FabricMart Reader Sew Along and a Quick Departure

The FabricMart Fabricista challenge is in full swing! I decided to sew along this week and create something a tiny bit out of the box for me :)

A PR member posted a color blocked version of M6884 earlier this year and it was so pretty! I've thought about it ever since but wasn't sure I could pull it off.

I knew I wanted to use ITY and had a few 'fall' colors on hand. I was going to go with teal, navy and gray but remembered that I made my last V8805 dress with that combo...and I wanted to save my gray jersey for something else. Going through the piles I found this white slubbed knit that I'd used for my M6841 drapey top. I decided that would work!

I made no changes from last time except to shorten the sleeves and lengthen the ties...and then completely screw it all up.

hahaha!

Somehow I put both ties on the same side. I didn't even realize it until the dress was done. And I was confused.

WAIT.

We have to back up a bit more. I serged the side seams and went to put it on and...huh? Whaaaaa?

It is a mock wrap. I hadn't encased the wrapped fronts into the side seam allowance. After unpicking serger stitches I got that straightened out. And then went to put it on and was all confused about the ties. But there was no.way.on.earth. I was unpicking those seams again. The ties are super long and super stretchy and I figured it wouldn't matter much anyway.

I think I need to go back in through the very upper body and nip it in a tiny bit. Last time I sewed 3/8" seams and so I did the same this time, but I've lost a bit of weight and it just looks baggy right below the armpit.

I didn't really like it and just went lazy and used steam a seam lite to hem it. And then went back and topstitched the hems with the teal thread (which pops really beautifully on the navy!) and took quick photos (I thought my deadline for submitting was Tuesday). After looking at the pics it really grew on me! I look forward to wearing this one this fall!

And because I didn't add length, I will probably always wear it with tights because it feels short.

I hope I win the reader prize!!! From the site:

This week's prize pack will be a copy of Successful Serging by Beth Baumgartel, a pack of 400 quilting pins (which are also suitable for garment sewing!), and two Kwik Sew patterns - #3766 and 4081. 

KS4081 kinda has my name written all over it!

And a departure from current sewing plans...

I tend to browse my favorite store sites for inspiration...and cool cardigans! I came across this cropped moto jacket at White House, Black Market. It's only $40 (marked down from $98), so I *could* just buy it...but I have loads of black ponte and a Lekala pattern!

I might keep the Lekala collar because I think that makes it more versatile with different necklines. And initially I thought I might leave off the sleeve zippers because it's a one-piece sleeve and how could they be in the "right" place? Well, the sleeve is very oddly shaped. I think they've accounted for that so maybe I'll baste it in and see how I like it.

Sewing Repeats; McCall's 6886 and Lekala 5871

First, thank you, thank you, thank you for all the great feedback on my Minoru! I normally reply to comments but didn't get a chance to stay on top of them.

We had a couple of really rainy days so I've gotten a chance to wear it - yay!

Right at the start of the month I made M6708 and have yet to review it because I couldn't do the buttonholes. I need to get it finished!!! Well, I'd used a contrasting fabric for the bands thanks to great advice from Instagram sewing friends, and then decided to make a simple knit dress from the contrast fabric!

I used M6886, which I made when it first came out in 2013. I didn't like the fabric and sent the dress to my mom, who loves it! So, win!

This went together really fast...

I can't find my selfie remote so poor mirror pics it is...SORRY!

I made no size changes from last time; 14 through the neck/shoulders, 16 through the bust/waist and an 18 hip. 

I did add a neck binding by measuring around subtracting about 20%. My band is 23.25" by 2.5" for the size 14 neck.

I had tried it on with a bunch of sweaters and jackets and was all prepared to take pics today but 1) I can't find my remote! and 2) I don't really feel well. So pictures on Lily!

With denim jacket, emerald B5926, red-orange cardigan, M6708 cardigan

After sewing my Minoru, I decided I wanted to use this striped ponte for another version. 

This fabric is so much thicker that the need for a swayback adjustment is much more evident. 

Initially, I sewed smaller seam allowances but it just looked sad. It is a fitted dress so if you wanted a looser fit, you'd need to remove some of the curvature from the pattern. Otherwise it just looks like you have on a too-big dress. I ended up nipping the hip curve in a little more. 

I used the shorter sleeve length from the pattern; but I ended up shortening it another 3 inches. It hit me at a weird spot.

