Happy Holidays!

For all of my sewing friends, I'm wishing you a Happy Holiday Season. .

With hopefully a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous New Year.

Merry Christmas to me!

Long story, but in the midst of Christmas/work wardrobe sewing, my wonderful Pfaff 1475CD died. The circuit board is out, which means it doesn't do anything. I debated a lot. I can send it to a great technician about 2,000 miles away to get a determination and price for repairs, or I could buy a new machine. If I send it, he will go through it and give me an estimate. If I don't want to pay the price, he will buy it to recondition and sell again, or use it for parts.

Although I just purchased the machine a year and a half ago to replace my mid 1980's version, it is a 30 year old sewing machine. I think they're like cars. When they start to go, it's an endless cycle. Unfortunately, the Pfaff dealer in town who had an excellent service man was sold and the technician retired. So if it goes again, I'm searching for someone new.

As most of you who are sewists know, new machine prices have skyrocketed over the last 30 years.  The Pfaff 1475CD was a top of the line machine, and I used it for 20 plus years, and loved it every stitch of the way. As close as I can tell, the machine I had, compares to the Pfaff Performance Icon, which retails at $9,999 now. Since we're retired, that price range is out of our budget. And Pfaff has been sold a few times and I don't believe the quality of the new machines is equivalent to the older ones made in Germany.

Enter the local Bernina dealer. It's a Mom-and-Pop store that has been in town for years and years. Pop does the repairs and all the "local reviews" are excellent. I spent some time looking at the Bernina website, which is excellent BTW. I even downloaded a video on how to work the machine and the manual, and went through both. Long story short, I didn't want a "quilting machine." I didn't want an "embroidery machine." I wanted an excellent sewing machine to make clothing and whatever else struck my fancy. After a lot of back and forth, and waiting for a week and a half for delivery on my special order, ta da!

It's sitting on a small computer desk right now, because it's large, and Dale has to modify my sewing table before it can fit. I'm extremely excited. At half the price of the Pfaff, I think it will do everything I ever dreamed of and more! However, I do need to go through the 19 pages of the manual of Sewing Preparation, and then the 12 pages of Setup Program, and fhen the page of system settings; and finally I'll get to the chapters on creative sewing; practical stitches; decorative stitches; alphabets; buttonholes; etc. The manual is actually 140 pages long, and it's so different from any machine I've ever used, I'll be reading most of it as I go along!

At this stage of our lives, this is a very expensive purchase, and I expect this one to last me as long as I can still sew. Or at least until I get ga-ga and start sewing crotch seams to waistlines and all that. LOL

I'll be sitting with the manual today, and getting this one all set up. Well, to be fair, probably now through at least Christmas! Dale is leaving on the 26th to visit the kids in California so I'll have from then until the 3rd to sew almost unceasingly. I'm very excited at the prospect.

And to cap off this post. This last week I got to witness one of the most exciting and thrilling events of my life. Which is why I'm not going to California with Dale. I was in Baltimore to see my oldest granddaughter get "hooded" for her PHD. Her doctorate is in Cognitive Science with an emphasis on early childhood education. Her is a picture of her and her husband, who got his PHD in September of 2018. I THINK his is in genetic engineering, but not sure. He does interesting stuff with genes.

She's a post-doc at University of California at Irvine, and he's at Cal-Tech, so they're in the LA-Orange County area. Now my oldest daughter's entire family is back in the state of California, at least for a bit. Her next younger sister is in Grad School at Berkeley, and the youngest has just applied to grad school, so we're waiting to hear where she'll be heading. She's been in San Diego for her the last five years.

Incredibly proud of all of them!

Hopefully, more soon! And lots of sewing projects completed. Hope you're all having a wonderful Holiday season and getting lots of goodies completed.

I'm moving in the right direction albeit slowly!

The bootstraps shirt got set aside as I have a definite urgency in my mind for the Modified Grainline Morris jacket. As I was looking for things in the sewing room, I ran across the pattern I started quite some time ago for the Morris jacket.

I have a ton of adjustments needed on anything like this due to my unique body shape. I had done some adjustments, and for whatever reasons, it got set aside and as far as I am aware, a muslin was never even started for it. I think it was because the fabric I had intended to use was a stretch cotton, and I wasn't sure how that would work.

Time passes, and I know I need a wool jacket for winter now that I live somewhere it actually gets pretty cold. I pulled out the wool double knit and did my standard prep for wool garments. I use Eucalan in the washing machine, let it soak, spin and then hang to dry. The one I use has lavender oil, so in addition to prepping the fabric, it is a natural moth repellent. Win, win, in my book. I save the cost of dry cleaning, and get the benefit of the moth repellent.

