What to work on next?

Sooooo many projects and so little time. I have my evenings back now that the Olympics are over. I found it fun to watch but got a little obsessed trying to watch everything. The PVR was heavily used these last few weeks - it was filled with Olympics and the daily Sew Much More episodes. I'm currently whittling away at the sewing shows. My husband hooked up my computer to the output of the satellite receiver so I can watch TV in the sewing/computer room. The real benefit is that while he's engrossed in XBox and hogging the TV, I can still watch things we've saved on the PVR. And I can save them to the hard drive too! The quality is not the best, but it works.

Anyway, back to sewing. Or knitting. I was inspired to start this blog after reading knitter blogs. Alas, sewing is not quite as "in" as knitting is these days and knitter blogs far outweigh sewing blogs. But still, it's a neat way to chronicle one's projects and can be a fun outlet for amateur writing. My interest in knitting was renewed when I read about and saw pictures of the wonderful sweaters these knitting bloggers were creating. I bought sock yarn. I bought frou-frou yarn to make scarves. I thought I would multi-task by spending my TV time knitting as well. Hasn't happened.

However, I am sewing and that's a good thing. But whenever I finish a project I get overwhelmed by what to work on next. Should I work on something for this season or next? Should I try something new or use a pattern I've sewn already? Do I start with a pattern and find the fabric (it better be stash fabric) or pick a fabric and find a pattern? Easy or challenging? Or perhaps I should work on the drapes I've been meaning to make or quilts that I've started and not finished?

I decided last night to work on a short sleeve blouse I started. The muslin didn't quite fit so I decided to look more closely into why it doesn't fit. The muslin fits fine in the upper chest and shoulders but is too small across the bust and waist. If I go up a size, it will be too big in the upper chest. This is a common problem for me. I consulted Fast Fit by Sandra Betzina and found that the breast apex on my pattern is about 1 inch too low and 1 inch toward my arm. The instructions for fixing it call for starting with a garment that fits everywhere except the upper chest, which means that I need to cut the bigger size and alter the pattern for my small upper chest. The alteration calls for adjusting the both the bodice and the sleeve patterns. I'm hoping to work on it tonight.

A week of travelling and tiny quilts

Do I need help? I flew across the country to attend a two-day meeting for work and when I checked into my hotel I saw that it was only 7:30 so I hopped back in the car and drove about 30 minutes to G-Street Fabrics in Rockville MD. Never mind that I'd just spent all day flying and hadn't had a decent meal! I had an hour and a half to shop before they closed! I actually was on a mission. I wanted to find buckles for the purse I'm making with the leftover black and white skirt fabric. I thought for sure they'd have them but they didn't. So I looked through their pile of $2.77 fabrics instead. In the past, I've found that they mostly have cottons in this pile but this time I found some good deals. I found a yard of a buttermilk knit in a paisley pattern - it actually was 1 1/4 yards, so enough for a Jalie T-shirt. I also scored a 2-yard piece of a beige poorboy knit that had decent recovery. And the final catch of the day was nearly 7 yards of a sheer polyester to make valences for my kitchen windows. I could tell the green/gold/browns would go well in there and how could I pass up the price? It was also suitcase-friendly thin fabric. Tally: 10 yards

I flew home Friday and then spent the next two days in a quilting class...working on a miniature quilt. Yikes. The course, taught by Sally Collins, can be considered as a way to learn how to improve your accuracy at cutting and sewing on "normal" size quilts, since accuracy is key when dealing with 1/2 inch blocks, or one can take the class to learn how to make a very small quilt. I took it for both reasons. I've only taken one other quilt class and I've only made one pieced quilt - well, actually just the top. I have made two small "quilts" - the top blocks are appliqued using Heat 'n Bond. I don't really think of them as quilts. I also have a small paper piecing project begun. After two full days in Sally's class I have 270 tiny pieces cut and only 8 pieces sewn together. The first day was spent learning about color and composition. Twelve women used the same Circle of Stars pattern and turned out 12 very different looks simply with different color choices. My quilt is a greenish-brownish background with yellow stars and brown centers. It reminds me of sunflowers or black-eyed-susans. Not at all what I thought the fabric would create. I simply started with a set of 8 fat quarters that ranged from gray to brown to green and pulled a few fabrics from my stash. Most of my fabric stash is fashion fabric for garment sewing but I have been accumulating quilt fabric - at an all too rapid pace, I'm afraid. I mostly collect cat prints for a "some day" cat-themed quilt. I'm pleased with the color choices of this quilt and hope to someday actually finish it. Yeah. Right. Famous words of a novice quilter. I also stopped at Joann's that night and buoyed by the thrill of taking fabric colors and combining them into something special, I bought 30 fat-quarters (it "helped" that Joann's was having a sale: $1/fat quarter). I'm not counting the fat-quarters in my stash. I don't think I will count (or have every counted) quilting fabric in my stash because it's not used up in the same way. Quilt fabric is like an on-going resource - like paper or pens. Hey, it's my stash and I can make the rules.

