You sewed what!?! The Fugly Snugly

During the Vogue pattern sale last week, I was feeling pretty frisky, so I decided to try out this origami-ish jacket pattern. In this photo it looks warm and flowing to me. I got some houndstooth print fleece and a couple of cute, red buttons.

• Project Details:
• Pattern: Vogue 1145 Lynn Mizono designed Misses Jacket and Pants
• Fabric: fleece, 4.25 yards!
• Lining: none
• Notions: lots of thread and 2 buttons, 1.125″ diameter



• Pattern Description: Loose fitting jacket with bizarrely short and ill-fitted sleeves which are too large at the top of the arm. It has two patch pockets, each large enough to hold a quart of soy ice cream, and an even more gigantic collar. No hemming is required; edges are finished with machine stitching.
• FO looks like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope? I couldn’t figure out how to place the buttons, so mine does not look like the photo. Also, I think you’d have to have a very specific type of fleece to get the light, flowing look of the pattern envelope photo.



• Were the instructions easy to follow? Yes, it was a simple pattern in theory, but the pieces are so enormous that they were difficult to cut out and difficult to maneuver.
• My particular likes / dislikes about the pattern: I liked how quick and simply it is constructed. There were so many edge stitches on this project that I was able to experiment with many of the hundreds of stitches on my machine. I also love that you can wear it back to front for warmth and comfort without having your hands trapped inside so that you can move your arms and use your hands and still be wrapped and warm.



• My pattern alterations / design changes: Although the button placement is marked on the pattern tissue, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, so I improvised my button placement.
• Would I sew it again or recommend it to others? nope and no, however I will sell you my pattern for $4 plus postage. I have the XS-S-M envelope and I cut the M size, so all tissues are complete.

Tonight I sported it to Wal-Mart with the thinly veiled objective of getting spotted for The People of WalMart photoblog. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Gumshoe Sweatercoat inspiration and Burda

After seeing this Gumshoe Sweatercoat in the recent Anthropologie catalog, I felt inspired to hop on over to my fabric chain store and buy some anti-pill, purple fleece and Simplicity pattern 2508. Well, it turns out the $1.99 Simplicity pattern sale ended yesterday, so I took my fleece and headed home to look through my Burda patterns. I have the 2 latest Burda magazines, but have never used a Burda pattern, so I could use a good excuse to give it a shot.
Before getting home to the Burda patterns, I added a via point: Anthro for a real life Gumshoe Sweatercoat sighting. They had the purple version, plus a black one and an orange one. The medium was too small in the shoulders, but the large was too large (and low) in the waist. The felted wool was thinner than I expected, plus the jacket had no lining. The button holes appeared to be pulled out of shape by the large buttons; the thin wool without a lining couldn’t really support the buttonholes well.

I liked the princess seams and the stitched waist detailing. With ruffles on both sides of the center front and pleated ruffles at the cuffs, I think it could be a fun sewing project.
After getting home, I found a Burda Short Jacket (#102) pattern in the September 2009 issue that will be a good baseline for my purple fleece jacket. Now I need to find some tissue paper and try to figure out how to do this Burda thing.

Textile Fabrics in Nashville, TN

Yesterday I had a little road trip with my mom. Textile Fabrics just happened to be 9 minutes away from our day-trip destination, so I got to pop in before lunch. Wow! It’s a huge fabric store full of beautiful fabric from all over the world, lots of cool buttons and belt buckles, shelves and shelves of various trim, and lots of sewing notions. They had Burda patterns! I’d never seen a real Burda pattern before. They had some Rowan yarn and a pretty good book selection. There were lots of people shopping there on a Monday morning and lots of friendly staff ready to cut fabric and answer questions.

ARE YOU WONDERING WHAT I BOUGHT?

Patience!

First I have to confess to you I’m engaging in crazy behavior by joining the Chanel Sew-Along, a group of sewists who are all working to create their own Chanel style jacket by November 15th-ish. I decided to join because I need an unnecessary and unachievable deadline on my shoulders at the same time I’m starting a new job (with travel required). Perfectly sensible, I think. It takes a professional, experienced couture tailor about 100-150 hours to create one of these masterpieces, so I guestimate it’ll take me about 700 hours. This is fun, isn’t it?

OK, your patience has now paid off. Here’s what I got at Textile Fabrics:

• Cotton-blend tweedy fabric for my Chanel jacket.
• Silk lining fabric in olive.
• Silk thread, olive for seaming and white for basting.
• Pins for silk.
• Trim.
• Long, thin basting needles.

I still have a lot to do before I’ll be ready to cut any fabric:

• Get a real dress form.
• Decide on the pattern. (I have almost decided on using Vogue 8259 with modifications for the neck and button band.)
• Read up on Chanel jacket making and on Chanel herself: books, articles, and blogs. For someone who hasn’t sewn much, I have a ton of resources on hand, including several Threads magazines and Couture Sewing Techniques by Shaeffer.
• Buy a walking foot. I will call my local Viking dealer tomorrow and inquire about it.
• Find some awesome buttons.
• Figure out how to do an customised FBA for myself. Ugh, I need a lot of adjustments here and I’ve never been able to do it with great success.
• Buy a good muslin for mocking up my jacket.

For a muslin fabric, I asked the ladies at Textile Fabric for a suggestion on an inexpensive fabric type similar to my cotton-blend. They looked at me like I was an alien, so I guess I’m on my own for this one. I’ll search my stash first to see if I can find something of a similar weight, but I may end up going back to Tennessee for another quick fabric trip.

My organized sewing workspace

OK, let’s face it, you all know I’m a bit messy, but when it comes to my sewing room and supplies, there is method to my madness.

