Garage Sales and Airplanes

I've been so busy covering vacations that I have had little time nor energy for garage sales.
I did get out last Friday.

 As I was talking to the young mom about how I know her mother, I spied one airplane peg.
She said there were two, couldn't find it and thought it was still inside, could she bring it to me at work?
Wasn't that sweet? Fifty cents a piece plus a hand delivery.

I saw this issue of Ottobre in an email and immediately zeroed in on the aviator hat. MUST HAVE.
I ordered it straight away and received it within two weeks which was quite amazing because it's the Fall 2014 pattern issue.

And look at that airplane thread-stitched onto the back of the coat.
It's perfect for this child's coat - not too cartoony (bubble planes) - just enough details to dream about flying real planes.
It could easily be  a stearman biplane or a waco or a travelaire.
All open cockpit biplanes for which you need a leather helmet.

I don't even have boys to sew for right now ;-)

When Oregonians Travel To Sweden

I thought I would introduce you to how we travel.

I'm one of the few people I know who knows where all the fabric stores are in Maui. Other people stay at the resorts and soak up the sun and the MaiTai's, but I freckle and there are days when I cannot spend all day in the sun. The answer to how much rum one can drink has been answered but how much fabric one can stuff in her suitcase has not.

My husband has been a good sport about these non-touristy explorations. When I went to Ireland a few years back with my little sister, we stayed at a hotel right next to the Sewing & Knitting show in Dublin. I booked the hotel because it was near the show, which, coincidentally was during the time of our visit.

Our upcoming trip to Sweden & Finland is based on - 30 years ago, I was an exchange student to Finland. Last year, at my high school reunion, I realized I am never going to have the money to go back and I needed to figure out a Visa moment.

My friends there are finally on the internet  more (very expensive for personal use) and I have a plan of staying with one friend at the beginning (Goteberg) and another at the end (Helsinki).

After months of planning (dang airline travel sites), my husband finally jumped on board. He's going, but he was making me crazy with his non-involvement.

He has decided he wants to look up Stearman owners.

Turns out the guy who owns one near Stockholm has a camera mounted on his wing and has a ton of video on Youtube (look up  Kenneth Öhrn and Stearman).
He sounds fun and since I've seen all the sights to see in Sweden, barring the new museum dedicated to ABBA, I say, let's go vacation flying.

I'll get payback when my sole reason to visit Rovaniemi, north of the Arctic Circle and home to Santa Claus (joulupukki), is to visit the Ottobre store. Serious women's sewing design patterns.

Here's a Stearman flying in Sweden:

And another vid:



And because we wonder how much avgas costs in Sweden. . .

I Guess I'll Go Eat Worms

I sewed this top for me.

I almost forgot to post these. This is now one of my favorite tops to wear.

Much better day today. All that other stuff in my head will get resolved and shoved out so I have time for the fun stuff.
For my medical, I was trying the entire month of February to  get rid of my Blastocystis parasite (again). The major antibiotic, Nitazoxanide, in addition to Boluoke, an enzyme made from Earthworms(!) to soften the shell of the parasite so the antibiotic could work on the parasite, left  me tired.   The energy was not happening.
Today I felt better, and I am finally blogging about eating worms. For an entire month!

 If I am going to post pictures of ME wearing  my creations, I am going to have to address lighting. My inside house lights all have that yellow tone thing going.
My daughter can take good photos (composition (i.e.  disguise the flab)) but not sure about hubby.
Both my kids are finishing up school and haven't lived at home for several years although I might get the daughter back. She says her soul would die if she had to move back to Canby (from portland) but she's run out of money and we are currently engaging in a call to jesus talk with her about the realities.

She turns 24 in April. She has been managing her life well - it's just difficult to find a good paying job post-school. At what point do parents shut up and at which point is the daughter too old to listen?

I Sewed Myself A Top

It is very easy for me to get derailed from bigger projects by the allure of smaller projects.

Sewing clothing for myself is a big project. I might as well call it a huge project.
From determining the best size, to cutting out large pieces of fabric, to determining the best way to sew them with my Singer, my Serger, and/or the Coverstitch machine. A lot of thought goes into a garment.

I sat down yesterday and traced out the t-shirt with a 'U' shaped neckline from Ottobre 303.

This pattern is not for beginners although if you had someone telling you the order of tracing, cutting, and construction then, yes, of course, a beginner could make this t-shirt.

Last fall, I sat down and traced out the v-neck version of this tee and made a muslin out of some thin knit. I'm a size 16. Some knits drape well over the girls and the 'rolls' but other knits cling in all the wrong places.

My friend, Pencil Girl, and I met up last fall at the NW Quilting Expo and she found this fabric for me. I was suffering under the delusion that I had entirely too many knit fabrics and not enough pressure to sew them up. She held the fabric up to my face and it was a fantastic match for my hair and skin color.

This pattern, because you take multiple measurements, fit me with no alterations. The pattern sheet folds out into a bedsheet size and all the patterns pieces are a puzzle maze of lines. They are done in heavy lines so it is easy to take the swedish tracing paper and lay everything out on the kitchen island and puzzle trace out a pattern. -- if you know what the pattern piece might look like than it's that much easier - lol.

