I MADE PANTS!!!!

I bought a men's pant pattern when Josephine's Dry Goods was closing in Downtown Portland. When I bought the pattern I looked at the size it said 34-36-38-40...I thought that meant waist. No it did not. When I finally pulled out the pattern the waist size only went to 34". My husband said he was a 36. So I took an on-line Craftsy class on how to enlarge and reduce ready made patterns, it was called Create Any Size: Grading for Sewers. I found this to be very helpful. I had asked my husband over and over about his waist size and he kept repeating that he was a 36...that's what his Levi's said & they fit!! So I enlarged the pattern to a 36" waist. Well guess what...they were too small. I had completed the body of the pants and put on the waist band, had my husband try them on and he immediately stated they were too small. I said they were a 36", I said that I needed to measure his waist...my measurement came to 42". He then asked me if I was saying he's fat...what? NO...I'm saying you're not a 36". An argument occurred and he stated again that the Levi's were a 36". So when he left the house I measured the Levi's that he claimed fit him...the tag did say 36...but in fact the waist measurement was 39"!!! So I removed the waist band and the darts in the back of the pants. I did not want to give up on these pants because it was only the second time I have put in a front zipper and I was quite proud that it worked and looked decent. I had him try on the pants again, I ended up putting smaller darts in the back of the pants & I made a new waist band that was 40".  Today I had him try on the pants with the new waist band and he loved the fit. They are snug but not tight. He can wear the pants with out a belt and they will stay up. The fabric I used was from a couple years ago, I bought 4 bolts of fabric from a woman on craigslist for $60. At that price it's as cheap as muslin fabric. I don't like to make simple muslins...I like to make wearable muslins. These pants are quite loud and they are a nice medium weight cotton. Now that I understand the pattern, I can make him a pair of Jeans or some nice wool pants. The pattern is Vogue 8719, and it's a fairly simple pattern. This project took me about 10 hours total, the next pair should only take about 5 hours to make. Or maybe I will make a pair of pants for me!! 

As a reward for completing the pants I made a couple more triangle bags. These are heading to a friend that requested one...and today is her birthday. Some cute Melody Miller fabric with a crushed penny from Portland.... Happy Birthday!! 

We finally repaired out front stairs!!! I do not have a before photo but believe me they were awful, moss had grown in the cracks and the treads were rotting out. We painted the stairs several years ago in an effort to make them last and it worked. But now it was time to really fix the stairs, mostly I wanted a clean look when you came up the front stairs. I mean it's the first thing people see when they approach your house..so make a good first impression. Rotting stairs are not a good first impression. 

Yea!!! I saw my tote bags in the store again. This time it's the illustration my niece did for me of a hedgehog wearing glasses reading a book. They started selling over the spring break and they ordered 25 more hedgehogs.  I was delivering 125 bags of the skeleton carrying books, that bag is doing great. 

A couple more zipper pouches

I had some more time in my sewing studio this evening after the sun when down. It was 70 degrees this afternoon in Portland!! I loved being outside reading, pulling weeds & playing with the cats. When the sun went down at about 8pm (daylight savings time started today), I went down to the basement into my studio and made a couple more zipper pouches from this tutorial. I wanted to try some fun novelty fabric. I pulled out some fun fabric that has images of camera. I got it half done before I realized that the cameras were upside down. I had to get out my seam ripper and pull out the zipper and start over again. Good thing it's such a simple project and taking out a couple seams was very easy. I completed the camera bag and thought I would add a crushed penny as a zipper pull. I had a couple of pennies with holes drilled in them, they were left over from when I was practicing drilling in the pennies to make a necklace. The penny I used on the camera bag was a mis-stamped penny. I wanted to use a split ring to hold the penny to the zipper pull. It was very hard to open this small split ring and even harder to get it on the penny & zipper pull. It seems that hold that I drilled in the penny was a little too small and needs to be larger if I'm going to use pennies on these cute bags. 
Then I decided to use some of my Melody Miller View-Master fabric. I love this Melody Miller fabric and still have a nice stash of some of her early lines of fabric. I completed the pouch in about 15 minutes. Since I did not have any more pennies with holes handy I pulled out some beads. It took me longer to pick out what beads to use on the zipper pull then it took me to complete the pouch. I can't say enough about how easy these pouches are to make. I again cut down a couple zippers to 4" since I do not have any 4" zipper (they are kind of difficult to find). Since the zippers teeth on the zippers was nylon it was easy to sew through them on my machine, I would not try this with a zipper that has metal teeth unless you are going to hand stitch the bottom of the bag. 

Matching Western Christmas Shirt

I finished my Christmas Shirt. It's McCalls 6383, it's a very 70's western shirt. I have made this pattern several times for myself and I like it a lot. There are a couple things that changed on this one. Such as I made the back yoke larger or shall I say longer. It really didn't show off the material and since I have longer hair it would have been covered up, so I extended the back by about 6 inches. I also think I need to alter the collar; this collar is HUGE. It's VERY 70's. Looking at the pattern it's very hipster, a thiner body and the large collar. I also think I need to put some darts in the back of mine. I will wear it a few times first to make sure. On one of the other shirts I made from this pattern I added darts and made a smaller collar. The darts in the back help define the waist. The other thing about my shirt..the 70's patterns did not think women had waists or hips. I added about 1/2 an inch to the bottom sides of the shirts to keep it from spreading out at the bottom when I wear it. I have this same pattern as a black Christmas shirt I made with white pipping and when I wear it untucked the bottom spreads out..the white pipping forms an upside down Y...it looks a little funny. I also made my collar in the grey material because the pink fabric really washed out my face. All other things about this shirt are great. For my shirt I used the 3 yards of the 10 yards of pink fabric I bought at Scrap. The pink fabric is a cotton and a little stiff but I hoping it will relax after a couple of washings. No big deal if it doesn't as we will only be wearing these shirts in December.

