The Impulsive Red Shirt From Impulsively Bought Fabric

I should probably not buy fabric for a while - a long while. My fabric stash has gotten huge - and I can usually find in it whatever fabric I need for a particular project. So yeah, no more buying fabric would be a good thing, a very good thing, and I'm working on it.

Back at the beginning of this week however, I slipped up and bought 5 different 2-yard cuts of knit fabric from Wal-Mart. That's right, 10 yards of new fabric came home with me, and I had no projects in mind for any of it.

I got home with my new fabric and felt a little bad - I really didn't need this new fabric. I really don't have room for any new fabric. But it was such soft fabric, such pretty fabric, and such a good deal.

Thus, that evening I did the only reasonable thing to counteract my impulsive fabric purchase - I impulsively made myself a shirt.

At 10 o'clock at night, on my way to bed, I saw the new, just washed, dried and folded, ready to be put away, fabric sitting on the table. The lightweight dark red sweater knit just seemed to call to me - "Turn me into a shirt!" And I decided that if I did go ahead and turn that one piece of fabric into a shirt, I'd feel less guilty about the whole fabric purchase - because it wouldn't all be immediately going into my stash.

Thus, I did a U-turn, and went back to my sewing room. I pulled out my self-drafted dolman T-shirt pattern, and returned to the table, ready to attack that soft red sweater knit.

My self-drafted dolman pattern has served me well ever since I made it. I've sewn it up multiple times for myself, my mom, and my sister. I've adjusted the fit, a little at a time, until it was perfect (and the current rendition of the pattern barely resembles the pattern I started with.) With seperate, slightly differently shaped, front and back pattern pieces, this pattern of mine is the perfect base for any knit dolman shirt I could ever want. I've been tempted a couple times to buy dolman patterns, but in the end I've always decided no, I have a pattern I like, and have perfected the fit on. Why would I use something else for the same style?

The purple puffed-sleeve shirt I made a year ago is definitely my most-worn top from this pattern, if not my most-worn winter top of all time. Seriously, I wear it at least once a week. Thus, I decided the red sweater knit needed to turn into something similar, with just a few small changes.

First, I opted to make this shirt with a v-neck and a wide neck band.

Then, I decided to make the sleeves full-length with long sleeve flounces. Maybe not the most practical idea ever, but so much fun to wear!

The sleeve flounces aren't hemmed at all, since knit doesn't fray, and I love how fluid they look this way.

Finally, I decided to finish off the bottom of the shirt with a hem band, as I didn't see this fabric behaving very well if I'd tried to do a regular turned-up hem.

Now this shirt was very simple, and very quick to make! I would have had it done, from cutting out to hemming, in under an hour, had my serger not misbehaved.

My serger has been behaving just fine, no issues whatsoever, for so long I can't even remember the last time it gave me issues. But Tuesday night, when I was sewing this shirt, it decided to throw a fit. It came unthreaded more times that I care to count! So, I spent half the time I was working on this shirt re-threading the serger. And re-threading it again. And re-re-threading it. And reading the instruction manual to see if I was doing anything wrong. Then, discovering I wasn't, threading the darned thing again. I finally finished the shirt around 11:30 that night - an hour and a half after I started. Twice as long as this style of shirt ought to take me to make. Darned serger.

Anyway, the shirt was done before midnight at least. I tried it on and loved it! I wore it the next day, and my sister took these pictures for me. Also, my serger has behaved fine ever since! (darned tempramental machine!)

So, there we go - 5 pieces of fabric bought, and one already used! Only 4 pieces going into my stash now - so that's not too bad!

Ok, clearly I have room to improve. . . but little steps, right?

The Beginning of (Sewing For) Leaving

Christmas is over, my final day of work was last week, launch is in 10 days,  and I have finally begun my World Race sewing!

T-shirts. Cute T-shirts. Something that will look good with pretty skirts, and ultra-casual pants and shorts. That's what I need. Now, I could just buy said T-shirts, but what's the fun in that? Of course I'm going to make my own!

I found this cute cotton-spandex chevron jersey months ago. A very generous friend decided that her contribution to my trip would be my pack. I needed a HUGE internal frame backpack to live out of for the next year. So, we went to the city to buy this pack. Once it was found and bought we decided to go fabric shopping, because we were in a city with more fabric stores than we have at home, so why not? Pack shopping turned into fabric shopping, and I found this grey and orange fabric. I imagined it would look great as a raglan-sleeved T-shirt with contrasting sleeves. I bought a yard, figuring that would be plenty for one T-shirt, and I wasn't wrong. I bought the grey version of this fabric to make my sleeves and actually had enough fabric to make two T-shirts!