Anyway, the class was really great and I highly recommend taking Sally's classes if you ever get the chance. My husband actually saw the announcement at the quilt store and suggested I take it (yes, he actually goes into fabric stores with me). I thought it was too expensive and out of my quilting league but my husband persuaded me. Yes, he persuaded me to take the class. No I did not slip him a drug and yes, he was my husband and not an alien. Another customer happened to have taken the class and was planning to take it again. She told me how good it was and I relented. I had my husband, the store owner and the customer pushing me to take this class! How could I not? I am really glad I did take it, even though I spent more money on notions during the class (needed just the right pins, scissors, thread, needles...) and of course the fat quarter buying spree at Joann's. Expensive class indeed. But it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. I really do hope to finish the quilt...and make a few more.

Happiness is...

...putting in an invisible zipper without a second thought.

Zippers used to be a scary thing and invisible zippers were especially formidable. I often stopped sewing for the day when I got to the zipper. I prefer to start fresh when tackling difficult things. Well, last night I didn't hesitate when it came time for the zipper. It was late, but not that late so I forged ahead. I put on the plastic invisible zipper foot, basted my zipper into place and stiched. Done. Perfect. Big smiles.

I'm pleased how quickly I'm sewing up this skirt. Well, gosh, it ought to be easy by this time. I've sewn two almost identical skirts in the last two months. Yes, I decided to do the shorter skirt. The pattern of this fabric just didn't seem right for a longer skirt. I left out the horizontal seam, which also made the sewing go quicker. I have the side slit, waistband facing and hem to do and then I'm done. I should be able to finish it tonight!

My willpower is holding in resisting ordering from EOS and fabric.com. I actually think that the more I sew, the less I will buy. When I realize how long it takes to sew just a few yards of fabric, it really makes it clear that buying 30 yards of fabric a month will result in a huge stash. I shouldn't have had to put my rocket scientist degree to use to figure that out.

All work, no sew

I've been very busy at work and thus have been too worn out to sew very much in the evenings - or even on the weekend! But there has been some sewing progress since my last post. I finished this purse - view A using the citrus print from my skirt and contrasting orange fabric. It was tedious! I'm preparing a review of it for patternreview so I'm not going to go into all of the details here - too much writing! The purse came out quite well, I think. I'll try to finish up the review and get a picture posted soon.

My dress form is still wearing the citrus print skirt because I have nothing to wear with it. Of course I have fabric and patterns to make tops, but I just haven't made any yet. I broke down and ordered an orange top and orange sandals from the Eddie Bauer on-line outlet store so that I can at least wear this outfit while it's still summer. I'll be very orangey!

I did cut out a muslin of a short sleeve top using this New Look pattern. I have plans to make it up in an orange and white striped fabric - tiny stripes, the skirt is quite bold enough, thank you. Having read that the pattern had a lot of ease, I decided to cut a smaller size. Unfortunately there's not enough ease for my hips and waist and I'm not really thrilled with how it fits overall. It fits the dress form better than me, which is not a good sign. I have gained weight. But I knew that. I just didn't want to be confronted with it.

Since Eddie Bauer came to my rescue for at least one top to wear with the citrus skirt, I've decided to take a slight detour from the blouse and work on another Manhattan skirt. I have a black and white floral print that looks rather "toile-ish". It's the same cotton/lycra woven fabric as the citrus print. I bought it at the same store in Mesa. I'm going on a business trip next week to attend a two-day review and I think the black and white skirt would be perfect to wear with a black top and black sandals. I just can't decide whether I want to make the shorter style that I made for the other two skirts, but eliminate the horizontal seams, or make the longer version, which has a vertical seam down the front and a slit in the back instead of the side. Whatever I decide, I need to get moving! Fortunately it's a very easy skirt to make.

Oh yeah. I bought more fabric. My husband bought some shirts from REI that he really liked and he asked me to make some for him. The fabric is the wickaway type and when Wazoodle.com announced a sale on Malden Mills knits, well, you just know I had to check it out. The prices were really good and the fabrics will work well for his shirts or tops for me. 17 yards. Ouch. The good news is that I am restraining from buying more fabric from EOS, despite Linda's recent acquisition of great fabrics - I'm tempted but so far I'm holding firm. I'm wavering a bit on fabric.com. They've offered me a discount since I'm in their group of frequent buyers. They have some silk that I'm considering but I'm going to try to stand firm with them too. I have to remind myself that although the silk would make a lovely dress, so will the purple rayon I bought from Stone Mountain and Daughter and the linen I bought from EOS, and the rayon I bought from fabric.com - and those are just the fabrics off the top of my head. I must resist. I must resist.

