Pattern Progress

I think a big part of why I don't like to pay much for patterns is that before long I have completely mutated the pattern into something else. I'll start with the pattern, redraft every piece over the course of a version or two, and end up with something completely different from what I bought.

Today I decided that I'd have a go at making the jacket without a lining. Spotlight has put all their polar fleece down by half price so I got 4 metres of black husky at $3 a metre, and the pattern changing began. Step one - merge a couple of pieces. The front as back are both comprised of two bits, and since it's draping instead of fitted I decided to make the front all one piece. And since it's draping down, I decided I'd raise the front hemline and give it a bigger collar too, so it had more to drape, but not as far to drape it.

The polar fleece worked pretty well, I just sewed each seam twice, about 3mm apart, and then trimmed close to the second one. Did a really basic folded hem - these are just test runs for wearing on daggy days around the house, so they're far from prefect. But I did a decent job, since even though they're just tests, they still take a whole lot of time and effort, and I can still use them even in their imperfection.


The original design (and this changed one) had a seam for the collar on the front edge in the middle of the drape. I didn't love that, so on the next run I decided to make the front and the collar one piece, meaning that the side front piece had to return. I tried making the back one piece instead but ended up adding some darts once it was finished anyway. I like the drape of this one much better, but I also raised the back where the collar is, and I forgot to lower the shoulder to compensate. I've changed the pattern piece, and added the darts to the piece for the back, so I should have a perfect version tomorrow.

I envy those people who can re-cut their own work to get it to hang right, but I'm not one of those people. Still, for $12 I got two jackets and enough left over to make most of a third, plus, knowledge!

PS, if it is perfect, I'm gunna make about a dozen of them for myself. This polar fleece is comfy and super warm.

My new favourite.

So a while back I bought this pattern off the Vogue website along with a whole heap of others that were $3 each.

The reason I picked this one is because it has a whole lot of collar and really slim sleeves, which is what I've been looking for in a jacket. I had already found it actually, but they were asking $95 for it, and it's not even real leather. I'd pay twice that if it was real leather, but it isn't, so I'd consider my budget to be half that.

And tonight, since my voice is still hiding behind a couch somewhere and my asthma is playing up to the point where I chickened out of going to Longy Bns even though I wasn't working, I decided I'd make the night at least slightly worthwhile and have a go at the pattern. I had some dark grey wool/acrylic blend medium weight coat fabric that I bought so long ago that it was in a cupboard in Becky's room and some quite thin black cotton for lining and I went for it. I skipped the pockets, since this was pretty much just a test run, slimmed the sleeves way down (even though the pattern said they had to be made from at least 10%+ stretch fabric) and decided I'd line the entire thing instead of facing the front and the collar in the same fabric as the outer and then having a part lining.

Of course, I completely disregarded the instructions. I've never made a pattern exactly as it says to, ever. It's not that I think I know better than people whose actual job it is to know this stuff, but I've got my ways that I'm used to, so I lined it in what I think of as "handbag style" because it's how you line handbags: basically you make two the same, one in inside fabric and one in outside fabric, and then you sew around the edges and turn it inside out and topstitch the edges. Of course, the ends of the sleeves are a bit more complicated than that (you sort of pull them out of the inside once you're half done and then turn them inside out again and... it's complicated...) but it all came together great. Narrow sleeves, massive collar that doesn't really have any bulk and therefore drapes nicely, full lining so it doesn't scratch your underarms when you're wearing a singlet... I hated having to take it off to take a photo of it, but I suck so bad at selfies it had to be done.

And that coathanger just doesn't wear it as well as I do. It's pinned closed here since I didn't have any press studs to put a closure on it but I'll happily wear it open for now.

Now I want to find myself some waxed cotton drill and do another one.

It worked!

I had told myself that I was going to piece the backing for the blue and grey quilt tonight, but after going out to dinner with a friend I hadn't seen since high-school, I got home and wasn't really feeling it. I finally got around to sewing down the fold over binding for the sunset quilt now that I've bought some more hot pink cotton, and then I got into a flat bag.

I'd done a test version with just the lines drawn on the other night and nearly finished it before I realised I was doing it all wrong - trying to sew it like I'd sew a lined pouch with a zipper instead of constructing it like I used to make laptop bags with the top flaps. So tonight's version worked much better.

I still have to sew a clasp into it, and I'm considering maybe making the gusset go the whole way around as opposed to tapering off to a point just beyond the corners, because they're a bit messy. That photo is actually stuffed, well, It has my spare phone and car keys and a lip gloss and a pack of quick-eze in it, which is pretty much everything, except for money, that I need for a night out.