While that was going on, I made up a quick muslin of the Morris jacket, and had my hubbie, who is a fabulous photographer, but is only learning "fashion photography" take some pictures. First time around, it was apparent I needed quite a few additional adjustments. I guess as I move forward in my 70's, my body is changing more rapidly. At least much more rapidly than I would like.

I made some more adjustments, and another muslin, which didn't look too bad, (I never seem to get my horizontal balance lines in the same place on the front!) but still needed a bit more tweaking. I've become much more aware of the back issues lately. I've always needed a sway back adjustment, narrow, sloping shoulder adjustments, etc., but since I did my moulage and muslin, I realized that my upper back between the armholes is narrower than most for my body size. I also needed to make a larger adjustment at the top of the back for the rounded upper back I think I have from sitting at the computer so much. However, I think I have it now, and tomorrow I'll start the cutting and construction of the jacket.

Here's a quick pic of the muslin before I did the upper back adjustment. I think it's going to be a great addition to the wardrobe.

Hmmm. Looking like a mouth breather in this pic! LOL

I have since added a wedge of 5/8" at center back tapering to zero above the upper horizontal balance line. I'm pretty sure that's done the trick. At the minimum, this will fit better than any jacket I could purchase!

So I'll hope to keep up as this moves forward. It should be a quick and easy sew. Fingers crossed!

More later!

For all our North American friends:

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours! There is much to be grateful for. 

Jalie 3130 FInished

It is completed finally! The two muslins helped to make this a much better fitting shirt than it otherwise would have been, however, I'm not entirely happy with the upper back.

This one will fill a gap in the closet, though, and I'm sure will be worn a lot. I revised the Jalie pattern quite a bit, and will need to do further revisions before I'm 100% happy with it. Without further ado,

I'm going to use my Suzy Furrer back sloper to see if I can better fit the back of this shirt. 

Fabric is Navy 100% Pima Cotton Broadcloth from Mood, purchased 11/10/19. It's still available here: https://www.moodfabrics.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=311982

I have so many projects lined up now. Next I think is going to be another shirt using my Bootstraps pattern, #54469, which I have already done in muslin, made a few adjustments, and have more to come. The front isn't too bad, but again, the back needs work. I'll be working on that one this week and expect to make it in a Cotton and Steel lawn in navy and teal purchased a while back.  

Excuse the wet hair and serious face. We have to do what we have to do to get the photographer to take pictures!

Again, the back has too much width through the upper back, and needs some adjustments to get the lower back fitting right. I'm thinking it may need an upper back length adjustment for the curvature I now have in that area.

In addition, I've got some navy tropical weight wool ready to sew into a pair of trousers; pulled a piece of wool doubleknit out of the very old stash (July of 1994!) for a modified Grainline Morris jacket; an indigo cotton denim for a much needed pair of trouser jeans, and multiple other shirts flying around in my head.

So hopefully, we'll see a very productive rest of November and December. I'll be gone for a few days mid December to see my oldest granddaughter get "hooded" with her PHD class, (SO PROUD!) and then Dale will be gone for about a week after Christmas to see family in California. While he's gone, I hope to be a sewing demon! Wish me luck!

A Tale of Two Muslins

I had a virtual friend mention that she was always impressed with my alterations. It kind of surprised me, but on contemplation, I realized that perhaps most people either don't have the extensive changes needed, or just do as I did when I started sewing, and donate items that either don't fit right or don't look good.

I have to say that I started sewing when I was pregnant with my first daughter in 1965. Yes, I'm that old, however I was a young mother. At that time, I could take one of the big four patterns and use a size 10, without alterations and generally make it work. As my age and body changed, I became more and more dissatisfied with the fit of standard patterns. In my 30's, I discovered Burda patterns, and they fit much better for many years.

In 1996, after my prior husband passed on I decided to "go back to school" and not sure how that would work, I started taking sewing classes at the local Junior College, aka Community College. They had an excellent fashion department, and over the years I learned a lot from various instructors. One of my favorite classes was in fitting. The class was taught by a wonderful lady named Ginny Winter, and she had done alterations commercially for many years, and seen all kinds of different bodies of all sizes and shapes. One of the first things we did was put up big sheets of paper against a wall, and a friend traced our body shape onto the paper. Then we contrasted our body shapes against the ANSCII standards. It was a very eye opening experience for me.