I added 3" to the length and then hemmed it about 1.25". I did a 1" hem on the sleeves and used the same neck binding measurement as before.

With the same jackets/cardigans:

It really did look cute with the polka-dot cardigan!!!! 

At some other point (the days run together...) I'd worn my khaki Lekala skirt and decided I should have a dark floral denim one for fall.

I could not find a dark floral that I like. I even checked Fabric.com in desperation!!!! Nothing at FabricMart, nothing at Mood, nothing at Hancock, and again out of desperation I checked JoAnn! 

I was cleaning the sewing room and found this cut of fabric that I'd forgotten about. I had 1.25 yards of it so a straight skirt was pretty much the only option for it. I think I initially bought it for shorts.

Lekala 5871

As before, I lengthened the skirt 2 inches because I eliminated the bottom band. I left off the pockets and belt loops this time as well. And I reversed which side was the fly. 

I did a great job matching the "outside" of the yoke to skirt. But didn't account for the darts. DANG IT! :) I still love it though!

Paired with my M7093 wrap top and a denim jacket. I also like it with a white top but otherwise didn't like any light-colored tops with it. Maybe because I'm thinking fall and boots??

I had a really productive sewing days Friday evening and yesterday...but today I am sidelined. When your kids love you too much...you get their cooties!

*all fabric from FabricMart

Trust Your Judgement

I was so mad when I realized I didn't change the settings for my Lekala patterns. This one I REALLY wanted and pleaded with them to resend it as letter and they did. 

I taped it while I was cooking dinner and knew I could sew up the bulk of the seams quickly on the serger, and do the hems tomorrow. 

Fail. Fail. Fail. 

I entered my measurements correctly. 

I know lekala has little ease. 

Top I saw:

"Oh cute! A fancy tshirt! Should wear easily and those pleats are sweet!"

Instincts:

That neckline looks impossibly small. 

It looks kinda short...

"Mom is that going to go around your boobs??"

Well...this is the top I got

(Sorry for the mirror!)

(I'm CHOKING)

(Yeah. Not gonna cover my entire torso)

1) I reversed the markings and the pleats are wrong BUT that's the least of the problems. 

2) I added 2" to the sleeve circumference and they're still JUST right. 

3) The bust is too small 

4) The neckline is stupid, ridiculously high. 

5) The top is just too short. This is with 1 1/4" added for hem allowance and it's not hemmed!

Fail. Fail. Fail. 

I can take a fail or two. Now and again. Sometimes ;)

Now I have to make something totally awesome.  

I like this fabric. Luckily I have 2+ more yards of it. Maybe I'll stash this to use as fabric for undies when I get around to buying lace. It's SUPER soft. 

A Tale of Two Skirts: Burda 02/2014 & Lekala 5871

Sew-a-palooza? Oh yeah. It happened.

I made a knit top and pants (both made before), a pair of shorts and 2 skirts. I'll review the shorts and show off the other two in a second post. I also managed during Sew-a-palooza to make 3 dozen cookies, make two Target runs, have lunch with my daughter, take her to SR Harris and cook dinner! I did not go grocery shopping.

Now, if you recall, I was really working on shorts muslins a little while back. Well then I got it in my head that I needed casual skirts. And I needed a pattern with a yoke. I was perusing Lekala and found 5871.

I really liked it! Except I knew I wasn't going to attempt those zippered pockets without proper instructions. And then I knew I wasn't going to do all that dang top-stitching. And that band is cute from the front but the tabs? Meh.

And then, as soon as I paid for it, I realized there was a recent Burda pattern with a yoked back. Dang it!  But then, I had the lightbulb moment to make them BOTH. Score!!

Burda Style 02/2014 #109 is sized for stretch fabrics and intended to be lined. Lined? Nope. Not today.

The Burda pattern was up first. I'd cut a 44 but after realizing how stretchy my denim was, I decided to use that difference between a 42 and 44 as part of my seam allowance and pseudo make the 42. I attempted to read the directions twice and then said forget it...it's a simple shape; I can do this!

The Bad:

• I was *SO* intent on my zipper not showing that I put it too far on the fly side and now it's lumpy. Boooo. 
• I didn't add seam allowance to the drafted fly shield so it's a tiny one :)
• I somehow drafted my waistband too short and had to patch it. You can barely tell though!!!
• There were crazy storms today and I only have sucky pictures.

