[Not this] weekend sewing

Another not-quite-as-easy-as-I-expected project from Weekend Sewing that I actually finished and photographed a few weeks ago. Thinking that one can't have too many bags, I decided to try the Everything Tote using some home dec weight Amy Butler fabric and a fun print from Heather's Mendocino collection for the lining. I had heard that there was an error with the pattern and checked the errata page before I got started so I knew how how much fabric I was really going to need, which was a good start.

I had a minor OCD moment when I realized that neither the pattern or the errata mention that if you are using a directional print (like the orange I used for the lining) that following the pattern as written will result in the print being upside down on one side of the bag. This is because the bottom of the bag is placed on the fabric fold. I fixed this by cutting two pieces for the lining instead of cutting it on the fold so the octopi ended up all swimming in the same direction and all was right with my world. One other thing to note about the materials: you need about 1/2 yard extra for the lining fabric in order to be able to cut out the handle and binding pieces. Also, to give the bag some stability, I lined the binding and handles with a layer of flannel a la Bend the Rules.

Unfortunately, the pattern is just not quite right, although it's pretty easy to figure out what you need to do to make it work. For example, to create the gathering between the handles, the pattern says to gather the material until the two markings (where the handles join) are 12" apart. Well, they start out 12" apart, so you need to gather the material until it looks right to you. Because of this adjustment, the binding pieces end up being a couple of inches too long and you have to trim them flush with the raw edges before you add the handles. Also, the instructions for applying the binding and handles make no sense whatsoever. Fortunately, you can easily find better instructions for making a bag with bias tape binding and handles, there are a lot out there.

All that said, I quite like the way this bag turned out and would probably make another.

Baby's First Summer

I hope you didn’t think that in all the sewing for Little Miss Lou I forgot about Baby B. No, siree! I couldn’t possibly forget about sewing something special for that sweet, smily baby’s first summer. In fact, I started making her outfits way back in March during our last snowstorm of the winter season.

The must-have summer outfit for kids of all ages is the Oliver + S playsuit. It’s such a must-have that not one, but two, were needed. I know I’ve said how much I love it before but every time I make another I feel the love all over again.

The next outfit I made for her was the comfy jumper dress with matching gingham bloomers. I hadn’t actually intended on making her a dress this summer. Then I posted my first comfy jumper dress and the e-mail arrived. My sister was in love and couldn’t say enough kind words about it. Uh-oh. I couldn’t resist that. There is no possible way I could deny my sister or baby niece an extra bit of handmade lovely. And the fact that she looked adorable in it with her baby blues shining was just icing on the (ice cream) cake.

Strawberry Fields

Saturday was the most perfect of late spring mornings. After a week of gray, dreary days we awoke to bright sun, blue skies, and warm temperatures. It was the perfect day for picking strawberries! It took some prodding to get the dudely to agree that strawberry picking so early in the morning (before 9am, gasp!) was a good idea, but he eventually agreed.

We ended up at Tougas Family Farm where we were greeted with the nicest staff of people. It was so well organized. We ended up with our own row to pick from, a bucket for rotten berries, our picking tray, and a flag to indicate where we’d stopped.

The picking was easy! After so much rain the berries were begging to be picked. We only went about 6 feet in our row and ended up with 17 pounds of berries in a mere 30minutes. I’d gone with the hope of gathering 10 pounds of berries and was shocked when we arrived at the scale with nearly double that amount.

What to do with all those berries? Freezer jam. It was the sole driver in my wanting to go strawberry picking. I remember my mom making it years ago when we were kids and I loved it. I had to try my hand at it. It was so easy; I just followed the directions inside the box of Sure-Jell. I ended up with 8 – 16 ounce jars of jam. It’s about all the space I could afford to give up in my little freezer. But believe me I could have kept going because there were many, many strawberries left.