In the last few decades, I've had various classes that do the same type of contrasting using various other scales including the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio in fashion design. It's rather eye opening if you've never explored it. Here's an article from a textile journal:   https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/254/17/172013/pdf

Here's another with the golden ration used to determine the ratios of the proper lengths for your body:  https://www.smartwomenonthego.com/dressing-your-best-the-rule-of-thirds/

The bottom line for me is that knowing your body and what works and doesn't work for you saves an enormous amount of time in deciding on what to wear and what to make. My most astonishing realization was that unlike my belief, my arms were not short. I just have very narrow, sloping shoulders! Now when I start to make a pattern, that's my first adjustment so I know that it's going to be in the range of possibility for me.

Back to the muslins. I think this will very well illustrate the difference the alterations I have to make to my patterns better than lots and lots of verbiage. I decided for my shirt pattern to go with the Jalie 3130 as my first project. (I am going to make several different shirt patterns before I'm done.)

As I have done Jalie patterns before, I know that the shoulders are much wider than mine. (I'm also short, now 5'2" down from 5'4", so length issues are usually included. For the first shirt, I narrowed the shoulders, the upper back, and adjusted the collar and collar stand to fit the revised neck edge. Other than that, the pattern was made as drafted. I thought a long shirt would be okay for this fabric.

Front, needing pressing but not too bad. Sleeves obviously too long. 

Back...oh, my! Sway back adjustment, or?

After studying the images, and putting my sloper up against the original pattern, I eliminated 2" in length, redrafted completely new sleeves, and elongated the back darts up towards the shoulders by several inches. 

The second muslin, in a "quilting cotton" purchased from an online quilting shop for the color:

Much better, but the side darts need to be backed off a bit, and I should actually shorten the sleeves a bit. I'm so used to sleeves being too long, I don't always notice until I see a photo. This is wearable IMO, once it gets a good pressing.

Back is much better, but those darts need to be moved towards the center by an inch, and raised  from the original by 3 1/2". After looking at these pictures, I'll be shortening the sleeves a bit too. This particular shirt fits better than any RTW shirt I've found, and even though it's not perfect yet, it will be filling a spot in my closet. It's also my very favorite color, so that helps too! 

I've gone ahead and made the following changes to my pattern:

Narrowed shoulders

Shortened front and back by 2"

Backed off side bust dart by 1"

Narrowed back neck, collar, and collar stand

Moved back darts 1" towards the center

Raised back dart by 3 1/2"

Drafted new sleeve, and shortened it by an inch (initially) TBD if that's enough. 

Next, I'm moving forward with a "soft navy Pima cotton shirting" purchased from Fashion Fabrics Club in September. It's a lovely fabric and I hope it will turn out fabulous!

As to the prior muslin and the jacket. Both are going to be reworked. I realized I didn't interface the hems in the jacket and they really need it. The lilac sandwashed rayon shirt is going to be taken apart, with the back recut, the sleeves shortened, and the front shortened. That should at least make it wearable if not perfect. 😁

It's here and I'm still procrastinating!

The buttonhole thread arrived, and I'm moving forward albeit very slowly on the jacket. I have done one hand made buttonhole, and although it's not perfect, once the jacket is pressed well and on my body, I don't think anyone will notice. I'm finding this fabric to be extremely prone to raveling so as per my usual when I'm uncertain, I have procrastinated a bit.

While I was waiting for the thread, I started tracing off and altering a Vogue pattern, #8689. I really like the looks of the pattern, and thought it would make a good work shirt. But I have to say, after spending more than a week tracing off pieces, altering pieces, and contemplating the shirt that would come out of all these pieces, I have set it aside. It has front and back yokes, front and back princess seams, and a collar and collar stand. I think it is more suited to a "play shirt" with lots of topstitching than a nice professional shirt.

In the white fabric which they have shown all of the shirts, you don't notice all the seams as much, but I think for me, it's not what I'm looking for. I consider this more of a "Western Style" shirt, which doesn't work in my professional life. I may change my mind down the road, but currently, I decided it was a no go. Thus, I went on a quest to look through my sewing patterns, (only the ones in the house, not my downloads or any from my tall file cabinet in my future sewing studio aka the shed,) and found several candidates for the shirt I want. Some will require slight modifications, but these are the patterns found in my pattern boxes in my sewing room, without getting into the Stretch & Sew, which I believe has one or two. There were an even dozen that I thought would be appropriate, as shown below.

