Plans Gone Awry

I went to put a zipper in the pants I'm working on, but after printing directions for a lapped zipper (which I've never done before) and finding black interfacing to interface the zipper area, I went to measure the width of the zipper and discovered -- no zipper!

I didn't feel like driving to the store, so I cleaned out the cupboards in my sewing room and sorted most of my stash.

This looks quite formidable in real life. This picture makes it look dinky in comparison to some of the stashes you guys have posted! There is fabric for 31 garments there. Thirty-one!

Having it all in one place will help me use it up more, I hope.

This is one last pile of miscellaneous fabric and half-done projects that I need to sort. It's sitting on the floor under my large ironing board/cutting table. These are abandoned home-related sewing projects: a cat bed, couch cover, and table cloth set. All half-done!


Here's the pile of ready-to-wear that I'd like to alter, with a few abandoned muslins thrown in.

I long for my old life in North Carolina. My husband once referred to our lives in North Carolina as "the gold standard of family happiness." I did the most sewing in the least space there. In my bedroom, I had an ironing board and a small table with my serger and sewing machine. I had two large Rubbermaid tubs of sewing stuff in my closet. That was it. I cranked out a lot of garments, made a house full of curtains, and had no mending pile. I used to mend whatever had gathered during a project before I started the next one. I alternated between a garment for me and a house project until I had made curtains for every room in the house. I tried a lot of new things there and improved my sewing skills tremendously. Sigh. I sure was productive then.

So, after that reminder that I was just as busy but more productive in North Carolina, here are my excuses. I'm sewing slowly these days because we've been making great progress on cleaning the house. One teenage boys has inexplicably started helping, so I'm seizing the moment. School starts for me soon, so I've been getting my stuff ready, and I'm taking a class on Web Site Design. I'll be learning about Dreamweaver, HTML, XHTML, and CSS, whatever they are. I bought the books and have been reading to prepare for class. I'm such a good student!

I'll buy that zipper tomorrow.

Went Shopping with Mom!

When my mom came to visit from Phoenix, we went fabric shopping.

My mom's friend lives half of the year in Syracuse and half of the year in Phoenix. Syracuse is a bit of a drive from my house, but we went to visit mom's friend. Mom's friend's sister-in-law owns Cottons, Etc near Syracuse, so they figured that, since I love sewing, we'd go there. I was a little worried because it is predominately a quilt shop, and non-garment-sewers don't often understand why I think a fabric shop full of fabric could have nothing worth buying.

It turned out that the fabric alone was worth the trip. Cottons, Etc has a room they call the "fashion room," and it is full of a variety of garment fabrics. Here's what I got:

The fabric on the left on 2 3/4 yards of a woven cotton/ploy/rayon blend. It's soft and flowing. It's for a non-specific skirt.

The next is 2 3/4 yards of a woven 100% rayon. It is also soft and flowing. It is also for a non-specific skirt.

The one on the right is a thin 100% rayon knit. I bought that with V8151 in mind.

In the second photo, the fabric on the left is 2 1/2 yards of a linen-like 40% rayon, 40% poly, 15% flax blend.

Next to it is 2 1/2 yards of a linen-like 100% rayon purchased to match. Here's where the mystery comes in. After washing all the fabric and setting it aside for a month, I pulled it out and thought, "Hmm. Where did my green go and why is this brown fabric here? Did I buy brown and I'm remembering wrong?" Looking at my notes, I found it listed as green. It's as brown as brown can be. I don't know if this color change happened in the wash or in my mind. Could be either. I'm bad with colors.

I'm not planning to use any of these fabrics too soon. I bought them for my stash, not for any current projects. I'm working on a pair of pants from an alteration of these pants. I have lots of pictures, but little courage to post them. When I'm done with the pants I'll have to see what I end up having the courage to post.

Eight Years and Two Millennia

My family was cleaning the garage a few weeks ago and we found this quilt. It was in a box labeled toys from my now 17 year old son's room that never got unpacked when we moved here from North Carolina.

Here's my quilt history: I always loved to sew clothes. During the years when my weight fluctuated because of pregnancies, I got frustrated. I wanted to try quilting because it sounded easy. I knew I could make beautiful clothes, so how hard could a couple of squares be? I moved to Illinois and made friends with my neighbor, Julie, a quilter. She encouraged me to try and helped me get started. It was the most humbling sewing experience of my life. It was way harder than it looked. I made a hand quilted quilt that I hung on the large expanse of wall created by my cathedral ceilings in North Carolina. People would come in, admire it, and exclaim, "Oh, you make quilts!" I would answer, "No. I made quilt. That's it."

