Burda 08-2009 #121 Pencil Skirt with Pockets

I did get my hair chopped last week. The back is much shorter. Not as short as the reverse mullet but short enough to give it quite a bit of body. Here's item #8 of my Wardrobe Contest entry. This is a cute pencil skirt with pockets and fun seaming. I had some issues with the hip area but I got that straightened out after the photo shoot. Of course, it's a black skirt so you can't see too many details.

Here it is off the body. I could either use the flash and fade out all the details or be in focus. I settled for the slightly out of focus pictures because you can see the seam details.

After I took the photos I saw these tugs around the butt. I fixed that by letting out the side and CB seam just a little bit. The back section is straight so I made a "pocket" for the ol' derriere. Part of the bump on the right side is the invisible zipper.

When I cut this I only had enough material to cut the yoke in two separate pieces. So, there should not be a seam in the waistband or the CB yoke.

The bottom back has a small open slit for walking ease.

Review coming at PatternReview.com later tonight.

Pillowcases for "The Sisters"

Some of you probably remember the post from a while back where my son insisted on calling his sisters, "The Sisters." Well, The Sisters and The Boy all sleep in one bedroom because their mother is a selfish human being. We have a bedroom downstairs but it's my sewing haven. There is a bunk bed in the kids' room and The Boy sleeps on the top and the girls sleep together in the bottom bunk. My husband and I both agree that it would be a shame if the mother of this household flipped out one day and went crazy. Therefore we think it's a good idea for me to have a sewing room. Sewing is my therapy. Without sewing, I get a titch bit loony. Lately I've noticed that when my son goes to bed the girls have gotten his pillow off the top bunk and are cuddled together on it. I figured it was time for the girls to get their own pillows.

So, I pulled out all of the girly-pinky-lacey-frilly fabric (my girls loooove pink and lace) and put it in a big pile. I found this fantastic tutorial online for the pillowcases. Yes, I know it is super easy but this tutorial shows you how to do so the only raw edges are at the side and bottom of the pillowcase. It's kinda cool. I'm also adding it to my favorite links to the right.

I ended up with this . . .

. . . with orange rick-rack . . .

. . . and this with lace.

This is the inside of the first one. The line of stitches is there only to hold on the rickrack. I love how you get a finished edge on the inside.

Ahhhhhh, I love me a quick, cute project.

Chanel Jacket 6 - Sleeves, trim, and other stuff

First off, I want to say thank you for all the support with the moose posts. I also want to apologize for the rant. I try to live my life by not getting involved with negative people. I really think they bring everyone around them down and I won't let myself get involved with it. Uck.

On with the sewing, shall we? I've been playing with the trim and figuring out how to apply it. I know the couture method is to hand sew it. There is no way I could handsew all of the trim. After my last couture jacket where I thought I was going to chuck it out the window, I am going to take shortcuts on this one. No it won't look like crap but there is no reason (unless you like to) to handsew it on. I just happened to have a matching gold in my thread stash so I tried zigzagging it. The blue trim already has matching stitching running down the length. I found a guiding foot that works to make my own stitches along their stitching line. And no, I won't use gold. I wanted to make sure I could see it and the gold was already in the machine.

Here you can see the original blue stitches with my gold ones on top.

Here's the finished trim on the sleeve.

The sleeves are on. Aren't these just great? I can never get jacket sleeves to set-in without puckering. I'm either awesome or this pattern is just drafted nicely with little ease. I'm leaning toward the later as the reason for these un-puckery sleeves.

I also ditched the zipper in the front. Instead I sewed in some hook and eyes. I love the zipper idea but with all the trim and crazy boucle I wanted something more discreet.

Hopefully today I'll get the pockets cut out, trim put on, do a final fitting, and, and, and. I'm a compulsive list maker and I often give myself too much to do. I think I'll end there. We'll see how much I get done.

Kid Jammies

Remember these from my September 6th post? Holy cow, I put these off for a long time. I had to stop making them because I ran out of waist elastic. Then other things like meat and mothers got in the way. I think they turned out pretty cute. Check out the other post for close-ups of the embroidery. This is KS 3234. It's a pajama pattern that I use for all my kids' t-shirts and pull-on pants. I'm only on the second smallest size right now so I'll get many years out of this pattern. I made five pairs. One is for my son and the other ones are for a set of twins. How strange is this? I have a core set of college girlfriends that live in Anchorage. Out of the group there are two sets of identical twins and a set of fraternal twins. One was my roommate in college and the other was my next door neighbor in college. Tainted water? All three of us had twins within nine months.

All I gotta say is . . .

really?? I understand people not agreeing me or supporting me with the whole moose thing. But, really, let's not get ugly about it. Just because you don't agree with something someone does, you shouldn't attack them or the people that do support them. I mean, really, are we 12? Jules? Really? I would write you specifically but, strangely enough, your profile isn't available. Sort of makes it nice for you to shoot out nasty comments anonymously.

If you don't like it, don't read it. But really, I'm writing this post to ask you to stop attacking my readers. Insult me all you like. I'm a teacher, bring it. But, leave the readers alone. Let's put our big girl pants on, here.

Sorry you have to read this rant. People who think they are better than everyone else irritate me a bit. We all have different customs, values, ideas, etc. I don't agree or like what everyone else does but I would never assume that I'm a better person than they are because I do something differently.

Ugh. I'm stopping now. Sorry again. Sewing coming up later tonight. Promise!

Oof-da

We are finally done processing the moose. We have an entire freezer of meat. Like, really, we had to go buy a freezer for this moose. We now have two freezers in the garage. And that is not uncommon for an Alaskan. Most people have at least two freezers in the garage. We finished on Sunday, cleaned on Monday, and then my husband left for the slope yesterday. It's been a crazy-hectic two weeks. I'm hoping things will settle down a bit this coming week. I have some thinks to crank out and I haven't been able to even get in the sewing room because it was occupied with my mother.

Here's my husband with the Cabela's meat grinder. We add fat to the moose when we grind it for burger. Moose has virtually no fat in it and will just crumble if you try to cook it as burger by itself. The white stuff you see below is beef fat that was added to the moose.

We also made 150 pounds of sausage. We bought the seasoning packet from a local business. The mix is okay but we've made better. This time though we didn't have the supplies on hand to mix up our own batch of seasonings.

Here's the grinder set-up. It's right next to the gun case. Can't have one without the other, eh?

We have an old ping pong table that we use for a makeshift table. We put it on sawhorses. The black bucket is trash and the white bucket is for scraps that will be ground into burger.

I thought this was pretty cool. My husband made this magnetic knife holder. He bought the magnets at Ace Hardware.

I'm hoping things are about to get more relaxed . . .

Burda 06-2008-105 Cap Sleeve Blouse

Not a lot of sewing going on here. I finished this blouse a few days ago but with work, moose, and children, I haven't gotten to post it. This is item #7 for the Wardrobe Contest. I have made this top before. I liked it so much I made it again. I wear it a lot as a layering piece. I will often wear it over a turtleneck, long-sleeves t-shirt, or dress. This is a silk-cotton blend from the fabric coop.

Here's some topstitching detail . . .

I used my fantastic Necchi buttonholer attachment.

I hope to finish some kid jammies this weekend but it may not happen. On top of moose butchering/processing, my mom is here. The guest bedroom is the sewing domain. The sewing domain is pretty small to begin with so extra suitcases and things don't make it easy.