The Burda #5387 is a really old pattern, and it shows the wide shoulders of the time it was designed, but I save a swatch of fabric in the envelopes and it showed that my all time favorite blouse was made from that pattern, so I have included it.

After a night of mulling, I decided on the Jalie pattern. I love my Jalie Rose I made last year, and I found the Jalie draft to be so inclusive, and more appropriate for my body style. Their patterns are very well drafted, and their instructions are straight forward and easy to follow. So I have now got that one drafted off. The only modifications to this first "wearable muslin" are a narrow shoulder adjustment and I lengthened the sleeve from a 7/8 to a full length. I did modify the cuff to fit my arms. I think once this one is completed, I'm also going to give the StyleArc Sara a try and probably even the McCalls 7575, although on the McCalls 6436, I had a ton of alterations to get it to fit me. We'll see how that goes.

For my hopefully wearable muslin, I'll be using a practically new sandwashed rayon in lilac purchased from Stonemountain and Daughter in March. Once that's done and any tweaks are noted, I'll be  moving on to a navy pima cotton broadcloth purchased from Mood in September. Can't wait to see how it comes out! Wish me luck.

More later,

Now the waiting begins

Well, I have been working intermittently on my jacket, and it's all done but the buttonholes and buttons. BUT...my machine doesn't like the fabric and won't do proper buttonholes. I have two in and both have to be removed. There is not much I despise more than ripping out buttonholes in a fabric that is basically the same color as the thread. But, I will grab my handy magnifier lighted headband and painstakingly rip out all the stitches. I found a picture of  what I use for buttonhole ripping:

While it makes things easier, it's not perfect and seems to take forever. Although taking forever is much better than destroying a jacket at the final stages! After messing up two buttonholes, I am biting the bullet and have ordered some silk buttonhole twist from WAWAK and will hand sew the buttonholes once I have the thread. If you've never done this, and/or as a reference for me, here's an online tutorial: https://sewguide.com/make-hand-sewn-buttonhole/

As it stands, everything else is done, and although it needs a final press, here's a picture:

I think it will be great for a work jacket. While I wait for the thread, I'm going to start on shirts. I have several to make!

More later!

On the Home Stretch

Moving along with the jacket. Yesterday afternoon I basted the facings/lining into the outer shell to see if everything was working out well. Once everything is complete and it has a good press, I think it's going to be just what I wanted. Hopefully, anyway.

So far, so good. This morning before all my errands, I went ahead and selected the buttons for the jacket, so now, it's going to be full steam ahead. Don't know why it's taken me so long to get this far. I've had some gastrointestinal issues for the last week, so haven't been doing much of anything at all. My hubs thinks it's due to the flu shot I got, but who knows?

Hope to have this finished and read for a final post before next weekend. More later!

Moving forward slowly and carefully

I am moving forward with my jacket and trying very hard to be slow and careful so it looks great once it's finished.

I am drafting the additional pieces needed as I go along, and it seems to be working pretty well. I have my lining pieces drafted and I initially cut separate interfacing pieces as the book tells you to cut off the seam allowances and I figured it would be easier before cutting.

Because this jacket doesn't have lapels, it's going much faster than it would otherwise, and because the fabric does have a tendency to ravel, I was pretty sure there weren't any welt pockets coming up. I'm using the patch pockets that are indicated on View A, so that's easier.

Not sure why, but my interfacing (perhaps too old?) is not fusing well so for the fronts, after carefully fusing everything, I went ahead and hand stitched the interfacing. For the balance, I'll sew it into the seams and then trim carefully along the seam lines.

After doing that, the front darts were sewn, and then I drafted a back stay. (Which will be refined for the next one. Although my Speed Tailoring book doesn't call for one, I remember an old sewing instructor who did alterations for many years insisting that all lined jackets need a back stay to keep the back looking nice and for stability. I didn't do it exactly correct, as after putting it in, I realized it is supposed to go to the bottom of the armscye. I'm only about half way. That will be remedied in the next jacket.

Hmmm...looking at the photograph, I may need to redo anyway as it has that fold right under the neckline.  I'll have to go check that out before moving on. It may be the way it's lying on the ironing board as I didn't notice it before this minute.

Next, I'll be sewing side seams and shoulder seams together. More late.

Pleased at last.

This weekend has been my pattern drafting weekend. I really wanted to move forward with things and have a chance at a TNT jacket pattern that fits my very atypical body.

