Me-Made-June 2011

At last, Zoe has organised a made-by-me month when I will be home instead of travelling for part of it.

My pledge is:

I, Sharon of http://petiteandsewing.blogspot.com, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-June '11. I endeavour to wear at least one self made garment each day for the duration of June 2011.

To help me achieve this I really need to make some blouses/tops. Skirts and trousers I have enough but tops/blouses are scarce so at least I know where my focus will be for a while.

Is anyone else going to join me?

Holiday Sewing

For my trip to the USA, I needed to organise a few extra layers as the temperatures where going to be around 6 degree Celsius, little did we know that we were going to be snowed on :)

First up was to change the neckline on 2 purchased thermal tops that I have for skiing (I still have a couple crew necks left).


With the assistance of my sewing buddies, I put on the thermal and then this top that I was going to take away and they then drew around the neckline with a chalk pen. I also checked that this neckline would work with my cross over top as well.


When I took the thermal off, I rounded off the chalk neckline and cut out the excess fabric, and then used fold over elastic to finish of the necklines. I also took the sleeves up as the original length was far too long for my tops.


The thermals worked a treat as they were worn just about every day we were away.

The next item was another Simplicity 2603 cardi and top with long sleeves.

This time I made the set up in a chocolate brown Merino Wool from The Fabric Store and cut the cardi front drape halfway between the short and long versions.

This length enabled me to take one of the fronts and tuck in into the back waistband of either my jeans or skirt

and then flick the other front side up over my shoulder.

giving me an extra layer across my upper body when the temperatures were very low.

Here is the top by itself and Roscoe being directed to stay out of the picture :)


The cardi went with all my tops and was worn every day. The merino wool washed and dried very well

Now to continue with my winter sewing.

Vogue 8572 - Versatile pattern

I did manage to get some sewing done earlier this year (not just the UFO skirt and pants fitting session) however the time to tell you about it just wasn't available.

I made another version of Vogue 8572 (OOP). I first made it here with long sleeves and then here with 3/4 sleeves and this time with short sleeves.

This time the fabric is the chartreuse crinkled fabric that is at the bottom of the bundle that I purchased from Kerryn's Fabric World in July of last year.



For some reason I thought chartreuse and burnt orange (above the patterned knit) zips would be everywhere, so I didn't think about getting them when I was at Kerryn's.

After checking out the many fabric shops in Sydney and having no luck, I remembered the comment the lovely ladies at The Cloth Shop said when we visited them in March 2009, "we can get you any coloured invisible zip you want".

So I cut a swatch of the both fabrics and posted them to The Cloth Shop. This is what I received back from Kim.

Chartreuse



Burnt Orange



The fabric was interesting to work with as you do your best not to take out any of the crinkles when laying out the pattern, pressing and sewing. The advantage of the made garment is that you scrunch it up and put in in a panty hose leg to wash, dry and then I just press the small facing I have at the neckline and I'm all set to wear it another day.

Front



Back



This top has been fun to wear during summer and I can now wear it with a number of jackets and cardigans to take me through autumn and winter.

(PS: The large piece of fabric on the top of the bundles was the linen for my Shirtmaker.)

Australian Stitches - Volume 17 Index

Here is the latest Index for Volume 17 for Australian Stitches, please take a copy if you want.

I have also sent a copy to Lynn Cook, Editor of Australian Stitches.

Enjoy

Sew Expo, Puyallup - WOW

All I can say is if you are a sewer, quilter, textile artist then you must visit the Expo at least once, it is amazing, the teachers, vendors and general energy of the whole site is mind boggling. This is the view when standing at one end of a row looking towards the back of the Showplex venue:

Photo courtesy of Alison

There were approximately 178 vendors attending and a lot of the teachers had their own stalls and were on hand to talk to or assist you.

See the brick wall way at the back, that is where some of the seminar rooms were and where Vogue Fabrics had their fabric stall set up, with different fabrics being added daily:

Photo courtesy of Alison

When I organised my classes I was concerned how I would survive 4 days arriving at 8am and leaving late, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to fill the day between attending classes, visiting the various vendors' stalls and finally being able to meet my Internet sewing friends.

I had some wonderful classes during the 4 days and there was something from each of them that I have noted in this cute note book that we received at our first class on day 1.

• When making a shirt/blouse, clip the top and bottom of the collar, collar stand, yoke and centre back of shirt and centre front fold lines (Marto Alto). I know I only clip some of those areas on one edge and Marto showed how the extra clipping sped up her sewing of the shirt/blouse.
  
  
• Your neck binding for a knit top is the same length as your neck edge but seamed at 1.5cm except for a mesh binding which is 2 1/2" (6.3cm) smaller (Sandra Betzina).
  
  
• When you press your bias strip in half, remember to remeasure it as it tends to stretch (Sandra Betzina).
  
  
• Facings - pin front facing to neck edge and clip shoulder seam, pin back facing to neck edge and clip shoulder seam, then sew facing shoulder seams matching the snips and your facing will fit perfectly to the neck edge (Patti Palmer) - this has always given me grief.
  
