Reversible Hoodie

Yet another review, this time for my son’s reversible hoodie. My poor friends who regularly check out my “regular” blog must thing that all I do these days is sew. I’ve been quite busy with sewing lately, though, and it seems that I never get a chance to stop and document stuff. But to that end, I’ve got stuff that I’ve sewn over the past few years that never got uploaded. I’m looking at forking out the $25 for an upgraded membership over at Flickr because my photo bank has run waaaaay over the 200 limit they set for the freebie account. Will have to do that when I get some money, though, so it’ll be a while. In the meantime, I’m hoping to get images and reviews uploaded to Pattern Review before they disappear into the nether regions of Flickr.

It’s Bear-able

As promised, another review, this time for the bear jacket. Now off to enjoy some Lonesome Dove with my honey!

Ta-Da!

Ok, I’m going to cop out and post a link to my review for the New Look dress since I spent so much time typing it over at Pattern Review and I’m too lazy to cut and paste and remove all the tags over here. Which strikes me funny, since I know that anyone reading my regular blog got here by a link, too. So, Harrison and Laura Files readers, sorry about the multiple jumps here, but I’ll throw in a few pictures here to make the extra jumps sting less. :)

I am aware, btw, that her dress is a little big. Her birthday is in about six weeks so I anticipate that it will probably fit just about perfectly at that point. Honestly, though, I’m just so excited that I have it done this early, I wouldn’t care if it were two sizes too big.

I’m also posting pictures of the kids in their respective jackets that I’ve made in the past month or so. I so suck at documenting anything like this. Sigh. I’ll have reviews up for them at PR pretty soon, too, hopefully. Perhaps that’s what my posts will be for the next few nights? Maybe? Unless something cool happens around here, that’s sounding like a pretty good plan. I mean, we’re planning on watching the Space Station fly over us the next few nights, but otherwise it’s a quiet weekend planned at our Nut House.

So, without further ado, the cuteness:

  

 

 

Painless Ruffles

Feeling muchly geniusish tonight. I know I must have read this tip for taming gathers somewhere before—I’m pretty certain it didn’t just appear in my head, but even just remembering it and utilizing it is pretty darned smart.

So the problem with gathering, as anyone who sews can tell you, is that you go to all the trouble to get the gathers all nice and even, spreading them equally around the garment (in this case, a dress!), and when you go to do the actual stitching on them to anchor them in place they wiggle and woggle around on you. You end up with a skirt that is really poofy on one side and somewhat flat on the other.

Kind of takes the fun out of making a big poofy, twirly skirt.

What happens (for me, anyway) is that when you feed the gathers through the sewing machine, the flat part is usually to the bottom with the feed dogs and the bumpy part is against the sewing foot. The foot presses down because that’s what feet do, and it tends to squash the gathers out of its way. At this point, I usually stop, grumble, re-configure the remaining gathering and start sewing again, hoping for the best. Which of course, never occurs.

So I got to thinking tonight while working on the ruffle gathering for the dress I’m making for Laura that I needed some way to make the gathered part as smooth as the ungathered part.

And that’s when inspiration struck.

I began by gathering the tulle for the underskirt in the way I would gather most anything—two lines of stitching, about 1/8th of an inch apart and pulling the threads until it was the right size. I evenly distributed the gathers and pinned them into place on the underskirt along a line I had marked.

 

I next took some tracing paper and cut it into evenish strips of about 13 inches (the width of the paper) by two inches (my cut size). I then centered the paper up over the stitching lines and started pinning it in place. After I got the first strip in place, I lined up my ruler with the stitching line on both sides of the paper and then drew the stitching line onto the strip. Each subsequent strip would be overlapped about an inch or two and I’d line the ruler up with the drawn line to the left and the stitching line to the right.

After the entire row of gathering was papered, I lined up my needle to sew directly on the drawn line.

 

I sewed the drawn line and for good measure, I moved about 1/8 inch toward the edge and sewed a second line.

 

My last step was to carefully remove the strips of paper from the stitching lines. I had used a fairly close stitch length and some pretty flimsy paper, but if either of those factors had been different, I could have easily squirted or blotted a little water along the thread which would have weakened it enough to come off without any ripping problems.  As it was, it came out really nicely and didn’t take too long to remove. My end product was a really nice ruffle that is evenly gathered.