My favorite pattern drafting book, (probably because it was my first foray into the idea that plain old folks like me could actually draft a pattern to specific measurements and make it fit,) is the 2nd Edition of  Patternmaking for Fashion Design by Helen Joseph Armstrong, shown here:

Publication date is 1995, so it's been awhile that I've been using this book. I also have the fourth edition from a more advanced class, but this is always the one I seem to reach for and have the most luck finding what I want. 

As I started to turn my one piece sleeve into a two piece sleeve, I realized that the instructions I'm using require a darted sleeve, which my sleeve that fit me, was not. So back to the drawing board.

I was quite pleased to realize after making the darted draft using the instructions, the sleeve was almost identical to the one I made from the Threads article. That was a relief and made me feel much better about what I'm doing. If two different approaches yield the same result, it's gratifying.

I'm hoping to start on my jacket tomorrow. My lining fabric finally arrived, and one of the two I ordered will be a great match. Somewhere along the line, AHEM, a brown wool flannel and a navy wool gabardine arrived that are both excellent matches to this jacket. I am sewing from my stash also, but every once in a while, the fabric bug bites and cannot be ignored! :-)

I do need to copy off the lining pieces and get them put together also, but I think that's going to be done in and around doing the outer shell. The tailoring booklet pretty much interfaces everything, and with this silk suiting, I'm going to use a weft fusible as I think that's going to work best.

So, onward and upward! More later.

Slight revisions required

I put together the muslin without facings, and have made a few more adjustments to the final pattern. Initial muslin shown, with sleeve hems basted, but no hem in the bottom. I have adjusted the pattern to reflect the changes I see are needed in the muslin for my final jacket pattern. I'm hoping to get a TNT jacket pattern out of this by the time I am done!

Currently, I am proceeding with drafting the two piece sleeve from the original draft, as IMO, that's the way jacket sleeves are supposed to be made.

Prior to adjustment:

Not sure why the hubby doesn't tell me to straighten out the jacket when he's taking pictures, but there it is. No head as I had just gotten out of the shower. :-)

This is Burda 6569, view A

Adjustments made initially and altered a bit more after the first muslin: Largest pattern size 20, and according to their measurement chart, I needed a 22 or larger.

Front:
Added 1/2" to front side seams, armscye to hem
Reduced dart by a total  of 2" (a bit more after this muslin)
Dropped dart point by 1 1/2"
reduced shoulder width 5/8"
After initial muslin:
raised shoulder point 1/2" for shoulder pads to zero at neck edge
dropped underarm seam by 1/2" to reduce excess sleeve ease

Back:
Narrowed back at neckline and dropped center back by 1 1/2" to zero at neckline
Reduced shoulder width to match front and dropped it by 7/8"
dropped underarm seam by 1/2" to match front
Raised shoulder point 1/2" for shoulder pads to 0 at neckline
added 1" to entire side seam
added 1/4" to center of armscye blending to shoulder and underarm
dropped back dart point 1/2"

I made several sleeve drafts from several different sources, with the best fitting choice (after more tweaking) being a print out of an adaptation of an original article in Threads Magazine. The reprint was adapted from "Add A Sleeve to Your Bodice" in the June/July 2007 issue of threads by Kathleen Cheethan (Threads #131); and the adaptation is available here: https://www.threadsmagazine.com/2008/08/19/create-a-custom-sleeve-pattern

I have also figured out FINALLY after sewing for myself for the last half century, that my right shoulder point is farther forward than my left shoulder point and I need to mark and sew the sleeve cap at different places on each side of my body to match up correctly and fit correctly into the bodice. There is about a 3/8" difference which will be used on the jacket.

The next steps will be doing the two piece sleeve, and starting work on the jacket. I have an old booklet copyright 1982, that I will be following to tailor my jacket.

It looks like there are reprints and some are available on Amazon. I'm looking forward to the process and having this jacket in rotation in my professional wardrobe.

More later,

Slowly working

I've done several sleeve drafts trying to get one that will fit my shoulder and my arms without having huge amounts of ease in the sleeve cap or having a very low armhole that restricts my movement without having a sleeve so tight around my biceps that I can't hardly move my arm.

I think I have it now after I think using 5 different programs to draft a custom sleeve. I've got the jacket part of the Burda pattern altered to fit I believe using my best judgement on what I need, and I have cut the jacket out of a canvas "utility fabric" that seems to be about the same weight as my fashion fabric.

