Belated Birthday Shirt

 Though it may be a few months late, I have finally finished making a mens button-up shirt as a birthday gift for my husband. It has been a long project because I worked at first on making a muslin to try the fit, I adjusted the pattern and I worked slowly just to make sure I didn't make any mistakes.

This pattern is McCall's 6044 and it is a very straight forward pattern. There are several great versions already made out in blogger world: four square walls; true bias; Dixie DIY. I chose to do view A with the addition of the back yolk from view E becuase it matched an already owned 'favourite' shirt in his closet.

I chose to top stitch in a blue-grey thread, and scrounged up a set of matching buttons from my stash that even went with the shirt! The yolk and front button plackets were done on the bias; I liked the look of the diagonal plaid.

Unfortunatley, even with my attempts to fit the shirt using a muslin, and to customize it ahead of time, it came out too small and does not fit comfortably. The actual buttons for this version won't be serving any other purpose other than decorative.  :(  Lesson for next time, maybe the pattern sizing isn't so rediculously huge.

 (Pull lines when arm is raised and too tight to use the buttons properly)

Anyways, I was thrilled to see the shirt actually being worn this morning, even though it needs to be worn over a t-shirt. I'm really happywith the finished product (minus the fitting issues); I took my time and it paid off: no use of the seam ripper was part of this project ... ok, ok, except for making the button holes.  :)

Monday's shirt

Started Sunday afternoon, and here I am wearing my new t-shirt on Monday.

I've used a wonderful light knit for this shirt and used the Kirsten Kimono Tee pattern from Maria Denmark. This time I decided to add thick waist and sleeve bands and a small neck band. Both the arm and waist bands are about four inches wide (eight total before folding them in half), and the neck band is 3/4 inches (one and 1/2 before folding). The last version of this shirt that I completed, I just hemmed all of the edges and top stitched with a double needle, and though it looks fine, I am still not entirely happy with the finish on that one.

(My new iron and a lot of cold snow and icicles!)

The sleeves bands are a tad too big; if I do this again I think they need to be shaped, rather than one large rectangle sewn on.

 I marked the back of the shirt with a small piece of ribbon. The front and back of this shirt can look exactly the same early in the morning.  :)

What got me through this: DIY Dixie's Never fear Knits, Tasia's Sewaholic Renfrew pattern and Maria Denmark's pattern!

 At the very least, this project has helped get me out of a sewing funk.

A fall-plaid skirt

A stash-busting, fall coloured, plaid skirt! This beautiful wool plaid has been hiding out in my stash for years. After the moth infestation I went sorting through my boxes just to ensure that everything was moth free and came across it. Amazing what you forget you own. As soon as I saw this plaid I knew exactly what I was going to make.

Inspiration came from Lladybird's beautiful and bright circle skirt and from Andrea's gorgeous half circle skirt over at four square walls (I love those skirts!).

There was only just enough material to make a half circle skirt, and amazingly enough I was able to match the large plaid pattern. That took a lot of plaid tracing and measuring, and I had to repeat the process three time because I couldn't believe my luck when I realized that it would work.

The zany-zipper dilemma was sorted. I had to remove the invisible zipper and refit the waistband of the skirt. Instead of re-inserting another invisible zipper (had I mentioned that the first one broke?), I decided to go with a bright red 'regular' zipper from my stash because the wool was too thick folded over to allow the invisible zipper to do its thing (that would be ZIP).

If anyone out there knows of a really great online 'regular' zipper tutorial, please give me shout. I've figured out the invisible ones, but perfecting the normal zippers still seems to be beyond me. I am content in the fact that the red zipper does not standing out, but please try not to notice the lumpy-zig-zagging stitches that hold the zipper in place.  :)

So, with a lot of hand stitching to ensure the bright red zipper was hidden as much as possible, I now have a finished fall skirt.

Fall sweaters and unwanted guests

Firstly, I apologise (again) for the lack of posts on the blog. My personal goal was to post two, hopefully three entries each month, and I failed in September. The machine is fixed and I've been sewing, just no projects I considered blog-worthy. Thus the silence. I am slowly sewing up a shirt for my husband. I really want to do it right so I am taking my time, making a muslin, measuring twice, and cutting carefully. It has been a slower than usual project.