This time I used the "U" neckline. I had a vision of something I wanted to do for embellishment in my mind but found out after I made the tee that it would be too busy for this pretty fabric.

Sherril's Sewing saga. Beautiful Flower embellishment.

The Beautiful flower embellishment is gorgeous but maybe next time on a solid color. Sherril tells how to make the flowers here. Her other pattern reviews are here.

It's always nice to see a tee made up on somebody similar in size.

For the neckline, I used the binding pattern piece from the Ottobre 303 and divided it into quarters and pin-stretched it into place. I placed the right side of the binding against the right side of the neckline. I sewed with my reg. machine a 1/4" seam and then wrapped the binding up and over the neckline. I pinned it into place and also decided to hand-baste it to cut down on the number of pins coming into contact with my coverstitch machine. Then I sewed the band down from the front side of the garment - like top-stitching. This caught the back side of the binding.
I don't own any binders (neckline banding) yet, nor do I own the clear foot for the coverstitch. My stitching wanders a tad but only I would ever notice.

I made the sleeves 3/4 length. I have always run a little warm but this last year or two - when my auto-immune is kicking up, I get cold. I am always pushing long sleeves up so 3/4 is a good compromise.

This pattern has you hemming the sleeves right away but I waited until I attached them to the body pieces so I could see how much I needed to cut off. Which was nothing, surprisingly. Either I have longer arms than I thought or the long sleeves Ottobre drafted are short. They sit about 3 inches above my wrist which turned out perfect.

Side view with sleeve.

I used my coverstitch machine to hem the sleeves and the front and back sections before I sewed the side seam from the tip of the sleeve on down to the hem. My little problem is that I don't own enough cones of black thread yet to thread both my serger and the coverstitch. I did deviate a little from the instructions in order to keep from re-threading more than I had to. I think more thread cones will go on the birthday list (hint, hint).

This fabric is from some unknown vendor and it was labeled as 1 1/2 yds @10.95 ($16.40), 60"  wide , Slinky Acetate.

Beautiful colors, gorgeous drape. This tee is on me as I write this.

I am so pleased with how this material worked for me.
It was fairly easy to sew with no curling and only a smidge of slippage.

I love how this Ottobre pattern fits me as well. The vee-neck  muslin that I sewed  - the vee is a little on the high side but that's easy to adjust on the pattern piece. The "U" neckline is perfect for me. It sits just above the cleavage.
Ottobre also drafted the pattern so the front side seam is longer than the back. This is so you can baste some ease where the girls sit.  This is a great fitting sewing pattern for women.

I Sewed A Shirt That Fits

Thanks to having bronchitis and making bosses want to kill me for staying home, I sewed a t-shirt.

I subscribed to Ottobre  a year ago and was very pleased with the pattern designs. I first subscribed to the kids' patterns and I loved that Ottobre was designing patterns with ready-to-wear in mind as well as the fact that kids play and they wear knits. There is a lot of RTW detailing on the patterns as well as the basics.
I had heard via blogland, primarily Stitches and Seams and Sew-4-Fun, that Ottobre's fit was right on as well.
When I used to sew more garments, I was forever fussing and trimming Simplicity and McCalls (& Buttericks) patterns. They would add 8 inches to the length that I would cut off before I even cut out the pattern. I gave up with the kids because the big 3's patterns were so huge - if you followed the size guidelines on the back of the envelope. I would buy RTW and make a pattern from those pieces.

I  also got blog encouragement from a few sewers out there who were not afraid to take photos of their finished garments on their plus-size bodies.
With Ottobre's t-shirt pattern (#303 Women's best tops), I followed the size guidelines and --IT FIT!!!

This is what the pattern layout look like. A little puzzle to get your juices flowing.

At Sewexpo this year, I bought some Swedish Tracing paper which worked like a charm. You can trace a pattern piece to this, pin them together and pin-fit it without cutting into your fabric. The swedish tracing paper is a light, durable fabric/paper that has a bit of drape to see where you might need to adjust.

This basic T had three main pieces - back, front and short sleeve so it was easy to cut out.

Small print and a huge pattern layout meant I discovered how much seam allowances to add - later. Which worked out.
I planned on serging so I added 1/4" (6mm) to everywhere except the neckline.

If you squint - light yellow fabric with whitish pattern on top -

you can see me cutting 1/4" out from pattern.

The most difficult part of the shirt was the neckline binding. I have got to get one of those coverstitch binders for Christmas. I actually sewed this wrong but it all turned out anyway. I used my serger to attach the binding and then flipped it over and coverstitched it down.

Before pressing it, I thought it looked mighty fine. Like RTW.
Yeah, I know, I'm full of myself.

My bathroom mirror photos turned out the best and not too fat-looking.

There are maybe two things I would differently on this pattern:  maybe hem those sleeves a tad higher and bring that v-neck down an inch. I utilized this yellow micro-fiber performance knit because I bought some knits from Fabric.com in May and this yellow arrived looking a little on the pale side. So I figured, no problemo, if the t-shirt doesn't work out, c'est la vie. Instead, it surprised me with the great fit so now I need to think about embellishments up by the neckline. The yellow is a bit see-thru and it could use some help up there.

An Idea?