Sew Stoked!

When I was nine, I cut up most of my socks to make a "quilt".  I had been reading a lot of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and if Half-pint could do it, so could I.  I learned several valuable lessons that day:  scraps of knit socks do not a quilt make; mothers do not like it when their daughters cut up their socks; and it would take a shitload, nay a LIFETIME, of socks to make a quilt.  And worst of all, the resulting quilt would be rough and smelly.

That same year, I cut off the hems of quite a few of my t-shirts and rather spectacularly I thought, carefully clipped out the windows of a house that was on one of my shirt fronts.  My left nipple popped through the window.  My first wardrobe malfunction.

In Grade 9, I was forced to take home economics.  Our first project was a tote bag.  My Nana, a fabric hoarder, was elated when she heard that I needed material.  I was ushered upstairs to pore over the many cardboard boxes full of fabric.  I rejected the seersucker (too pale) and went for a navy and white plaid poly blend.  The bag was unsurprisingly hideous and it fell apart.  

My next project in home ec was a track suit.  My Dad took me to the fabric store where I selected a pattern for a cowgirl style track suit, ooh!  If you can imagine these pants made in white poly/cotton fleece, then you can picture my track suit:

that fringe though...

The problem came when my mother told me that we would be making the pants and top without the fringe, the fringe being too expensive.  I may have freaked out.

"WITHOUT THE FRINGE?", I bellowed.  

As the fringe was the pièce de résistance of the cowgirl outfit, I was completely uninspired to make it.  There would be nothing cowgirl about it - nothing!  I was devastated.  It was like the time when the parents of an ex-boyfriend took us out for a special dinner and we ended up at the Kmart cafeteria - the fish here is fantastic!

In Grade 9, I couldn't find any shorts that I liked; however, I did unearth a garish mustard yellow, black, crimson and forest green plaid in the bargain bin at the fabric store.  My stepmother offered to help me sew the shorts.  I cut out the pattern pieces carefully but mistakenly cut the ass parts of the shorts in half (well why is there a line there? I thought you were supposed to cut along all the lines on the pattern...)  

I am now 46.  I have spent many hours of the past two weeks sewing costumes for my child's school play (Shrek Jr.).  I am sick of sewing aprons, skirts and capelets but I feel like my sewing mojo has been activated.  I am going to sew something for myself.

Enter the Alma blouse from the Canadian company Sewaholic.  Sewaholic publishes brilliant sewing patterns focusing on women with a small waist-to-hip ratio or "pear" shape.

I love the piping on the collar.  Picture from http://lilleyul.blogspot.ca

I will be making this version with a tie at the waist (but no notched V in the front):

Pic is from sewaholic

Because I am a cheapskate, and because I do not have confidence in my wannabe seamstress self, I am opting to use several yards of a beautiful grey and black dotted silk that I purchased for a toonie at a yard sale.  I love me a garage sale.  

Before cutting into my fabric, I wanted to try sewing on silk so that I could adjust my machine's tension and I also wanted to conquer the dreaded zipper.  I am afraid of zippers and I'm not sure why. I googled "invisible zipper tut", followed the instructions and managed this:

POW! Take that, zipper!  

Okay, I know it's not invisible, but it's not bad, not bad at all.  My neighbour made fun of me when I posted the picture on Farcebook:
 David Pauloff If the zipper is red I think the invisibility part needs work. 

Ha, ha, very funny.

I read about hand-picking a zipper à la Parisian seamstress and promptly decided that that will be my method for my blouse once I reach the "sewing in the zipper" stage of construction.  I enjoy hand sewing - was I Amish in another life? - so it would be a cakewalk.

And so I plunged in.  I cut out my pattern without incident, although that took me longer than expected.  Accuracy is important for the final fit of the garment.

First up was ironing the interfacing onto the neck piece.  Interfacing adds stiffness to fabric.  If you can iron, you can use interfacing.  Easy-peasy.

See?

not completely precise, but it'll do

Then I sewed the shoulder seams, which was also a no brainer, and I added some staystitching, which is a simple line of sewing around the neckline that prevents the fabric from stretching.

So far, so good.  Time for some tea and chocolate.   I whipped this up:

I was concerned about the bust and contour darts, which add shaping, until I consulted another online tutorial.  I practised on a piece of scrap fabric first, and then felt ready to tackle my top:

practice makes perfect

inside view of darts - I did it!

How about that?