My husbands shirt is McCalls 4530 in red linen. He asked why I didn't add a back yoke to his shirt. I told him it was because I made his first and I forgot, really I thought the red was so nice and bright...a very Christmas color. I think his would have benefited with a back yoke too. I told him if he wanted me to add a yoke I could take his apart and add a nice yoke if he really wanted one. Maybe later, he wants to wear it RIGHT NOW. Neither shirt has pockets which may be a flaw...of course I can add pockets too, but I really wanted to get this done before the holidays were gone. My husbands favorite part of his shirt is Santa diving into a pool, it looks like Santa is sunburned and naked.

Now that the holidays are over it's time to get down to finishing a couple of quilt projects that have been sitting around. We have some friends that were due the day after christmas but have not had their baby as of today. I wanted to get a quilt made for them. Now I will focus on their quilt. I have the top complete. It's the alphabet. I was kind of waiting to see if they had a girl or boy, but it really does not matter. I will make it unisex. Since it's a baby quilt it should go quickly.

A couple days late but I finished a Christmas Western Shirt for my husband on Saturday. I had wanted to get it done before Christmas but I was working on a wool shirt for him (a wool shirt was much more necessary than a linen Cowboy shirt). The pattern is McCalls 4520, it's out of print but there are a couple other similar patterns floating around out there if you are looking for a western shirt. I will say I'm disappointed by the lack of mens patterns at pattern companies. But then there is little variation to mens clothes, you can only do so much with a shirt or pants...other than using unique fabric...everything seems to be the same. That is good if you are going to make mens clothes as all you have to do is learn a few basic techniques and you have it. I have found a couple of small pattern makers that have some interesting styles like Buckaroo Bobbins. Though I have not made any of their patterns it was nice to see other options for mens clothes. Sorry kind of a rant there on mens patterns.

I just love the christmas material used on the front and on the cuffs, it's called Holiday Break & it's by Michael Miller. I bought it a couple of years ago with some other cute kids western themed holiday fabric. Now I will work on my Cowgirl shirt, it's going to be pink with the Holiday Break as the yoke. We will again have matching Christmas Shirts.

The Rumple Minze is from my brother...he gave it to us with a jar of hot chocolate mix, marshmallows, candy canes and chocolate mints. Just add hot water & booze and you have a nice warm jar of happiness.

Some leggings, a shirt and a quilt back

I love my light up Santa, if I could I would leave him out all year long I would, he always makes me smile. I completed several projects last week. My new goal is to do one thing every day. One day last week I spent on the internet choosing health care...that was a drag. So I had to get into the studio and make something. So I made a couple pairs of leggings for my husband, he likes to wear long johns under this jeans during the winter months. I bought him some silk long johns a few years ago, but he can only wear those so many times a week. These leggings are a little thicker and may be just a little warmer...at least he thinks they are. As you can see I did a zigzag stitch in the waist band. It took me about an hour to make both pairs of leggings. I'm going to Joanne fabric this week to look for some grey or red material to make a couple more pairs for myself. I love these leggings and as I said they are soooo quick and easy to make. I then finished the backing for the my Tula Pink Moon Shine quilt. I used the left over squares with some nice turquoise material that I found in my cupboard of fabric, I think the turquoise goes nicely with the bright Tula Pink fabric. This week I hope to put the entire quilt together and quilt it on my machine at home. I pulled out my Christmas Fabric in preparation of making a couple matching western shirts for my husband and myself. I was thinking of the grey or red for the base of the shirt with the Michael Miller Holiday Break fabric as the decorative yoke. I love this fabric it's very cure. 
I also finally tried to make a fabric basket. I have seen these on so many blogs. Ladies make the baskets to put in sewing rooms and fill them up with small scraps of fabric or thread destine for the trash. I have never made one before and found a nice tutorial on SewMamaSew during the handmade holidays posts the last few weeks. I like it but I do not think I will be making any more for my studio but I think I will make a couple to hold cookies as gifts this holiday season. During the winter months I like to wear long sleeve t-shirts under large sweaters. I tried the Alabama Chanin long sleeve shirt from her last book "Alabama Studio Sewing + Design". I used some cotton jersey that was not very stretchy thus the shirt is a little tight. I want to make it again because I like the flare in the sleeves. I think I have to do some adjustment to the bust, as that area was a little tight too. The fabric I used to make this shirt was some scrap that I bought at a thrift store so I have no idea of the actual content of the material. It was a white piece of material but I dyed it blue with a batch of fabric I dyed last summer on vacation. I really liked the color and was hoping that the shirt would work on the first try....it did not. I may just back to the Jalie 2805 pattern as I have made several of these t-shirts and they all fit really well.