I often said, "Thank goodness for Sears quilts. Because of them, few notice how bad mine is!" I enjoyed my quilting phase, but I knew I wanted to return to making clothes. I have some pretty wall hangings and one lap quilt to remember the phase by, but I don't quilt now.

In the meantime, my oldest son was intrigued by my quilting. I have a little wall hanging he made that has six enormous squares on it. He was five when he made it. He named it "shapes." It is machine quilted and the stitching lines bear little resemblance to the seam lines. It's very cute.

He started this quilt in 1999 in Watertown when he was nine and in fourth grade. He machine pieced all the squares himself and hand quilted three lines of stitching before he forgot about it. You can see in the photo that some of his stitches are perpendicular to each other. He, too, was humbled by quilting!

I remember this quilt lying around in North Carolina and I occasionally suggested he work on it, but he never did. When we found it in the garage, he seemed so pleased to remember it and his quilting. I knew I needed to finish it so it would be a displayable memory.


I really finished it more for his future wife than for him. I hope he has a wife who will respond to a guest's exclamation of "Oh, you quilt!" by plucking it off the wall, saying "No, Andy did," and telling the whole story.

I took the lazy way out and just folded the backing over the front for the binding. I don't like it. First, I prefer a contrast binding, and second, the machine stitching that secures the binding to the quilt before it's folded over helps anchor the batting, and this minimally quilted quilt could have used it. I didn't want to put too much time into this, though. I think the abandoned quilting adds to its charm as a young boy's project.

I did machine stitch between the squares and the border, because it really needed something to anchor it.

The best part of the quilt is the name Andy chose. He seemed so pleased that I was finishing it, and he found it funny that it had taken so long. I told him that since it's his quilt, he needs to name it, so he came up with "Eight Years and Two Millennia." The label says "pieced and hand quilted by Andy, 1999" and "machine quilted and bound by Alana, 2007."

We've covered a lot of ground since "Shapes."

What was I thinking?

I decided that I want a stripe down the leg of my brown yoga pants that matches my shirt, so I came up with what seemed like a good idea. I would buy two pink t-shirts and use one for the stripe and one to wear with the pants. I went to ONE store, a K-Mart at that, couldn't find a nice, pink t-shirt, so bought two of these ghastly green t-shirts. Why do I do such things?!?

I couldn't bring myself to do it. First, I look terrible in the green t-shirt. It's thin and cheap and it shows. Second, the green doesn't go with the brown at all. It looks like puke together. What was I thinking?!? Probably something along the lines of, "I have so much to do that if I don't buy something today, I'll never get anything, every." I'm very dramatic about such things.

Today I took decisive action. I put the two new t-shirts aside and ordered some pink fabric. I got it at Sew Baby. I'm planning to make Vogue 8151 for the top. I ordered the fabric from Sew Baby because they have the matching fabric and rib knit trim. I'm a bit confused because the site describes the fabric as "t-shirt knit (interlock)" which is a contradiction to me. I think of t-shirt knit as jersey and I don't think of interlock as t-shirt fabric. I'm not sure which I hope it turns out to be, jersey or interlock, since what I'd really like is a source for both. Whichever it is, I'm excited to have a source that sells matching rib knit trim.

I also ordered enough black to make two tops. I've realized that black is the perfect wearable muslin color. One can never have too many black clothes, I've discovered. I also ordered the August edition of Burda World of Fashion. Might be a bust for me, since it has few plus sizes, but all the other sewing bloggers use it, so I must explore.

Subtle Yet Satisfying

Here's the before picture.
















Here is the after picture. I raised the sleeves up and opened up the neckline.

I learned some interesting things on this t-shirt. It was a size 2X. I think a 3X is easier to alter and get just like I like it. First of all, the hips only just fit. I would prefer more wiggle room. Next, there wasn't that much shoulder width to cut off, so when I wanted to raise up the underarm hole, I didn't have the left over shoulder fabric to fill in the underarm. I ended up with a very long armscye and not that much sleeve seam line. I had to stretch the sleeve to fit, so the sleeves look a little less fitted than I would like. My next t-shirt alteration is a 3X, so we'll see if a slow careful 3X alteration gives me the best results.

The Short Answer is 2 1/2 Hours

I received a question asking how long it takes to alter a t-shirt like this. It really got me thinking. I suppose, if I worked faster, I could do it in an hour. However, I'm a very slow sewer.

I spent about an hour and a half on the sleeves and an hour on the neck and hem together. That includes at least forty-five minutes hemming and hawing about what I needed to do. That's the part that's a problem when I'm rushed. It eats a up a lot of time, but I don't mind doing it. Actually, I seem to need to do it.