The Good:

• I really like it! 
• I used a jeans zipper!
• The shaping from the yoke is awesome!

The Technical:

• Stretch denim remnant from Mill End Textiles (purchased last year)
• Jeans zipper from stash ($.97 on clearance from JoAnn!)
• Size 14 needle for seams, size 16 needle for waistband, buttonhole
• Gingham scraps for pocket lining
• Metal button from SR Harris ($.25)
• Thread from stash
• Finished length was 23.5" or so...I didn't add any hem allowance and used a 1.5" hem

I actually top stitched the yoke (on either ride of the seam) but it is pretty invisible. It is neat though! Hahaha!

The Lekala skirt was sewn on Sunday in about 3 hours. It went REALLY fast. I tried reading those instructions four times and MEH!!!!! At the last minute, I decided to leave off the pockets. I like pockets but on women's fitted garments they just seem to get in the way. Every time I put on the denim skirt I have to "arrange" the pocket. Hmmph.

It was raining and WINDY and this is the best outside pic

Some of that bunching is due to my (granny) panties. Sorry.

The Bad:

• Nothing! I kicked butt sewing this skirt!
• Wait...the darts. I don't like the darts
• The cut on fly is too narrow. Next time I'll add 1/4" or 3/8" to it

The Good:

• Fast. Fast. Fast.
• I did a good job topstitching the darts and ok on the yoke topstitching
• I made no adjustments and think Lekala did a pretty good job on the drafting.

The Technical:

• Cotton twill from SR Harris ($3.50/yd!)
• Zipper from SR Harris ($.50 in stash)
• Button from stash
• Thread from stash!! I was so amazed that I had matching thread. Yay for stashing!
• Since I eliminated the band on the bottom, I added 2" to the length and a 1.25" hem allowance. I ended up making a 1.5" hem.

Verdict?

They're both good patterns!!!  Yay me!

The Burda is sized for stretch wovens so that affects fit.

The Lekala is great for circumferential measurements; but I think adjustments still need to be made. E.g., my "hip" measurement is 44". More of that is attributed to my butt than my "hips". I don't have enough butt room. This is true for the Burda pattern too; but the fabric stretches.

They both lose with their crappy straight waistband that's just folded in half. Booooo.

Those darts on the Lekala have to go. I don't like them. Maybe I can Frankenpattern and use the Lekala front with the Burda back! :)

In the above pics, the Lekala is on bottom, Burda on top. They are VERY similar! The Lekala is only slightly more wide on the outseam than the Burda.

More Sew-a-Palooza and SR Harris yumminess coming up! :)

Finished Item: Lekala 4011 (Plus a whole bunch of other stuff!)

One day, my daughter and I were looking at sweatshirt patterns - she likes the McCall's 6614 sweatshirt she got but it's a unisex pattern so it's pretty boxy. We found a few that she liked, but when she saw this Lekala pattern, she wanted it!

She loves bright colors and isn't big on prints. I found this insanely bright neon sweatshirt fleece at Hancock for 50% off plus I had an additional 10% off coupon - score!

Now, issue #1 with Lekala patterns; there is no recommendation on amount of fabric. So you'd have to be pretty confident or just over purchase. But you don't want a bunch of extra neon green sweatshirt fleece hanging around, right? So I bought 2 yards.

A positive or negative depending on how you sew, there are narrow seam allowances, for this one it was 1 cm which is close to 0.39". I used a 3/8" seam allowance (0.375").

The pattern printed and taped together well. It was 28 pages total (with 3 or 4 blank pages) and the markings all lined up really well.

(my cute 25 cent basket that holds my pattern weights -aka- giant washers)

The grainline is labeled "beam", the pieces each have the pattern number and the measurements. I don't know why it says 'linen type top'; but it does. And then it has the pattern piece. Sleeve? Great. Center Part Left Front? Uhmm. Ok. Little bit of finagling there...

So to ensure the pattern would fit on my fabric, I traced and cut everything out and then laid it on my fabric

 NO problem! Well alright...so I headed to the sewing room and LUCKILY caught my error. And then realized I was going to have to be REALLY creative to get the pieces to fit onto 2 yards of fabric.

