H1N1 Doesn't Strike Back

So everybody in our house has been ill. Really ill. Horribly awfully help-we-all-have-the-black-death ill... and none of us even had swine flu. Does this seem fair?? I mean, we're all hacking up lungs and feverish and whatnot and we still have the potential TO HAVE IT ALL AGAIN if we get H1N1. This is Not Right! I protest! Someone should DO something about... well... something.

Hmmph. So what with having some sort of bronchitis or pneumonia or the plague or whatever and a lovely variety of other highly stressful situations cropping up all month, I have done zero blogging, reviewing or sewing for several weeks. Well, I made a simple sundress as part of The Big One's Halloween costume. That just about did me in.

Hey, here's a picture of it from this morning (it was Parade-the-kindergarten-and-first-grade-kids-around-the-school-like-prisoners-of-war-in-Halloween-costumes Day at school today). The Big One is, if you can't tell, A Cat. This is like a dream come true for her. I thought she would pass out from sheer joy.

She is a really weird kid.



Sorry for the bad photo, I used our new teeny tiny video camera. Did I mention that this week our computer was also completely hacked by a virus and I had to wipe the whole thing and reload the OS? Yay. So I haven't reloaded my Photoshop software yet and I couldn't fix the photo either. Oh, the trials of modern life.

Anyway, TLo was, as you may have guessed, A Princess. Who carries a magic wand. She would probably have gone for the Princess-Who-Carries-A-Magic-Wand-AND-Has-Fairy-Wings look, except that I cleverly hid the wings last night before she remembered that she owns them. I'm a mean mom like that. I did not make that costume either.

Just to keep up the pretense of writing about sewing, the sundress I used for the cat costume was Ottobre 3-2009-18.





My devious plan was to use "real" articles of clothing and purchase a $5.00 ear and tail set from Walmart. Mission accomplished! Even though the tiger-print is a bit over the top, The Big One can certainly wear it this summer. In fact, I'm sure she'll be thrilled.

I've made this dress three times now, once with an adjustment to the width of the front and back pieces to allow for more fullness and add some pleating detail to the front. It's a very simple dress design and it tends to look a little Susie Homemaker to me, but the girls adore wearing it so I can't really complain, as it takes all of an hour to cut out and sew together.

Anyway, I'm hoping tomorrow or Sunday I will be able to get back on track for "Polo: The Most Popular Mediocre Shirt...EVER!" if I can get organized. I'm also in the middle of trying to design a new work wardrobe, as I will (possibly) soon have a new job and I own (literally) not one office-appropriate piece of clothing. Yay. I dread sewing clothes for myself, so this should be horrifying.

Polo. It means “chicken”, right?

OK. So I just read this post (well, I had to, it's really really hard to write a post without actually reading it). Apparently I have a little too much to say about polo shirts. I surpise even myself. I'm afraid I'm going to be one of those people. You know, people who stand around at parties or soccer games and drone on and on and on and on and on... about model trains or low-carb diets or collecting pygmy elephants or whatever. It seems I'm like that with polo shirts. This is really weird, since as a general rule I detest polo shirts. This post is just the first, well second, of many many things I have to say about, yes, polo shirts.

Good grief.

I started out on the Polo Shirt quest with Kwik Sew 3226.


Unfortunately, I seem to be incapable of remembering that I usually really dislike KS patterns. They're sort of like frozen packages of diet chinese food: They seem like a good idea, but when I get them out of the package I'm always disappointed with the reality.

This KS pattern was like that. I chose it because I'd never made a polo shirt before and I had the suspicion that the placket would be tricky... too tricky to try to make one from BWOF or even Ottobre without picture instructions, even though I have several issues of both magazines with polo-like shirts. So I bought the Kwik Sew, because one thing I will say for them: they usually have excellent illustrations and instructions.

Unfortunately, they also seem to almost never make anything the way it's normally made. Case in point: this pattern doesn't do a 'typical' polo/rugby placket. It has this weird facing thingy that, when completed, forms a sort of floppy interior mess. I am of the opinion that needlessly excessive facings are pure evil. This one is a prime example.


Of course, I'd already cut out all the other pieces before I realized how awful the Floppy Facing would be. And of course, this shirt was part of my "let's see how many unwanted adult shirts we can use up for school uniforms" plan as well. Which is to say, I had a very limited quantity of fabric to work with (i.e. one 2XL-sized shirt's worth).

