To Occupy my Time – Page 158

Coat Research

Part of my mission at Fabric Depot was to research coat options. I need a new coat and I have thoughts of sewing one. Here are my criteria: at least thigh length, has a hood, hourglass-shaped (or some such shaping around the waist), easy to sew, can do autumn and winter. It seems that this is a difficult combo to come by. Let’s rank the contenders and see how things come out.

Length: Yes
Hood: Yes
Hourglass: No
Easy: No information
Autumn/Winter: Yes
I’m looking at the upper right corner version.

Length: Yes
Hood: Yes
Hourglass: Not really
Easy: No information
Autumn/Winter: Yes

Length: Yes
Hood: No
Hourglass: No
Easy: Yes
Autumn/Winter: Yes

Length: Yes
Hood: No
Hourglass: No
Easy: No information
Autumn/Winter: Yes

Length: Yes
Hood: No
Hourglass: No
Easy: no information
Autumn/Winter: Yes

Length: Yes
Hood: No
Hourglass: Yes
Easy: No info, but one commenter rates it difficult, but great for advanced sewers.
Autumn/Winter: No
(I love this one the best, but I can tell it isn’t going to make the cut)

Length: Yes
Hood: Yes
Hourglass: Sort of?
Easy: I’m guessing not as it is Burda Style
Autumn/Winter: No.

Length: Yes
Hood: No
Hourglass: Yes
Easy: Yes
Autumn/Winter: Yes, if I made it out of a light fabric.
(This has the advantage of being a Pattern by Gertie. I’m a fan of Gertie.)

Length: Yes
Hood: No
Hourglass: No
Easy: Yes
Autumn/Winter: Yes

Length: Yes
Hood: Yes
Hourglass: No
Easy: Yes
Autumn/Winter: Yes

Length: Yes
Hood: No
Hourglass: No
Easy: Can’t tell
Autumn/Winter: Yes

Length: No
Hood: Yes
Hourglass: No
Easy: Yes
Autumn/Winter: No

Length: Yes
Hood: No, wait, yes!
Hourglass: Yes
Easy: Can’t tell
Autumn/Winter: No, more of a winter.

Length: Yes (a bit long)
Hood: Yes
Hourglass: No
Easy: Perhaps?
Autumn/Winter: More winter.
This also looks exactly like a coat I had my senior year of high school. I haven’t decided if this is a plus or minus.

Length: Yes
Hood: Yes
Hourglass: No, but fun princess seams in contrast color
Easy: Perhaps
Autumn/Winter: Yes

Length: Yes, though long

Hood: No
Hourglass: No
Easy: Probably not.
Autumn/Winter: More winter.

Length: No
Hood: No
Hourglass: No
Easy: No
Autumn/Winter: No
I only include this because Fabric Depot had a sample garment on display last winter. It is a fabulously weird coat–it kind of has an insect vibe going on. It’s also rated “advanced” in Vogue which means “super professionals only” in layman’s terms. I loved the strange arm/cloak aspect of it.

Length: Yes
Hood: Yes
Hourglass: No
Easy: No
Autumn/Winter: Yes

Length: Yes
Hood: No
Hourglass: Sort of.
Easy: Yes
Autumn/Winter: Yes
I’m including this one because it is another “unique” coat from Vogue. Its lack of closures would not hold up to the Portland rains.

Length: Yes
Hood: No
Hourglass: Yes
Easy: Maybe?
Autumn/Winter: Yes

Length: Yes
Hood: Yes
Hourglass: No
Easy: Probably not.
Autumn/Winter: Yes
This is a regional pattern company and I think this would be a fun coat to make in a fun fabric. Silver Falls State Park is near Salem.

Length: Yes
Hood: Yes
Hourglass: No
Easy: Eh.
Autumn/Winter: Possibly, depending on fabric.
I am including this because I think there could be a belt added here that might make this more palatable.

