Hurricane Sewing - Melody Dolman

As I've mentioned, my firm has moved to a new building. This new building's management has slightly different policies during hurricane times in Tampa, and I'm here for them (the new policies — hurricanes not so much)! This building shuts down as soon as there is an official Hurricane Warning from the weather service. Well, that official warning for Idalia came Monday afternoon. Which means the building and my office was closed from then through yesterday (Wednesday), and it was sewing time! It felt like a "snow day" from my youth. As far as the hurricane, I had nothing but rain Tuesday night and never lost power. It's still rainy today so I'm tired of rain but I'll take that over an actual hurricane.

Below is my finished Love Notions Melody Dolman. It's too big on Zillie because Zillie is currently smaller than me. 

I was able to look at past orders online where I learned this fabric is a rayon challis I bought from Fabricmart in 2020. That's the last of the old dryer fabrics. 

The sewing part was a breeze (hurricane pun?). But the buttonholes made me want to scream. My (now ancient but still loved) Viking D1 is in sore need of servicing and it just did NOT want to make buttonholes without a fight. Ripping out a black thread buttonhole on b/w fabric is not a pleasant job. After doing that once, I decided to move to Plan B …

… which was bringing out my Featherweight and the Singer buttonhole attachment. I shouldn't have grumbled about this because it didn't take long to set up, review You Tube to be sure I was threading and attaching correctly, and then make 6 perfect buttonholes in a row. Plus, it was fun to visit with my Featherweight. 

Here are the finished Featherweight buttonholes. Sorry, you can't see much with the black thread on b/w. (One of my near-future projects really needs to be a new ironing board cover.)

Below you can see the edges of my buttonhole and the buttons I chose for this top, as well as my fading chalk marks for placement. These buttons are from Carolyn years and years ago. Thank you again Carolyn! I went with 6 buttons instead of the 5 per the pattern. I may have even gone for 7 if I had 7 buttons. I like less gaping opportunity.

Overall, I think the pattern is pretty good and goes together well. The only other thing I'd change (and I did) would be to interface the entire integrated facing instead of using just a strip per the pattern below. 

Here's the inside of the shirt. Nothing too exciting here. I attached the cuffs technically wrong but I wanted them to be bands and not cuffs so they're attached opposite of the pattern instructions. At the bottom of the shirt, I turned up a 3/8" hem, twice, and stitched it from the wrong side. 

The Melody has a standard camp collar, with good instructions, although I question why they have you snip 1/2" into a 3/8" seam allowance. I think that's a typo? But if you've been lounging around your living room watching Netflix for the past couple of years and NOT sewing (who me?), a good refresher is Katrina's video below. Her Lifting Pins and Needles channel is fun to watch.

I'm not sure what's up next. Now that I've sewn up the dryer fabric, I have given myself permission to look through my stash. That should reacquaint me with what I have and hopefully inspire a pattern/project choice.

Basic

You can't get more basic than this. Sorry for the snoozer but I will actually get a lot of wear out of this, if my current basic black knit skirt is any indication. This is the old formerly black skirt (right) next to the new one (left). Yeah, I was overdue, wouldn't you agree?

I copied pretty much everything from the old skirt, including the slit. The only thing I didn't have on hand was 2" wide elastic. So I adjusted the top edge and used some of my 50-yard roll of 1-1/2" elastic from Wawak. I also didn't make a separate elastic casing. I was boring myself with this project and just wanted to be done already so I just serged, turned, and coverstitched it down.

Note to self: If you leave your coverstitch machine sitting for 2 years, it would probably be a good idea to dust off the harp before dragging your new black skirt across it. That's the wrong side of the hem/slit edge. Yuck. The harp is clean now though. LOL!

Next up is this b/w dotty woven fabric. It was the other piece that had been sitting on my dryer for 2 years with the fabric I recently made into a Rhapsody. I'm forcing myself to use it before I venture into my stash. It's been so long that I don't even remember where I bought it. (Funny story - I was digging through a bin of miscellaneous sewing stuff that had been sitting in the other room. I found bits and pieces of masks and mask makings, some Wonder Clips I forgot I bought, and a brand new, tags still attached, pair of knit joggers that I also forgot about — the "TNT" Old Navy RTW that I've been living in around home. I'm sure I bought them as a backup since I love all my others so much. I don't even need them yet since the others are still in excellent condition. I'm usually NOT scatterbrained like this, but this is definitely an indication of how weird the last 3+ years have been.)

