An Actual Finished Garment

Ha. And you thought it couldn’t be done. Now I know it looks like I’ve finished garments before. But no! It’s all a clever deception. They are astonishing feats of illusion, whereby the outside looks finished and the inside… well, isn’t. But now I have vindicated myself. I have completed a garment with a perfect interior. No. You don’t understand. The interior is PERFECT.

I basted. I catch-stitched. I spent hours, HOURS, hand stitching the lining and hem. And of course, TLo won’t wear it.

TLo is lucky she’s cute. It’s clearly the only thing that is going to keep her alive until she’s 18.

You see, she has completely outgrown her old leopard-print fleece winter coat, which was in fact a hand-me-down that I made three years ago (yes, three years ago) for The Big One . Last year Santa brought the Big One a leopard fur coat (which was what she asked for. Along with a doughnut. That kid is weird).

Actually, technically speaking Mrs. Santa made the fur coat. At the cost of great personal pain. To the point that Mrs. Santa swore, volubly, that she would never ever no not ever work with faux fur again because who the @*#@$!! ever thought faux fur was a good thing to invent and everyone at the North Pole had better just step off if they know what’s good for them.

Faux fur did not bring out the best in Mrs. Santa.

And so we come to this winter. By now there is a long history (well, “long” if you’re 5 years old) of having leopard print for winter coats. In the minds of The Big One and TLo, nothing will do but a leopard print coat for winter weather. TLo needs a knew one and Mrs. Santa has made it pretty clear she is not working with faux fur any more. What to do, what to do? The solution: a leopard non-fur home dec print from Hancock’s. Mrs. Santa agreed to throw in a faux fur collar because even her hardened heart felt slightly bad when poor little TLo said in her sad little voice that she “wanted a soft furry collar by her face too”.

Clearly Mrs. Santa is too soft-hearted. She should have known better than to fall for that.

Here’s the coat:

I decided to use Ottobre 6-2009 #22, which was designed for shearling fleece. Which of course meant it wasn’t lined and had exposed unfinished seams. The home dec fabric I picked is very lightweight and definitely needed lining and maybe even underlining. So I adapted the pattern to be lined.

This basically involved drafting a back facing so the collar could be attached without seams showing.

And all the rest I finished using the most amazing technique that I learned from Shannon Gifford’s (SensibleSewing.com) online PatternReview.com class called “Stitch and Flip Jacket”. To sum it up in a nutshell, you attach the lining in such a way that all the vertical seams are completely enclosed while you work. The advantage of this (besides being totally cool and easy) is that you don’t need a lining pattern, you cut the lining from the exact same pieces as the fashion fabric. Ta da! Perfect for this project. (This class isn’t currently on the class list at Pattern Review and I don’t know how many times it’s been offered, but I highly recommend you petition Deepika to add it again sometime soon because it was totally money well-spent.)

I still had to do those hours (HOURS) of hand sewing to attach the hem and the front facing to the lining, but with this technique everything is stitched to the lining on the inside (similar to if you had an underlining) and no stitching shows on the outside anywhere.

This is a kick-ass coat.

Despite her Sears and Roebuck model pose, TLo is not happy with it and wouldn’t wear it today. She is a real pain in the butt. I think she gets that from her dad.

Night Of The Living Dead School Girl

OK, I think this child needs therapy of some sort.  When asked to pose for a picture of her uniform this morning, this is what she came up with:

Seriously?  It looks like those Victorian death portraits.  Yay.  That’s exactly what I was going for.

This is a great skirt, which I've made twice so far and plan to make several more times in larger sizes for TLo.  (Yes, it is very confusing that the Big One wears smaller sizes than the Little One- or at least this seems to completely baffle my husband.  The Little One could, technically, be called The Wide One.  But that's just mean.  Plus we're really trying to avoid actively instilling eating disorders in our kids-- unlike several of The Big One's first-grade schoolmates, who shall remain anonymous, and oh man don't even get me started on that one.)

This is BWOF 10-2006-140.  For some reason the new skirt from BWOF 12-2009 (as shown by Angie A. on her blog today) reminded me of this skirt.  In fact, they're not really all that similar, but I like the flippy skirt idea as a general concept.  It's particularly nice for more tailored school uniform looks.  I find the oversized A-line jumpers get a little boring after a while.

Anyway, I made this in a navy twill and a khaki twill as per the Great Uniform SWAP rules.  Both are Docker remnants from someplace or other (can't remember where exactly, might be Fabric Mart, might be someplace else). 

The only real change I made to the pattern was to add buttonhole elastic to the waistband.    Or at least, I think that was a change.  Anyway, it’s a change that I usually make if it’s not already included in the pattern.  I am a devout believer in Buttonhole Elastic. 

Because The Big One is so slender at the waist and basically has no butt (she gets that from her dad), I have to pull in the waistline quite a bit or else her skirt falls off. 

