carrotflowers

8 projects all cut up

Almost 2 weeks ago I splurged and bought a new machine. The store doesn’t stock them (!!!) so I’ve been waiting and waiting for my new Activa 230 PE to come in. In the meantime, I started planning and then cutting out pieces for some projects in my queue. Behold!

(Postscript: the Bernina & I did not fit well. I returned it and a week or so later bought a used Pfaff Expression 2046 which I adore, adore, adore.)

not keeping up

I have not been keeping up documenting my sewing projects. Argh! The major problem is that I’d like to put them up chronologically and now I’ve got a backlog because some are easier to write than others. I spent a lot of the last few days reading the supereggplant and allbuttonedup blog posts about sewing & it made me confront the fact that if I don’t write promptly, I’ll just forget the little details of a project that all add up to learning and defining my sewing skills. So, I’m just going to have to try harder! And also accept that my posts will be in a hodgepodge sort of order.

muslin

Recently I appropriated a ton of free patterns via freecycle. I ended up re-freecycling over half, there were too many for a lifetime! I finally cracked open the envelope on one of them, this Butterick top. I love the one with the Mandarin collar and the kimono (or Dolman?) sleeves. So I started with a muslin and cut out the size 6. Making a muslin is a fantastic idea when you are working from an unfamiliar pattern or pattern company. For examply, by now I am pretty sure what size I need for burdastyle.com or a Machiko Kayaki pattern. In this case however, it’s a good thing I started with a muslin.

Three muslins later and I had altered the pattern, changing it so that rather than have separate facings, I extended the right and left front so that it could just fold over. I extended them just so that it would close comfortably as well, because it was too tight. I also had to narrow the darts.

It had been so long since I’d make a muslin - or sewn in general - that I remembered a couple of important things:

1. BASTE - use basting stitches when making a muslin so you can just rip it right the hell back out, easily.

2. Don’t trim the seams. :(   A couple of times I needed to rejoin pieces, after I’d already gotten carried away and trimmed the seams down. Blech.

p.s. in the lower right of the big photo - my new iron - I treated myself to a Rowenta. It just glides over fabric so smoothly

going back in time / Britex Fabrics

The next few posts are going to be me, going back in time, to discuss everything I’ve made since my very first post (pincushion) but did not write about. After all, amongst other things, the goal is to document and learn from the errors of my ways

Let me also just say, a couple of weeks ago I was in SF for the Web 2.0 Expo. It was at the Moscone West and very close to Britex Fabrics, which I had read about online. I’m sorry but I was not totally thrilled. Everything was quite expensive and I just expected a more extensive remnants section. However, where I live my resources are quite limited, so I picked up a pack of clover pins that I had read about on the purl soho website. And you know what, they are right, the pins in fabric do slide through like butter!

In progress: JJ blouse from burdastyle.com

Well, I had to read the first step several times over a couple of days before I seemed to comprehend it. Then I still got it wrong (slightly.) It wasn’t too hard to amend my mistake. I also followed one sewer’s advice and did a fake French seam based on her how to. Thus sewing that one seam took me ten minutes. Progress is slow but I’m actually proud of me for trying to take my time for once. In Amy Karol’s Bend the Rules Sewing, she has a little section called “What Kind of Crafter Are You?” and I identified my category right away: the impatient crafter. Hell, it’s part of what I love about sewing - the gratification is so quick. So when I read Claire B Shaeffer’s Couture Sewing, and she talks on and on about all the hand sewing they do, and all of the basting by hand like 5 times before sewing a seam, I was like “kill me!” But then on my very next project (the Kayaki blouse I think) I basted a few steps before machine sewing & I think it helped. That book really helped me understand easing so much better as well.

no blogging these days

See, this always happens. I get hung up on dumb details like the entry formatting, which theme I should use, should I roll my own etc etc. Then the backlog of things I intended to write about gets too overwhelming. Ick. I did choose to switch to hosted Wordpress rather than WP.com because I couldn’t edit the css without paying. But now I’m like, why stop at editing the CSS, I should just customize my own theme. Yeah, you’re going to be looking at this grey default for awhile…

No sewing last night

And so far none tonight either. It’s a crappy feeling. I don’t even know why I didn’t get started last night. I can only sew after the baby is in bed, anyway, which is about 7:30, and quit by about 10. Last night I spent some time fooling with this blog, actually, trying to mod the CSS and figure out blogging from flickr. Turns out I’d have to pay to edit the CSS since I didn’t bother hosting it. Plus I spent some time doing household stuff, like dishwashing. Lamz0r. By 9 or so the hubs was ready to finish watching Order of the Phoenix, and that was the end of that. Tonight? 45 minutes cutting up and marking pattern pieces for a bag, free pattern from Ottobre, and picking the fabrics.

While pciking fabrics and cutting patterns and prepwork like that is in itself pretty satisfying, if I don’t follow it up with actual sewing I feel a little hollow inside.

I have learned that rather than prep one project at a time, it’s nice to spend a good couple hours tracing a couple patterns, cutting up the fabric and laying it all aside. Later, when I’ve got several projects in a row waiting, that’s a happy space to be in.

And I actually did do some sewing in the last few days. I made a bag for my Mom after I finished the headband. More about that later. And I probably will expend some energy writing up older projects, just so I can make notes of my mistakes/what I learnt/how to do it differently while it’s sort of fresh in my mind.