Those Sewing Whirlwind Pics!

Hi! Happy Monday!

First off, I want to sincerely thank each and everyone one of you for your kind comments about my Mother-in-Law on my last post. You all are just such a wonderful bunch of people! You truly warm my heart. That may sound cheesy and cliche, but it's true dammit and I make no apologies. She is doing much better now, thank you. She spent 5 days in the hospital and we found out this all stemmed from a really horrible sinus infection. She feels better than she has in months so we have been wondering how long she's been carrying around this infection.

Anyhoo, I finally had some time to snap pictures of my 'whirlwind sewing escapade'! This is a pretty long post, so go grab a cup of tea real quick! ;-)

Okie dokie, Numero Uno is the easy peasy circle skirt. I think this took all of about 30 minutes to make, cutting time and all! I just plugged my measurements into the formula given in the tutorial. The only thing I changed was the waistband. Instead of using wide elastic I used a brown cotton/Lycra and made a band about 14" wide x my waist measurement. I then stitched up the side and folded it in half, wrong sides together. Aligned the raw edges of the waistband and skirt and stitched them together. This makes the very comfortable "yoga waistband" you may have heard of. I can leave it wide or fold it over. For the hem, I was able to use my handy dandy rolled hem foot on my regular machine and voila! A skirt!

The fabric is some I've had in my stash for probably 10+ years. It's kind of a weird color and I have nothing to wear with it at the moment. The fabric is most likely poly and has a touch of sheen. It's sort of a heathered brown/gray with peach... I dunno.

Next, is the bra. This is Merckweardigh BHL15. She now has an Etsy shop and the patterns are in English! Whoo hoo!

 I used some odds and ends to put it together but I like how it turned out. I've made this bra before but I used all stretch fabric and it wasn't supportive at all. That bra is too big now, but I thought I'd try this pattern in a non-stretch fabric. I bought this tricot last year to use for some custom order panties and was dissapointed to find that it was a bonded nylon tricot. Bonded = No stretch, what-so-ever. The shop said nothing of this in their discription, of course, so I ordered it. It worked out fine though because it happens to be the perfect fabric for bras! My favorite RTW Freya bra is made of some similar stuff! Well, anyway, after all that the bra didn't fit in the cups, which is really too bad since the band and underwires fit perfectly!! The lower cup is good but the top squishes my breast tissue in a very unflattering manner. I'm thinking, and if I can get up the guts, I can slice the top cup while wearing it down to the seam and measure how much I need to add then transfer those findings to the pattern. I still haven't gotten up the nerve yet but I may try it.

Lastly, This is my mock-up of Vogue 8546:

 

This first picture turned out all fuzzy for some reason. Sorry 'bout that!

The back shows the wacky fabric a bit better. I really should take a close-up. It's some funky stuff, I'm tellin' ya. I'm forever attracted to the funky fabrics, though. I have a slew of '70's polyester autrocities, but I love 'em just the same. This fabric has a little bit too much body for this jacket. I think it will be much better in something more fluid. That's something I don't have in the stash at the moment, though! This fabric adds too much bulk in front and that's something I really don't need! All-in-all, I really, really like the jacket! It's very comfortable and I'm keeping my eye out on a good deal for some wool jersey. The only thing I'm going to add is a big button, kind of where my hand is in the front view, to hold it closed. 

Now for a bit of exciting news! As you know, I have been a pattern tester for some time. Most recently working with Patterns by Figgy's. Well, the lovely ladies behind PBF, Shelly and Karen, so very graciously asked me to be one of their pattern testers for their NEW BOOK!!! It's coming out next year! Yes!!! Shelly and Karen are writing a book and I get to help test for it. I'm also now an official tester for Wiley Publications. My name will be in the book and on their website and everything! Needless to say, I'm so excited and feel so honored! The only thing that really sucks is I can't tell you what the book is about. YET! As soon as I get the go-ahead, I'll let you all know. I can tell you right now some of you are going to be most pleased...

Well, I guess that's it. I think I have about three posts in one here folks, but it's been building up!

Have a wonderful week!