I think in this picture you can still see how nice a hip curve it has though.

  

This style must have been really popular in Germany in 2006.  In 2007 I met no fewer than 5 German women who pretty much had this exact skirt in denim.  I can see why they liked it, it's pretty darn cute.

This was the best pose I could get out of The Big One.  Plus, she’s looking particularly lovely with her giant missing-tooth gap and her hair uncombed.   I’m such a good mom to post these photos for everyone in the world to see.  I’ll be sure to save them to show her prom date too.

Some Honest Thanks.

Katie has given me the Honest Scrap award. Actually, she did this last week but I’m just a little slow in following through.

“Scrap means left over, fragments, discarded material. Many times truth and honesty are discarded material, considered fragments and left over. People like us need to tell it like it is and let the scraps fall where they will.”

Here are the rules:
1. Thank the person who gave the award and list their blog and link it.

2. Share "10 Honest Things" about yourself.

3. Present this award to 7 others whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged you.

4. Tell those 7 people they've been awarded Honest Scrap and inform them of these guidelines in receiving the award.

1. Thanks:

Katie at Kadiddlehopper nominated me for this award. She has more energy than any one person should have and gets an astonishing number of projects completed every month. Plus, they look good (because I suppose you could say my kids get astonishing numbers of "projects" completed every month too, but could you wear them?? Exactly.) Thanks Katie, for sharing all your wonderful work and for passing this award on to me.

2. I Hereby and Forthwith Nominate These People:

1) Everything Just Sew (Judy)

Judy designs gorgeous baby clothes. Plain and simple. I always love to see what she posts next.

2) The Stitchery (MaryBeth)

MaryBeth is a wise person who I don't speak with often enough. She also happens to make lovely clothes and she's extremely thoughtful about her work. Lucky for us, she shares her thoughts out loud.

3) Quality Time (Angie A.)

Angie is a happy person. I like that. She also makes clothes. Or at least, she discusses making clothes. She seems to actually create clothes about as often as I do. But she has very good ideas and really, isn't that what counts?

4) Is Sewing A Sport (The Other Judy)

Judy also makes cute kids' clothes and I like her attitude (she's another happy person... I like this in other people since I'm such a miserable pessimist myself).

5) The Slapdash Sewist

This is the girlie whose name I can't ever remember. I'm going to make up for that by saying she is really funny, very insightful and makes some cool stuff to boot. Plus, she is my new hero for giving me my new motto: "As long as you're not afraid to get cute clothes dirty, you can wear them every day." Awesomeness.

6) The Pink Place

I have no idea who this woman is, but she sure does make pretty things. She hasn't been blogging long, but everything she's posted has been lovely. Quality over quantity, I always say.

7) Location: Eurasian (Katharine)

Katharine is a great sewing buddy. She hasn't done lots of posting lately, but she has a darn good reason. I'm happy to see what she does post and hopeful that we'll be able to see lots more soon.

(There are so many many blogs out there and I know I only read a fraction of them. It’s really hard to pick just 7 blogs!)

10 Truthful Things About Moi:

1) I try to feel otherwise, but I don't really like dogs. Actually, I'm not discriminating against dogs per se. I don't really like domesticated animals of any kind. Except cats. And that's mostly because they persist in really liking me, which makes it seem uncharitable to dislike them in return. This Christmas, Santa is bringing The Big One a cat. I have some serious qualms about what this will do to my fabric stash.

2) I have a small problem with collecting and, rather more importantly, never using fabric. I do try to control this addiction, however. Mostly because I'm poor. Wait. Is that two truthful things?

3) I'm pretty poor. According to the government statistics on poorness. However, I think I'm really quite well-off in the scheme of things, so this just proves that government statistics can be very misleading. Don't believe everything the Man tells you, man!

4) My parents were hippies. Sort of. Enough that I'm lucky my name isn't Starflower or Nirvana or something. Not that Nirvana is a bad name. I used to know a lovely woman with that name. Of course, she was Indian. Which makes much more sense than calling some Irish kid from North Dakota “Nirvana”.

5) I think I'm smarter than most people in any given room. Actually, technically speaking I am smarter than most people in any given room, unless the room happens to be full of nuclear physicists. However, I'm not as smart as I like to think I am.

6) Being smart has gotten me absolutely nothing in this world. Unless you count a sense of smugness about being smart. Which is pretty much useless and almost never pays the rent or makes you popular.

7) I have hardly any friends. I doubt this has anything to do with #5 or #6. No, really. I don't think it does.

8) I think sarcasm is really entertaining.

9) I wish I had more time in the day to do all the things I want to do. Actually, I just wish I wasn't so lazy. But not enough to become less lazy. It's easier to wish for more time.

10) I hate washing dishes.