The darts are sewn in the front and back and I need to get in and change the threads and needles on my serger before moving forward. The cotton canvas ravels quite a bit, and since it's hopefully going to be a wearable muslin, I'd like to have all seams serged. If it works out well it will be a nice utility jacket for playing.

Hopefully next post will include some photos of a partially put together jacket at least.

More later,

Status Report

It's the middle of August here, and we've had a lot of days with triple digit temperatures, which kind of drains every single bit of energy from your body! 

I worked on the tunic top, and then set it aside for a bit. It was necessary to raise the center of the Vee about 2 1/2" for it to look decent. I did muslin the neckline with a regular piece of muslin, but now I'm convinced I need to muslin the entire top to be sure it's going to look right on me. With the look of the top, it will need a fabric that drapes well, so I didn't want to use regular muslin and have been contemplating what I have that I can use for a muslin that won't bother me if it doesn't turn out well. 

The light bulb finally went off yesterday, and I realized I have a very lightweight cotton sheeting that will work. It's a deep garnet red, so if it works out, will be a nice top for me as that's one of my favorite colors! Hooray.

In the meantime while that has been being mulled in the back of my brain, I decided it was time to finally bite the bullet and do a sleeve draft for my particularly un-typical arms. Due to genetics, a lot of pool exercise with weights, and extra pounds, my biceps are 18 1/2" around, while my shoulders are sloping and forward. That makes it interesting to try to fit anything, so I figured with a custom sleeve draft, I'd have better luck. 

I had done the Winifred Aldred draft a while back, (Metric Pattern Cutting for Women’s Wear) but never went ahead and did the muslin. I had purchased the Craftsy class (now Blueprint) of Suzy Furrer’s sleeves, Patternmaking + Design: Creative Sleeves at the same time I got the moulage class, but it was languishing in my queue, so needed to get that started. Since I had such good luck with her moulage, I wanted to go ahead and attempt that draft before moving ahead. Now, I have the two drafts and they seem to be fairly similar. I have not yet done the draft from the Armstrong book, (Patternmaking for Fashion Design) but may do so in the future as another check.

I did muslin the Suzy Furrer sleeve, and I think it’s a win for me. I’ll be moving forward with making it into a two piece sleeve for my jacket pattern this week. Unfortunately, I can’t stand for long periods of time, so it has to be done in fits and spurts. Hopefully quickly, but who knows?

For the lapel-less jacket, I’ll be using Burda 6569, View A and a houndstooth silk suiting in camel and navy. I pulled out the invoice for that and was actually quite shocked. I know back in the day, I bought a lot of really good fabrics on sale, on close out, or as bolt ends from Fabric Mart, but now as I look at the prices, I’m in shock and in heaven! The date on the order is May 9, 2009, and I bought three yards for $2.99 a yard!

Needing Ironing!

Unfortunately, when I looked in my lining bin, I didn’t find anything I wanted to use with this fabric. I figured I needed a camel or a dark navy, and was leaning towards a dark navy. My favorite and only lining I’ve used for the last multiple years is Ambiance Bemberg rayon lining. It’s wonderful and drapes nicely, and wears well.

When I went looking for it I was horrified to see that Logantex will no longer be importing it, so most of the places I looked were selling out of the stock they have with no possibilities of reordering. Denver fabrics had some, so I ordered a brown and an iridescent bronze (along with a piece of navy wool for trousers) and hopefully one or the other will work well with the fabric.

Onward and upward. Hopefully by the time the lining fabrics arrive, I’ll have the jacket ready for the lining!

More later, and hopefully soon!

I'm still around...but LIFE!

Ridiculous that I haven't posted for 2 months, but there it is.

I haven't really done that much sewing, anyway. My son-in-law passed away unexpectedly the end of June which brought up many, many issues, not only for my daughter and Grands, but some of my own as I was quite young when my own father passed away.

I did finish my beginning Spanish class at the local community college, and was reminded once again that having a class that takes a full semester and gets jammed it into 6 or 8 weeks means you are underwater with studying and homework the entire time. I did come out with a 4.0, but felt like I didn't learn enough. It was too jammed up with too little time to actually memorize all the verb tenses and phrases that are vital to having a conversation. So, good news, bad news. :-)

I wanted to get a bit more organized, and bought a new, very inexpensive bookcase from Amazon that now holds several boxes of patterns, some of my most vital reference books, my ham, my June tailor board, my clapper, and spare plastic pattern envelopes. I did get to bring some (12 pattern boxes!) of my patterns in from our back yard shed, so it's easier to find things. But there are still many out there in filing cabinets that I really need to go through and cull out any I'm no longer interested in sewing.

