Weekend Doings and Lent Day #12

I had an amazing productive weekend - maybe it's all the sunshine and hints of spring.

On Saturday, while Mr. Cleaver watched March Madness, I went into my studio and whipped out a muslin for a Beignet skirt. I need to take in the two front seams (it's kinda pinned in the photo), but other than that I found the pattern to fit really well. I have a sky blue twill in my stash I hope to make it from - I have less fabric than the pattern envelop calls for, so fingers crossed that all the pieces fit!

Then, this morning we stopped by the open house at Skillins Greenhouse and picked up some seed starting supplies. I had already ordered my seeds a few weeks back from Johnny's Selected Seeds and put them directly into my new seed flats. I won't be able to put anything outside until mid April at the earliest, but it doesn't hurt to plan ahead.

Now, onto the Lent.

If you're thinking I missed a day there, you're right - I never got a photo of Day #11. But if you guessed I wore the same denim skirt all last weekend, you'd be even more right.

On Day #12 I went to my closet and I just couldn't bear the thought of wearing tights today, despite the cold. (Remember when I said the warm weather wouldn't last? I woke up the next morning and it was snowing - how's that for not lasting?) So instead of tights I threw on my hand-knit knee-highs and braved chilly knees (and mostly stayed indoors).

Tiger scarf: Gift

Green Tee: Target

Skirt: Ann Taylor Loft, gift

Bracelet: Gift

Socks: Made by me.

Boots: Naturalizers, Macys.

In My Studio: Before & Now

So one of the best things about the new house? I have my own studio.

(And whenever I say I'm going to my studio, I immediately think of this random reality tv moment I saw last summer. One, be forewarned, it'll get stuck in your head.  And two, it's worth it to watch to the second half of the video to see how context can change a song.)

I've co-opted the first floor bedroom, which used to belong to a baseball fan.

Thus far, we've only had the opportunity to remove the wallpaper (fortunately one easily-removable layer), so the room is far from finished, but I needed to set up and do some sewin'. So I figured I'd show it in it's current state.

The bears really make it.

There's great natural light during the day and there's plenty of space for my cutting table and all the other stuff. There might even be extra space, except...

there's one thing more: I bought a loom.

It's a 36inch four heddle Harrisville that I got used at a really great price on Sunday, thanks to a tip from Bristol. I haven't done anything with it yet except drool, but soon and very soon.

I'm so excited!!!

My Valentine Skirt

Happy Valentine's Day!!

About two weeks ago, I ordered a pretty red dress online and afterward thought it would be great to wear on Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, it didn't show up by Saturday.

Come Sunday, I decided I wanted something red to wear anyway.

Remembering I had some red fabric in my stash (received as part of the same group of fabric that became the granny skirt) and grabbing a simple previously made pattern (Simplicity 2758). I whipped this skirt up in an evening.

It is generally know that I am not a fast sewer.

It was only a through a confluence of positive circumstances that it came together so quickly:

1. I happened to have all the materials on hand, including the fabric, interfacing, red thread and a sufficiently long red zipper.
2. I has sewed the pattern before, so the pattern pieces were already cut out and I knew it fit well.
3. The pattern is basically three pieces: skirt front, skirt back, and waist band. Plus the added strip for the faux bow.
4. Only two seams to finish!
5. The material is a faux suede, so I couldn't really iron it. Meaning, I didn't have to iron it!
6. The zipper went in super easily on the first try.

To add a hint of pizazz, I added some top stitching on the waistband and on off-center bow.

And voila! Festive Valentine's Day skirt!

Mr. Cleaver's Christmas Shirt

Last year for Christmas, I  secretly knit Mr. Cleaver a sweater. This year, I secretly sewed him a shirt.

Secret sewing is much more difficult than secret knitting, especially when your sewing machine lives in your bedroom! But I squeezed the project in on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, when Mr. Cleaver left for work early (except for one when we lost power!).  I did kick him out of the house for an hour and a half on the 22nd or 23rd so I could do the buttons and buttonholes, and I thought for sure he was onto me.

But Christmas morning came and he opened his shirt and I had to tell him I made it, even though I stitched something inside one of the cuffs,  which I guess is a good thing. I did work really hard to make it the shirt as professional as possible, including doing flat-felled seams throughout and matching the plaids wherever possible.  You could practically wear this thing inside out!

A flat-felled seam.

My biggest worry was that it wouldn't fit, even though I kept comparing it to shirts in his closet, but it fit great and he wore it all Christmas day. The fabric is a lovely light-weight wool  from the Pendleton wool mills that irons and wears like a dream. My family has a long-history with Pendleton wool button-downs, so I was glad I could bring Mr. Cleaver into the tradition.

