Sewing is Art

I have to be careful with so-called "refashioning" or "repurposing". Sometimes it turns out the original garment is something I should give away or throw away. Case in point is farthest-on-the right, a pair of pajamas I swed for Ralph out of (IMO) very ugly - but very sturdy, as it turned out - fabric from the Swains bargain table. Those pants lasted a couple years with near-nightly wear and Ralph loved them. When the crotch seam fell apart irreparably, I decided both he and Nels would like a small version saved.

The middle fabric I love - a mock-houndstooth print (houndstooth is now my favorite pattern!) that was only $2. I chose this length of fabric for the pants with the most detail (triple-stitched topstitch, mock fly, cuffs). My inspiration, nineties skater boy flannel pants:






The Boy, up to no good.

Labels: pajamas, wardrobe refashion

Today was a big enough deal I made sure to secure a (borrowed) camera: I got my new sewing machine, a Juki HZL-E80. And I popped its cherry right away, whipping up the underskirt for Suse's dress (both from Ottobre's 01/1007 issue):


The underskirt took about twenty minutes.


P.S. No pictures in this series indicate how very, very much Nels wants to wear this dress. And dance /sing to Justin Timberlake's "Summer Love."


Darn flash makes dress look bright. Dress is actually rather subdued.

Labels: dresses, maquina de coser, Nels, Sophie

I sew and sew and sew and so rarely document what I sew. Here are two of my children's Halloween outfits:





Can you guess what Nels was? The letter "V", that's right (his idea - for months before the holiday). You can see their auxillary costumes in this blog post. I love, simply love corpsey bridal stuff (as evidenced by Sophie's ensemble last year). This year she chose "dragon" which was kind of a pain, but I rose to the occasion.

Labels: costume, Nels, Singer, Sophie

I've been watching "The Office" again. Which one? Both; I finished the BBC's seris last week and this week finds me in Season 2 of the American version. I just viewed the episode where Dwight picks the office's health plan and today's blog post title references that.


Yay for my first pair of socks!


I hate ribbing but because I am a dork I ribbed all the way down this pair.

Friday after I learned grafting (kitchener) I let Suse pick out the yarn for her pair:

Labels: knitting, socks

I have a "new" machine. It was my grandmother's. Oddly it is almost the exact age of my 201-2 (which is to say, 56 years old). My MIL saw it today and said, "Do you have any good new machines?" meaning most people want to see shiny white plastic. The machine was dirty and cosmetically banged-up, but runs well. I'm thinking of hauling its over-heavy ass to the Quilt Show in Ocean Shores tomorrow to give to the reps who can take it to their Oly shop and clean it / tune it up.


Yesterday two girlfriends and I had a little sew-date together. This was about an hour before my world went a bit sideways. P.S., I'm at the heel flap and heel turn of the socks pictured above left and they're going great.

Labels: knitting costume friends singer

From a tutorial on Instructables. Guess what, I shopped for everything and did it all myself. Ralph helped at the end. I am honestly not good at that stuff. The leather is cannibalized from an old favorite coat from my brother; I lined them with twill from a dress of my mom's and used a combo of hardware-store hardware and vintage buckles.

I made two pair.

Come to my sewing workshop on Wednesday, September 12th! It's at the library! You could totally pay your fees or look through archive copies of our local crappy paper! ;-)



I hosted a few sewing workshops in Port Townsend. I only got attendance when I charged money for it. However I'm willing to try *again*, this time with an "aggressive leaflet campaign".

Labels: SNF