Merry Christmas!

kate & ana
Originally uploaded by wck

Happy Holidays!

Best of luck all those traveling today- we are apparently getting snow here this evening, which has the kids VERY excited! I wouldn't mind a bit of the white stuff as well. :-)

I received some fantastic sewing books this year, so I'll be happily tucked away under a quilt reading through them the rest of the day.

From my best friend, who knows me FAR TOO WELL. I bought him some wood working books for his woodshop, and he bought me this.



All Dolled Up: Sewing Clothes and Accessories for Girls and Their 18-Inch Dolls


A great techniques reference book! At first glance, the diagrams don't seem quite as clear as other books, but it covers a lot of ground.



The Dressmaker's Handbook of Couture Sewing Techniques


This one is my favorite- it has some absolutely gorgeous dresses inside! I'm really dying to make the silk chiffon dress and the pintuck dress.




Sewn With Love: Classic Patterns for Children's Clothes and Accessories

Christmas Eve

Why yes, it is Christmas Eve and I am finishing quilts!








And you'll remember that I made my two nieces each a fancy winter coat from BWOF. They wore them recently to see the nutcracker. Here they are in their coats with their mother:




Well, their american girl dolls will be receiving matching coats for Christmas this year since I had enough scraps left over.





The sailor and I just got back from dropping off a big dinner for the guys standing watch on his ship and now I'm back to the sewing machine! Happy sewing and merry christmas to all the other last minute finishers here! ;)

stripes

All I want for Christmas is to never see another roll of gold braid again!

My sailor realized last week that he had no jackets with his Lieutenant (LT) stripes on them, and asked me if I would please, please upgrade his Lieutenant Junior Grade (LT JG) jacket. Silly me, I said "How hard can it be?" Ha! A LT JG has one thick gold stripe on the sleeve, then one thin gold stripe. Above that is a gold crest. A LT has two thick gold stripes.

This picture is actually a cadet jacket sleeve (I think), which has just one tiny stripe on it. The LT jacket is in use today, but this one was in the closet here.



Well, if you are ever asked to do this work, this is what it entails:

1. remove the old thin stripe- the ends are secured in the under arm seam, so you have to open that
2. remove the gold shield
3. open the stitching holding the sleeve lining to the sleeve at the wrist
4. carefully measure one fourth of an inch above the bottom stripe and pin the new thick stripe in place
5. stitch it down
6. hand sew the shield back on
7. hand sew the under arm seam again, making sure to enclose the ends of the braid. This is actually my least favorite part, and showed me that I need to work on my couture hand stitching, specifically the nice even ladder stitching that's best for this.
8. hand sew the sleeve lining to the sleeve again

I did it all while watching Top Gun on the DVD player last night. Hey, if you're going to be sitting on a sofa surrounded by gold braid, you might as well revel in it! The one good thing that I see coming out of this is that for the first time ever I could look at the uniforms in the movie and tell from the striping on their uniforms what rank the actors were playing. ;) The Sailor & I have been together for ages, but coming from the communistic dot-com world, I tended not to pay a whole lot of attention to what ranks had what gold stripes on, until I was forcibly introduced to it via a few hours of hand sewing. ;) I can now spot a LT from across the room!

(this is my sailor on his bridge during a public affairs tour of the NYC harbor- wearing ODUs instead of fancy gold trimmed jackets (; )



You know what's coming this spring? That's right, he becomes a LT Commander (Lt Cmdr)... which is three gold stripes. Oh boy. I'm tempted to tell him to send the jackets to a military tailor, but that is really expensive. I have trouble justifying spending that much when I can do it, although now I rather see why it costs so much with all the hand sewing and precision.

In more exciting news, I'm still cranking away on Christmas present sewing, and there will be photos of those soon!

Happy Holidays, and good luck on the tail end of your holiday sewing!!

A concert skirt

First off, I had a question about where I had gotten the fusible hair canvas for my sister's coat. It's from Fabric.com, Fusible Hair Canvas. I'm sure you could get some from the garment district, but this was handy and not too expensive.


Next, Kate has her school's holiday concert coming up and needed a floor length black skirt for it. My sister couldn't find one in the stores so I whipped out BWOF Sept 2009 (the one that had Ana's coat pattern in it) because I remembered a long kids skirt in it. Indeed - and it has a really pretty flare shape to it. It's shaped with darts and has a center and back seam with a back invisible zip, so it's a very schmancy skirt for a little girl.



I cut a size 128, sewed the darts, and basted up all the seams, then tried it on the munchkin. Guess what? It fit perfectly! Dear BWOF, I love your fit. :-D

Here is the skirt on a hanger:


She was very excited to try it on, and pulled out her violin to show me how it will look when she plays in the school concert, since I won't be able to attend.