They didn’t last long though. We munched through about 2 pounds of fresh berries, froze a bunch of whole berries for later, made a fresh strawberry pie, imbibed in fresh strawberry daiquiris, and made strawberry cheesecake ice cream. And now they are gone and I’m wondering if it would be gluttony to go back and pick more.

Lazy Days & Appliques

Now how about some happy sewing news?

I’ve had the lazy days skirt from Oliver + S bookmarked since it was first posted. I honestly don’t know why I waited so long. What a breeze to put together. And so satisfying! Within an hour I’d turned my first half-yard of fabric into the cutest, little skirt I’d ever seen. Why stop there? Aren’t two skirts better than one?

I honestly could have sewn Little Miss Lou a skirt for each day of summer. Before I got too out of control sewing up skirts I realized I’d probably better do something about the top half. Enter the appliquéd T-shirt. One T got a simple flower, power applique; I love how it feels like the 1970’s made modern. The other T got a simple 4-square applique; this one feels like July 4th on the beach to me. Ahhh, summer.

Now I can’t help but wonder…can a 32 year old adult woman get away with a lazy days skirt and applique T? Wait. Don’t answer that. I might not be able to bear all that honesty. Perhaps I should just leave it to little, blonde 4 year olds.

Weekend Sewing, my first experience

I was totally enamored with this book the first time I flipped through it at Borders. It is filled with lovely styling and photography; it does its job of selling the simple summer weekend. There are flowing, easy to wear dresses, picnics, running though a field of flowers, and paddling around a lake. I bought it: hook, line, and sinker.

Then I tried my first pattern, the flower girl dress, and realized that beauty really is only skin deep. Now settle in with a cup of something soothing because this is a long one.

I encountered my first mistake in the introduction. It claims to fit little girls between the ages of 4 and 8. Little Miss Lou is your average sized 4 year old and even the largest size was too small for her by one inch. OK, not a big deal. I just enlarged the pattern on a copier so that it was half her chest measurement plus additional for the seam allowances called for in the pattern. Heather acknowledges this error on her web page and suggests adding additional width to the largest pattern size, but not additional height. This doesn’t seem quite right to me. If you need addition width, don’t you also need additional height to maintain the same proportion?

Moving on to the fabric requirements and cutting diagram. Like Elise, I found these to be a bit off. The pattern doesn’t indicate the width of fabric required just a length of one yard. If you’re using a typical 44/45” wide quilting weight cotton there is no way to place the pattern pieces on a yard of fabric so that the lengthwise grain runs the length of the garment. And that was using the largest pattern pieces provided in the book, not my enlarged pieces. So I channeled Tim Gunn and made it work by cutting a contrasting band of white to add to the bottom of the dress skirt. If you cut these bands at double the length you need you can iron them in half, attach to the skirt bottom and avoid needing to hem the garment.

Now let’s talk about those step-by-step instructions. I’ve made a lot of garments for kids that have a bodice and never have I seen such strange instructions for putting together a bodice. I read through it a few times, trying to make sense of what she was talking about in the words and diagrams. In the end I gave up and did it my way. Well, it wasn’t really my way but Amy Butler and Leisl Gibson’s way. I suggest you go that route as well because it’s easy, peasy. All you need to do is attach the front/back of the bodice lining at the sides seams. Repeat for the bodice exterior. Now pin your lining and exterior pieces right sides together along the top edge of the bodice.

Where to put the straps you ask? Good question. It’s not marked on the pattern so I made a guess. I sandwiched one end of each strap between the exterior and lining piece on one side of the bodice. I then stitched a seam around the top of the bodice. I clipped into the seams around the curved bits and turned the bodice right side out.

At this point I was pretty annoyed with the instructions so I didn’t even bother trying to follow the rest of the pattern as written. Instead I just went with what I knew from Amy and Leisl. I attached the contrasting bands to the bottom of my skirt panels and then attached the front and back panels, finishing the seams. (I used the serger-like stitch that is on my Bernina though a zig-zag will also work.) At this point I marked the centers of my bodice and centers of my skirt (again no marking provided on the pattern). At the top of the skirt I sewed in two rows of basting stitches less than ½ inch from the top. Then I gathered the skirt until it was the same width as the bodice. With right sides together, I matched up the markings on the bodice and skirt and attached with a ½ inch seam. I finished the edges like above.