I think next time I'll do an edged handle too, because the black kinda vanishes. I considered using piping on all the edges, but I got lazy.

Still, as a proof of concept, coloured in with fabric markers, I'm pretty pleased. Next one I'd like to try one of the side zipping ones with two handles, but I think tomorrow I should try get that grey and blue quilt backed.

Prototype'd

I devoted most of tonight to cleaning my room.

Well, I say that, but really, I devoted most of today to standing about my bedroom with my hands full watching Long Way Down, or staring at my fabric shelves coming up with new ideas, and moving my clothes around. Still, my room looks a bit cleaner, mainly because the clothes are in the cupboard and/or the laundry.

And once I had performed the nasty task of re-compressing the mess after it'd been magically expanded to fill the whole room and, worse, cover the bed I was wanting to sleep in, I sat down at the machine for two minutes to have a got at this little prototype.

Two birthdays this weekend, and both of them are getting quilts I wont have made - Becky because she always seems to have a problem with the fabrics I choose so I'm giving her a Spotlight voucher and instructions to buy at least 3 metres of quilting fabrics with it, and Anna because she won't be getting her swag till after her birthday, so I don't know how big a quilt she'll need for it. I figure a tiny quilted card is the solution, and I wanted to see how my machine would go with the card. Great, as it turns out, except the bobbin ran out half a square before the end.

Oh well, it was only the prototype.

Would a rose by any other name still stab you with it's pointy stem?

Tonight I made a wheat bag with pearl barley instead. Can I still call it a wheat bag?

Yes, it's pieced, because, well, why the hell not? Final size is about 15cm square, and it feels heavier than the ones with wheat in them - about the same weight as the big one I made the other night, which probably has about a third more wheat in it. Tomorrow night I might get some more buckwheat and make a matching pair; same size, fabrics and volume of grain to see which I prefer.

The back is more chopped up denim, because I like any excuse to touch it. It's touchable.

I love it. But I hate it. But it's quite nice. But it's not really.

I no longer have any idea how I feel about the swag quilt.

Look at that picture, it's freaking gorgeous.

But...

I'm not sure in real life. Because the strips of drill were all cut in one direction, and assembled in whatever direction they came together in, the weave doesn't align. I can't get a photo to show what I mean, but from an angle, it looks like each fabric is two different ones. Like someone's knitted a jumper from two different dye lots. It's especially problematic on the short bits either side of the centre blocks, on the big blocks in particular, not matching the long sides.

So that's making me quite cross.

On the other hand (because I now have 3 hands) the fact that it can look so lovely and balanced without me ever having seen the fabrics laid out in their spots is amazing. Either I've fluked it or I'm just absolutely, massively gifted.

Let's go with the latter, shall we? :)

Hopefully making some progress on the quilting tomorrow before work. Also, I had an amazing revelation on how to do something that has been eluding me for a few weeks tonight while I was on the loo. So I'll be testing that too.

Never again (until next time)

Today, while we were waiting for some photos to be developed, Casey and I went wallet shopping. Strangely, she was the one who needed a wallet, but I was the one who bought one. Not a particularly nice one, but one I thought I might be able to copy.

I was wrong.

I should get a proper pattern and have a go with that, instead of just trying to make it up, but that's not really how I roll.

Anyway, having failed I decided to make myself some pouches. My first one was a bit crap but I got into the swing of it and my last one is seriously super nice. Except I used white thread instead of brown, but it's hardly my fault the bobbin shelf failed me, and there wasn't much point in only changing my top thread.

I really need to make a start on my swag quilt, since it's 3 weeks till Lake Charlegrath when I'll be needing to use it. The good pouch had some cute runching though and that's making me want to have a go at doing a quilt with a bit of dimension to it. Is this a terrible idea? Do I need warning off of it?

Mellow Yellow

I looked and looked but I can't find my camera :(

Thankfully, the spare phone has a 5MP built in so I just used that.

This is mellow yellow. If you click on the picture to see it big you'll probably get a better idea of my chopped off corner issues. This is how I did it.

You cut your centre block. Then you get your strip and lay the square so that one edge crosses the strip diagonally with one end of the side at the top and a one end at the bottom., which gives you the length you actually want to cut your strip. You add a centimetre and cut it, which, once you've cut across it on the diagonal, gives you the extra little bit of point for when you sew it to your square, but of course doesn't take into account the fact that the next square out will cut off a centimetre or so from the edge and take the corners of your square with it. But I chopped it off consistently, so it's not so much a mistake as an innovative re-imaging of a classic concept.