Slow Progress

I finished the citrus skirt. It's cute...and bright! Now I need to make some shirts to go with it. I don't have any bright orange or bright green things in my closet at the moment and a plain old white shirt is kind of boring. I have a few fabrics to make shirts out of: two green and two orange. One green is a rayon green and white check I bought at Britex. I envisioned a tank so I only bought one yard. The other green I bought last night at Hancock. Yes, another 2 yards added to the stash. It's tiny green and white check fabric that I had bought for the lining of the purse I'm making out of the citrus fabric remnants. I thought it would look really cute in a short sleeve blouse. I picked up two New Look patterns for blouses last night as well. I looked through all of my Burda WOF magazines and could not find the blouse pattern I wanted. Unbelievable. All those patterns. But I think the Burda WOF patterns are great for fashionable things and not necessarily basic garments, so I'm not all that surprised. I was going to use a Burda shirt pattern I have, but I didn't like the square bottom of the hem. I plan to wear this untucked. I'd like to make a similar blouse with some orange and white striped cotton I bought at Hancocks earlier. I have an orange lycra linen that I'd like to make into a blouse, but I don't know how best to take advantage of the lycra in it. It's a woven with a lot of stretch.

I try to get a bit of sewing in each night while my husband entertains himself on the XBox. But last night I had to go to the fabric store to get interfacing - for the shirts and for the purse. I spent a long time looking at Joann's and finally bought 5 yards of Pellon lightweight fusible for the shirts. I also picked up a yard of Pellon Shirt Tailor fusible - it's supposed to be good for cuffs and collars. It has tiny holes in it and I'm not sure how stiffly it will adhere so I didn't want to get it to use for shirt fronts. I also bought a yard of the heaviest weight sew-in they had for the purse, but I wasn't all that happy with it so I went to Hancock to see what they had. Their stock was pretty much the same except they had a mystery roll of some stiff stuff that almost looked like cross stitch cloth but the weavings weren't regular enough and it wasn't cheap enough at $2.69/yard to be that. I think it will work better than the Pellon stuff, so I bought a yard (plus it's mega wide, unlike the measly 22" wide Pellon). I didn't have any time to sew when I got home though. Maybe tonight.

Sewing and Fabric...Fabric and Sewing

I've fallen behind in my blogging but I have been sewing...and buying fabric. Well, at least I'm sewing.

I had about a yard of fabric leftover from the blue skirt so I made a little short sleeved jacket. It was easy to sew up. It's a little big through the upper chest. I didn't make a muslin and on the Kwik Sew patterns I'm at the very bottom end of the medium size for my bust. A lesson to remember for the next Kwik Sew top I make.

I cut out the Manhattan skirt out of the citrus print (oranges on a bright green background) and had a bit left over for a purse. I didn't have quite enough for all of it but this was fine because the pattern actually called for it to have contrasting fabric. This will work well because the fabric is a bit busy. I was also able to squeeze out the pieces for a matching cosmetic bag for inside the purse. But I didn't have contrasting fabric, lining or the zippers and webbing needed for the project. And I thought making a purse would be easy! So of course this called for a trip to the fabric store. I found the perfect orange fabric for the contrasting part. The fabric is called "trigger", which I've never heard of. It is canvas-like and matches the weight of the citrus print. For the lining, I chose a bright green and white check (tiny checks) in the quilting cottons. I also found some orange and white striped cotton that would make a sweet blouse to wear with the skirt. Total take: .75 yards of the orange trigger, 1 yard of green and white checked fabric and 2 yards of orange striped fabric. Alas, the store didn't have the zippers I wanted to I had to go to another fabric store. They were also having their big 4th of July weekend sale (oh horrors!) and I found some cute cotton shirtings in summery stripes and plaids. I picked up two 2-yard cuts. They also didn't quite have the zippers I wanted but they'll do. I did have some restraint against driving out to a third fabric store.