Being able to think about all my alternatives and choosing the one I really want is a big part of my sewing enjoyment. Over the years I have realized that sewing is the only thing I do that is completely for me. I get to make any decision I want. I can keep a mistake or redo it. I can go get more notions or use what I have. I can do the quick fix or the long solution. It's all in my hands. Real life isn't like that. I have to work around other's needs and desires, using limited resources and limited time. But with sewing, I can do whatever I want. I often choose the long way and the hard way. Not always, but often.

I wonder if this is what makes hobbies enjoyable to people. Is this why the guy who builds train villages in his basement does it? Is this why a painter paints? A stamp collector collects? Or is it some other reason?

One of the sewing blogs I enjoy is The Slapdash Sewist. I think she is experiencing the same thing. Sure, she chooses the slapdash solution, but the same principle is at work. She can make any decision she wants, so she makes the one that pleases her. So do I. I think we could happily sew along side each other, laughing at each other's decisions, but totally getting it.

Friday night I sewed the pre-pinned binding of a small wall quilt. Took about two hours. It was maybe thirty minutes of work. I was watching TV. Yesterday I altered the sleeves of another t-shirt and it took one hour. I timed it this time with my stop watch. For the first five minutes, just having the stop watch going freaked me out. It was taking away my joy.

I once seriously contemplated being a sewing professional. I started timing myself. It took eight hours to make a pair of jeans and five hours to make a pair of dress pants with all the details like welt pockets. I suspect that's a really long time. Speeding up is no fun for me.

I am enjoying the process of altering t-shits as much for the acquisition of skills as for the new, fitted shirts. I think if sewing was about saving money at a minimum cost of time, I'd have quit as a failure a long time ago. For me, sewing is about having exactly what I want, made exactly the way I feel like making it.

exercise 0, sewing 1, God 100

What a week! I didn't "exercise" once, but I was on my feet the whole week. I had a blast at Faith Formation week, sometimes lovingly called Catholic Boot Camp. It was worth all the work. I hope my students learned a lot, but in the end, if the only thing they learned was "I belong," I've done my job. I know God will do the rest. To belong to our motley crew of dedicated Christians is not a bad fate at all. With all that confidence in God on my side, I managed to teach them much more.

I manged to sew a little bit, but am I mad at myself. I told myself a million times, "When you get your 'Walk (T)His Way' t-shirt, take a picture of it before you alter it!" After I started hacking into it, I remembered! GRRRR. I was rushed.

I requested a 3X, because I wanted it loose around my hips. It was, but like any man's t-shirt, the arms hung off my shoulders and I hated it. I took off the sleeves and put little darts down the under arms, stopping at the top of my hips. The underarm hole was way too deep, so I took the extra shoulder fabric and put in an underarm patch. That raised up the underarm. Then I cut the new sleeve and reattached it. I love the underarm patches, but I hate how the t-shirt turned out. I cut too much shoulder width off and cut the sleeve too short. Half an inch on each would have made them hang nicer. Sigh. I was rushed since I got the shirt after Catholic Boot Camp started and needed it finished before Friday.

Next I unpicked the neck trim and lowered the front neckline, reattaching the neck trim just like in this earlier post. I hate how it turned out! I must learn to use a shorter piece of trim and stretch it out more. Sigh. I was rushed.

If I was really pregnant and didn't just look pregnant, I'd have loved it. But the long length made it look like such a cute maternity top that I needed to shorten it to look more like a traditional t-shirt length. New problem. I was having a terrible time with my top thread tension. After checking my instruction book and finding nothing, I remembered a long ago experience with the same thing, and that was a thread problem. I switched threads, and sure enough, no problem. That solved everything but my top stitching problems since I was using a thread that no longer matched. I had no time to go to the store. I was afraid to use a double needle with the bad matching thread, so I went ahead and used a single needle. The thread tension pulled through OK, but it looks so "home made," in a bad way. GRRRR. I was rushed.

So what did I learn this week? God is good and gives me all I need to flourish; the first thing to go when I get busy is exercise; I love to sew for fun, but never on things that have a dead line! Oh yea, I knew all that already.

Sew much fabric, sew little time

I've not been sewing because I am teaching Faith Formation at church next week. It's like Vacation Bible School, only I'm Catholic, so we call it Faith Formation. I'll be teaching fourth graders. I've been getting ready. After that, I have three weeks until school starts, and I plan to sew up a storm!

5K update: I am doing 30 minutes on the elliptical machine now, covering 2.25 miles. That's about a 13 minute mile. Bad news, though. I didn't exercise Thursday or Saturday. I was busy with other things, but that's how it starts. One day slips into two, then a week.

During Faith Formation week, my goal is to work out at least three times. That seems like a realistic goal. I'll report my stats. There, now I have to be accountable.