projects – Page 15 – Out & About

Colette Patterns Mabel. More work.

Here is the waistband for my skirt. It’s ready to sew.

The Mabel is supposed to be made in about an hour. That doesn’t include the 45 minutes I spent threading my serger. Man, when that thing needs to be threaded, it’s an investment of time.

Colette Patterns Mabel

I walked to Modern Domestic to get the Moneta pattern not Wonder Tape, now that I think about it. While there I was overcome and bought not just the Monea pattern, but also the Mabel pattern and a yard of material to make me a skirt. My solemn vow to only have one project at a time on hand seems to have gone by the wayside and I’ve driven to another state.

Tracing the pattern, using my handy “pattern weights” aka cans of food.

Cutting the waistband.

Cutting out the skirt. My sewing scissors are incredibly dull and I ended up getting out my rotary cutter and 12″x 12″ cutting mat, which made for some tough repositioning.

Laurel finished. And my eye is already on other projects.

This picture makes me think I’m a midgit. But it’s just a weird hanging height. I’ll take some pictures wearing said Laurels later. I can’t believe it took me almost a year to finish this project. Too many things going on. But let me say, these dresses are COMFORTABLE! I really like them a lot, though their length means I have to squat like a lady while at work.

But yeah. The projects have stacked up. In addition to materials bought to make another apron (I kind of want to do a new one every summer) I also succumbed to the siren song of knits that Colette patterns has been sounding of late. The material on the left is so I can make a Moneta of my very own and, if the pattern is as simple and flattering as people say, I may make three more uniform dresses so I can have a new uniform this year. The material on the right is for curtains for the bedroom window. I bought them on sale at Lowe’s and I have plans to make them work better than they do now.

And, of course, I bought material to make a roller shade for the door-with-window in my bedroom ages ago. The colorful fabric is from Ikea. The border/backing fabric might look familiar to you, it’s the leftover fabric from the uniform project. I’ve layered the two together with a picture of said roller shade so you can get the effect. The not-quite-blue curtains I purchased at Lowe’s will be integrated with the room by cutting out birds from the excess Ikea fabric (I have enough, I checked) and sewing them on triangles of the uniform fabric and sewing those on the curtains. I also have plans to run a red ribbon across the curtains, (and possibly on the back of the shade?) to tie it into the red of the comforter.

As you can see, Sentinel is quite excited by this project.

Baby blanket finished!

Nothing like the baby actually being born to motivate the knitting process.

This was made for Mya Rose, Matt’s brand new niece.

I was nearly done with it in March, having knitted most of it while watching Downton Abby this season. But then I didn’t have any other shows to watch, so nearly done it stayed, until the birth spurred me onward.

Great thought.

This is from Lois Ehlert’s The Scraps Book and I love it. I’m going to post it over my desk. How many different eggs in the nest does every person have?

Laurel Dress. Making more bias tape and a setback.

I concluded I did not have enough bias tape to complete this project, so I made some more. Matt helped. I have good spacial relations, but not good enough to be 100% confident that I could make the bias tape exactly as before with those stripes.

Also, I discovered my iron has sprung a leak. I store it on top of the file cabinet when I’m not sewing and I discovered a wet, rusty mess below the file cabinet. This involved moving the file cabinet and cleaning under it.

Then I propped it up on bars of soap so air would circulate under and dry the bottom, without leaving rust stains.

I felt very smart to think of this solution.

Should there be any future reference needed, this is the way you slice your stripy bias tape to get bias tape to come out vertical.

Here’s my new bias tape maker! It’s the yellow thing on the right, nosed against the iron.

Here’s my good helper.

And here I am sewing together sleeves. You can see where the iron drips.

Progress on the Laurel Uniform dresses.

After months of nothing I have stay-stitched the neckline, joined the shoulders. It looks more like a dress and less like pieces of material that aspire to be a dress.

Laurel dress. Cutting of fabric.

I love that I can sqeeze both front and back on one fold of this material.

I also love my new Bluetooth speaker I bought at Fred Meyer. Much easier to listen to podcasts while I work.

Sleeves.

And I have this much left. What to do, what to do? Don’t worry, I already have a plan.

Waiting to be sewn.

Shrug and a return to the Laurel Uniform Project.

It’s getting really cold and I need to finish this shrug. So here I go. Look how much I took off the sleeves! That would be the line sewn into the sleeve area. Then I trimmed and bound.