Housekeeping time! I’ve got lots of little bits to update you on, either with my in-progress project, upcoming things, or small projects I managed to gloss over at the time…
So in no particular order:
My purple coat
Progress is slow on my purple jacket/coat from the Winter 2011 MyImage magazine, not because of anything to do with the coat, but because life keeps getting in the way. I’ve finished the shell and I’m onto the lining now, so I’ve just got to finish constructing the lining, attach the two together, flip, and sew the buttonholes.
I’d prefer to do the buttonholes on my vintage buttonholer attachment, but the templates I have aren’t big enough for my enormous (2.5 inch?) buttons. Anyone know a clean way around this? Can I set the buttonholer to do double-length holes somehow?
In any case, I should be able to finish this coat this weekend and (hopefully) get a photoshoot in. Not long now before I can do evenings photos again – it’s already light out when I go running before work!
Gift update
My go-to baby gift is to sew a changing mat, with a hand towel on one side, and nice fabric on the other with big, deep pockets and ties to fold it all up. I had two baby boys arrive in January, so both sets of parents got changing mats with this awesome Alexander Henry vintage robot fabric. 1 meter of it wasn’t quite enough to stretch to the pockets, too, so I filled in with some scrap denim.
My only sewn Christmas gift for James this year was new stripey pyjama trousers, but I didn’t get any photos of them at the time. Now you can marvel at my stripe matching skillz!
Running stuff
I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m running my first half marathon in a few weeks (in Paris!) so I’ve been racking up the mileage in preparation, about 45km per week right now. I’m itching to make a sub 1hr50 finish, but anything under 2hrs would be great. I’m also heavily involved with my running crew/group/family/collective and I’ll be talking more about that next week as they’ve got a refashioning challenge for me.
But this plus the Pattern Magic course started all sorts of swirling pattern ideas in my head and I finally sat down on Wednesday night and put brain to paper (using my Hokey Croquis pad).
I’m not sure if my refashioning materials will be suitable for the above, but even so, I’d like to do these at some point, even if it’s with the material I just bought the other week. But this weekend I really need to make some straight muslins for fitting tests before I start cutting them up to match my designs. I’ve already traced the bottom portion of the Jalie skinsuit pattern, so sewing that up and marking the knees shouldn’t take too long…
Oh! And last week I finally sewed up a ponytail hat to run in!
The problem with running hats is that they have to be close to your head, but there’s no room for your ponytail, and even wide headbands just weren’t warm enough during our recent deep freeze. So I took some scrap microfleece and altered BurdaStyle’s Elana hat pattern to have a hole in one seam. I’ve run in it about four times now and I definitely give it two thumbs up. I’ve also made one for my friend Sophie so I’m curious to see how hers fits her!
Pretty dress inspiration
When I was ill and feeling down in January, my mom shipped me some surprise books from Amazon! The Design Museum ones are good for breakfast reading, but I’ve seen most of their choices before and there’s only one disappointing paragraph on each. But the 100 Unforgettable Dresses book, oh my! The writing is fabulous (it’s by a former NYT fashion writer), so much so that seriously, “I’m reading it for the articles” is true, and there were at least 30 dresses there I’d never even seen before.
I only intended to flip through it for inspiration, but I ended up reading it cover to cover, because the details and historical contexts were just fascinating. There’s a good mix of vintage Hollywood glamour, modern runway, and Oscar gowns, and even if I didn’t like the dress in question, the article about it was still worth the read.
Future sewing room
And finally, a shot at how my future sewing room is coming along. My current sewing room is just a tiny, ex-hotel bunkbed room that was only ever meant to be temporary (5 years later, there’s a LOT more stuff in it than the 2007 photos would suggest!), so it’s exciting that we’re finally at the point where we can put up walls in the new portion!
Way more on this later, and we’ve been awful at updating the boat blog, so I’m feeling guilty for even mentioning it here since over there you wouldn’t know we’d even finished the insulation, eep.