Length: A little long.
Hood: No
Hourglass: No
Easy: Probably not.
Autumn/Winter: Yes
It’s so cute! I will never make this, though.

Length: Yes
Hood: No
Hourglass: Yes
Easy: Nope
Autumn/Winter: Not really.

So let’s sum up.

24 total coats.
10 with hoods.
2 with hoods that are hourglass-shaped.
1 with hood that is marked “easy”

Which means we have a winner. And that winner is:
Simplicity 2208.

I was interested in what kind of polar fleece type selection might be available to me. It turns out I could make this coat in many different sports team’s logos. But Fabric Depot did have a goodly selection of material that would make this look a bit more classy than some polar fleece suggests.

As a bonus assignment, check out View B of Simplicity 2208. Is it incredibly cool, or incredibly not cool?

What do all y’all think?

Colette Patterns’ Laurel: More sewing adventures. Final muslin, Dritz magnetic pin cushion, pressing fabric & cutting out pattern.

Here’s the new fit with the new FBA. There is still that line of extra fabric from the bust, but I’m done fiddling. We will just go from here.

New sleeve. Seems okay too.

I splurged and bought the Dritz magnetic pin cushion. I did not like it. The magnet isn’t very strong and the pins fly off. Do not buy one.

Pressing 10.5 yards of fabric is a very daunting task.

Happily, my drying racks came in handy for storing the pressed material.

My apron patterns needed to be enlarged. I took care of two of the pieces on the copy machine at work.

But two pieces needed to be enlarged more than 400% so I went to (what I still think of as) Kinkos. (Now known as Fed/Ex.) A wonderful employee Heatherann helped me and look! For $3.75 I didn’t have to tape a million sheets of paper together. That was so worth it!

Colette Patterns’ Laurel: More pattern adjustment

I’m giving myself a bit more room in the sleeves.

And I’m doing one more full bust adjustment.

Notice that this time I angled the pattern back together at the waistline. Now we shall see if I get more room in the bust area with less fabric in the waist area.

The secret to comfortable summer skirt wearing.

Perhaps your thighs rub against each other while wearing skirts? Prehaps this makes you not want to wear skirts, even though you love them? Do I have a solution for you! Get yourself to a running store. You know the place: expensive shoes; fancy shorts that cost more than you spend on a winter coat; thin, laid-back employees, still mellow from there 15 mile morning run. Once you find your running store, ask for some Body Glide. It’s made for runners, but runners aren’t the only ones with chafing issues. You are now all set. The next time you put on a skirt, slap some of this on your thighs and they will glide smoothly past each other. So. Wonderful.

I’ve maintained for years that the Body Glide people are missing out on a huge marketing opportunity as I’m guessing the population of women with thigh chafing while wearing skirts is much larger than the population of runners who run far enough to have chafing issues.

Fabric Depot

This is where I buy a lot of my fabric, simply because it is so tremendously large. Fabric Depot is (for my world) very far away from me. It’s a 20-minute drive or an hour on public transportation. But boy, is it fun when I get there!

In the summer you can shop outside and get great deals on clearance fabric.

Just one section of the store! This is what I call the “fancy” material. Bridal fabric as well as all the tulle and also material for workout clothing.

The pattern department is huge. Aside from the usual shelf with pattern books, they have all these independent patterns.

Here is the fancy cotton, wool etc. section. It’s such a big store they have to have huge signs hanging from the ceiling.

I regularly read Gertie’s New Blog for Better Sewing and often hear the lament from commentators, “I have no good fabric stores near me.” So I feel very lucky to have Fabric Depot in my (extended) back yard.

Pendulum Aerial Arts

To begin my vacation, I attended a free performance of Pendulum Aerial Arts. They were breathtaking.

Here’s the rope girl.

This was a great hula hoop routine.

I think my favorite is the length of fabric.

The guy did the hoop.

Four of them did a floor routine where they did a lot of amazing balancing.

This was a very good way to begin my vacation.

