Sunday afternoon was Lesson Two for my beginning sewing ladies, following along from the first lesson a few weeks ago when they learned how to operate a sewing machine and make a shopping bag.
At the end of the last lesson, Holly, Ness, and Veda were all begging to learn how to make a skirt, so how could I refuse? I decided they should follow in my footsteps and learn with New Look 6843, which was one of the VERY first patterns I ever made (then remade over and over again with a few variations!).
They picked out their own fabric and zippers, with Ness choosing a navy corduroy (so we got to talk about nap!), Holly choosing a beautiful navy wool suiting fabric, and Veda going for a bright and cheerful Liberty print.
Here’s Veda sewing on her own purple JL Mini machine (like my red one!)
We talked through measurements, pattern layouts, what the symbols on patterns mean, and also how you don’t have to follow the directions if you don’t want to (since I thought New Look’s order of construction made it awkward to check the fit of darts, and their zipper insertion made things more difficult than they had to be!).
Here’s Holly at the pressing station:
We also had a show & tell about good quality interfacings vs bad ones, and at the end of the afternoon, Holly and Veda had beautiful skirts to wear to work and school the next day! (Ness wasn’t feeling well and had to leave early, so we’ll finish hers at one of the monthly moorings Craft Nights).
I’ve also made it clear that this was The Last Lesson as it takes up a lot of my time and energy (albeit handsomely paid for in cakes, sweets, champagne and nibbles!), but that I’m always available if they’ve got any questions or need help in any aspect of their future sewing projects. I see these ladies all the time anyway so I’m sure things will come up in normal conversation anyway!
Crazy pants!
In other news, a few weeks ago I made some more pants/underwear!
These were made with scraps from my KnipMode draped dress, plus white lace over the hips (as seen in my rose & lace tee), then I just wanted some fun so I pulled out some random colours of lingerie elastic from my stash and attached them with hot pink thread in the machine.
They may be mental, but they do make me smile!
Firefox Fun!
Totally offtopic, but Firefox 4 is out now and it’s awesome! Go and upgrade if you’ve got an earlier version, or give it a fresh download if you’re using (shudder) internet explorer! I’ve been using it since it launched yesterday and it really does feel zippier than before, and I have a crazy amount of tabs open at once…
Strange but true – an even earlier sewing project of mine (even before the New Look skirt above) was to refashion a massive Firefox teeshirt! So I’ve got plans for all the Firefox lanyards my husband picked up at the weekend – those nice, sturdy, satiny ribbons have got to be turned into something cool! Thanks very much, Mozilla crew!
(Both the skirt and Firefox projects were so old they pre-dated this site and I had to go dig them out of my old Craftster directory! But it turned out that my skirt photos were either missing, blurry, or chopped, so you just get to see the Firefox….)