I visited S.R. Harris fabrics in Brooklyn Park yesterday...OMG!!! Talk about wonderousness. The place is 30,000+ sq feet of fabrics. Rows and rows and rows of denim. 10 aisles of quilting cottons. HUNDREDS of bolts of shirting fabric. Knits, knits and more knits. Silks, wools, EVERYTHING!
It's a somewhat dark place with too-narrow aisles. Fabric is piled on top of itself so you need to be strong or bring your 6'2", 200+ pound husband with you :) It's DIY on cutting most yardage; silks have to be cut by employees, anything over 5 yards has to be cut by employees, and then some fabrics are marked as well. Along the same vein, you must return your fabric to the shelves. Not so bad.
Everything is 50% off the marked bolt price. Quilting cottons looked to be about $11.99 across the board...so $6.00 a yard. Denim varied from $8.99 to $16.99 (and up I'm sure) so $4.50 - $8.50/yd. Shirting fabric was about $6.99 - $8.99, so $3 to $4.50 per yard. How awesome! Obviously, there are more expensive fabrics too...just giving a general idea.
Zippers are 50 cent (50 CENT!) for zippers under 14 inches (I believe). $1.00 if over 14 inches. They have barrels and boxes full of zippers. Buttons were 10 cent to 25 cents each, again, barrels and buckets FULL of them. This isn't my cup of tea, the buttons. I'd get aggravated before ever finding anything.
I tried to remain conservative and ended up with:
2 1/4 yards of Rock & Republic denim at $6/yd
1 1/2 yards of white pintucked shirting cotton at $5.00/yd
1 1/2 yards of blue and white gingham at $3.99/yd
2 1/2 yards of printed knit jersey at $4.50/yd
1 yd of purple cotton at $1/yd
1 yd of green/white printed cotton at $1/yd
I used the green and white cotton to make a little blouse for a friend's baby. The purple cotton shall have the same fate! :)
I am REALLY proud of my sleeve work on this little blouse. I think I shall use this same technique always. I used a combination of easing it in the traditional way, with the "cheat" method I saw advertised HERE. I actually did do the ease stitching, eased the sleeve together, matched up dots and notches and the shoulder seam and sewed the sleeve on. Then I turned inside-out and starting with the sleeve, sewed the sleeve seam and the side seam. Worked beautifully and wasn't hair-pulling out at all.
This was after I realized I wasn't getting this tiny little sleeve around my machine arm and not knowing another way to make it work.
I don't know how to do collars. I wing it based on what I think it should look like. I am going to learn the proper way to do a collar, I promise! :) I love making buttonholes - I LOVE IT! It's so cool and fun and the results are always good. I am however, scared to use my machine to sew on buttons. I just hand sew them.
Today, I also made this for my husband:
One of those instant gratification types of projects.
Next up, muslin'ing for Simplicity 2700!