I haven't had a lot of time to sew, but did finish the skirt block and the flared skirt from the "in House Patterns" May challenge. This picture looks like it dips in the front, but it is an illusion.It is a black linen, that will work well for whatever needs I have for a skirt in the warmer weather.

After that, I made a couple of hot weather sleeveless tops from my TNT pattern that was first made in August of 2013! The above top is the same pattern! I'm not even sure what the original pattern looked like, but I believe it had a collar. Should check that out I guess. Perhaps it's time to change it up. Who knows? 

This first one is from a rayon remnant I've had in the stash forever. Not sure where or from whence it has come! It has a lovely hand and the colors feel like summer to me. Makes me feel cooler even in triple digit heat!

This second one is from a piece of cotton purchased (on sale!) from Fashion Fabrics Club.com in May of this year. I love making blouses that fit, I like the fabric, and end up costing under $10 for the whole thing! Pretty amazing to use a "new" fabric instead of one that's been around for years! LOL

I can't believe it, but it's already August. I promised myself that this year I'd start in August on fall/winter work clothes. To that end, I have two jackets on the list, one in a black and white tiny check, and another navy and brown herringbone. One will be lapel-less, and the other I think is going to have a shawl collar. But before that, I'm jumping in on the "tunic" craze. I found one that doesn't look all that 60's to me, and have just traced off the pattern. I do need to muslin the back and front yokes because from the way it looks to me now, the front Vee will be about 2-3" below the top of my bra. That really isn't my style! LOL

The pattern is from Bootstraps,#45749,  and it seems to me this will be a nice top to wear when I'm not interested in wearing a blazer. Lots of the ladies at my office never wear jackets, and this has a  similar look to their choices, but more my style. I have several nicely draping rayons that it might work for. We'll see what I think when it's done!

Hopefully, it won't be so long before I post again! I love to use this as my sewing record, so need to keep it more up to date. The sewing this year is way behind a typical year for me, and I hope over the next few months, to get it moving!

Wishing you lots of sewing mojo and the time to make lovely items.

The jacket looks better now

Thursday, May 9

Well, today is a beautiful day in New Mexico! We've had a high of 80, and it should get down into the mid 50 degrees tonight with a chance of showers from about 10 PM to about 2 AM. That makes all of the flowers happy!

I've been working on continuing education as well as sewing. The jacket bothered me with that big white spot down the left side enough that I finally pulled out the scraps, cut around flowers, and am going to applique them to the front panel. I have it basted on right now and it looks SO MUCH BETTER. Here's a pic with the completed blue linen pants.

Much better in my opinion! 

This week, I'm doing some playing. Alexandra Morgan of In House Patterns up in Vancouver, BC is having a little free skirt "draft along" for the month of may in honor of Me Made May. I really want to do more drafts because the Suzy Furrer bodice worked out so well. In general, I am finding it much easier to do a draft from scratch to my measurements than trying to alter a commercial pattern. In that vein, I've joined her this week and today I drafted my skirt pattern. BTW, if you're interested, she's doing it all this month and you can join free by just asking. Here's the link: https://www.inhousepatternsstudio.com/email-capture-2bd2e31e-65fb-4816-ab95-6294d01fcdf6

However, that doesn't mean I'm not using commercial patterns. I am using my bodice block to alter the commercial patterns and that seems to make it much easier and less error prone than starting from scratch. I have a blouse coming up soon, I hope. I've pulled out Vogue 8689, (copyright is 2010) interestingly enough, it's still on their website: https://voguepatterns.mccall.com/v8689 and have pulled out the pieces for View A. I'll probably not start tracing them until tomorrow. 

My boss that wanted me to come back to work neglected to tell me that for summer work, the pay scale is 25% less than I'd been paid for tax season. I  politely declined the offer when I got the contract. However, I am continuing on with my progress and will be ready to go back in January for tax season. So I don't really have to do too many "professional" outfits for summer and I can mosey along with what I want to sew instead. 😎

I've also signed up for a Spanish class at the local community college. That starts in about a week, and will be four mornings a week. I expect my summer is going to be busy. But fun!

I'll try to check in more frequently! Hope all your sewing is going well!

The long cold winter is over...hopefully!

Hi all.

