Off the Clock

Progress pic I've had this pattern in my stash for a few years but never made it until now.  Crunch time came last weekend when I found out on Saturday that I would be having a job interview on Monday.  Now you may wonder why I don't have a jacket in my wardrobe to wear for a job interview.  Well as it turns out I am retired and wasn't expecting this opportunity that fell into my lap more or less out of the blue.  I wear a 14 in big 4 patterns, but my pattern is the larger grouping starting at 16.  Most of my Saturday was spend tracing and grading down the pattern, then making my usual length adjustment of 1" in the bodice.  I wasn't sure what to do with the sleeve, because after doing the math including 1/2" for shoulder pads it looked like they would be ok.  However, experience is that sleeves are often short on me.  I decided to add 1/2" to the sleeves to be safe.  Long story short, even after sewing until 1am on Sunday night I en...

For today's project I am revisiting Butterick 5493 which I first blogged about here .  If you scroll down on that post to the solid green version you will read about how I messed up the pattern and how I'm not happy with the shoulders that stand up away from my body.  I have enough of this green crepe left over that I can use it to make another one.  This will be a good comparision as I will cut this one on the grain as the pattern calls for and then I can compare the difference in drape.  I spend hours yesterday re-drafting the pattern.  First I traced out a fresh version.  This involved grading down because the pattern set starts one size above my size.  I must have bought this pattern in the very early days of sewing when I still believed that the body measurements listed on the pattern were what you go by. Once I had the fresh pattern drawn out in my size I made my bust adjustments; I lowered the bust point 1 1/2" and did a 1/2" full bust all...

My mom brought over a bunch of generic feet that work with Bob, the new Brother machine.  That reminded me that I had bought a bunch of generic feet myself for Betty (the White) just before I bought Phoebe (the Pfaff).  So I hauled them all out to see what would work and what wouldn't, and to play a little bit. This is a gathering foot.  I really don't understand how this one works, and clearly I didn't have it working very well.  It has a smooth underside that was hit and miss with whether it moved the fabric along or not.  I don't know if my fabric was too slippery - it is a crepe.  I would definitely need to play with this foot some more to get the hang of it. This foot is a binder attachment.  It works with pre-folded binding.  I have other feet to try that I think fold the binding for you but I'm not sure if this one does - I'll have to play some more.  I used store-bought bias binding for this sample, and as you can see I missed...

There's a new kid in town.  Strangely I haven't come up with a name for this one yet, so it is currently known as "the Brother".  Maybe I'll call him Bob.  It's formal name is the Brother Fashionista NQ3500D .  This is a mid-level sewing/quilting/embroidery machine.  It's the twin of the Babylock Ventura.  That "D" in the name stands for "Disney", and yes, there are 35 Disney embroidery patterns on it.  Bob came from  the Nova Sewing Centre  in London, formerly the Sewing Superstore where I bought Phoebe .  They still have the same great staff and it was a pleasure to once again deal with Ivana. I've been thinking for awhile that I'd like to play with an embroidery machine.  I was initially looking at the entry level ones sold at Costco, but decided I would likely outgrow one of those pretty quickly.  They tend to only have small hoops to work with.  The brother goes up to 6" x 10". I was wresting with going w...