Monthly Archives: May 2014

Thing 124

The Hollyburn is finally complete!

The construction of this skirt went so smoothly, too. The zipper is straight and neatly concealed, the pockets lay flat, the waistband fit perfectly the first time. I was on a roll!

Until The Final Hem.

A blind hem looks so professional and my serger has a blind hem option. It was time to take my sewing to the next level. Easy peasy.

The first round was a fail, but that’s normal for beginners, right? I tried again. And again.

My optimism wavered. At one point I googled “blind hem serger frustration,” not because I was looking for solutions, but because I needed to know that I wasn’t alone.

Eventually I gave up on perfection and decided to settle.

 

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But lying in bed that night I couldn’t let it go. The rest of the skirt turned out so well but the hem gave the whole thing an amateur feel. I slept on it and by morning I had decided to redo the hem.

Anyone who has used a serger knows what kind of commitment I’m talking about. That’s a loooong hemline and a lot of stitches to pull out. Yet it needed to be done.

It took me the better part of an hour (with reading breaks) to pull it all out. The fabric was a little worse for wear — a few snags and one teeny tiny hole from the stitch ripper — and this is what the floor looked like when I was done:

 

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I serged the raw edge and used my old Singer to do a new blind hem. (Until I started googling my frustrations I didn’t even realize my regular machine could do one. I had never looked up the meaning of all those strange stitch types in the manual. Which has me wondering, What other superhero abilities does my old workhorse have?)

It’s still not perfect but it is so much better.

 

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Isn’t she cute?

 

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Martina wore this to church this morning. In fact, everything she’s wearing except for the shoes is made by me. I can’t tell you how much this pleases me.

 

Cost of this Thing: €16.80 (12.80 for the pattern, 3 for the fabric, 1 for zipper and thread)
Cost of all Things to date: €194.62 (gulp)

 

 

Thing 123

Today’s Thing is another Renfrew shirt. I LOVE that pattern. In fact, I’ve made two in the last two days. The first one was for Martina.

When we went to the Haagse Markt a couple of weeks ago the girls each picked out a metre of jersey for a shirt. This was Martina’s choice:

 

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It’s a soft and slinky knit with wonderful drape.

The shirt took about an hour and a half to make on the serger, with frequent reading breaks. (The Agatha Christie binge continues.)

Tomorrow I’ll post photos of her modelling it with Thing 124. Ooh, the suspense!

 

Cost of this Thing: €3
Cost of all Things to date: €177.82

 

Thing 122

What do you do when you have a bug and do not feeling like crafting? I think we all know the answer to that.

 

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Since my serger was all set up with dark thread I found some dark fabric scraps for this tissue pouch. The polka dotted fabric is a slippery, light weight chiffon — a total pain to sew with — and the lining is a scrap from an old pair of Sandor’s work pants.

It feels all soft and silky, which is comforting when you’re fumbling for a tissue, no? And chic, to boot. Maybe I’ll make a little zipper pouch and they can join my growing gift stash.

At any rate, this tissue pouch met the only two criteria I had today: Fast and Free. Now back to bed.

 

Cost of this Thing: 0
Cost of all Things to date: €174.82

 

Things 120 & 121

I’ve been working on clothes for Martina today, but I’ll blog about those this weekend. Today’s Things are a product of last night’s beading session.

I had some tiger’s eye in my stash, a beautiful honey gold to chocolate brown stone. I combined them with gold-coloured bead caps and some black seed beads.

 

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I considered myself done for the night but Hester and Cheryl, my bossy-pants bead buddies, insisted I make earrings. Fine.

 

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They were right. I’m pleased with this set. It accessorizes my tulips quite nicely.

 

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Thank you to my assistant, Martina, for the photos today 🙂

 

Cost of these Things: 0
Cost of all Things to date: €174.82

 

Work-in-Progress Wednesday: Crocheted Horse

Martina had some school friends over a couple of months ago on an afternoon where I was crocheting some little animal or another. They squealed and oohed and ahhed and in a rash moment of insanity I promised them all an animal. Fortunately I made no timing promise other than to say it’ll be a while.

