Flag of the picnic nation

I have been lucky enough to live in two cities that have thrift stores that focus on reusing materials for art, craft, and learning. In San Francisco there is the amazing SCRAP and here in Oakland we have the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse or as we call it in my house, Broken Things. SCRAP is a much more dangerous place to go as most things that I am interested in--fabric, yarn, and paper goods are typically sold at a per bag price (last time I remember this was $7 for a grocery bag filled with items) though some are by the yard or lot or piece. All this to say, it is super cheap. During a time of incredible fabric stash enhancement in the early 2000s, I grabbed lots and lots of large fabric swatches. Over the years many of these swatches probably made their way back to SCRAP, but there were a number that I couldn't part with.

For some time I have been intending to take these two sets of pretty florals in similar tones and make a quilt. One idea had been to match them up with the fabric I recently used on my summer PJs, but when my mom passed along three different Echino oil cloth fabrics to me I decided to make picnic/park blanket. With the oil cloth on one side I could put the blanket down on damp grass without worrying about getting wet or having to completely launder the blanket after every use.

The front is a simple patch work of the nine swatches that made a square of roughly 43" by 43". I had about the same size piece of oilcloth that I had cut out a piece to make a wipe-able seat cover for a dining room chair. To fill in the gap I used a piece from another Echino oilcloth. The result looks like a very hip version of the American flag. I used store-bought quilt binding and the leftovers made the tie to wrap it up for portability. I rounded down for this project to get three points (1 point each for patchwork, backing, and quilting). I am looking forward to using this on an excursion to Totland or for a picnic!

Numbers game

When I finished the batch of sewn gifts I hit another 20 point milestone. When I first conceived of this project my hope was to use one yard a week, but because of the efficiency of sewing (and my current obsession) it is pretty easy to exceed that. So the numbers are:

• Rollover from last batch = 4pts
• New seat covers = 2.5pts. Technically this is not a sewing project, but it involved fabric leaving the sewing room so it counts. I calculated the amount of fabric used by figuring out the area of each seat and multiplying it by 3 -- for the burlap on the bottom, the layer of batting, and the exterior fabric. Then I divided that number by the area of one yard of fabric. This was an epic project. The chairs look great, but it took a long time and the difference from the earlier recovering jobs to the most recently completed one is vast.
• Sunhat Disaster 2: The mother of all hat disasters = 1pt
• Stuffy repair = 1pt. I made several repairs to my son's stuffed animal collection. New eyes for Mama Bear, some stitches for his alligator, etc. Alligator had been hanging out in the sewing room for months now, so I am happy that she is out.
• Backpack for L = 1pt
• Wiksten tanks = 2pts
• Backpacks for E & L =1pt 
• Little girl backpack = 1pt
• Backpack for Cy = 1pt 
• Backpack for A = 1pt
• Summer PJs for me = 2pts 
• Wiksten 3 for Mylinda = 1pt 
• Sleep shorts for mom = 1pt 
• Playday dresses = 2pts
• Boxers for brother = 1pt 

Total points: 22.5pts

There will be no prize for me this time because, frankly, I have not been refraining from purchases. It is very hard to resist discounted remnants, people!! Or pretty voile for a future pair of bloomers. Or cheap, cheap yardage at the thrift store. It's a good thing I am on a sewing kick otherwise my craft room would be even more crowded than it is!

Cal Patch study

One of my goals for the Seam Allowance project is to finally work my way through Cal Patch's Design-it-Yourself Clothes. I bought this book right after it came out with the best of intentions. Jenny and I kept saying that we were going to make a date to take our measurements. We never did. Periodically I would take the book out and flip through it, but I never committed to reading it or working through the exercise of making a pattern. As part of Seam Allowance I am making myself a schedule so that by the end of the year I will have made myself the basic pattern for each garment type and have attempted a variation. The schedule looks like this:

July 2012: Read part one of the book and take full set of measurements.

Cal suggests that you work as you read and I will certainly do that. However, I am approaching her book as a textbook and this as a self-guided course, so this month I will also read the instructions for the each of the basic patterns and browse part three about customizing and stylizing.

August 2012: Basic skirt pattern

September 2012: Skirt variation, either from the book or of my own design.

October 2012: Basic T

November 2012: T variation, either from the book or of my own design.

December 2012: Basic woven shirt

January 2013: Woven shirt variation, either from the book or of my own design.

February 2013: Basic dress

March 2013: Dress variation, either from the book or of my own design.

April 2013: Basic pant

May 2013: Pant variation, either from the book or of my own design.