In the end, I found two useful rugby placket tutorials online: one here, apparently from Timmel Fabrics, although mysteriously you can't actually go to the Timmel Fabrics website. The other one is from Dawn at Two On Two Off. They both basically say the same thing, although Timmel's is more verbally descriptive and Dawn's has really good photos. Feeling more secure with a few pictures behind me, I scrapped the Floppy Facing and scrounged up enough remaining fabric to make a 'real' placket.


I can't say I did a very good job, but it was a place to start. The buttonholes are particularly disastrous, but I think that's mostly because I had the wrong needle in my machine and didn't realize until too late.

In any case, I plodded on. This first shirt was the result. I'll say right now that it's pretty dismal all things considered, but it was more of an experiment than an attempt at a perfected piece. I ended up changing the collar to a peter pan collar that I drafted myself, since I actually used an "old" (and, as far as I can tell, never worn) long-sleeved t-shirt I got from my mom. It didn't have a collar that I could cannibalize so I made this one instead.


No, those are not dust spots from my camera. The Big One has worn this shirt at least three times, which means it's basically destroyed from mysterious irrevocable spots. She is Very Messy.

I also gathered the cuffs of the sleeves with elastic, because the original pattern produced gargantuan sleeves... way too humongous for The Big One's little stick arms. The gathering had the added advantage of being more girlie.


I also thought I'd try out the decorative stitching on my sewing machine with a wing-needle, just to see what would happen. Nothing much, apparently. This was probably not the best fabric to try it on.


Since making this, my further efforts in the Polo Shirt quest have been better, especially since I completely changed my base pattern. All in all, I'm chalking this first one up to a learning experience. I learned:

A) how much fabric is provided for by a 2XL shirt (it will create an entire size 5 polo shirt or dress)

B) Kwik Sew patterns are just not for me. Maybe I'll remember that before I purchase another one. But probably not.

And C) despite owning approximately two thousand sewing reference books, not one -one- has any sort of instruction on how to sew a rugby/polo placket. And my multitude of sleeve placket instructions just don't quite cut it.



Clearly I have to purchase a few more books. It's for the children.

And The People Rejoiced...

The Great Uniform Interregnum has been ended! Long live the Great Uniform!

Or whatever.

Actually, I think the Great Uniform SWAP and the Hannah Andersson SWAP will have to form a power-sharing coalition. By consolidating their votes they can maintain complete control of the Sewing Room, sweeping aside the flimsy arguments of the I-Desperately-Need-A-New-Purse Party and the What-The-Hell-Am-I-Going-To-Wear-This-Winter Party. The Uni-Andersson Coalition will triumph in Sewing Room politics. And so, Citizens of the Sewing World, we move on to the order of the day. Which is: Polo.

Polo was invented about a billion years ago by some people in Persia who had way too much time on their hands. (Of course, it's my hypothesis that anyone who plays- let alone invents- any kind of sport has way too much time on their hands.)

Polo, like most sports, is a war game. In fact, I think it was originally played using the severed heads of vanquished foes or something like that. In any case, it's all about blood-thirsty battle and hacking your enemies into gorey pieces until they lie sobbing on the ground in a state of utter humiliation and/or death. This, of course, makes it the logical inspiration for elementary-school uniforms.

99% of the school uniforms in this town, indeed the entire country, involve some form of a polo. Sure, the school says you can wear a blouse or a "shirt", but does anyone actually dare to do such a thing? No. The Polo Syndicate clearly has a hold on the uniform market.

OK, so polo shirts are "basic" and "standard" and so (apparently) make good uniforms. I get that. They can also be easily purchased from various places in Hell-- I mean The Mall-- for a few nickles and a handful of beans. I'm sure there are sweatshops in Kenya or Hong Kong or Saskatoon filled with busy, consumption-ridden children creating the endless acres of polo shirts that fill our shops. I decided to save the children and make my own shirts.

I'm just that kind of person. I expect my Humanitarian Of The Year Award at any moment.


You know, I think I'll break this post up into multiple posts. I have a surprisingly large volume of things to say about polo shirts and the making thereof. Which is crazy, since I've only completed five. But I've been through several patterns and variations, so I think in the interest of having something to do over the next week (because I'm soooo short of things to do), and to keep this post from being longer than Gone With The Wind, I'll break it down.

And so, Citizens of the Sewing World, today I will simply leave you with this:

Ralph Lauren polo dress. Size 5. $47.50.


My polo dress. Size 5. I used an old shirt of my husband's... so whatever a slightly worn two-year-old shirt from WalMart is worth. Seriously. What, about five bucks?


Next time: YOU CAN TOTALLY MAKE YOUR KIDS' UNIFORMS FROM OLD POLO SHIRTS! Is that cool or what?