Man, I should get a job in advertising. I could go around convincing people that any mistakes that are there were fully intended by the creator. Maybe I'll claim they were being ironic - since Alannis Morisette did that song, noone knows what it means any more so I think it's perfectly reasonable to claim my chopping off corners was an ironic take on traditional quilt blocks, when actually what happened was that I did my math while I was bored on checkout, and I didn't have an internet handy to tell me I was being a damn fool.

Also, I was convinced that a jelly roll was 7.5cm wide. Don't know where this number came from, but all my math features this number. Weird.

Anyway, I'm not sure whether to add 3cm to my length next time or just cut my diagonal from 1cm in on either side instead of the edge of the strip. I think I'll find out by making one block though, not a whole quilt.

With regards to a badly done quilt...

I've still got no idea where my camera is. Probably somewhere in the lounge/kitchen area (that's where I had it last) but I've moved on to bed now so it's a bit late to go looking. I changed my mind today when I looked at the pink so it's become very very yellow. Helen will therefore hate it, and I'm not a huge fan because of my stupid cut-off corners, but now that it's quilted I think some nice binding will improve it greatly. I'm thinking green. Keeping it gender-neutral.

It's quite small, maybe 70 by 90cm? And I went with a blue for the back, because it was there.

I wish I could see into peoples brains to know what they think it looks like, since I've been very vague and shown no pictures. I don't really see pictures in my brain, I hear words instead* so it would be especially interesting.

Here's a tiny, terrible and completely inaccurate mockup to give you an idea.


Stay tuned tomorrow to see how it compares to the real thing...

*that's why I waffle so bad here. I'm just trying to fob some of them off.

Baaargain.

If I could find my camera, I'd show you some lovely pictures of the 6 jelly rolls I bought today. For $30. For the 6 of them. (Don't worry Helen, two of them are for you)

What I wouldn't show you is the hash I've made with my first attempt at using them. I've come to the conclusion that if you make one mistake in one block, you have to sit tight and hope noone notices it, but if you make the same mistake 8 times in every block, you can tell people it's your attempt at creating an interesting and unique design.

Well, it might be once it's done. At the moment it's still 12 slightly nasty blocks, but tomorrow night I'll string them all together with some pink between them and see how it looks then. It'll only be little, but you never know. It could be an interesting and unique design. Also, it's only actually taken up one straggy fat quarter and about the equivalent of 3 strips, so it's not too much of a waste. It might even be small enough to have a go at free motioning it, since all I have to lose is about 50 cents worth of fabric and 3 hours worth of sewing.

For those of you interested in my TV habits, Katie from No Ordinary Family is my new favourite TV character, at least until Mozzie comes out of his coma in White Collar. I'm 7 episodes in and should download some more, but I'm a day or so ahead on my internet usage (on the 19th we should be at 62%, we are at 66%) and there's a lot of shows coming back form midseason break this week.

In completely unrelated news I have the hiccups, it's 3.30 and I need to go to sleep.

I'll be having a bit of a whine now, thanks...

Today started a bit shit, actually, with my fortnightly migraine choosing the small hours of today as the day to come say hi. I pride myself on very rarely throwing up and I find that the only time I do lately is when I'm in lots of pain, which would be for a random 3 hours each fortnight when the top front left side of my skull tries to escape. And because it's random, and not for very long, there's not much point going to the doctor, but at least I know it's over for a bit.

Anyway, I was feeling better by lunchtime, so I went into Spotlight and got some cottons to match the satins I'd picked, and they had 75% off Christmas, so I gave myself a $20 budget but then I only actually spent about $12 after the price of the cottons. A half dozen gift bags (I love gift bags) some hair ribbons and a little bundle of Christmas fat quarters was plenty.

Then, and this is weird for me, I came home and had a nap.

I am not a napper. Dad and Casey are dedicated nappers, but I sleep in late. Once I woke up (it was only for an hour or so, and I had to meet people in town at 8 for Carols by Candlelight) I felt worse, so it's very much not something I'd recommend. We didn't stay in town long either, so I guess I wouldn't recommend Carols by Candlelight either, but that's a whole year away now (for me at least) so not as relevant.

Finally, I got into the top. One of the pleats vanished while I was sewing, but instead of throwing in the towel (like I should have) I unpicked it, put it back in, and redid it. I have to say this fabric was a bitch to work with. If it was on facebook, I would unfriend it. It grips hugely with wrong sides together (like when you're trying to push out your edges smoothly to sew over them) and doesn't grip at all with right sides together (when you're trying to sew the rest of it)

Then when I did my halfway test, it looked horrible. Like, um, lead female character in a TV show going undercover as a prostitute terrible. The cut was fine, but the colour and the way it clinged in some places and not others; it looked trashy.