Anyone interested in joining me? I would love to exchange ideas with others engaged in the same study and see what others create. No one is obligated to follow along for every single month (maybe you don't wear woven tops and you're not a skirt woman, that's cool). Or perhaps you just want to do the basic patterns. Check out this Flickr group for inspiration! Comment below and leave your blog address or Flickr ID if you want to work alongside me.

Sew unto others

Although I have just committed myself to making one quarter of my wardrobe, the last five things I have sewn have been for other people. It's good practice--both in the sense that I every stitch I sew brings me closer to proficiency and in that giving people items that you make is a good thing.

When I decided to start this blog I wanted to have a unique illustration for the header so I turned to one of my two renaissance sisters-in-law, this one being the wife of my brother (I will certainly talk about the other, the sister of my husband, at some point, too). Mylinda is an actress, singer, and dancer. She is also a visual artist, who works in pen and watercolor. I told her about this blog and its intention and, seriously, within hours she had created the amazing illustration you see above. As a thank you I wanted to make her something, so I turned to my new old friend, the Wiksten Tank. For this version I used my re-drafted pattern, left off the pocket, and lengthened it to 25" from under the arm to make it more of a tunic, but not quite a dress. This fabric was intended to be the muslin of the Darling Ranges dress, but in a washing mishap some of the yardage was lost. I think it looks great as this top and am excited to see how it fits.

Early last week, my mom came to visit and asked for a pair of sleep shorts like the ones I'd made myself. Using the pattern/recipe from the original One Yard Wonders I drafted a pattern for mom and managed to finish them before she left. These came out so much better than my first attempt. Unfortunately I forgot to snap a photo of them, but I used the same fabric as above.

Since I was mailing something to Mylinda, I decided to whip up a couple of little dresses for my nieces. I've tagged several projects in the new One Yard Wonders (OYW) and started with the Playday Frock. The smaller size is made in a darker orange quilting calico and the larger size is made in a white, orange, yellow, and brown vintage sheet. This is a cute pattern that is easy to sew up. I am a little unsure that it will be sufficient in length, especially for my older niece. I think that if it is too short it should work as a top and look really sweet with pants, leggings, or even shorts.

I didn't want to leave out my brother, so I sewed up one more project from the new OYW. Men's boxer shorts. They were basically like the sleep shorts and PJ bottoms that I have made, but with the complication of a fly. The directions in the book did not make sense to me (which is not to say they don't make sense, just I wasn't getting them) and I couldn't find anything useful online. Ultimately, I looked at a pair of John's boxers and realized that there was something wrong with the amount of overlap. Now this could have had something to do with that I made French seams so I may not have had the right amount of fabric to make overlap just right. That said, they look sharp and should work.

I got some practice at French seams, elastic, pattern adjusting, and being at the machine. I also got five points--one for each project!

Seam Allowance

Ring pincushion made by my mom!

I got my first sewing machine about 13 years ago after a demoralizing trip to the mall. I was shopping for clothes and as I went from store to store I realized that everything looked the same, nothing was particularly well-made, nor did it fit me properly, and the ethics of clothing industry were pretty terrible. That was it, I was going to get a sewing machine and make my own clothes.

I was pretty much starting from scratch so I took classes at first for the basics. I made purses, bathrobes, pajama bottoms, and inexplicably several pillows that were faux fur on one side and satin on the other. I moved on from there and started coming up with my own bag patterns. I made a pair of pants. I made lots of skirts (both with elastic waists and zippers). I made a couple of dresses. In short, I was pretty good at sewing, but never felt like I was.

When I thought of sewing I thought of mistakes, swearing, and the awful tension problems of my original machine. At the time, resources on the internet were not what they are today, so there were fewer places to turn in my frustration. Instead of working through the frustration I would stop sewing. When I would come back to sewing I would have to restart my learning.

This time I am having to relearn, but I feel less frustrated by my mistakes. I take a lot of deep breaths and pick up the seam ripper. After years of knitting, I realize that I even with the mistakes that I make sewing still moves faster and how fast do I need to get stuff done. This is what I do as a hobby!

That said, I am ready to take this hobby and make a commitment. I am coming back to the original intention of why I learned to sew and have joined the Seam Allowance pledge to make at least 25% of my wardrobe. I have some ideas about what that means to me and will explore that more on this blog. Today I went to the kick-off party for Seam Allowance and was excited to see how many people had signed on. It was also fun to see how many people there had not taken the pledge, but were definitely toying with it, asking questions, shopping for fabric.