 

Twirl time!

All told, this probably added about 20-30 minutes to the project, but the benefits of doing it add immeasurably to my happiness! I’ll be using this again when I attach the skirt to the bodice and pretty much anywhere else I think of adding ruffles!

Stashin’

Made a little headway on organizing my fabric today. Didn’t actually organize any of the fabric, but got a step closer. When we decorated the office/sewing room this year, we chose the Expedit bookshelves from Ikea for my main storage units. I put my books, projects and fabrics in the available 24 spaces. The problem is that fabric shouldn’t be exposed to light because that has a tendency to fade it. I’ve looked for drawers or doors or anything that I could install on the shelves that would help with hiding the stash, but nothing seemed to fit.

Finally, though, I found the Itso fabric drawers from Target. They are the perfect size—exactly the dimensions I needed. The colors matched the room decor we set up and look really nice. For Christmas, I told Robert that I wanted eight drawers—enough to hold my entire fabric stash and box up some projects. He got them and now I’m in the process of putting my fabric in them.

I spent today working on the sample cards that I intend to keep in a box or perhaps on a flip ring. I made a template in Word that has space for width, length, prewashed status, fabric content, care instructions, where and when purchased and price paid, after discounts if any. Most importantly, I included a spot for box number. I intend to number all eight boxes and as I fill them, I’ll make a card out for each fabric. I will cut out a 3”x3” swatch to glue to the back so I can see what I have at hand easily. At this point, it won’t matter if a fabric is for me, the kids or Robert (my current system—we all have shelves, more or less) because I can just look in the specific box and find what I’m looking for. I also intend to try to keep the stash to just these eight boxes, so I won’t be getting the itch to go out and buy stuff when I don’t have any place for it.

In all, I’m pretty excited about it. I need to get to work measuring and describing the stash I have, but as soon as I’ve got it all labeled and boxed, it will all be smooth sailing. When I get new fabric after I get it organized, it will be a matter of minutes to get them into the system and put away neatly.

Bring on the Snow!

Or, in my case (as I live in East Texas), the slush!

Finally finished Laura’s jacket. I cut it out probably a month or so ago, along with the stuff to make a jacket for Harrison as well. As so often happens, the projects got set aside for life and I have only in the past few weeks or so gotten enough time to get to them. I finished Laura’s completely today, although all I had left was the snaps and the hole through which I bagged the lining. The sleeves threw me for a loop—the directions seemed totally non-intuitive, but I trusted Ottobre to have worked out the details as they so often do and it came out perfectly.

I used a short napped fake fur from Hancock’s and lined it with a nice, cushy baby pink knit. For the bears, I embroidered the facial features instead of using buttons. I figured since she’s still under a year that there was no reason to be tempting fate with chokey things.

I think the only thing I would have changed is to add some bear ears to the hood. At the time I was making that part, the fabric was being kind of fiddley and I just didn’t want to make the effort to add them. As it is, it looks really cute, but ears always make things better. Maybe next year.

I’ll get pictures of the girl in it soon. She wore it out Christmas shopping today and was oooohed and aaaaahed all over the store. More importantly, she kept rubbing it and smiling, so I think it was pretty successful.

Now, on to the boy’s jacket!

Grrrrr…I mean, Brrrrrr!

Working on the girl’s jacket since it’s finally winter here in East TX. It’s going together pretty quickly, considering that I’m working with fake fur. It’s got a really short nap, so it’s not too bad, but I’m definitely going to think twice about using this fabric again. If I didn’t know how adorable she’s going to be in it, I’d have given up hours ago. Nice thing is that it’s entirely lined (bagged!), so I don’t have to worry about finishing the seams. I’m finger pressing them open and running over them at the junctures with seams to keep them open and that’s pretty much doing the trick. I might tack them down in a few places, but overall I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. I’ve got to redo the hood (again), but I think I’m going to work on that tomorrow since it’s nearing midnight and I do actually work for a living. :)

Will hopefully get to the boy’s jacket by the weekend, although I’m not as worried about his just because he’s already got one really good jacket. I am making him a reversible hoodie so it will be warm without being too hot or bulky. It’s cut out, I just need to get it finished up. One project at a time!