  
• Button loops, sew these in place on paper to ensure your placement is correct and then put the paper in between the fabric and facing and stitch, the paper pulls out (Connie Crawford).
  
  
• Fancy Seams - Ron Collins showed us a pair of linen pants that were lined with silk organza to help the "wrinkle factor". I will be using this technique as I love linen, and I am sure others have documented it, I will once I get around to making the pants.
  
  
• Have you ever had difficulty in tyring to figure out what colour you can put with the chartreuse garment that you have in your wardrobe? Visit the hardware and pick up 1 or 2 of the Inspired by Colour charts, they have a lot of very good ideas of colour groups (Sandy Miller).

I'm certain that the handouts that we were given at each seminar will provide a lot more for me to "try out".

Now I have to figure out how to get back their in a few years time :)

What an adventure!

I am home from the USA and it was a fantastic trip, I hope not to bore you with the details.

Our flight to LA on the Qantas A380 was uneventful thankfully and landed us in a very cool Los Angeles for the day. We then flew to Portland on Saturday and hired a car and this is where the fun started.

Sunday saw Janis, who had contacted me via Stitcher's Guild offering us a natives tour of Portland, meet us at our hotel for a fabulous tour of her home town.

First stop was Fabric Depot, then to Mill End Store the goodies we found soon had us using our second bag.

Monday we headed to Joann's under our own steam and then on Tuesday we headed to Rose City Textiles on our way to Puyallup for the Sewing and Stitchery Expo.

For the next four days we attend the Expo attending the classes we had booked into and meeting up with Patti B, BeeBee, karent, Karen Roth, CarloynB and Janis (again) who are all from Stitchers Guild and managed to bump into a number of the Australian Sewing Guild Group who were there as well.

From there Alison and I flew to Utah where it put on a great snow show for us. This is what the car looked like after 1 hour and thankfully we had a helper to sweep the snow off the car before we headed 1 hour back down the freeway to our hotel.



After Utah we headed back to Oakland and drove back to Los Angeles for our flight home.

Now for the goodies:

Fabric



Top Row: green/black knit, brown geometric knit, brown/red/coffee knit, purple mauve geometric knit and brown/coffee swirly linen. The two small pieces of black and green are wick-away fabric for a cycling shirt for DH.

2nd Row: 3 ply gortex, orange self patterned linen, aubergine Camel Hair for a coat and next to it is quilted fabric that I would like to use for the zip out lining that was in Threads No 152, and the next piece is a patterned fine cord for a jacket.

3rd Row: cream wick-away Lycra, aubergine knit with wool, orange wick-away and camel boiled wool.

4th Row: brown self patterned knit, camel waffle weave knit from M&L Fabrics; Missoni type knit, Rust knit, brown floral, cream stripe, cream/pale blue knit and open weave knit all from Marcy Tilton.

5th Row: multi coloured stripe and pale green waffle weave from M&L Fabrics, coffee/grey/cream knit from Joann's; aubergine/grey/blue silk and brown/pale pink silk from Vogue Fabrics.

Notions



Wonderful rhinestone zippers, buckles, brown and coffee sharpies, sewing machine and coverstitch needles, snap source goodies, Palmer Pletsch Interfacing packs, scissors and more.

Other goodies



2 Ottobre magazines, Sandra Betzina Power Sewing Books 1 and 2, Merino wool and pattern, beads and of course 2 rolls of Press "N" Seal, 2 Cross Stitch Fob kits.

We were entitled to 2 suitcases on our trip and luckily we didn't have any excess baggage costs and didn't have to post anything home.

I will be back soon to let you know about the Sewing and Stitchery Expo and the classes I attended.

I interrupt trouser sewing for a UFO

Last weekend my real life sewing buddies came around and assisted with the trouser fitting and tomorrow being a public holiday for us in Australia (Australia Day) I plan on transferring all the adjustments I have made to the muslin to the paper pattern and making up a new muslin which I will share with you soon.

In the meantime, I have completed a UFO that has been sitting in a drawer for the last 2 summers, a cute summer skirt.



This fabric was given to me by DS and it was a border piece across the width of the fabric.

To make the skirt:

• I pinned the fabric on Isabel (my fitting double) to get the hip size
• Cut the fabric with a 1.5cm seam allowance to create a centre back seam where I put in an invisible zip (one of the back seams is the selvedge edge).
• I then put it back on Isabel and pinned out side darts to make the side seams which are 27cm or 11 inches long

• Once I had sewn these in place I then added front and back waist darts so the waist would be snug.

This where it became a UFO, this was the first time that I had sewn with a stretch woven, so when I tried to do the waist treatment it simply frustrated me to the point that it got put aside.

At Christmas time when DS was visiting I decided it was time to get it back out and finish, as DS kindly reminded me that I have just about every colour in this skirt in a top to wear with it.

I had some poplin in my stash so I cut a facing and attached it the waistband with some twill tape to help it cup the waist, turned the facing over and stitched it all down.

I now have a new skirt to wear on the weekends.