Category: All (-ish)

Colette Patterns’ Laurel: Tiny ruffles are hard on the hands. Also, getting bias tape right.

Here they are, three sets of sleeve ruffles, nearly ready to ruffle.
 
And here I am ruffling them.  My fingers ached from all the pulling of bobbin threads.  I do a lot with my hands and they are pretty strong and don’t usually bother me, but something about the pinching and pulling really took its toll.  But there’s no crying in sewing.  (That’s a completely untrue statement.  There is often a fair amount of crying in sewing, especially when you finish a dress and decide the collar is horrid.  Just to take one random example.)
 
Attempt #3 at continuous bias tape was more successful with this tutorial.  The part that helped me the most is in the picture on the screen.  No Big Dill suggests actually numbering your lines so you can match things up and that worked wonders for me.
 
Cutting the continuous bias tape. Very satisfying.
 

Colette Patterns’ Laurel: The day of French Seams. Also, wrong orientation for bias tape.

French seams are awesome.  They neatly encase the raw edge of your fabric in a tube that is part of the fabric and would otherwise just be hanging out, needing finishing.  To make them you sew the seam with the wrong sides together (it feels so wrong, but it’s right), trim said seam, press open (and then over, if you are anal like me) and then pin the right sides together and sew the same seam again, then press again.  Here is a tutorial if you are interested.

If you followed all that, you have just realized that each seam of my three shirts needs to be stitched twice, trimmed once, and pressed twice.  There are seven seams per shirt (two neck, one back, two sides, and two sleeves) and three shirts so that makes 21 seams total which means 42 seams, 21 trims, and 42 pressing sessions.  All that is to say that all I did today was sew french seams until my eyes crossed.  Holy cow.

Here’s an example of the back.
 

The shoulder.
 
And the sleeve.  Still, they look pretty, don’t they?  And they are strong too, which is good for a work shirt.
 
To give myself a break, I started to make bias tape.  Here’s my fabric.
 
And here’s my joined triangle.
 
And here is me realizing that I have the angles wrong.  Blast!
This image comes from Colette Pattern’s book on the Laurel Variations, which is free to download and where I learned about the tiny ruffle variation of the Laurel.
 
To cheer myself, I cut out the fabric for the tiny ruffles.
 

Colette Patterns’ Laurel: Cutting out the shirts, adding neck facings.

All the fitting that is going to be done has been done.  So now it’s time to cut.  As you can see, my helper arrived right on schedule.  Unfortunately, he decided the best way to “help” would be to race around on top of the fabric.  This resulted in the helper being shut in the bedroom for a while.
 
Shirt pieces were cut.  And cut again.  And again.  It’s at this point that I think to myself, “If I was only making one of these shirts, I would be done by now.”  I’m sure that will not be the last time I have that thought.
 
Prepping the neckline for facings.
 
I used the tutorial from Gertie.
 
Shirts with neck facings.

Important note from the future:  For those of us making the tiny ruffle variation of the Laurel, I think the organza is overkill for the stay stitching.  There’s going to be a ruffle and bias tape there, no need to add the organza too.  Skip this step if you haven’t already done it.  Just do the stay stitching.  I’m guessing that’s all you need.

Spotting weird


Man, oh man, did I wish someone else was in the car with me!  As it was, I worked very hard to drive safely and take this picture.  This is why there are no close-up shots, because this car was next to me for miles on MLK Blvd, but I didn’t feel like I could drive and properly frame the photo.  It was only when the car pulled ahead of me to turn that I took the picture, which is too bad, because the details are crazy.

What do we have in the above picture?  The cylindrical form on the top of the car reminds me of the motorcycle cage Ryan Gosling used for his crazy motorcycle riding (see below)

And I think that was the point, because there were two BMX bicycles attached to the inside of the cage.  I couldn’t believe the amount of work that went into this.  The car had great swaths of its roof cut away.  The cage was welded to the car.  The bikes were welded to the cage.

And for what?  Car sculpture?  Final’s week art project?  Odd homage to bad-boy-holding-baby movies?

http://www.moviefanatic.com/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines/

I’ll never know, I guess.

45RPM: Romeo & Juliet (Indigo Girls and Dire Straits)

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

 The Indigo Girls “Rites of Passage” came out when I was refusing to get over my first boyfriend breaking up with me.  This song was the last song on side one of the cassette, and the amount of power and hurt in Amy Ray’s voice sent me quickly unfolding the lyrics sheet in the case to read the words along with her.  There was only a title and songwriters’ names and no lyrics.  Blast!  It was a cover!  No matter, through repeated play, I had them down in no time and could belt them out right along with Ms. Ray.  It was an excellent song for encapsulating my scab-picking-of-the-broken-heart mental state, and I loved it.  At one point it was playing when my friend April was around.  “Hey, this is Dire Straits.  My parents have the album.”  So then I knew who wrote it.  But I never heard the original until…

…I was leaving for college early that morning.  To be more precise, my entire family was leaving to drive me to college several states away.  I had spent the last few days/weeks/an entire year saying goodbye to people, packing, sorting things, planning.  I served my last two weeks at Pizza Hut, an ex-boyfriend stopped by to give me a good-luck card, I dreaded leaving my cat.  It was incredibly early–possibly even five o’clock in the morning–and I stumbled awake and into the bathroom, flipped on the radio and went about my getting ready duties for the last time as a regular resident of the house.  And there, right in the middle of washing my face, I realized the song I was hearing, the song with the simple guitar accompaniment and the quiet lyrics, was Dire Straights “Romeo and Juliet.”  Mark Knopfler’s song was a sadder, more accepting version of loss and it fit perfectly with the many goodbyes I had just given.  To this day, I love both versions for different reasons.

Hello From Future Me!

It’s me, your trusty blog author, writing from the far future of September 8, 2013.  Things are good here, but there are still no flying cars.  I’m here to tell you that the next month or so will be very busy, what with finishing up the uniform project and getting ready for school to start.  So this blog will be static for the next little while.  But that just means there will be a glut of catch-up posts in September.

Also, on September 8, you will change the format of the blog which will hopefully make it easier for people to comment.  That design you have now is sleek and everything, but I know you hate that it’s even hard for you, the blog author, to comment.  The new template will be much better, in that regard and also ORANGE!

So keep your head up.  There is much work to do.  But September 7 will be a very relaxing day.  Just keep breathing.