Pattern: McCalls' M6044 - View C

Fabric: Pendleton Lightweight Wool from Gorgeous Fabrics

Flat-Felled Seam Tutorial: sewneau.com

Lady Grey Progress (Details)

After all my weekend travel in October, I finally had a chance this past weekend to get back to work on my Lady Grey Coat.

Some things I accomplished since Friday:

• Cut out shell fabric
• Sewed sleeves, belt and belt loops.
• Made two practice bound buttonholes and two real ones and one self-covered button (had to use my teeth to get the back on!)
• Seamed back pieces
• Pad-stitched the under-collar and one lapel (working on the other tonight).

As one might guess from this list, I'm kinda going at this a little scattershot.

I sewed the sleeves and belt because I wanted to see instant progress, and I wanted to get all the pad stitching set up so I could do the actual hand-sewing watching TV during the week. My hope is to have all the hand stitching done by the end of Friday and get the majority of the shell sewn this weekend and the lining fabric cut out. The goal is to have a finished coat by Thanksgiving. Wish me luck!!

Here are some progress photos of my favorite details:

Top stitching on the seams. It makes the coat look particularly "coaty" to me.

Pad stitching on the lapel.  It's hard to tell in the photo, but it makes a huge difference in the way the lapel lays. It's a time consuming process, but totally worth it I think. The finished lapel took me some Jeopardy!, an hour of the Ken Burn's Mark Twain documentary and two hours of Circus on PBS. (Which, have you seen Circus? It's really really well done. I'm enjoying it lot.)

Pad-stitching on the roll line of the under-collar.

Lady Grey Sew-Along: the Muslin

As I mentioned before, I'm participating in the  The Lady Grey Sew-Along.

I'm a teensy bit behind now, and since I'll be out of town for the next two weekends, I'll soon be really far behind. All that aside, I finished my final muslin yesterday.

With the exception of the two front flaps, muslin 1 and muslin 1.5 are exactly the same.  My fit turned out pretty well, largely because I took a lot of time grading the coat for my varying bust, waist, and hip measurements.  The one change to the front was to shorten the lapels to get rid of some gaping there.

But if anyone has any fit feedback, I've posted some photos below.

Front:

Back:

Back with arms raised:

Side:

The Notary Dress

This weekend I finished my "Notary Dress" I showed a peek of last week. It's made of a navy blue wool/poly blend with an Egyptian cotton lining in the sleeves and bodice. The pattern is McCall's M5972 View A, but I've made a number of changes.

I've been wanting a classic navy blue dress for a while, and I picked the pattern for a number of reasons:

• The class silhouette. The straight skirt in particular, was different from anything else in my full-skirted closet.
• The open yoke. I knew I wanted to add some horizontal pleating to the yoke of the dress, so I selected a pattern where I wouldn't have to deal with moving any darts or seams.
• Wide neckline. I wanted a boatneck, which I find very flattering. From the envelope illustration this appeared to be a fit but in reality it was more of a wide scoop.
• On a side note, when it comes to patterns from the major publishers, my preference goes Vogue, McCall's, then Butterick. I've worked with Burdastyle patterns, but never a Burda one.  Maybe I need to branch out?

( If you're curious, the necklace, which I love, was purchased at the most recent Picnic fair, but the artist, Kriya, also has an Esty shop.)

So in terms of modifications, I made a ton. My go-to guide to design modifications is Adele P. Margolis's Make Your Own Dress Patterns. For fitting modifications, I use Fit for Real People.

• As with all commercial patterns, I cut out the pattern on different size lines for the bodice and skirt to match the envelope measurements, smoothing the lines with a french curve.
• I redrafted the neckline as a boatneck.
• During the tissue fitting (Gertie has a great series on tissue fitting that I highly recommend), I took a wedge out of the center front, to make the neckline lie flat and so the center of the pattern lined up on my center. I also rolled the shoulder seam forward about a 1/2 inch, which is typical for me.
• The bodice fitted, I cut out the lining and then went back to the pattern piece and added my three horizontal pleats. Each pleat is about an inch wide, with an inch folded under, so I added two inches at each pleat point. I will mention that once I got it on my body, I had to refold the top pleat some to get it to lie flat. I also blind-stitched the pleats downs.
• Raised the waist seam an inch or so to match my natural waistline.
• Added cap sleeves. I used the "sport sleeve" instructions from Margolis' book. Basically, I traced the armhole and then made a few muslins that I based into the actual dress until the fit was right.
• Because I added the sleeve, it made the side zipper a little difficult. If I had been smart, I would have added a seam allowance to the back and moved the zipper there. As it is, there's no closure, I just pull the dress on over my head, which works, but is not ideal. Actually getting it on is fine, getting the dress off is a little more difficult.
• I ended up slimming the extra I had cut into the skirt at the hips, so a smoother silhouette.