At this point I needed to fit the dress on the girl to figure out how long those straps really needed to be and where to place a buttonhole. (One of the errata indicates that it’s impossible to get the dress on and off without either snaps or buttons.) You can use whatever method is your favorite for making buttonholes and sewing on buttons. I chose to hide mine. The straps button on the inside of the back bodice.

Are you still reading? I hope so. I wanted to give as much detail as I could on how I made sense of the construction of this dress. Because this is such a lovely book to pick up and look through I’m sure it’s drawing in lots of people who are new to sewing. Without any previous sewing experience though I worry that poorly written instructions and diagrams will turn off those new sewers forever. And I just can’t let that happen. Sewing is just too rewarding an experience. I’m hoping that the editors of this book are taking the reviews to heart and are busily working on the second edition. I understand that mistakes happen but I cannot imagine how so many errors made it through the entire book process. It’s sad and disappointing.

Recipe of the (Last) Week

Recipe: Spicy Chicken Peperonata with Lime and Mint Dressing
Source: Bon Appetit

Ingredients: ****
Very basic ingredients but ingredients I love and sometimes those make the best dishes. I did leave out the mint. I may have spoken of my weird feelings about mint in the past.

Preparation: *****
There was really very little work involved in making this dish. All that had to be done was sauteing the chicken, sauteing the veggies, and mixing together the dressing. It all took less than thirty minutes, start to finish. That time even included making the polenta I served it over. (Leave it creamy, rather than allowing it to set-up.)

Taste: ***
Spicy? I don't think so. Maybe it was my poblano, but this dish completely lacked heat. What could have been a delish dish ending up tasting like fajitas served over polenta. Not exactly what I'd hoped for. My go-to polenta recipe came through though. In the end, the polenta was the only thing I had a second helping of. Doesn't that just sum it up?

Not the skirt I planned to make

I had planned to make a yard-sale wrap skirt from Weekend Sewing. It looked like a simple project, so even if the notoriously bad directions led me astray I figured I had a good chance of making it work. The pattern call for 2.5 yards of 45" fabric and I had 3 of this summery Midwest Modern print on hand. Perfect, or so I thought. After I traced the pattern I noticed that there was no diagram for how to lay out the pattern pieces on 45" fabric. Strange, but I could deal with that. Until I realized that, in fact, it is impossible to cut out enough panels for the larger sized skirt from 2.5 yards of fabric. Or 3 yards. I estimated that I would need 8-9 yards of 45" fabric to cut out 9 panels; more if the print was directional (like those made by the author herself). No wonder there was no diagram for cutting out panels from 45" fabric; it can't be done.

Surely this error was due to some mishap as the book passed from author to editor to pattern testers and it would be fully explained on the errata page. Alas, no such clarification was forthcoming. Strangely, upon googling peer reviews of this book, I found only glowing praises, many citing the "excellent and clear directions". In my opinion, I don't think anyone test-sewed the yard-sale skirt pattern before the book went to press. I understand that mistakes happen, but please correct them, acknowledge their extent, explain what happened. Can you tell I'm a little disappointed?

Enough about the lemons, let's move on to lemonade. Or, in this case, a Barcelona skirt. I love this pattern, it having been a staple of my summer wardrobe last year. Since I used a lighter cotton than for the previous two, I lined this one with a lovely pima cotton that I found at my local fabric store. I was pleasantly surprised that lining it only added about half an hour on to the construction time. Fortunately the rain let up yesterday and I was able to get outside to take some photos. And experiment with my remote control and tripod. I even attempted some action shots: I love bloggers who are able to convey movement in their photos.

Yes, we're pretty happy to see the sun around these here parts.