So, I randomly decided to hack up another old piece of satin, to see if I could use the same rough shape to do a draped neckline. I couldn't, but I randomly came up with a quite nice looking asymmetrical type top. Or, well, quite nice looking asymmetrical type piece of fabric pinned around me and also in places to my singlet. 

One of the few times I wish I had a bodyform. 364 days I wouldn't use it, but it would've come in handy today.

I noted the changes and cut it out in a green, and tried to do it again, but it wouldn't work. And that's the problem with satins. They're all different. The pink sewed and pleated and draped gorgeously, but when I tried to do it in the eggshell, it looked horrible. My random pinned top looked really nice (in the mirror, it was probably a bit horrible from behind) but when I tried to do it in something else, it all collapsed in a slinky, uncontrollable heap.

That's the great thing about quilting fabrics, and why so many of the clothes I made in the past were made from them. The way it will act is entirely predictable. One might shrink a bit in the wash, but any brand of quilt weight cotton will perform in the same way as another. It's so much easier. You don't need an entirely different set of skills to sew Moda fabrics as you do Free Spirit fabrics. A quilt patten will work the same with either. But that's not the case with two similar seeming satins. It might be perfect of it may be a big frustrating ball of slippage and swear words.

I'm gunna put this thing on the backburner for a couple of days. I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere, and it's making me cross. Maybe I'll try a cotton sateen, see if I can find the best of both worlds.

WB, mojo...

There is a singlet top from Kmart which I re-buy on end of season clearance every year. Some years are better than others - most years I have to pay $4 or $5 a pop (regular price is $10) but one year they got down to $1.50. With the exception of the hottest days of summer (I get sweaty belly, so I wear a proper bra instead) I will pretty much always be wearing one of these singlets. They are super comfy, stop my boobies roaming free* and look nice too, because of the little pleats at the neckline. The straps are not too skinny, the back is not too high the armholes don't open too far forward, and they are long enough that they don't ride up at the hips.

Clearly, they are the one true love of my life. 

Oh, and I cut one up to use as a pattern a year or so ago, and some of my favourite formal tops were made from it.

But naturally I can't find any of them now. I really need to clean my room out, but I'm under the impression I have missed my 3-month window of opportunity. Come March I can say I am Northern Hemisphere Spring cleaning, but that's still a while off.

So here's the test one I made before work today. I can't show it to you on, since it ended up slightly too small, and even though I got it on earlier, it took two people to help me get it off, so I wont be putting it back on just for a photo. (there's no zip, it's meant to be just an over and on thing, even without stretch)

It's actually almost the same construction method as my handbag, with the pleating on the outer and the lining, and sewn face to face before being flipped right side out. I didn't do the bottom, since it was only a test, and the shoulder join is a bit shoddy, so I'll need to work out an alternate method, but the theory seems to hold. I need to make the straps longer and everything else a bit bigger, and do my pleating a bit neater, and have a go at ironing the creases out/in as necessary, but I feel like my mojo has, like most of my tertiary-studying co-workers, returned home for the holidays.

Unfortunately what my mojo actually wants to do while it's down here is watch How It's Made, an utterly fantastic show on the Discovery Channel. I don't blame it. Tonight, episodes 3, 4 and 5: Toothpicks, Copy Paper, Toilets and Beer, among other things.

*but my boobies are pretty well behaved anyway, and almost never need to be bra-d in.

Crabs

I made her a long time ago and even though she was only meant to be a practice one, I never got around to making another. I probably should, since the only hard bit was the eyes on stalks, and her claws were a lot easier to set than some of the monster arms and legs I've been doing.

As for the colour, I'm not making this up, but a few days ago my dad caught an albino crayfish.

The one on the bottom is a normal one. They haven't been cooked or frozen or anything like that, it was just how they came out of the pot.

So it would seem that shellfish come in all sorts of colours.

Lemme know...

This is just a test post to see if I can steal photos from facebook.

So here, maybe, is Esther (with a h)'s quilt.

And the back (with creases:)

And a closeup of the back piecing (my first time doing diagonals)

If this works, it wasn't as hard as I thought.

Is that the time already?