So after all that, how do I think it turned out?? Hmmm....

I give it my official seal of approval. (Seriously, I love this dress!!)

Coming Attractions

Just when you though she didn't sew anymore, coming soon to a blog near you: The Notary Dress, in the world's most lint-attracting fabric,  just a zipper and a hem (and some hand-finishing) away!

The Lady Grey Sew-Along: My first attempt at a coat!! (But first to find some fabric for the muslin...)

Birthdays (of the Spousal and National Persuasion)

What a wonderfully busy weekend! Between Mr. Cleaver and the country - we spent our whole weekend in celebration. Not that I'm complaining :)

After a leisurely morning on the 3rd, involving the farmer's market and the bakery and a new fishing pole for Mr. Cleaver, we lazed away the afternoon ( I finished my dress) and headed out to eat around 4. We grabbed a meal and some bird watching at The Good Table (our favorite) and then drove down Highway 77 to Prout's Neck for a trek around the Cliff Walk.

The cliff walk is one of those hidden gems that I'm sure everyone knows about, but I didn't until about two weeks ago and Mr. Cleaver didn't know about it until I took him there this weekend, so maybe it is secret. In any case, to take the cliff walk find the house above, right next to the Black Point Inn,  and find the small stone path that cuts across the grass. This will take you out to the Cliff Walk.

The Cliff Walk is stunning.  There are rocky crags, pink sand beaches, and a beach entirely of smooth round rocks that rattle when the waves recede.

The walk takes between 45 minutes to an hour. Afterward we stopped at the Black Point Inn for cocktails. The bar was busy so they sent us down to the Adirondack chairs on the front lawn (too bad, right? :) ), where we sat and sipped and watched the sun set.

Mr. Cleaver declared the birthday a success. On the way back to town we stopped by the side of the road to snap a few more shots of the sunset.

For the Fourth, I spent the morning baking a belated birthday cake for the Mister, which we had delayed because we knew it would take a while to make this much cake! Though it did mean I had our tiny oven running for a few hours on the hottest day of year thus far!

After all the baking I finally got to put on my new dress!

[Dress: Vogue 8184; Modifications: made band from contrasting color, skipped boning, added in-seam pockets, added horsehair band to hem]

All snazzed up, we headed our to my Mother-In-Law's for a cookout with the family. Mr. Cleaver's older brother offered some hints and tackle for the new pole.

Once we were stuffed to the gills, Mr. Cleaver and I joined half of Portland for the Portland Symphony Orchestra pops concert/fireworks show. The addition of PSO to the festivities was a great touch!

I hope every one else had an enjoyable weekend too!

String and Strawberries

String I:

I finished this dish towel at the beginning of the month, but for one reason or another it's sat in my photos for about three weeks. It's not as though I have a backlog of a bazillion projects to post, but as cute as this piece of embroidery is (it's an ironing scotty dog!), I didn't think it warranted a whole post to itself, so I'm lumping it together with a few other bits and pieces.

The Scotty Dog Pattern is from the Hoop Love Vintage Transfers Group on Flickr, which has a treasure trove of patterns you can print out an stitch. They have an especially large collection of mostly complete days of the week patterns like the Scotty above.  I'm alos planning on doing Wednesday (mending) and Friday (baking).

I worked on this mainly while my bum wrist kept me from knitting and in the after period  when I struggled to get my knitting mojo back (which happily it has, thanks to Kate Davie's Manu and some Malabrigo Silky Merino). I haven't yet done the pattern transfer for the second towel, but if our current levels of humidity hang around for much longer I will, since they're only so much wool I can handle in humidity :)

Strawberries:

On Saturday, Mr. Cleaver and I picked four pints of strawberries at Maxwell's, two of which went to his mother and the other two which ended up on my cereal and this strawberry shortcake I made last night.

The recipe is from Posie Gets Cozy and the only changed I made/would recommend is to make 6 or 8 dough "blobs" instead of the listed 4. mine were doughy in the middle until I cut them in half and baked them some more, and the smaller biscuits (it's a very biscuity shortbread) were about all I could handle to eat at once.

String II:

I have plans for a fantastic Fourth of July dress from Vogue 8184. It's a fairly simple dress (especially since I'm skipping the boning- since my version has straps), so I 'm taking the time to do my first go at tissue fitting, especially since I fell in between two of the multi-size envelopes.  I'm somewhat obsessed with fit these days - what with the pattern drafting I've been dabbling in and all (and I'm close with another sundress I drafted). Since the Fourth is only ten days away, we'll hopefully have results soon!