After successfully making myself a T-shirt last month to match my sister's dress, and thanks to a comment on that blog post, I thought it would be fun to make us matching garments again. My sister was surprised, and thrilled, when I presented her with her new shirt!

I made her shirt out of the pattern I made for her green velvet shirt, but with one extra cute detail, a fun ruffle on the back! I love this shirt on her, and as she's already worn it twice since I made it I'd say she's rather found of it too!

Now, for my shirt I figured it would be easy enough just to pick up a raglan sleeve shirt pattern at Joann's during a pattern sale. Well, it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. After going through the pattern book twice I finally decided that Simplicity 3696, a PJ pattern, was close to what I was looking for, but still not quite perfect. After exploring other options though, I decided to use it. I made it a size smaller than I usually would, so that the shirt wouldn't turn out too baggy and pajama-like. I also changed the sleeve length and added contrasting bands to the sleeve hems and shirt hem. 

The result? I love it! This shirt turned out much better than I thought it would, being made from a PJ pattern. 

After seeing how both of these patterns turned out I must say I'd be content to use both patterns again, and as I need a few more shirts before I leave and my sister loves getting matching ones, I just may do that.

My sister is quite pleased that we'll be wearing matching shirts, even when we're halfway around the world from each other, and that thought brings a smile to my face too.

We're gonna miss each other next year! I'm almost ready to go, and as excited as can be to get to go on this trip of a lifetime, but leaving my family is hard!

I'm so glad I've got this last week to spend at home with them before I go! Now, somewhere in this week I've got to pack that huge backpack. Hopefully everything fits!

Meet Miss Maisy

Merry Christmas! I hope each and everyone of you has a marvelous, joyful, restful day celebrating our Savior's birth. My family sure has! Yesterday my little sister got quite the Christmas surprise, a puppy!

Meet Maisy! She is an English Bred Labrador Retriever, who will have a very special job to do when she grows up. Maisy will be trained to be a diabetes alert dog!

You see, 8 years ago, at age 4, my little sister was diagnosed with Type 1 (Juvenile) Diabetes. This means that her pancreas stopped producing insulin. Insulin is the hormone the body produces that converts the food we eat into energy. Without it, our bodies can't use the food we eat, thus we would essentially starve to death. Thankfully,  diabetes can be managed by daily insulin injections and  blood sugar checks every few hours to make sure the correct amount of insulin is being given and enough food is being eaten. If my sister's blood sugar is too high (over 200) it means she needs more insulin, she has not been given enough for her body to be able to use all the food she has eaten. If her blood sugar is too low (under 70) it means she needs to eat more food! Her blood sugar level should be between 80 and 150 at all times, and, it's a constant balancing act to keep it there. (For non-diabetics the blood sugar should be between 80 and 120.)

As my sister continues to grow the amount of insulin and food she needs changes. This is where Maisy comes in! She will be trained to sense, and then alert us, when my sister's blood sugar goes too high or too low. This service will be invaluable to keeping my sister healthy!

Of course, my sister was thrilled beyond words to get Maisy for Christmas!

She was quite disappointed to have to leave her home this morning while we went to church, but she put on her Christmas dress, told Maisy she'd be back soon, and came along.

Now, I am pretty darned pleased with how my sister's Christmas dress turned out! It's pretty but not too fancy for sitting on the floor to play with Maisy.

About a month ago I was reading some sewing blogs where I came across this pattern and fell in love. The piping, the pockets, the full skirt, they were just perfect. I had to make it for my sister! I was all ready to buy the pattern when I discovered there was just one little problem, a very common one for me I'm afraid, the pattern didn't come in my sister's size. Gahh!

 Well, I was making that dress, pattern or no, so I bought this festive, colorful fabric at Joann's black friday sale. Being part of Joann's Christmas line, the fabric was 75% off that day! The black background of the fabric is covered in green slashes and metallic gold, white, and pink dots. After considering each of those colors, I decided to make the piping pink and found the perfect colored cotton to do that.

Design settled on, fabric found, I was all ready to make the dress, except I still needed a pattern. I decided to use Simplicity 8026 because it came in the right size and featured the princess seams that would be embellished with piping. I cut the shift dress pieces off at the waistline, drafted the pocket, skirt, and epaulet pieces myself, changed the back neckline into a shallow "v", and split the center front piece in two to accommodate the piping across the upper chest.

An invisible zipper down the back and shiny gold buttons on the shoulder epaulets completed the dress. It turned out just as I'd envisioned! 

Of course, Maisy makes it cuter, but then, puppies always do that!

Maisy loved coming outside with us to take pictures, and as soon as we came back inside she fell asleep curled up in between my sister's boots! Apparently she didn't want to be forgotten the next time my sister went outside. This Christmas puppy will truly be that girl's best friend!