Mistakes:

• Cut the left front piece backwards...oops. Recut it but didn't have enough fabric so it was slightly off grain and ended up growing on me.
• I told myself I'd cut the "pocket lining" piece out of lining fabric. Uhmm, no. It shows from the outside. Err. Had to find random scraps big enough to cut the pockets from.
• I serged the left front and the left princess seam piece but that's the seam where the zipper goes.
• Then I sewed the shoulder seam while top stitching the pocket

Break time.

Then I read the zipper instructions 317,413,897 times. And still didn't understand what they were telling me. So I had to start pinning pieces together and doing what made sense. Once I figured it out, THEN the instructions made sense! Oy!

There is a LOT of top stitching on this jacket and it isn't my strong suit. My machine doesn't produce the "beautiful stitch" I read sewers swooning about. And anything under 1/4" is tough for me. I am low on patience.

Then I realized how crappy my top stitching around the pocket was (yes, the pattern suggested binding the pocket but I had no fabric for bias tape!!) so I wanted to add double fold but didn't know if it worked. My young adult nieces confirmed, yes, add the trim.

More Mistakes:

• I made something weird happen on the left piece (right facing here) and so the seam doesn't   line up across the front.
• I didn't interface around the zipper. Oops.
• The zipper should start at the top, pointed part of the right side and I guess more of the band (or placket as they refer to it) would fold up. Darn it 
• Because I decided to do the bias tape after sewing the side seams...the raw edge shows. I used some fraycheck and went about my business

Again, after completing this step, I realized what the instructions were saying with sandwich the placket and blah, blah, blah. Fine.

Ahhhh!!!!

After that, it was mostly smooth sailing. I had no problem setting the sleeves, however I did notice it needed to be eased more on the front than the back. I don't know if this is normal or not. And the bands weren't overly different from the circumference of the sleeve opening. 

The pattern suggested adding bias tape across the collar seam which I really like. I wish I would've read that before I under stitched the collar, I could have gotten a slightly cleaner result. But, I like the green contrast on the black bias tape. I took double fold and opened it once, ironing out the crease. this made it 1/2" wide and nice and flat.

FINALLY, after working hard Friday and Saturday, it was done! Wooohoo!!! She not only loved it, it fit very well. The *only* issue is the sleeves are slightly too short. I could've added 1/2-1" BUT this is pretty good, imo because I normally have to add 2 to 2 1/2" to her sleeve length. So I don't know if the sleeves are drafted longer or if they lengthened them based on her height. Either way, I was pretty impressed overall with the fit. She wore it all morning and said it was comfortable, warm and cozy. 

I don't know why she's standing so stiffly.

Success! I sewed my first separating zipper AND my first Lekala pattern and most importantly, the giftee loves it :-)

I will definitely try a Lekala pattern for myself now. Maybe a simple one!

***********************************************

Also: 

His blanket is bigger than his body

2.5 yards of checkered and black serged together

New PJs in cotton flannel for my husband using McCall's 4244 which I graded up (yay me!) to an XL after discovering my pattern only had S,M,L.

This time I used the dual casing method and loved it! Well, I didn't love threading 42" of elastic twice plus the drawstrings but I love the finished look. 

I didn't know if they would fit well but I compared them to an existing pj pair and...pretty close. The blue ones are knit so it works that the flannel are larger

I was all set to make pjs for my daughter and I using this I heart Bacon fabric but uhmm...it's super popular and they had just over a yard. I still bought it. I can't make pants from 1 yard! :) Some crazy people are selling it on Etsy for $7-11 per yard. I paid $2.79. Uh yeah, I'll just wait to see if they get more in stock.

Then I was minding my business and Kyle at Vacumming the Lawn posted that she made herself an apron for Christmas. Hey! I want an apron!! So...about 2 hours later I had this:

Chevron main, dots pockets and ties, scroll for the neckband. I accidentally cut the children's size ties. Haste makes waste and all that jazz...

No cat shots, but a mommy/daughter shot!

And an awesome Christmas gift!!!!

Jerk is a physics term and it is:

the derivative of acceleration with respect to time

the 2nd derivative of velocity with respect to time squared

the 3rd derivative of position (sometimes called r) with respect to time cubed

It's funny and it's science! Yay!!!!!!!!!!

Hope your Christmas was amazingly awesome!


***Edited to add: Lekala patterns are $1.49, $1.99 if they add seam allowances. Also, I am up to 97 items, FYI :-D ***