The girls browsed through my patterns like forever before they could decide. One finally chose a panda (the same one I promised Martina — the one that almost didn’t get made), another a goat, and the last chose a brown horse with a white mane.

A couple of weeks ago I finally got down to the task. I started with the horse, mostly because I couldn’t face making another panda and I can’t find a good goat pattern.

I’ve used the same pattern before, but now I have professional eyeballs to jazz it up.

 

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Hey (hay!), it’s a start.

Thing 119

I’m working on a Hollyburn skirt for Martina. It’s slow going, not because the pattern is difficult or complicated (it’s not). It’s slow going because I’m on an Agatha Christie kick, currently on my fourth in three days. They’re all ones I haven’t read in so long that I don’t remember the end, which is rather important to the suspense. I’m reading a chapter, sewing a seam or two, reading another chapter, adding pockets… Which means I still don’t have a skirt to blog about.

Fortunately I haven’t yet blogged about last week’s beading project. Buffer, baby! Buffer in the form of another bracelet.

 

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The big black beads are serpentine, separated by small Swarovski pearls. I found a big nautical-style spring ring clasp in my stash to finish it off.

 

 

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It’s big but surprisingly comfortable to wear. The stones are cool against the skin and not too heavy. I still won’t keep it for myself, though. Into the sale pile it goes.

 

Cost of this Thing: 0
Cost of all Things to date: €174.82

 

Things 117 & 118

Remember the flowered zipper bag I made last week?

Now it has contents: a matching tissue pouch and business card holder, because that’s what I make these days.

The tissue pouch is lined with the polka dot fabric from the giant batch of tissue pouches.

 

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The business card holder is a little floppier than the others I’ve made. I didn’t use interfacing this time. It will need some business cards to give it some structure. Hey, that’s what it’s for.

 

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This completes another gift set:

 

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So many gift sets! I’m nothing if not prepared…

 

Cost of these Things: 0
Cost of all Things to date: €174.82

Famous Things

We don’t subscribe to any newspapers, but we do get a couple of local papers every week. I usually page through them quickly, checking for any items of interest. My favourite is the obituaries. I like to read the names of people and see how old they were when they died.

But Het Krantje had a treasure beyond the obituaries this week. A couple of pages in they had a full page spread on the Koningsdag activities in our town last Saturday. And guess who’s famous now!

 

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Martina, Annika and my crocheted crowns, that’s who. We’re having our 15 minutes of fame and enjoying every second of it…

 

 

Thing 116

Here’s one last pair of undies to round off Lingerie Week:

 

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They’re the non-granny version of the “Cheeky Panties” that I made yesterday. Martina approves. These were also much quicker to make, done in 45 minutes flat, and that includes one stitch unpicking session after I attached the leg elastic to the wrong side. With a bit more experience I could probably get this down to half an hour.

Even better, the next many, many pairs will be free! Expect to see a profusion of panties, especially as my budget crisis deepens.

 

Cost of this Thing: 0
Cost of all Things to date: €174.82

Thing 115

Today I tackled underwear again. I’m determined to make a wearable pair. And I think I’ve succeeded!

The pattern is “Cheeky Panties,” a freebie offered at the Burdastyle website. I think they can be put together in under an hour if you know what you’re doing. I took four. Four! It took forever to figure out the right settings on my serger, and then the assembly, which should have been simple, turned into a comedy of errors. At one point I even had the gusset sewn to the outside of the underwear.

But I pushed through, and here we are:

 

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Martina says they’re comfortable except the waist is too high. (Translation: granny pants)

I’m going to try the pattern again, but will skip the top band, lop off another inch or two, and finish the top edge with the same elastic used for the legs. I think they’ll look less homemade then, too.

 

Cost of this Thing: €2.50 (40 metres of lingerie elastic, enough for at least 30 pairs…)
Cost of all Things to date: €174.82