The Pincushion for Everything

I’ve actually been working on finishing things this fall. Last month was the Burda jacket, and this week it was the Weighted Pincushion Organizer from Elizabeth Hartman for Sew, Mama, Sew!, which I started nearly 2 years ago. It’s a cute design and so useful. And it’s no longer a UFO!

The fabric is the same as what I used to make my knitting bucket bag that I made last year, so lovely to sew this stuff! This pattern/tutorial is really well done, and the pictures and directions made it so easy to put this together.

Done in less than a day, it was a nice project to do between bouts of working on my skirt sloper (Craftsy course “Patternmaking Basics: The Skirt Sloper” with Suzy Furrer) and also my jeans copy (also a Craftsy course, “Jean-ius! Reverse Engineer Your Favorite Fit” with Kenneth D. King) I’ve got the skirt sloper fitting really well now so I’ll be able to show this soon. And I will, because after losing over 15 lbs nothing fits anymore so I need to make some skirts to fill the hole in my wardrobe. (And as we all know skirts are so much simpler to make than trousers, but I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about making some jeans and Thurlows this winter too.)

Yay for fewer UFOs!

Burda Jacket 02-2011-109 – Finished UFO

How long does it take some UFOs to finally get off the shelf and out in the street?

Well, this one took just 3 1/2 years!

I started this jacket in Sherry’s RTW Tailoring sewalong back in April 2011. That’s right! I got everything sewed up except the buttons, front buttonholes and the hem (and blogged it here); I just didn’t know how to handle the hem.

Then last month I decided to just do the bagged hem anyway (using Sherry’s sewalong posts), but stop at the slits and do them by hand. It actually worked out. The slits are not the neatest on the inside, but nobody will notice. And it’s good enough to wear, which is all I care about!

   

These buttons seem fairly delicate for the denim, but I like the look (despite them being slightly difficult to handle.) The front buttonholes are also corded to counteract the stretch denim.

I’m so happy to have this jacket finished!!

Coming soon, more on this year’s finished sewing projects.

How to Remember Serger Settings

How does this happen? Where does time go? Holy cow, next week it’s May already!! At least spring has F I N A L L Y arrived in Ottawa, man it was a long winter.

So, with May comes the Ottawa Race Weekend and I’ve signed up for the 5K again. And for this race I’m sewing some new running gear, which has been on my To Do list for ages.

Four years ago I made the Jalie 2796 Skort, which I always wear in warm weather. It’s great, but I want some funkier stuff. I’ll blog details about this very soon, as I’ve only just started today. But, while I was testing out the various serger stitch settings for the lycra fabric I realized that I already did this for the first skort (same fabric, different colour). Of course, I couldn’t find the stitch samples with my notes. Not surprising since I’ve rearranged my sewing room 3 or 4 times since!

Here’s a pic of what I came up with.

I used the stitch settings table from the journal pages I did last year, and printed out on card stock, 8 cards to a page in portrait mode. (For some inexplicable reason it displays as landscape in Google Drive even though on my computer it’s portrait. You should be able to change the orientation yourself, I hope!).

Now I can attach the actual stitched fabric samples to the card with all the settings, and the ring keeps them all together. This will be a great reference for when I use the same fabric in the future. And it’ll hang by the machine, so no more hunting.

For anyone interested, here’s a link to the serger stitch settings Excel spreadsheet. And now that I think about it, I can probably put this in a Word document as well. Soon!

 

A Sewing Room Update

Sewing for others has it’s benefits, namely being paid for it! And with the money I earned from the chair and ottoman covers and some other alterations back in September, I immediately put it back in the sewing room, which was really getting out of hand.

The main thing I did was replace the fabric storage with the ever popular EXPEDIT shelving from IKEA. I’ve lost count of how many other sewintists have these shelves! They are absolutely great for folded fabric, considerably deeper than standard book shelves. The tall shelves hold a third of the fabric, and other stuff, the majority of the rest (good stuff) is on the shelves under the window.

I also decided to get rid of the huge work table I had, which was always half covered with “stuff”. The height of that old table was actually perfect, but I really needed a table to sit at for studying as well. If I really need a higher table for cutting out fabric/tracing patterns I can always use the kitchen counter which is great for that!

The new arrangement is so much nicer and open, there’s no more bumping into furniture or trying to squeeze through. The mirror on the wall, partly behind the door, is now much more visible and usable.

I thought I’d have plenty of storage with the 3 EXPEDIT shelving units (4, 8 and 16 cubes), but there’s still stuff laying on the ironing station and on the floor! (My attempts at making a collage need a lot to be desired!)

And just for the heck of it I did a true panorama shot tonight with the camera in portrait mode – I didn’t think that was even possible. I’m sitting on the ironing station below for this one, and there’s my course materials and laptop.

The desk sure comes in handy for my studying – just 7 more days left!!! And a whopping big course project due next week. But there on the stool (right) is my next project pinned to Annie, it’s going to be a DVF inspired wrap dress in black.

Well that’s me for now. Once I’m done my course in Digital (Web) Analytics next week I’ve got PLANS for working those poor, neglected machines!!