I didn't have quite as much restraint with on-line fabric shopping however. My husband asked me to make some wheel covers out of canvas for the trailer - it sits out in the sun everyday and the tires are getting beat on by the sun. Purchased wheel covers are expensive - more so than they need to be. The purchased ones are probably out of a sun-resistant and mildew resistant fabric, but since we don't have rain until October, sun is the primary problem and I think the canvas will work fine for a while. Of course I knew of a good source for the canvas and they just happened to be having a sale. Fabric.com had a surprise coupon from 10 to 50% - you didn't know how much the value was until you selected it. On my computer at work, the value was 15% - not bad. But when I checked my coupon on the Powerbook at home, it came up at 25%. Woohoo! Even better. I filled my cart with the canvas (5 yards), some trim for pillows (5 yards, but I'm not counting that in my stash), some beautiful hand-painted embroidered cotton I've been eyeing for a while (2 yards and 3 yards), oriental brocade (2 yards) and some stretch twill (2 yards) that I couldn't resist at $3.04/yard even before my discount.

Then I couldn't resist seeing what Emmaonesock had to offer - even after my unhappiness about the yardage of the last order. I just can't resist her nice fabrics. She often puts small cuts of fabric, either the last pieces of fabric she's been selling or a single cut that was all she could obtain. Those one-time single cuts are often really special and there was one that caught my eye. Usually they catch everyone else's eyes as well and they sell out quickly. But I managed to snag the 2-yard piece of this:



I also bought 1.5 yards of red stretch denim that I'd been thinking of getting and to help make the shipping more worthwhile.

I might add that Quicken suggested we make a scheduled payment to Emmaonesock. Not a bad idea! Fortunately my husband has a sense of humor and more importantly, understanding of my fabric obsession and a love for me.

So, dare I tally the fabric? 25.25 yards. Well I am sewing - my citrus print skirt is almost done and together with the top I whipped up = 2 yards of fabric sewn. I have the contrasting fabric and orange/white striped blouse fabric washed so my next project will be to work on the purse or make a muslin of the blouse I want to make. So many projects...so little time.

Trying to keep the momentum going

Now that my French class is over I have my Monday and Wednesday evenings back. Or should I say "J'ai mes lundi et mes mercredi soirs." I hope that was correct - I've only had six months of French. So what to do with all that time? I wanted to keep my sewing momentum going and work on my next project but I had 4 lbs of strawberries that needed to be made into jam and canned or they'd soon be headed for the compost. My husband liked the strawberry jam I made a few weeks ago so much that he bought more strawberries for me to make more jam. Thanks honey. I am not pioneer-woman-Suzie-homemaker. I only did the canning to turn the apricots and plums from our overproducing fruit trees into preserves. We grow some strawberries, but the slugs eat more than we do, so there certainly aren't enough to make jam. But it's strawberry season here and the major growers for a lot of the country's supply are about 20 miles south of here in Watsonville. Hence, we can buy flats of strawberries (6 pints) for $6. It seemed like a good idea to make jam. It wasn't really hard, just time consuming.

Fortunately I didn't spend all evening making jam and had some time to play with fabric. My box from Emmaonesock showed up. Gorgeous fabrics. I'm a little dismayed though - some of my cuts are barely the yardage I purchased and one is actually under because part of it was cut for a sample. It's a sold-out fabric so I can't get more. I hope I can still get a shirt out of it. They were rather pricey fabrics, otherwise I would have bought some extra. I think I'm more dismayed because I sometimes read on the sewing boards that people consider her cuts to be generous. I wonder if I'm not in the "generous cut" club because I request my American Sewing Guild 10% discount. Actually that's probably not true because I didn't get the discount nor the generous cuts on my previous order. She offers the ASG discount so I'm entitled to it and getting 10% off really did influence my purchase of the pricey rayons. I can afford to buy them but it's psychological I guess to think that I'm not really paying the full price.

I petted and examined my new fabric and piled them up on the cutting table Good grief, I hope my new cutting table doesn't become perpetually buried under fabric now! I decided that my next project will be another Manhattan Skirt, so I washed and dried the citrus print I bought in Mesa. Maybe tonight I'll cut the fabric and get started.

Oh yeah, I also finally used my new sewing machine last weekend. My Pfaff 7570 and Babylock Evolve serger are certainly a wonderful combination and I'm sure many sewers would dream for such nice machines. So why did I buy another sewing machine? I guess because I could. I convinced myself that there were times when I needed a second machine. That I'd take the new machine to sewing classes, use it when the Pfaff was set up for embroidery, or set it up on the dining table when I needed to sew big things like curtains or quilts. So this weekend I had a sheet that needed mending (the hem had come undone) and my Pfaff was already threaded with thread for my skirt. Perfect time to use the new machine. I set it up on the cutting table, learned how to load a bobbin, threaded it, and sewed a new hem. Yipee - I spent $900 on a sewing machine so that I could fix an old sheet! No, really, I will use this machine. I have to because I told my husband I would and I have to keep justifying my sewing purchases so that I don't feel guilty buying more fabric or notions...or sewing machines.