I know everyone goes through periods of extreme busy-ness and stress, but I feel like the past 6-8 weeks have just been nonstop with barely a pause to catch my breath! You’ll have to accept my apologies for not going into these various sewing happenings in full – I’m saving my writing time for my finished garments!
So, without further ado, a catchup on the last few weeks’ goings on…
1. The day after I arrived back from Amsterdam, my parents arrived for a visit! Among other things, they brought with them a big stash of Suziplex wicking lycra that Lakaribane bought for me by request while she was in Montreal recently! I think I’ve lost track of the number of international borders these 5 meters of fabric have crossed, but I am so happy to have more, because the three running leggings I’ve sewn with the stash I bought in March are my favourites ever.
2. I recently went on a bit of a Young Image magazines and envelope patterns binge, so I sat down with my mom while she was here and she picked out some designs she thought my niece might like for her Christmas present…
I’m happy to report that I traced and sewed up her present in plenty of time and sent it back with my parents, but I know my niece reads this site, so I won’t be showing you the results until after Christmas!
3. My nephew will also be getting a FehrTrade Christmas gift this year, and my mom helped me pick out something for him, too. We looked through all the YoungImage but the older boys patterns in those weren’t really “him”, and Burda magazine patterns all seem to stop at 128cm for the most part, so thank god for Lekala!
My mom decided she wanted me to sew her a Chic Sweatshirt for her Christmas gift, so you can see here the sweatshirting bought for both of their gifts – lavender for my mom’s and blue for my nephew.
(The green & pink at the bottom are just swatches…)
4. With all the talk of gifts, my mom and I decided we’d do a craft exchange for our gifts, so I picked out some yarn for my mom to crochet me this hat, which I really like. The only problem is – the original “Durango” pattern seems to be nowhere online anymore – the yarncat site that everyone links to is g-o-n-e. So, Ravelry/crochet people, can anyone help? Can anyone send it to me so my mom can still make it? It looks to be a free pattern, it’s just disappeared.
5. While we were shopping in the West End, we also swung by MacCulloch & Wallis so I could grab some boring stuff on my sewing shopping list. You may recognise some of those colours from my Fall sewing shortlist?
6. I cut out and prepped all the fabric for the vintage swing coat, then this weekend I had an entire day to myself (omg) so I sewed it all together, too. More on that later…
7. My ironing board broke! The weld that attaches the legs to the board broke, and an attempt to fix it with chemical metal was a failure. It was only a cheapie from IKEA, and had lasted five years, but it still seemed a shame to buy a new one just for one point of weakness (I’m much more of a mender and fixer than a buy-a-new-one-er)
8. I started on my next project – the vintage sheath dress from the November Burda magazine, and thread traced all seven of these monster darts. Twice! (single layer basting, you see…)
So with most of the tedious prep done (there’s still some fusing to do!), let’s see how much I can get done in crafty 10 minute segments!