To the topic of this post... Fall sweaters and unwanted guests.

A few years back I made us a few thick wool sweaters for the fall. Actually, I initially made my husband a sweater as a gift, but it became mine because surprises don't allow you to easily measure someone.  :)  It's a beautiful thick zip-up sweater with pockets, and big enough for me that it makes a great 'jacket'. Still needing to make my husband his own sweater, I took all of his wants and dislikes and knit a newer, and more appropriately sized, sweater, complete with hood, wooden buttons and a tree.

 

 The tree design was created from scratch because I couldn't find the right tree pattern anywhere. It was easy actually. I drew a tree, and then using teeny-tiny graph paper, I 'traced' the tree drawing by colouring in squares on the graph paper. From there, I used the chart to count colours in my rows as the back of the sweater was a straight forward stocking stitch. Ta-da! I do have plans to add a lining to my husband's sweater so he can wear it more year-round. But that is yet to come.
So, that's the story of the two beautiful sweaters.

Until I went to wear mine for the first time this fall...

Holes. Where there shouldn't be holes. Oh no. I searched more, and there was a whole chunk of the waistband missing on my husband's sweater! And more holes!  We had (have?) moths.  The hours of work that went into these! So we searched out and plucked those little moth larvae from the sweaters and hats and mitts that had not been stored away (as good wool garment owners should). And we froze and washed and dried and plucked more. There has been no more hole development, so I think they may be gone for now, but from what I read, you can never be certain you are completely rid of them. We just need to be extra careful.

(Source)

So I am now in the process of patching, re-knitting and fixing the sweaters. They are looking a little worse for wear; I am not as good a patcher as I am a knitter (and even that is very basic), but they are still warm, and now clean.

Lesson learned: wash and store away your woollies in the summer. With cedar if possible. And kill remove the moths that trick their ways indoors. Hopefully we'll still get more wear out of these sweaters before the moths attack again.

Math revisited...

  "Why will I ever in my life need to know the formula for the circumference of a circle!?!" Little-Squirrel asks.

"Well one day," answers Big-Squirrel from the future, "in the distant future, you will want to make yourself a skirt and that darn formula will help you calculate the waist and the diameter of a whole skirt!" 

Little-Squirrel just rolled her eyes. "Sure, whatever."

Guess what? I number-crunched my very own half-circle skirt! It was not as complicated as it sounds, though, I did enjoy math as a kid. I will try to explain without making it too complicated...

I measured my waist (plus 2 inches) for the half-inner circle; only half the circle is my whole waist measurement. And then doubled it to get a whole circle's circumference.

Then using the handy-dandy formula C=2πr, I calculated the radius of the waist and made a small circle with that radius from paper (inner circle in diagram). I folded the small circle in half and decided on the length of the skirt. I measured the length from the edge of the half-circle and drew another larger circle, cut the smaller circle away, and there it was: my very own, made-for-me, pattern.

The waist band was two long rectangles. I attached them to the slightly gathered skirt-waist by sandwiching the skirt between the waist pieces (right sides facing in), stitching, folding them up and hand stitching the top edge (I didn't want any top stitching to show).

I added a lining using the same (but shorter) pattern  out of a lightweight white cotton and inserted an invisible zipper. Hand stitching the hem took awhile because of the rounded edge of the skirt, but I enjoyed several Olympic track events and some swimming.

I am really thrilled about this skirt. It's a nice light weight for the summer and it feels just so great.

Stripes: Part Two

 

A striped Kirsten kimono t-shirt for the summer! This is a simple free pattern from Maria Denmark, and I am so in love with this shirt! We've had some very humid days this past week and this shirt was very light and super cool to wear.

The pattern consists of a front and a back. That's it! Unless you decide to bind the neckline (which I did not) so it went together very fast. I used my double needle to top stitch the hem, sleeve and neck lines for a nice simple finish.

Check out Scruffy Badger's site to find many versions of this shirt. I especially love the birds-on-a-line version. I hope to get a chance to make a few more, but first I need to go in search of some knits. I am thinking I may try to add thick sleeve bindings on my next one...not sure how that would turn out on a kimono style shirt...

This pattern is so quick you'll even have enough time to play with the dog. Lucky guy.   :)