I'm going to be giving the Love Notions Melody Dolman a try. I don't think I'll be wearing it tied up, but never say never. I'm hoping to get the pattern taped together tomorrow. And maybe some pictures up on the walls in the sewing room. It's so … blank in there.

If this top works out, it will be something else I can wear to the office. Or around the house. Speaking of the office, we just moved to a new building a few weeks ago (I think I mentioned that already in another recent post) which means I've lost my trusty work bathroom selfies mirror. A moment of silence, please. The new building, not my firm, owns the bathroom spaces, so I don't think anything will be improving there. I also don't have a true full-length mirror in my house so it looks like I'll be shopping for one of those soon. 

Have a great weekend! I hope to be checking in again soon with progress on the Melody.

Easy Peasy

This post is really to remove the "Under (Temporary) Maintenance" post as the last post, because I really have not done much since my last "sewing" post (which was a wadder to bring you up to speed). 

The good news is I believe I fixed the issues I was having with my blog. Replying to comments seems to work again. I can add new entries to my two blogrolls at the right. My archive of old blog posts at the left is expandable/working again. There are few small things that aren't back to my preference, like typefaces and sizes, but I'm going to just let it roll for now because I just don't feel like spending more time in the HTML bowels of the blog. 

So, back to the sewing stuff. I am making the absolute easiest thing in the world. A black ponte knit skirt, which uses one pattern piece cut two times. You'd think I'd be done by now. But you'd be wrong. 

I was going to use my RTW skirt (on its last legs hence this project) to create a pattern, so I'd get lengths and widths correct. Then I went a step further and decided to just modify an actual pattern instead of, I don't know, drawing lines on paper. The problem with drawing lines on paper was I have no idea where any pattern paper is at the moment, so modifying an existing pattern seemed easier. Neither method was going to be particularly hard. It's a tube of fabric with elastic at the top. 

I used Kwik Sew 3256, which I last sewed 7 years and many pounds ago, and which I actually cut instead of tracing. I used the top section of View A. 

I still have the skirt hanging in my closet so I could try squeeze it on and figure out adjustments. I added up adding many inches by just adding copy/printer paper (thank you office!) to the sides and bottom with Post-It tape (LOVE this stuff!). That way my original pattern can survive unharmed.

I should have had the skirt finished yesterday but I was having the weirdest problem with skipped stitches. My trusty main machine has never done this before. I finally changed the needle and was back to sewing. But that put me off for the afternoon so I've still got the side slits to sew around, and black thread on black fabric + over 40 eyes at night (who are we kidding? Over 60!) don't mix. I hope to finish it up tonight or tomorrow.

In the meantime, if you're interested in someone who is undertaking a much more interesting and challenging project than my stupid-easy black skirt, I encourage you to go visit Bunny's blog and follow her as she makes what's going to be a fabulously fancy sparkly wonder! 

Also since I can't help it, I leave you with another photo of Cyrus. Who is definitely in the running for Most Spoiled Dog in the World. 

Under (Temporary) Maintenance

I'm mucking about with my blog. Hopefully this goes well. Stay tuned.

The End. But Not.

Last post I said "This is either the beginning or the end of my saga with the Elizabeth Suzann Clyde Work Pants." Well, I didn't want to leave you hanging, or thinking I had disappeared from the blog again, but it's The End. 

Of the Clyde Work Pants, that is. And it's not an end with a completed pair of pants to show for it. Although I did end up with quite an impressive pile of ripped out thread. (That's not even half of it.)

Below is where I ended things. I did rip out every seam and all the topstitching and I cut them down by a size or two. And then I sewed them back together, and topstitched again. When I tried on the new version, they fit MUCH better, but I still wasn't loving them. 

It's those pockets, which span front and back. They are just TOO BIG and feel like TOO MUCH fabric in a weird place when I walk. So, I'm giving up because I know I'll never enjoy wearing them (and I'm not about to do any further ripping/altering to eliminate those monster pockets). I might go ahead hem the legs and add elastic to the waist so I can donate them, but I'm definitely not keeping them. So, alas, a wadder to welcome me back to sewing. Hands up if you can relate!

Next up is probably going to be a really boring black knit skirt for work. Nothing fancy because we are still not dressing up in any way at work (and I'm only in the office 2 days a week), but my current black knit skirt is fading. Literally. I've worn/laundered the heck out of it and I want/need a new one. I need to check was the fabric stash has to offer.

In the meantime, please enjoy two more pics of Cyrus. I'll be back soon.