Boxers Update

I wrote briefly abut changing the fly on the Boxers to a "H" style, and using athletic mesh. I made another pair with a totally different mesh, from Len's Mills.

Just a refresher on how the fly pieces now look, and overlap.

There was bright green in this print, but when I cut the pieces out, not much actually showed.

It's kind of a waffle knit athletic mesh. Pretty bright in real life! I did such an awesome job lining up the butt seam with the fly dart!!

My dad has been having a rough patch with his health, so I made him some boxers too. In the green pair above, the elastic is on the outside, and this pair, it's on the inside. I don't know which is better, but no one has specified a preference. I stuck with the regular fly...partly because of habit and partly because my dad's mental clarity isn't all that great some days due to morphine, so I don't want to confuse him at an urgent time :)

 I bought this brown cotton lycra from Midnight Mountain Fabrics to make a brown shirt to go with the skirt from the last post.  I ordered a metre, but when I opened the package, it was only half a metre! I know I'm short, but that's not quite enough for a t-shirt with sleeves. I emailed them, and within a few days I received the full metre. I used the mistake cut to make these boxers. I really appreciated that I didn't have to send it back. As it was, it cost almost $15 to mail these to my dad. I vacuum sealed them, but I think the size of the "envelope" added to the cost. I'm glad I could cheer him up a little and add to his collection.

Just a Little Tank Top

I wrote recently about sewing due to frugality. I have another example today. Years ago I picked up this cotton knit at Value Village. It sat for awhile, and then I tried making a dress. I didn't have quite enough knowledge yet to get it to look like what I wanted. I wanted a ruched section in the middle. I struggled and struggled and wasn't very happy with my end result.

Fast forward six years and Megan wanted a cold shoulder skater girl dress and this was the fabric she picked from my stash. I was a little disappointed to give it up to her, LOL. 

 I improved so much in those years! I hacked a tshirt pattern into a dress, figured out the cold shoulder sleeves with the help of an online tutorial, and did a V back.  The only thing missing was pockets!

Okay, the V back isn't perfect, but still looks pretty darn good.

I was amazed at how well the sleeves turned out. 

Even more amazing was that her cousin showed up wearing the exact dress in black---that was store bought. 

I still had some fabric left, but not really a large enough piece for anything. After making the other skirt, I decided to take apart the dress, and make a skirt. Once I took it apart, I didn't have enough to cut the pieces from the other pattern, so I cheated and pretty much just put in a waistband and pockets, onto the skirt part of the dress. I couldn't re-use the top pieces, so I had to get creative with what was left from the stash. 

Colour blocking lace to the rescue!

I didn't have enough for the front so the top of the straps got lace.

 The back yoke got lace! The lace was from a faux "Belly Band" I had made. I just wasn't reaching for them anymore. And yes, it needs a sway back adjustment. I didn't have enough left to cut a one piece back, so with the centre seam I have no excuse why I didn't do it.

 There is a bit of pulling at the sides

 I think this is the Itch to Stitch "Lago" tank (free!), and I don't think I did a FBA. Perhaps next time I will add just a smidge, especially if the fabric isn't too stretchy.

Not sure what I was showing, except my happiness! It had been a hot day at school and I loved my outfit. 

And wouldn't you know...I don't have a picture of the skirt. Imagine the skirt and bodice of that dress at the top, with an elastic waist, and pockets.  I wore it a couple times with a brown short sleeve sweater and a brown t-shirt. I decided the brown t-shirt was too worn for school (but I liked that it had a wide neck band, almost a yoke). So I decided to order some brown fabric to make something fresh. I haven't gotten to that yet. Soon! Maybe that should be next on my sewing list. I was going to make a dress, but unless I find some boots, dress season is coming to a close. 

So, from that one Value Village purchase, I made one tween dress, one temporary dress, a tank and a skirt that both fit into my wardrobe easily. 