Time to add the neck lining to the front and back of the bodice.   I also had to clip the seams so that they would turn more easily.  It stressed me out to cut into my beautiful seams:

I somehow avoided cutting into the seam itself.  :-)

I did a marvelous job pinning and sewing, but then I realized that I had sewn the lining wrong side down.  Grrrrrr.  Enter seam ripper.  Laugh at the pile of threads that I plucked out:

I didn't let my mistake get me down.  I may have said a few choice words - motherfucker fuck fuck - but I kept control.

Understitching was next on the agenda and that gave me some pause.  I had no clue how to do it; I'd never even heard of it.  I googled and learned that understitching keeps linings and facings from peeking out around a neckline, and that it gives the garment a professional finished look.  I am nothing if not a consummate professional.

It actually worked.

Deep breath because it's zipper-time.  I am sewing it in by hand.  Wish me luck...

pins holding it together

I sewed in that zipper and I didn't cry once.

Sidenote:  I am surprised at how long it takes to sew a blouse.  I have total respect for seamstresses.

This is my first time attempting to sew something that I might actually deign to wear out of the house, so I am trying my best, but still.  There are many, many hours involved in the construction of a garment.

Sleeves next.  I have no idea how to create gathers or set in sleeves.  So I watched a video and learned.

It was painstaking.  My fabric puckered on the underside of the gathers and I had to use the seam ripper again.  I also had problems fitting my armhole facing / binding inside the opening, so I ripped it apart and adjusted the seam, which wasn't as onerous as it sounds.  The good news is that I only screwed up one side, and then I knew how not to do it on the other.

the armhole facing covers the unsightly seams

The good news is that my blouse is actually looking like a BLOUSE:

I finished up the sleeves with some edgestitching around the cap sleeves.

All that remains is the hemming around the bottom of the blouse (easy!) and construction of the belt (even easier!).

Tada!

you can't see the tears of happiness running down my cheeks

I am chic!

I am so happy with how my blouse turned out.  I can't believe that I made it and that it fits me.  I want to wear it everywhere!  The first people to see me in my new blouse were three workmen who are doing construction on my curb and driveway.  They did not compliment me.  I was tempted to ask them what they thought about my blouse, but I refrained.  It's not all about me... :-)

I am not going to lie and say that making this  -my first garment for my adult self- was easy; however, I was able to figure out everything online.  All of the links to techniques that I used are in this blog, and if you would like to try to make your own Alma, I urge you to.  It is so satisfying to make your own clothing; I feel like a million bucks in my $16 blouse (pattern was $14 and the fabric was $2).  I like the navy and white polka dotted version of the blouse that I posted earlier and now I am going to try to make that too.

I can do it!

Optional musical pairing:  Must Get Out by Maroon 5

"I've been the needle and the thread

Weaving figure eights and circles round your head..."

Addendum.  Friday, April 22, 2016.

Next up, the Cambie dress, also from Sewaholic:

http://scruffybadgertime.co.uk/2012/05/the-sewaholic-cambie-dress-awesome-x2/

I Bake a Geode; I Sew Something Special and I Enter My Creations in the Fair.

I know that a few of you come here so that you will feel better about your own pathetic lives.  If you are one of these individuals, then today's post about baking is for YOU.

Some of you have enjoyed my baking misadventures.

The loaves à la toddler:

The unleavened tooth-breakers:

And now this:

Yes peeps, it all comes THAT EASILY to me.

Several months ago, I purchased a bag of light rye flour from the Arva Flour Mill.  If it's good enough for the White Stripes, it's good enough for me:

My kids are fond of rye bread, which puzzles me.  I enjoy it, but it's not exactly the go-to for the under-ten set.

I found a recipe for Rye Bread in Fanny Farmer, one of my favourite cookbooks:

I needed a break from quilting this gift for my neighbours; baking was the answer.

(Yes, the lines are supposed to be crooked like that, although I think that bit of drunken quilting at the top of the dark brown bit is especially wonky and probably not entirely intentional).

I also needed to "not think" about the book that I was not writing while hosting Japanese students:

I would bake.  Baking is wholesome and satisfying.  And I had a full bag of rye flour.

Let's get back to that bread.

When I started to kneading, I couldn't figure out why the mixture was so damn stiff.  I reread the recipe.

Doh! (get it?)

I forgot to add the milk.  :-)

I was not pleased with myself, not pleased at all.  This is what I get for multi-tasking, which I clearly SUCK at.  Obviously, I was not going to begin again so I poured in the cup of milk that I forgot to add and tried to "mix it" in with my trusty wooden spoon.  I wasn't mixing as much as I was pulverizing.  Not even Boney M could get me out of my funk.