Long time no visit! It's been an interesting, hard and cold winter in this household. Tax season started off with a bang and a lot of hours. That hasn't abated much, but now that it's almost over, I'm more used to the odd schedules. Sometimes I open at 8:00 am, frequently I close at 9:00 pm, and the worst for me, sometimes it's closing one night and opening the next morning. I don't get a lot of sleep on those turn arounds, unfortunately. It takes me a while to get to sleep after an evening at work, usually around 10:30 to 11:30 pm before I can drop off. Then in the mornings, due to medications that can't be taken with food, I have to wait an hour before eating. So it winds up I get up around 5:30 am for an 8:00 arrival. AND I'm like a little kid. If I don't get enough sleep or my regular meals, I'm definitely cranky!

This year hasn't gone as planned at all! The Burda blouse I started was probably a wadder. I'm going to try to take it apart and redo as I LOVE the fabric. A beautiful deep red batik heavy-ish cotton. But somehow or another, I got the facings confused with a collar...and enough said. So it's waiting to be ripped apart and hopefully redone. I'm just not sure I have enough fabric to redo. Fingers crossed. I love the fabric and envelope design, so have high hopes if I just have enough fabric left to recut the neck facings.

I started on a new pair of heavy cotton twill pinstripe pants. Then, BAM! I got the Type A flu. I had a flu shot, well they told me it was a flu shot, and if my illness was "minor" compared to what it would have been, good grief! I was down in bed, which I don't do, for a full week, just getting up to eat and use the facilities. After that, it was back to work, but it took me a full month to get back to feeling more or less myself. That was from about mid February to a few weeks ago. I did get the twill pants finished, finally, and they are in rotation. Quick view:

These were a welcome addition to the wardrobe. I've been wearing a lot of my wool slacks made several years ago, but dry cleaning time and costs have added up. It's nice to have something I can throw in the washer and dryer.

All of a sudden, we went from really cold weather to Spring, and perhaps today moving towards summer. I know Southwestern New Mexico winters don't come close to what many of you experience, but for me, coming from California, it's a shock. We had several snow days...of course it melted quickly, and temps down in the 20's, 30's and 40's. Last week we started seeing mid 70's and today it's supposed to be 99 degrees. Big change in a few short weeks.

My fruit trees, all the deciduous trees, my roses, and peonies, are all leafed out and I'm starting to see buds on my items. Exciting stuff! But thoughts of Spring put a longing in my heart for some lighter weight clothing.

Well, this was obviously started a few weeks ago or even a month ago. Tax season is over, I've mostly recovered, and moving ahead. Despite being tired all the time, I generally enjoyed working again. It was very different from my Real Estate Appraisal business, and I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the income tax business. You get to know a wide variety of people, and learn a lot more about the area you live in.

I've started working on continuing education already, and intend to "test up" several levels until I reach about the status I was before. I doubt I'll go ahead with retaking all the tests to become an Enrolled Agent again due to my age. It's at least a year of intense study and a two day test. Probably not worth it right now.

I did have my "exit interview" with our District Manager this week, and he was very positive about my contributions. To the point where he's asked me to work on a limited basis starting in July through at least the end of October, and we're going to work together on some marketing for this area.

BUT... as all of you out there know, this means a new wardrobe for this area. They want us to look "professional" and in this area through July and August the temps range anywhere from 92 up through 107 or so. Since my summer wardrobe since I've been here consists of shorts and sleeveless tops, they're probably not going to fit the bill.

I started about two weeks ago with a new jacket. Unfortunately the fabric was purchased when the local Hancock's was going out of business so I didn't have enough for pattern matching. But I still love it very much... It's a light to medium weight linen printed with big blue flowers. As I look at the picture, I'm thinking there will have to be something added to the left front in the big white space. But for now... It's a mixture of the front off Burda #6569, added to Butterick #5719. I had the Butterick fitted and like the princess seams and 3/4 sleeves, but wanted the lapel less look for summer.

I have a blue rayon knit tank that will go well under it, and the pants are started. They're a light weight linen bought recently from JoAnn Fabrics when I went with a friend. I figure they may make it tolerable. They're the same Burda TNT pants, but I've switched out the normal pockets for in-seam pockets. Other than that, it's the same old, same old. I don't think anyone notices that all my pants are from the same pattern. They're just pants! LOL 

Blue denim colored linen pants begun.

I think this outfit should be done fairly quickly. My plan over the next 60 days is to try to spend 3 hours studying and 3 hours sewing. Hopefully that'll give me at least three summer outfits for rotation. We'll have to see how it goes. I do have a light blue silk that I hope to make into a nice blouse too. 

That's all for now, and I hope to be here more often with more finished outfits!