Sequoia Pants

Remember last spring when I made...wait a minute. No, it was summer 2017?! when I started making my own pants? The third pair I made, I tried to slim the legs down, and I wasn't all that pleased--the inner leg seams aren't straight. But I had three pairs of work suitable pants--I just didn't know I was starting a new job in December 2018! LOL! Then, in Jan 2018, Itch to Stitch released the Sequoia Pants/shorts.  Take my money!! I still needed a pair of grey pants! I just couldn't find the right fabric--grey fabric always seems to be too heavy. I made a muslin out of a steel blue sheet, and LOVE them. My only issue was for my width, I'm not very tall, so the full width of the pant leg was perhaps just a bit too wide. It's a fine line between balancing your width, and balancing your height. I tapered them down a little for this pair.

SOOOO many pattern pieces. Quite a few for the waist alone, but I decided to just do a knit band with no snap or button, like I had done on my first pants I made without a pattern. I do a faux fly.

I was getting desperate to find fabric. Finally Fabricland had their broadcloth on sale, so I just went with that. The weather was warming up, so I figured I might as well. I liked the colour. They are on the thin side though.

Washed the fabric, and laid it out to fold up. That's when I noticed that a good portion of one half of one side appeared to be faded!!! The broadcloth is near the front of the store, but I didn't think much light came through the window display. Maybe the bolt had been used in the window display at some time. Who knows. I was going to go back and complain, but I was too busy. Since it seemed to be on one side only, I used that as the wrong side, and cut as much as I could from the other end of the fabric. It did help to keep the RS/WS noticeable.

It's a little hard to see, but you can see a line going up the middle, and to the left of it, the colour is yellowed.

 I told my photographer I wanted pictures of the pants, and the shirt. I'm sure I said the back of the pants. This is what I got. The back fits great, I think.

 Look at all the pockets!! No gaping with the slanted pockets!

 A little slimmer than the other ones.

So, these pictures are crap. LOL. Maybe I'll get more.
I didn't have plain grey snaps. I had Transformer engraved grey snaps. So, the exposed snap caps got Transformer snaps, because I thought that was pretty appropriate, considering the hidden ties to make these into capris. I went and bought cheap buy expensive snaps at Fabricland for the hidden caps, and the other parts of all the snaps (the engraved snaps only come with caps).

So, I do love these pants. The rise feels a smidge low, so after sewing in the waistband, I wore them a while. Then I noticed the seam had split. I hadn't serged the waistband and pants together yet, so I went around and serged them together and I'll take out the original seam for a bit more rise. I like the narrower legs.

My only complaint...the pocket flaps. My phone fits well in the pockets, but I can't snap the pocket flap. The phone is too tall. If the flap was higher though, then it wouldn't be long enough to reach the pocket snaps. Making the flap bigger is not going to look right for proportions. So, I'll have to make the pocket longer, and make sure it all fits together for the next one. But my phone is a bit on the larger size. An Apple 6 would probably fit fine. My Asus ZenPhone and Samsung A5 don't fit.

The Trouble With a Stash....

I don't do a lot of fabric mixing in individual items, but when knitting, I will often be mixing yarns for certain effects. Often though, I just don't have the right yarn to go with what I already have...so the stash grows. That's not usually too much of an issue for me with fabric. I buy a piece of fabric, I use it,  I keep big scraps for Boxerwear flies, or crotch linings in underwear, or sometimes bands. So as long as I'm sewing as fast as I'm buying (ha!) the stash won't significantly grow.

But sometimes a piece comes in and sits there. Could be I loved it, but it wasn't as big as I thought. Or the material is not right for anything I'm working on. Sometimes I have bought fabric and then changed my mind about the project. That's what happened with this salmonish stretch lace yardage. I picked it out to make a "belly band"--a loop of stretchy material or lace worn over your pants waistband to smooth it out and /or fill the gap if they're a bit low or your shirt is short. Megan liked the colour and also wanted a bathing suit cover up because it matched.

