See my vest!

It's done, it's complete, it's snazzy, it's my vest. Using simplicity 4079, I made view E, minus the false pocket flaps and ties in back. The pattern wasn't very complicated, the most frustrating thing about the whole project was being bounced around while reading the instructions, a big focus breaker for me.

I think if I were to make this again I'd make my own straightforward list of instructions prior to even cutting out the fabric in order to save time and patience. After trying on the finished vest I would consider making it a size smaller, as its just a bit too roomy for me.

Now on to the pictures.

First up is a shot of the lining (which I'm still amazed I made). All in all it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. The process of finishing the vest required that I learn the slip stitch in order to finish the lining. I'm debating top stitching along the edge of the vest due to poofyness that occurs around the shoulders and bottom of the vest while being worn.

{Side View}



{Princess Seam}

{Front Open}

{Back}

It looks uneven in the picture, but I'm actually just twisting slightly.

{Picture of my background for part of the shoot}

January equals loss of sewing mojo

The title says it all. January was an uninspired month fueled by a lack of hours at my current job and fruitless search for a 2nd job. My days were spent staring at numerous job posting sites, and my evenings consisted of an anxious/uneasy feeling mixed with moderate amounts of self loathing.

January sucked.

There was a silver lining though, the last week of January I found out that I would be getting hours next month. I was nursing my job search bruised ego that last week, reading the craftster forums and exploring new and uncharted territories in blog land. And then it happened, I found inspiration.

This woman is amazing, her name is Carolyn and I've been addicted to her blog for the past few days, devouring her extensive blog archives, taking notes on techniques, and coveting her fabric collection. I highly recommend Diary of a Sewing Fanatic. I felt invigorated reading her blog, ready to take on new challenges, and so it began.

What to make though? I had a few things in mind before my January blues kicked in, so I did a little research on pattern review, and decided on making Simplicity 4079, a very at the moment hip and trendy lined vest.

I was lost in some sort of fantastical sewing trance all day Saturday and managed to cut, everything out, and assemble the majority of the vest, pressing every seam not once, but twice. I love the lining I can't believe I made it, its that amazing. Pictures will come but not today as I hope to finish the vest some time tomorrow, and I have an awful lot of slip stitching to do if I'm going to reach that goal.

I gots mad skillz

Lately I've been working on honing a few skills before I tackle my next pattern project, mainly my button hole making skills. There have been a few semi successful attempts in the past, but I figure a little practice couldn't hurt. At first I was practicing with scraps, but I figured why not try to make something useful in the process. After a little brainstorming and an afternoon all by myself this adorable plaid cuff is what I came up with.

{ All done up}

{Stretched out}

In hindsight I think I should have made the button holes a tad bit bigger, I've already stretched them out by constantly taking it on and off. Other than that they've held up quite well. As for design aspects of the cuff I kind of went wild with the sewing machine and made a neat loop-de-loo design just for fun. I definitely had fun making it and I can see making a few more in the not to distant future.

I would also like to point out that I'm trying my best to work on delivering better quality pics (through better camera work and digital editing). What can I say? I've been working at a portrait studio for the past three months, something was bound to rub off on me.

oh well

I promised a while back that I would post pictures of what I made for Christmas, not everything has gone according to plan though. Long story short, I ran out of time to make a knit hat for my sister, so I got her a book on digital photography. My parent got her a camera that she is in love with but doesn't fully grasp the technical aspects of it, here's hoping she'll crack it open and learn from it. My mom's present I managed to finish the night before going to visit, however in all the craziness of wrapping and packing, I forgot to take pictures (as well as to bring my camera for the visit itself). The only finished picture I have is that from my camera phone, and I'm not paying 50 cents to post some crappy camera phone image on my blog. My sister took some pictures, but I don't know when those will be sent to me (if they're sent to me), so for now here are a few in progress pictures. The finished embroidery was about 7 inches long, and about 5 1/2 inches tall, its a portrait of our family's animal companion, a welsh corgi named Dylan. Please excuse the blue markings, its just water soluble pen that I used to sketch out the outline.

{Close up}

{From a distance, ignore the pink flower I was experimenting}

As for my dad (AKA: the hardest person to shop/craft for on earth) I was quite fortunate one night while trolling around on etsy to come upon the greatest t-shirt ever for my father the ex-utica resident. I figured, at least its something handmade that he'll really enjoy, rather than the typical store bought gadgets that he might use. Of course I decide to order it like two days before my trip, no way on earth could it have gotten here in time, but when I showed my mom a picture she broke out in a fit of laughter. Dad decided he would rather wait and be surprised. I'm not sure what the legalities of posting a picture of the item is so I'm just going to leave links for now. The seller was great, I highly recommend GossipGossip, my order was here within four days, and it looked great, lets hope dad enjoys it as much as I do.

First post of the year

Well I'm going to kick off the new year with a post about things I made last year that I haven't posted. A while back I picked up five simplicity patterns at Jo-Ann's for a dollar each (woohoo savings!). Last week I actually decided to use one of them in order to use up some stretchy thermal fabric that I recently acquired. After much deliberation I decided to use simplicity 3790 (View A).

So I took my measurements, compared it to the sizes, cut everything out and did all that good stuff. The one change I made while doing this was to forgo putting in the inset piece in order to achieve more versatile looks with the shirt.

All in all its a really simple pattern, no confusion whatsoever, but lord almighty this thing was HUGE. I mean, it fits in the sense that its not falling off of me, but its bigger than I would like ideally.

Now before I show you the shirt I'm going to flaunt my fabric choice which the BF has deemed classically unsophisticated (he meant in in a good way). The moment I saw this fabric the inner child in me was awakened and demanded that I buy a whole bunch of this fabric. And I did. Pictures do not do the colors justice. The yellow own is more lemon-lime neon in person.

Now for the shirt, please forgive my "modeling"




So its big, but its not bad. Once I make a sash type of belt to go with it I can see myself wearing it a whole bunch.

I wanted to give this pattern another go taking into account what I now know about the sizing of the actual pattern. I made View B (3 sizes smaller) from the pattern using this awesome moose/outdoorsy type of print- again, I left out the inset.

Next time I take pictures of something I've made, I'll make sure to straighten everything out a bit more. The bottom band appears to be traveling upwards in these pictures due to stretching and running around.

Well that is all for now, hopefully I'll be posting finished x-mas projects soon so stay tuned.