Off the Clock

I know I'm supposed to be working on my Angela Wolf jeans but I had to buy some more denim and I got sidetracked with Style Arc's Barb's Stretch Pant in the meantime.  I got this pattern as a free download for signing up for their newsletter. I have mentioned that Daughter has been losing weight.  I took in a couple of pairs of her black work pants for her (rather substantially) but they are hanging on her again.  I figured it's time for new pants for the girl, and knowing that she needs something comfortable but office appropriate I've been eyeing this pattern.  The pattern is drafted for a stretch woven, and recommends Stretch Bengaline.  Fabricland had their members 50% off sale yesterday and I went looking to see what they have.  They don't carry Bengaline (not that I even know what that is), but the staff recommended either a ponte or the "Symphony" fabric I ended up chosing, a poly-lycra sturdy knit with a nice weight and drape and a beautifu...

Vogue 8669 & New Look 6735 Nothing for three weeks and then you get two posts in one day. After yesterday's success I was really excited to experiment a little more with tee necklines.  I have quite a few knit top patterns I haven't tried yet, mainly because every time I try a new one I decide I don't like it as much as my basic New Look 6735.  I guess I'm just a basic tee girl at heart.  I have Vogue 8669 in my pattern stash waiting to be test driven, but I am not in love with it.  As much as I like a nice cowl neck this one seems a little frumpy to me.  The tee is a loose fitting top with a very shallow cowl.  I've seen a number of interpretations online and haven't fallen in love with any of them - they just aren't my style.  When looking into cowl necks I found  this tutorial from Threads Magazine  but I'm a little bit leery of starting from scratch.  In the end I decided to take my TNT NL6735  and frankenpattern ...

I have a hunch I've probably used that title before. Anyway, I got back into the sewing room last night. I want to start on a pair of jeans using Angela Wolf's Angel Bootcut jean pattern , but she recommends prewashing and drying the fabric at least twice. I have some blue denim as well as some black denim in the stash that have been prewashed once, so I got them into the washing machine. I'm not sure if I am going to have enough fabric. The Wolf jeans calls for 2.75 meters. I only have 2.3 meters. I'm not sure why the difference. At first I thought this was because I bought according to the fabric requirements for Vogue 1204 but I just looked that up and that one calls for 2.6 meters. Maybe I did buy more but it just shrank that much in the first prewash? *(Oh wait, I just looked up my other jeans pattern, McCalls 6610 (which I haven't made yet), and it calls for 2.3 meters. That explains why I ran short on fabric making my first version of Vogue 1204 . I e...

I haven't been in the sewing room in over three weeks! I had to be out of town on business for a week and was madly scrambling to finish up Butterick 6049 early so that daughter could wear it for a Halloween party. After being up working on it until midnight the night before going out of town she did get it early but without the lining being sewn down at the waist. What started out as a fairly straight forward project ended up being a bit of a fitting nightmare. I don't have a full pic of the final version but this one (to the left) is close. I took in the bodice for a snugger fit after this pic was taken. You may remember I had hand stitched the neckline opening to make it a bit more modest but that just ended up giving it a funny shape once she tried it on, so that stitching came back out. As always I try to figure out what went wrong with a project. In this case I think part of my fitting problems came down to the fact that I used a regular cotton weave for the muslin but...