Tuesday, June 2, 2009

The skirt I made yesterday


This skirt took me approximately 5 hours to make. I got the idea when my friend picked out the patterned fabric and wanted me to make her a skirt out of it. For her skirt we did the yoke in a matching red cotton. I ended up having her buy twice as much printed fabric as needed, and I fell in love with it so I bought the remaining from her. The fabric was sold bye the "section", each section being the equivalent of two rectangles (approx 26 inches wide by 45 inches). This skirt required two sections. For my yoke I used a stretch denim that I had on hand, and for the tie some red knit fabric I had on hand. I wanted to use up some red rick rack that I had lying around, and it seemed to go with the whimsy of the patterned fabric. I gathered the fabric into the yoke so as not to loose any of the awesome pattern. I believe the selvage called the fabric "Recesss - Fun with Dick and Jane Collection" by Moda. I threw it away before I could copy it exactly (silly me).

I also added a square pocket approx 12x12 inches on the right hand side of the skirt. The volume of the patterned fabric mostly hides it, although it does want to stick out just slightly. The trickiest part of this skirt was figuring what order to sew the pocket on so that the rick rack would look continuous. I drafted a pattern for the yoke, and let the bottom fabric become its own pattern.

I really enjoy the length and the lightness of this skirt!

Monday, March 2, 2009

Visions of pleather all through her head...


This is one of the 3 fabrics that rendered me insomniatic on Thursday night. It is a chocolate brown pleather with flowers and paisley shapes embroidered into it. I purchased this fabric back in 2005 with the intention of making pants. At the time I had pretty much no experience making pants and no free time, which meant I put the fabric in my closet and forgot about it. When digging through my stash for a specific blue upholstery last week, I rediscovered this fabric, and again the desire to make pants immediately seized me. Since I just wore out a pair of well-fitting jeans, I tore them apart to use as a pattern base. I am a little uncertain as the jeans had some stretch to them and this fabric doesn't, but I figure I can add extra seam allowances and hope for the best! I need to remember to buy blue thread for this fabric; all the ones in my stash are entirely too teal.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Sometimes I can't sleep.

Sometimes the reason I can't sleep is that I have a vision of a particular item that I want to make. Tonight I have had three different items haunting me and rendering me insomniatic. Usually this kind of energy is good, because it means that I work hard on whatever is currently obsessively tickling my fancy. Sometimes it's just frustrating, especially when I don't have certain supplies to work on the project. It is especially frustrating if I have the supplies, but really need space to spread out my project. I don't really have this space at home, but I do have it at work. Tonight is one such night for me. I have visions of a black wool cloak (which I do not have the fabric for), visions of a blue patterned mens 18th century cutaway coat (I have the fabric, but the pattern is at work, and I don't have the space to cut it out here), and visions of brown embroidered pleather pants (I just spent the last hour or so tearing apart an old pair of jeans to turn into a pattern for said pants. Now I need to wait until I can get to work to correct the pattern and cut out the fabric).

Did I mention that I have a huge deadline at work tomorrow and need to get up really early to work on meeting it? Of course all that I want to do is to work on my own side projects!