Neither of those things happened. Megan's bathing suit faded so quickly (do I even have a blog post about it?). So the lace sat there. I thought I might use it when I made the rayon "pillowcase" dress. I thought I could colour block the sleeves but the family thought it looked odd. So the fabric sat. I kept seeing lace everywhere though and thought it was time to do something, especially after making the tank tops with the lace down the center back. I wanted to expand out a bit. At first, I thought I'd do the sleeves in lace. Too predictable. Then I saw some shirts with the back yoke in lace. Nice, but not quite right (looking at my photos, apparently I did make a tank top with a lace yoke). Then I saw my mother-in-law in a split back t-shirt  and thought, if she's wearing one, I need one. But of course, none of my fabric was suitable.

Off I trudged to FabricLand with my fabric. I'm so picky about matching colours. I was not optimistic. I walked around, everything was too expensive. I headed to the clearance/remnant bin, and found two good sized pieces of fabric. One was a woven that I thought my girls' might like as shorts but still matched the lace (they turned it down), and one was this knit. It's a little thicker, with a plush feel. Could be a ponte?

I got out my t-shirt pattern, all set to hack. First up, I had to create the back yoke. No problem. The petal pieces weren't hard too, though I had just done a swayback adjustment on something and loved how it looked so I was disappointed to not be able to really do that. I thought about it a long time though. Then I got really creative, and decided I wanted to split the yoke and do the stripes on the bias. Pointing up.

I needed some strong coffee for this. And in the end, though my stripes matched awesome, they were pointing down! LOL. I didn't have a lot of fabric, so I just went with it.

 Everything else on this top was a pure fluke. I decided to cut the neckband going the opposite way than normal (it was still stretchy), so it would have little vertical stripes. I had absolutely no intention of it matching at the back. Never even thought of the possibility while planning.

 And I sure as heck did not think about having the yoke stripes match the sleeve stripes!  Holy cow, I could not believe my luck. Perhaps it makes me look a little wider, but that is a lucky sewing-win if I've ever had one. And even more incredible was that both sleeves turned out like this, not just one. If it was only one, that would have been really odd looking.

The two layers of lace still seemed a little see-through, and with the way they curve and there's only one layer at the sides, I worried about my bra showing and if it would be school friendly. I didn't get to wear it to school, but I  think it's fine. Next time, I could make the yoke longer, or more likely, make the back pieces angle more sharply and meet at the sides lower. However, I doubt I'll do this again in the lace. If I made the angle different, due to my short height, those pieces are going to lose the nice curve and I might as well just totally overlap two normal pieces, sewing them together most of the way down. I guess that is an option, but I wanted a bit of looseness.  My mom's not a fan of the shirt, but this time, it's just she doesn't like this style. It wasn't about how it looked on me. I hope I get to wear it more. I don't know if I wore it again this summer. I've gotten to the point where I have more favourites than I really need. Do I get rid of the old frumpy t-shirts?

Great Value!

One reason I sew is to make clothes that fit ME. I'm short, full busted, full belly, not much butt. Regular sized clothes in size XL to fit my bust have issues with gaping armholes, wide shoulders because I'm not 5'6". Pants that fit my belly droop on my butt. I can find petite clothes, but it gets expensive for the basics (worth it for jeans and more elaborate items I won't sew. I need a new coat and I'm hoping to find something), and there's really only one store with affordable (for employed people) petite clothes.

The other reason I sew is because I haven't had much income. Combine low income with needing specialty sizes? Insert sad face here. However, I can't afford to just walk into FabricLand and buy 2-3m of good fabric (even on sale it's still really pricey). One of the best sources of fabric has actually been the thrift store chain, Value Village. It can be really hit or miss, but when I score, it's usually awesome!! Sure, I have no clue what the fiber content is, but how it feels matters more to me.

I found this fabric quite awhile ago. It was a large piece. It waited patiently in my bin and finally in the fall I made a "simple dress".  When my mom saw those pictures, she was not impressed. While my mom is not a style maven, I take her opinion seriously. The dress had to go. I figured the easiest thing to do was turn it into a skirt.

Of course, I couldn't just stitch up the armholes and keep the casing for the ties as the waistband. No, I needed to use a real pattern, cause darn it, I have a drawer full of them that need to get used! I picked one (I actually didn't have much for stretch knit skirts), and look! It's my trusty New Look 6735!! Fabulous! I don't know if I'll ever make the wide leg pants, or the cardigan (I like cardigans, but that one looks a little too Grandpa-ish for me. I think I don't like the sash).