The CT picture spread in VF

My Channing Tatum peccadillo is such that I not only bought this issue on the newsstand (actually from the supermarket) but TWO people gave me a copy. I enjoyed the article, but the photo spread was my favorite part. And not because it featured Mr. CT, (who I do not find that appealing in static 2-D, he only works for me in moving 2-D, a.k.a. movies) but because it was hilarious.

The cover isn’t too bad, it’s the captions inside that slay me.

Here we go. The captions will be big and bold. My commentary will be normal sized.

Tatum shares soup with a puppy.
This is actually a cute picture, one of his better static 2-D images. He, unlike many men of his era, can carry off a hat. And I know he likes dogs. But really? Who thinks of these things? “Get me a puppy! And some soup!”

The former male dancer shows off his body.
Ugh. The sweats! Has Vanity Fair decided to become the new Seventeen?

A vintage Mustang.
Um. Okay? But why?

A portrait of the young man as an artist.
Again, why? Are these things planned ahead of time? First, we will do the puppy/soup picture, then put you in sweats. After that! Step into this sweater and these velour pants and look arty.

Back in the saddle.
The other problem is that CT has a pretty limited male model look. (Paging Zoolander!) Above, we saw it face on, here he’s looking to the side.

Animal Magnetism
This is the requisite scrotum photo. Though I actually like this one because he is squint-y smiling.

A view from the ranch.

What ranch? Where does this ranch come in? It is not mentioned in the article. And why waste a picture on a forgettable “ranch” view when you could be showing your public more CT?

Tatum in the riding ring.
Here we get his model look from the other side. And learn that the shirt above, in the black and white photo, is blue. And the “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha” part of me needs to point out that he’s not actually IN the riding ring, but standing right outside.

Puppies!
Yes, that is really the caption. With the exclamation point. Again, is this Vanity Fair or Seventeen?

Shot by Bruce Weber in 2001.
“Oh my god, is that his pubic hair?” Matt said, as I was walking him through the photo spread. Hmmm. It is. And I hadn’t really noticed, either. This picture was taken four years before he would appear in Coach Carter and five years before A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, when an astute reviewer would comment that “the camera doesn’t just love him, it wants to marry him, settle down and have his babies.” Yep-per.

A vintage boat.
Dammit! We don’t care about the damn vintage boat.

Preparing to Launch
I sort of get this one, as the gist of the article is that Channing Tatum is big, but Channing Tatum himself seems to think he could be even bigger. And I guess he’s willing to step into an astronaut suit for a cheesy photo shoot.

I mean really Vanity Fair? This was the best you could do?

Common Ground Coffee House. Art.

It says, “Our Northern Wonderland.”

Colette Patterns’ Laurel: Fabric Preview and more muslin action.

Straight from the dryer. The blue in the back is the color of the shirts/dresses. The striped material in the middle is to make bias binding for the shirts/dresses. The green seersucker (this is how I can get more seersucker in my wardrobe) and awesome print are for aprons. Note: It is very difficult to dry 10.5 yards of fabric. Very, very difficult.

To review: Full Bust Adjustment gave more room in the bust, but then, due to lack of dart, gave too much room in the abdomen area. I have not been able to find any solutions for this on the Internet and so…

…here is where I remove some from the sides to attempt to fix this problem. It’s all I can think to do.

Eh. I’m not sure that did much good.

Plus, now I’m wrinkly in the back.

I’m making the sleeve a bit bigger.

And here I am with sleeves. I don’t like how they flare out.

Back view.

Yep. I think the sleeves need to be even bigger.

The Lorax Setup.

Kelly and I arrived at the park in Vancouver, Washington ready to see the Lorax. We were early so we claimed a seat in the front and got to witness the trouble with the inflatable movie screen.

The wind was a problem. It wasn’t big and gusty, just a persistent blowing that blew that screen right over. They tried to raise it a few times and then called for backup in the form of stakes.