Summer PJs

I bought the original One Yard Wonders as soon as it came out and regularly combed through the patterns for the ones that I wanted to make. However, until recently I had not made a single pattern. Earlier this year I made two versions of the yoga mat bag--one mostly as written (including the erroneous instruction for the base to be 16.5 inches in diameter) and one with a few changes (a pocket, placement of the strap). In planning my next projects I came across the 101 One Yard Wonders Sew Along at Pink Chalk Studios, which made me look at some of the patterns differently and offered insight into the projects. I liked the idea of the Perfect Fit Sleep Shorts paired with the Summer Nightie since I am more of a shorts sleeper than a nightie sleeper.

The instructions for drafting the shorts are fairly straight-forward, although I was not 100% sure what the rise was (the distance from the waist to the crotch seam--different on the front and the back) or if I was measuring it correctly. The resulting pattern is a little boxy, but it works. It would have worked better if I had paid more attention when laying out the pattern pieces as I ended up with two of the same front pieces instead of mirror images. This problem was compounded when I assumed I had cut the back piece incorrectly and corrected that piece by adding on the crotch piece. Then when I sewed my leg together I ended up with two of the same legs! To fix that problem I sewed the legs together with the crotch seam not aligned and adjusted to make the pieces even out. The result looks and fits fine, but it could be better. I sewed a little button on the front so I would know which side I intended to be the front.

Next time I will add a curve to the back pieces for a better fit and lower the waist as I typically don't wear my PJs at my natural waist.

Using a coordinating fabric I then made the Summer Nightie using fabric from the shorts as bias tape. This came out super cute and I didn't have too many problems following the directions for drafting the skirt of the nightie. A couple of words of advice:

• If you are going to wear this as a nightie, you might want to add a few inches to the bottom. You may not be able to do this with one yard so consider using coordinating fabrics or using a larger piece of fabric from your stash.
• The triangles for the top are pretty small. I am a B cup, maybe a B+, and I cut out the largest size. It works, but next time I might make the triangles a bit bigger. Size up! If you are bustier, you can easily trace the triangles larger.
• The casing instructions are fiddly. I would recommend either making the casing first, then sewing the triangles to the top or sizing the front down to fit your underbust size and shirring the back.

I plan on using the shorts pattern as a basis for making full-length PJ bottoms with the above adjustments. If I make the nightie again I might actually make it shorter to make it more of a top.

Wiksten squared

There's been radio silence the past few weeks as the school year has wound down, but my sewing machine has continued to hum. At the end of every year, when the testing is done, the art history class holds an event dubbed the Art History Olympics, a contest of intellectual prowess and artistic interpretation. Among the competitions are building famous pieces of architecture from memory using graham crackers, marshmallows, and cruciferous vegetables; The Price is Right with recently sold famous works of art; and an art fashion show where students act out pieces of art.

As I have been joining an esteemed panel of judges (other teachers) for a few years now, I decided this year I would join in with an art themed outfit. Since I had been obsessed with Jay McCarroll's Drop Cloth fabric from his Habitat line and stalking the Wiksten tank obsessively, I thought I would combine the two. I decided this with less than a week to make the top and I knew that I would have to, for the first time in my sewing life, make a muslin.

Armed with the knowledge mined from Flickr, I knew to cut out the size that matched my bust so I cut out the medium size using a recycled sheet (this sheet is endless, yo, I cannot get rid of this fabric). The initial result looked good, but needed some tweaking. I went and paid a visit to A Verb for Keeping Warm, where Kristine suggested that I take up the straps so that the seam fell behind my ears and for the excess fabric I was getting on the back neck I should take the back down a smidge. AVFKW had the Drop Cloth fabric in blue, which is exactly what I wanted, so I got 1.75 yards.

I got home, took up the straps and lowered the back. I liked it better, so I bound the neck as practice. One other thing that bothered me was how it sat on my backside. It sort of rode up, so I wanted to widen the bottom a little. I then transferred the following alterations to the pattern and redrafted it:

• Trim .5 inch off front strap
• Trim 1 inch off back strap & neck
• Grade back down another .5 at deepest
• Increase back sides by .5 inches starting at 7 inches from the bottom
• Cut neck and armhole binding down by 1.5 

I cut out the pattern pieces on Monday night, sewed Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning et voila! I had something to wear to the Art History Olympics and a wearable muslin. 

I did end up cutting the neck down a smidge more, which is useful information since I just cut out fabric for a third Wiksten that will have a button band down the back and have two pockets on the bottom of the tank instead of one at the top. While this pattern seems simple, it is a great base to start from and a perfect pattern to practice making alterations with. I also think it could be a great gift if you have the general idea what size someone is especially since it works up super fast!