I think I might have shortened the upper  part, and I added pockets. Of course...I could not fit all the pieces onto the taken-apart dress. But I still had tons left so no problem.

I wore this outfit to work (substitute teacher) the day after finishing, and got great comments before the day even started. I didn't wear those sandals, but I wish I had LOL. I haven't worn skirts in a long time. So long in fact when Rob asked what I was making, and I replied "A skirt" he said "You don't wear skirts!". How does he notice that, but can't remember Megan's friend's name?  I love how this skirt is twirly, but because of the great shaping, it doesn't really fly up in the wind. It's slim at the waist, which I think is key for me. No gathered skirts for me. The t-shirt was slim fitting, which is also important. I will definitely make more of this pattern.

I also wanted to make tops with the left over fabric. I wear patterned dresses, so I figured, with the right top, it will simply look like a dress. The first top I made, just the simple t-shirt from ....New Look 6735. It looks fancy in this polyester fabric though LOL. 

I had to severely alter the colouration on my phone camera. The fuchsia was showing as salmon! It looks fine with the skirt, though I haven't had the opportunity to wear that combo.

I still had fabric left. Yup! It was in somewhat smaller pieces now, so I knew I had to do something with some sort of piecing. Then, the Plitvice was released. Bingo! I may have had to seam the back instead of one piece, I can't recall and I'm not running up two flights of stairs to check.

I had a job interview, and I thought this would be the perfect outfit. 

I didn't wear those flip flops!

I didn't have the fusible stay tape, but people in the FB group said they cut narrow strips of fusible interfacing, so I did that. Worked great. 

After the interview, I got changed into these grey Sequoia pants I haven't blogged about yet. I needed photos of the pants, so I employed one of the kids. I'm not sure why she thought I didn't want my head in any shots. 

I didn't make any alterations to the pattern (maybe shortened it near the bottom). I wasn't sure how it all went together. One tester had done a FBA but I just wasn't sure how to do it. I think the middle section is a little small over my summer fluff. I think if it had a bit more width, the gathers would show better. But how to keep that princess seam where it should be? The gathers sort of rode upwards and sat on my upper chest, and pushed the cowl up. It did feel a little wide on my shoulders. 

 I don't see a seam there.  It is a banded shirt and my first three attempts at banded shirts are not my favourite, but this one worked.

The cowl is quite nicely constructed to prevent flip out and gaping. 

When I was visiting my mom the week before the interview, she just happened to have a fuchsia cardigan that she never reached for. Of course I'll take it! Perfect for movie night in the park (same day as the interview, which is why I changed into the grey pants). 

I also have a solid fuchsia top but I think it'll be too much pink. I even have fuchsia pants. Not sure if it matches well enough. But I can really mix and match these pieces. White, grey, black tops with the skirt, and grey or black pants with tops. And this huge piece of fabric was $5.99.

$5.99 for "designer" skirt, and two tops. Pretty awesome!

I Spy a Spoxxy!

What is a Spoxxy? It is a very popular tank top pattern by Stitch Upon a Time that went out of print awhile ago. Why did they retire it when so many people kept requesting it? I don't know. They finally brought it back for a very short time, so I snatched it up. Then, a couple months later, they brought it back again--updated and with dress options. Luckily, once you purchase a pattern, if it gets updated, you get the new version free!

I made this version for Megan when I first got it--before the updates (which apparently changed the armholes slightly). She likes it. She didn't want the bottom band.

 The yoke piece is white athletic mesh. Well, actually, it's leftover wicking mesh from diaper making, but we won't tell her that.

I think I made the medium. It seems a bit snug around that arm, however, as a pre-teen, it can be hard to fit patterns. We've had gaping problems in the past with necklines, and this doesn't have that. She really liked it. Her friends were amazed I made it! Since this picture she got her hair cut quite a bit shorter!