I ended up with this after 10 minutes of kneading (and mofo'ing):

I let it sit until it doubled in size and then I punched it down - KAPOW! BAM! BAM!  My favourite part of baking bread.

Because I don't want to chronicle the rest of this baking debacle, let's just leave it at this:  My bread was like a rock.  But it sure looked beautiful:

Laughing my hand off here.

The interior of the loaf tasted good but the crust could chip a tooth.  Let's call my loaf The Geode - crack that hard bitch open and you might find a treasure inside.

********  Intermission ***********
have any of you read The Sisters Brothers?

So I was a total slacker this summer and couldn't even post one blog entry.  Please don't tell me that you can't or shouldn't start a sentence with the word so because I don't care.

This summer, I was too busy sewing, playing soccer, yelling, drinking and complaining.  Isn't everyone's summer like that?

I wrote the first part of this blog (above the asterisks) sometime in July and then I wrote some more again in August, but I just couldn't get it together.  And now I'm finishing it the first week of September.  Oh well.  None of my loyal readers give a fig.  Right?

Okay, back to it.

Intermission's over.

*************

The good news is that I did finish the weiner dog quilt:

The pattern is from Boo Davis' Dare to Be Square.  I don't normally make cutesy-pie quilts but something drew me to this pattern - I think it was the seventies vibe.  Boo's quilt in the pattern had a solid blue background, but I like to mix it up a bit so I went for blue and grey.  I also threw in some pink in the dog's body because every little boy needs a little or a lotta pink in his life.

The quilt should really be called a wall-hanging or play mat, due to the enthusiasm of the quilter (i.e. lots of stitches per square inch), and as such, it is as stiff as my loaf of rye.  :-)  It was well-received by the recipients, although they practically had to tear it out of my arms.

In other creative news, the crafty denizens of Bruce Street have been working on entries for the Western Fair.  How could we resist such tempting categories as Wacky Lamp or Horrific Hat?  And I musn't neglect to mention that we can win TOP DOLLAR.

Gwen made "Munchkins", a family of three hapless dolls:

I made Reading Lamp:  a lamp and shade covered in crumpled pages from Trixie Belden and The Mystery Off Glen Road and J.R.R. Tolkien's Book of Lost Tales.  I bought the lamp from the Goodwill for $3 (you can still see the orange sticker in the pic below).  I already had the books and the glue gun, so it was a cheap project.

Before / during:

I burned my fingers quite a bit with the hot glue while crumpling up all those pages and sticking them onto the base and shade.  It's clear that the life of an artist is fraught with danger.

Here's the big reveal:

Stunning, I think.

In a fit of pure genius, I made Hat Head:

I had purchased the bag of doll heads from a yard sale many years ago and had been waiting for just the right project. 

This is why I go to yard sales, peeps :-)

Who needs a meat dress?  Eat your heart out, Gaga:

I love Hat Head!  I think it's my favourite hat ever, even beating out the burr and teezel hat that I made ten years ago, which sadly, I do not have a picture of.  I do have a picture of a teezel though :-)

HH is also a nod to Pretty Ugly, my Western Fair crepe paper and Barbie doll creation from 2004, now languishing in a landfill.  My evil offspring tore off most of the heads and bodies from the lamp, shortening its moniker from Pretty Ugly to just Ugly.  

I also entered some knitting (a vest for Gwen and a bag that I made for myself), and Dynamite - a quilted wall hanging that I sewed last Spring:

I don't think that I have much of a chance of winning in the quilting category (you can win between $300 and $500 in the category that I entered), but I am quite proud of my piece.  The Quilt Police will find many things wrong with my quilt, not least the wonky shapes, which are completely intentional. On the plus side, it's my own design (I haven't ever been confident designing my own things); I attempted free-motion quilting - definitely not my strength as a quilter; and I think the design is interesting to look at.  I will admit to being very curious about the other entries in this category.

Here's Art Bag.  I repurposed a pair of handles from a purse that I purchased at the Goodwill, and I lined the bag with a wine-coloured taffeta skirt (also a Goodwill purchase).

I knit the bag over many months, took a very deep breath and tossed it in a washer full of hot water (to felt it).  Here it is, only a couple of rows in:

Lastly, here is the pinafore that I made for Gwen.  It actually looks quite hideous in this photo, and is much prettier in person.

The kids and I will be venturing to the Western Fair next week and I am quite excited to see how we made out.

I love being creative; I would die if I didn't make things.

image from:  http://findings.creativemornings.com/post/87107476756/creativemornings-you-cant-use-up-creativity

Go make things!



Optional musical pairing:  Hooray! Hooray! It's A Holi-Holiday! by Boney M