I'm glad I never throw out my old BWOFs, you never know when your sister will ask for something crazy like a floor length black skirt for a small kid! Of course, now I'm likely going to making concert wear for the kid for years, but that is a decent tradeoff for a private violin concert in front of the christmas tree on a December afternoon. :-)

Burda 8292

We had a very Christmas-y day today, baking gluten-free christmas cookies and.... watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Twice. ;) Kate had never seen it before and I'm afraid that my sister is now going to shoot me because Kate LOVED it. She's seven, which is pretty much the target audience for that movie!


"Don't bother me, I'm busy watching the squirrel scene!!"



I also did a whole bunch of work on my sister's coat. I'm using Burda envelope pattern 8292. The fusible hair canvas worked really nicely for interfacing the top- I block fused the entire top of the coat with it and gave the coat a nice heft. Then I interlined all the pieces with flannel. It took a couple hours to get to the point of constructing the body what with cutting each piece out of the wool flannel + hair canvas + flannel interlining + ambiance lining. This is what our entry way looked like all afternoon:



Here's the inside. You're looking at the flannel interlining, machine basted to the wool flannel fashion fabric.




And here we have the outside constructed. My sister tried it on, and other than the pockets being a bit low, it looked pretty good on her.





And finally, my mom noticed that there was a bride in the NYT Wedding section this weekend with a short sleeved empire waist gown made by her grandmother. We were very excited because we rarely see this style in the real world- her dress looks beautiful & it made me think hard about using lace for mine.

BWOF Coat 09-2009-146

I've been a bit quiet around here recently because I just lost my grandma. We were very close when I was growing up since she only lived a few miles from my parents house on a huge farm, and my sister and I would go over there all day every day when I was growing up. I learned how to drive out in the apple orchard, went swimming, and played baseball out in the back field. And talked and talked to my grandma since she was a pretty cool lady. Here we are on the front steps a few years ago:




In happier news, Ana was very jealous of her sister's new wool coat and asked me if I couldn't make her one. My dad is taking all of us to see The Nutcracker ballet in two weeks so I promised her a new coat to wear to it. I picked BWOF 09-2009-149 because of the beautiful flare shape:



The fabric is a stretch black wool flannel from Fabric.com which I seem to recall being from the Vera Wang Lavender collection. I interfaced with a light non-woven interfacing from Pacific Trims that was labeled as a shirt interfacing. To control the stretch and give it a bit of structure, I blockfused the pieces, which is very easy to do using BWOF patterns. I always trace the pattern and then add the seam allowances with a rotary cutter arm which means that it's easy to cut the interfacing without adding seam allowances and fuse them to the fabric without getting super bulky seams.



So here we are so far- it needs trim and buttonholes.





The coat is lined in a tan ambiance lining which of course, as always, drove me NUTS. It slides, it wiggles, it refuses to sit properly to be cut, even doing a flat insertion of sleeves makes you pull your hair out, and it's all around a huge pain. ARGH! ;) The buttons are little silver ones from JoAnns, and I want to add some pink trim to it so that it's not quite so severe looking.

But there we go, a mostly finished coat for my teensy niece.

Up next - a coat for my sister in a really pretty pink wool. I ordered some fusible hair canvas from Fabric.com to interface this one, which could be interesting. (Yes, can you tell that coats are my favorite thing to sew these days?? (; )

PATTERNS and some other photos

Let's call this a catch-up post. :-) I'm busy baking chocolate chip cookies for the guys on my sailor's ship who have to work on Thanksgiving, so this might be a disjointed while I move cookie sheets in & out of the oven!

Faye asked recently about how to create boiled wool. I started with some very heavyweight 100% wool jersey, and ran it through a cycle of hot-washer-hot-dryer about three times. I know some people zigzag the edges first, but I didn't, so I did get some distortion. However, I started with 3 yards and I was only making a size 7 jacket, so it was OK.

Next, here are a few patterns I purchased recently. Now I need to get over the sore throat, and find some time to sew them up. (I'm actually not a super dedicated seamstress, sewing while super sick... this is more of a "wow I don't feel great" sore throat so the quilting projects were good to keep my mind off it.)

Vogue 1156.... I love this one. Need to make a muslin soon!



And a really cute little dress that I may or may not ever get to, but which I love looking at anyway. If I didn't go to work in sneakers and jeans everyday, this is what I'd wear.



And finally, some finished photos of the Thanksgiving table runner I made:





I used the "snowflake" stitch from my Viking to quilt the lines.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

under the weather

The sailor and I are both sick with sore throats... must be the start of winter. We've stocked up on tea and OJ and I've retreated to my sewing room with lots of charm packs to do some holiday sewing. I bought a whole ton of Moda charm packs in the last month and they've been collecting near the sewing machine. Just sitting there looking so cute and tiny waiting to be made into christmas presents. This first one, though, is not a Christmas present at all. Here's the current WIP, a thanksgiving day square table runner, which is not yet quilted. We're all eating at my mom's house, so I've told her to put on an ivory tablecloth & I'll bring this over.




We also have a little table runner for my future MIL. I love the little snowmen!



Corner folded up to show the back



Has anyone else started holiday sewing yet?

coat Q & A

Important pieces first, shall we? Cameraphone pictures of my niece in her coats, taken while I was trying to mark with a safety pin where to hem the sleeve.