I made myself one too, using the scraps left from the purple/brown/white polka dot fabric. I did a white waistband. I didn't do a FBA because everyone said it has great ease. Well. The top looked like crap on me. Truly. It was a total fit and fashion disaster. I ended up taking the white band off to use as a waistband on a pair of shorts for Megan. Those turned out great.

Then the revised version was released (check the link at the top of the blog), and I liked the dress. I wasn't sure about the elastic waist, and all that gathering at the front. I don't have a long torso and to gather all that fabric needed to go over the bust, at the waist? No thanks.

I had found this awesome maxi dress at Value Village. I loved the colours. It was a little more than I like to spend ($13.99) but it was in great shape and a rayon-spandex blend. It wasn't quite wide enough though, so that gives you an idea of the volume of the dress. Also, I don't think the dress has a back seam, but my "fabric" did. The yoke is plain black cotton-lycra. I'm not sure what size I did, but I did not do a FBA. I think I might add just a smidge next time.

I created a shelf bra. I was following a sew along in a SUAT sew along group and she showed how to do it--plus I had already done it before. Somehow though I didn't make the bra long enough in the front, and it caused this ripple below the neck band:

And here's the fixed version:

 The sew along group leader was a great help in figuring out the bra needed to be longer. I took off the elastic at the front, and added an almond shaped piece to the front, then re-did the elastic. It worked! The seam is just below my bust apex, more on the lower portion, so it doesn't show (and the print fabric helps).

 I did have to re-do the pockets in a lighter weight fabric. I wanted them to not stretch, but the fabric was making the dress hang weird. I measured the pockets against my phone, but it's odd. The phone technically fits, but it angles outwards and still sticks out past the opening. Dont' know how to fix that.

What  I like about this dress is that it is fitted through the bust but then really flares out. At first my mom said it makes me look larger, but I showed her how it was so loose and flowy, so obviously I couldn't be as large as the dress! Great for those fluctuating size days! The key is to be fitted through the shoulders and bust so the extra ease at the waist looks intentional. If the bust and shoulders are too large, the whole thing just looks messy.

 Apparently I don't have a picture of me wearing it? Here I am at my parent's (it's kind of like being at a cottage). The down side with dresses? Once it gets cold. I did even put on pants underneath by the time it got dark. I have since made a light grey cardi that will make this dress school friendly. Considering that you can't see my bra straps, I guess it could be school friendly already! It is super comfortable and I wear it lots on the hot days when I just don't want a bra. Wore it yesterday but didn't get a picture. I will update once I do!

She's Talking To Me

I picked up this fabric in a local destash (I picked up a huge bag of scraps, as well as some larger pieces. Some of the scraps were pretty large though!). It's a nice, stretchy cotton-lycra with good recovery. However, my TNT t-shirt pattern was drafted with a looser, not as stretchy CL. I didn't realize I needed to make it a bit bigger to allow for that. It feels a bit snug, but I still wear it.

The seller couldn't remember if all the fabrics had been pre-washed, so I washed it. I don't know if it was from sitting in the machine damp, or if it was touching another fabric (and I'm sure I hung it to dry outside), but when I went to use it, there was blackish marks all over. It looked dirty and smudgey.

They seemed to be on only one half of the fabric. I scrubbed, I tried bleach (total disaster), I scrubbed and soaked it again. It was much better after another wash.

 The angle of this isn't good because I was using the self-timer and had a hard time finding a spot to set up the camera. It's definitely form fitting.

Can't remember if I tried adding a swayback adjustment. I don't  think so. Why do my pants look so bad? Look how twisted that right leg looks!

I wore this shirt (and, ummm, I think those same pants) when hubby and I had to take a little road trip to pick up his motorcycle parts. We stopped at a Tim Horton's. I was standing on Rob's right, and there was a worker just a bit to Rob's left. She commented "I like your shirt, where'd you get it?" and Rob thought she was talking to him. He was wearing a long sleeved t-shirt from his Christmas pajama set, complete with toothpaste drippings. No, dude, she was talking to me!!  I had hoped to make a "nice" t-shirt to wear for work--goes with grey and black pants. But it feels a little too snug, and therefor a little too casual.