Got called in to work today which kinda ruined it for me - they wanted me to do 10-6 but I told them I could only do 10-3 because I had Spotlight's Christmas quilt night to go to, only for me to show up at 6 and find out that, as with last time I was planning for one of these things, it's next week. Still, the spend-$100-save-$40 voucher I got in the mail was useable, so I bought enough fabrics, batting, and cotton to do another 4 baby quilts, as well as a heap of other random stuff. Then, because I was cross at myself for being so shit with knowing what the hell is going on, who am I, where am I etc etc, I wandered around town scowling at people and buying more shit I didn't need.

Helen, I have a heap of hairclips for you. They were on chuckout for a dollar a pack at the reject shop and they're plain goldtone snapclips. They don't have a hole though, so they might take more gluing than normal.

As well as hairclips, I bought a copy of Portal, because one day I might get around to playing it, and also because it made the guy behind the counter come up and flirt with me (I scowled at him) and an mp3 player, despite the fact that I got one for $10 on eBay last night, and this one was $30. I was feeling bummed, and cant be held responsible for any purchases made. I held back from going into Cotton On, because 75% of the stuff (all the clothes and shoes and accessories) in that shop make me scowl even on the best of days, but I simply cannot resist the fact that they have notebooks for $2, especially as I have bookmarked a tutorial for a really cute quilted cover, which has already led to me purchasing 12 of the damn things for one day when I get around to it. So I went to the plaza instead, and I wandered around Kmart, scowling at people, then I went to KFC, where I was going through drivethrough, so there wasn't too much human interaction. Which was nice. 

But I did learn something interesting tonight - if you push the tip of your tounge on the back of your top teeth, you cant really smile. It's not so much a scowl as a "you are too unimportant for me to bother with any expression at all" face, and it's good for walking past the mobs of teenyboppers at the plaza. Also, being better than them in every single way helps too. See, even when I'm feeling bummed I manage to still feel awesome. That kind of multitasking can only be achieved by someone who both quilts and owns a small kitten.

However, before all my self loathing/moral superiority kicked in, I decided that what I really needed to do tonight was make another baby quilt. I picked some stash (I know, Oh my god, Are you okay, etc etc) and started chopping 10 squares at 21.5cm of one fabric and 20 each of two fabrics at 11.5cm. I think it's called a disappearing 4 patch or something but basically every second one is a 4 patch. Final squares are 20cm so its 80cm by 100cm big.

I didn't really think through which blocks go where - there's not the hugest amount of contrast between the two fabrics in the 4 patch and the big stripe blocks unfortunately have become a bit wonky during quilting - I did either side of the seam on the 4 patch but I had no actual line to follow when it hot to the wrong way of the stripe, and the pins I put in to help with the guesswork have made it bunch up a bit. Still, I got it designed, cut, pieced, basted and quilted in about 6 hours, but I cant really be bothered binding it tonight. Instead of watching stuff on the laptop as I was working I had the new mp3 player on, and due to the absence of a clock on it, I didn't realise it was 1am already, so that can be done tomorrow.

This is the back and I really like the diagonal line. I would have done it straight but then I would have had to try line it up with the other lines - now I've found out I actually prefer the effect created by having it on the angle. I think next one I might try something even more along these lines - a kindof freeform assembly of the blocks instead of right angles in a grid. Wasn't that the point of these little ones? To try shit out?

Lunch break...

Of course, now that I look at the photo (after I've string pieced and ironed out my pairs) I can see my glaring mistake.

Probably no-one will notice it. I was trying for random - well, actually, I was only concerned about not having a row of the paisley going up or down.

If you still haven't picked it, its that all the paisley blocks form a diagonal line with their outer sides. Except for the red ones :(

Actual unpicking would be 6 pieces. That's not as bad as I was expecting.

I'm running way ahead. I may as well. I will feel better about it.

Also, the test swatch of the purple quilt boofed up nicely, so I wont be bothering with more quilting. Here's how it's at currently.

So I only need to trim the edges and bind. Nice feeling :)

Post Crafternoon, Pre Whoring...

Had a big crafternoon at Helen's, made some decent progress on the purple test quilt (3/4 of the top cut and pinned, all of the rest of the fabric washed and ironed ready to go) and had 2 fast food meals for the day (usually only have one.) Showed off the retro and bluegreen quilts, and stunned people into indecision with my huge array of 10cm squares.

And now, instead of getting stuck in further while watching the Big Bang DVDs I bought with my massive tax cheque, I have to, according to Casey, go "whoring"

Azza from work's birthday party is on tonight. She doesn't mean real whoring, just going out and acting slutty while not actually being slutty at all. It's a Casey thing. I'm not feeling it, as once I have started on a quilt it's go go go, but she is being insistent.

Guess who's not getting the purple quilt?