She quite loves the pockets on the brown polka dot coat so I'm glad that I put them in, even if they aren't fancy welt pockets.

Elizabeth asked if I was interfacing or underlining the coats. The grey coat is not interfaced- when I felted the wool jersey I just kept throwing it back into the washer until it was really thick so it really didn't need anything. That jacket is unlined, anyway. Then the bodice of the brown coat is block-fused using a nice interfacing I buy at pacific trim. It's a lightweight white woven cotten that's fusible, and it's my favorite interfacing these days. It's the white stuff here:



BeeBee asked if I was going to use the reverse of the brown wool. No, I thought it was neat looking but it didn't really fit with the look of the coat, so it's hidden away.

I was all set to start working on a brown tweed coat for myself using a really pretty vintage pattern. However... I lost the pattern! It has to be here somewhere, the apartment is Not.That.Big. I think my fish is hiding it...

polka dot coat

Here are some coat innards, from last night! Again, this is BWOF 11-2010-147, the little girl's coat. I changed a few things, using wool instead of a boucle, leaving off the facing (I lined to the edge), and making it single breasted in the end.



I finished up the shell and then paused there for the evening. This pattern was very nicely drafted and it went together very easily- the sleeves slipped right in, the collar met the notches, everything lined up without much effort. Dear BWOF, your new pattern sheets drive me crazy but you are still worth it. ;)



I did have some issues getting the back tab's shape to come out correctly, since the wool was so bulky. Eh. I think I'll get two largish buttons today and sew them onto the tab, so hopefully that will disguise the wonky factor. It is at least sewn on straight, but this photo was at an angle so it looks a bit more off here than it really is.



And here we are- almost done except for hemming the sleeves. To do that I need to try it on the munchkin and she's at her mother's house right now. :-) This is hanging on an adult size hanger so the sleeves are poking out because the hanger is a little too big.



You can't see them, but the pockets are in the side seams. The buttons are gold colored shell buttons that I had lying around... I think the gold picks up the pink so they look ok.

To make the buttonholes this morning I basted a line down the front, then thread traced where the top & bottom of each buttonhole would be across that line. My machine makes a 4-step buttonhole that uses tiny "X"s up & down the sides and I've discovered that they work very nicely for thick wool coats. With the threadlines marking the top and bottom of the buttonholes it's not too tricky to make them as 4-step buttonholes. :-)

So, there we are, a tiny dress coat for my niece!

a new winter coat for Kate

I haven't finished the trim for my niece's military jacket yet, but this weekend I decided I'd start on a new winter coat for her.

I bought this lining fabric at Joann's about two years ago:


and I bought this fabric from Mood about 3 years ago- it was $40/yard, so it's one of the most expensive pieces of fabric I've ever bought. But the instant that I saw it, I knew that it had to be made into a sweet little coat for one of my nieces!



The fabric's reverse side is kind of neat looking as well:



I'm using BWOF 11-2010-147, from the newest issue. You can see a picture of the pattern on the german site. And here's the line drawing:



So far, I've cut the fashion fabric, fused the bodice pieces to woven fusible interfacing, and sewn up the lining. Let me tell you right now what's not going to happen: welt pockets (I'll put them on the side seams instead). No way am I messing up $50 of fabric with imperfect welt pockets!! ;)


This project is reminding me why I love sewing little girl outfits, they go together so incredibly quickly. The lining just zipped together in a few minutes!

a quiet weekend

This is Henry:


Henry lives in a small printshop in Brooklyn that is stuffed full of 100 to 50 year old letterpress print machines. Henry and I had some quality time today while I learned how to print the same way they used to in the 1800s... pick out individual letters, load them into a chase, ink your press, and print the page one sheet at a time. It was slooow going, frustrating, tedious, and hard physical work, but totally worth learning. So now I'm qualified as a letter press printer in the shop and I can go in and print my own projects. Oh boy.



To get all philosophical, it has a lot of the same appeal as learning how to sew garments, doing something carefully by hand that's usually done in mass production these days. The prints are like 10000% more beautiful when you've spent the last hour setting the text and aligning your paper than when it just spits out of an ink jet printer. ;) I've seen this kind of printing demonstrated before but never done it myself, so I had no appreciation for the amount of effort it takes to print a carefully lined up block of text straight on a piece of paper using these old technologies.

To get all practical, hello letterpress wedding invites that I can now print myself at cost. I'm sure there will be some artsy fartsy projects produced, but there will also definitely be some wedding printing going down. ;)



This was work-by-hand weekend, apparently, because I also spent several hours sewing buttons, frogs, and trim onto Kate's little military jacket. Still coming along... I'm thinking right now about putting snaps under the frogs since they might be hard for her little hands to open & close easily.

Here we have the buttons (from Pacific Trim) down the front princess seam & one side of the frogs:



I'm still debating what to do on the collars and the sleeve cuffs, to add braid or buttons onto them.