Space is at a premium in our home just like at yours perhaps. Our place is small by American suburb standards, but huge by European or city-living standards. It’s a lot of room for fabric, thread, yarn, craft books, and notions to be strewn about, but I don’t want to make my husband look at my work-in-progress ALL the time (just most of the time), so I recently undertook a serious organization project.

The Plan

1. Gather up and take a look-see.
   I gathered up all my sewing stuff into one place so that I could take inventory. I pulled out fabric hidden in the back of drawers, patterns shoved in the bookshelf, thread hanging out in my travel bag, and pin cushions from all sorts of places. Once I had everything in the same place, I had a better idea of what I would be dealing with. I had a bit a fabric, a stack of sewing magazines, several dozen pattern envelopes, and lots of little bitty notions. The most striking discovery was my penchant for clearance/sale zippers. I love invisible zippers!
2. Sort and filter.
   I never realized how many packs of hooks and eyes I had until they’d all been gathered up. I decided not to filter any of them out of my notions collection, but instead I sorted them into little, glass spice jars so that I could keep them organized by size and still identifiable in their spice jars.
   I had lots of fabric scraps and interfacing scraps that weren’t really big enough to be useful to me and weren’t important enough to take up more space, so I filtered them out of my sewing assemblage and into the rubbish bin.
3. Decide on a sewing space.
   Initially I had been sewing at the kitchen table, but I had trouble clearing off the table in time for supper each day. I can’t stand having a kitchen table full of clutter when it’s time to eat, so I needed a different solution. My husband’s very flexible about dealing with the aftermath of my hobbies and crafts, so he didn’t mind if I took a corner of the dining room to set up a permanent sewing nook. This nook isn’t big, so I can’t have lots of storage furniture; I knew I would need to use wall-space to organize and store my tools.
4. Find the best use of the space.
   I have my grandmother’s sewing cabinet. It’s one of those little tables that has a folding top, so it takes up very little floor space. I pushed it to the sewing corner and then placed my machine. On the wall behind the machine I left the chalkboard that was already there so that I could use it for my notes and I could hang my sewing instructions on it.

   I wouldn’t have enough room in this corner for my ironing board, fabrics, and patterns, so I put these aside to find another home for them.

   Next I needed a place for my most common notions. I wanted shelves that weren’t deep, but could hold lots of little items, would provide easy access to my notions, and wouldn’t be too hard to install. I decided to go to a local thrift shop to look for shelving. After a cruise around the shop, I spotted a wooden, knick-knack display shelf. It was quite heavy, probably made of pine, but it was a good size. Actually, I found two of these shelves, but another lady grabbed the second one from me! I only had room for one shelf anyway, lady! After I brought it home, my husband helped me hang it on the wall in my little atelier.
   
   I placed common notions on the shelf. For things like buttons I put them into glass jars for easy storage. For machine needles I hot-glued magnets to the backs of needle cases and then stuck all these needle cases to tea tins. The tins hold measuring tapes and markers. I didn’t have enough room for all my thread, so I left most of them in another room on my thread rack, the one my dad made for my mom about 20 years ago.

5. Lighting.

With a coupon from a national craft chain-store, I purchased a task light to place above my machine.

Outside my atelier, or “sweat shop” as my husband lovingly calls it, I’ve placed my fabric stash inside the living room ottoman. The fabric is mostly organized by type: linen, knits, wools, and cottons. For my pattern envelope collection, I’ve placed them in two drawers in the guest room, but created my pattern database here on my blog so that I can easily search through them. I’ve hung the ironing board on the back of the guest room door, but one day I hope to get one of those wall mounted, fold-away ironing boards. Ah, I can dream…

Itty Bitty Knitting Escape

Yesterday I needed a break from car shopping, so I went to one of my favorite quiet corners in town, the clearance shelf at the LYS. Although hanging out in the LYS clearance corner can be hazardous for the pocket book, I thought it would be relatively safe considering it is humid and hot as blazes outside. Who wants to buy wool in this weather?

Note to self: this was not good logic.

I got some Nashua Handknits’s Julia yarn (wool, alpaca, and mohair) for making some mittens. Do you know that little mitten pattern that comes in your junk mail? It’s printed on a little, folded paper about the size of a postcard and there’s a lady on the front photo who models some striped red and yellow mittens. I saved the pattern and it’s been sitting on an end table, so everytime I see it I start to think about knitting mittens. I got two colors of the Julia yarn, teal and sour apple green, to make mittens. I love the teal, but I’m not sure which pattern I’ll finally decide on.

I also got some cute itty bitty tools. First I got some itty bitty scissors for air travel. They are 1⅜” (3.5 cm) long! I have been using that Clover throwing star cutter, but it has given me problems with airport security (in Munich in particular), so I’ve been on the look-out for a better solution. Surely these itty bitty scissors will pass TSA inspection, right?

I also got an itty bitty circular needle. When I first spied it, I thought it was a dollhouse knitting needle toy, but it turns out to be a needle for knitting one sock in the round, a Clove 9″ circular bamboo needle (size 0 / 2mm). I have a crosswalker sock-in-progress that’s been sitting untouched for over a year because I can’t stand working it on DPNs as the pattern called for. This itty bitty circular needle would be perfect for getting my sock moving again. I brought home the dollhouse needle, then knit the sock onto it. It is quite fiddly to work with; the inflexible, wooden needle parts are so small that you almost have to pinch them with your forefingers and thumbs. After knitting a few rows, I got more comfortable with it. For me it will be fast than knitting with DPNs, plus it makes me laugh.