The Elf shirt, revisted

Obviously, I did not get the shirt sewn together on Sunday. It took longer than I thought to finish the edges, once I got them cut out (which, to try and counteract the problem of a woven sheer over top of a knit velvet, I ended up pinning the sheer to the pieces and cutting around them, rather than using a rotary cutter. Probably better anyway, since I remember from the first time I made this shirt that the sheer likes to shift around under the ruler when being rotary-cut.) So it ended up being this whole big process that I just finished tonight:

First I zig-zagged around the edges of the sheer.





Then I pinned the sheer on top of the velvet and zig-zagged the two layers together. I had five rectangles of various lengths to do this on. I did get the torso pieces sewn back together, using a fine needle to try and avoid punching too wide holes in the sheer-- I think that was another contribution to the fraying in the seams. I would have done more, but despite the heater, it was really cold down there and my hands were going numb, so I made a strategic retreat to the upper floor of the house. I still have to figure out whether a second row of stitching would do more harm than good anyway. But I still think, now that the contrast panels are prepared, this shirt should go back together rather quickly. Unless the half-sewn-in invisible zipper decides to cause me problems (I didn't want to rip it out all the way because right now, the top is actually matching up! I'll hand-sew it if I need to. Actually, that might be the best way to handle it, period.)


And since I ended up not taking the pictures on Sunday either, these are Tracey's pillows. It was nice to be able to use up this fabric. Though I have to say, in this case and in the aforementioned shirt, my pack-rat tendencies when it comes to larger leftovers has really come in handy!


On the scrapbooking front, I do have journaling typed and in the fonts I want for, I think, five layouts. I do have more to make than what I thought, because not all of my recent photos had been matched with paper (this is what sidetracked me from sewing and pictures on Sunday...my hands were getting too cold in the basement then, too.) So now I just need to format the pages and print them out. I'm hoping to do some more writing on those tomorrow.


Going back to sewing now... I think I have patterns picked for the next few projects! The first one being that green striped fabric I'd mentioned on my mini-goals list. (See fabric all the way to the left here.) I'm going to use McCall's 2029-- though, figures, the picture on the McCall's website is wrong! The drawing to the far right should be a long, bias-cut skirt (like the floral one but longer). It's actually perfect for what I wanted to do, because there's no darts to mess up the stripes and the zipper is in the side so no back seam. I do want to modify it a little to make it longer, though-- with this fabric, it really needs to be nearly sweeping the floor! Then for the blue-green floral next to it, I'm going to use McCall's 5050, I think with view B. I'm strongly considering modifying it so the gathering is at the waist instead of under the bust, though, and maybe making some kind of fabric belt to conceal it. (My waist is small for my pattern size, so if I'm not really careful with empire-waist and hippie-looking shirts, they look like baggy maternity shirts on me.) I haven't chosen a pattern yet for the gold-embroidered teal, but for the multicolored print on the right, I'd like to use Butterick 6831. (Simple pattern for a busy print.) At this point, I think I'm going to combine the body of the cream one with the sleeves of the pink one, and am considering adding a tieback of some sort.


I also got a few fabrics for Christmas--my mom is really good at picking out things I like! I got a printed knit that I think I'm going to use to try out BurdaStyle's Lydia top, and an embroidered brown suedecloth that I'm pondering Simplicity 7090, the greenish version with the asymmetric seams. I also got a brown striped fabric that's much like what I used for my Emily blouse (ok, it's the exact same fabric in brown.) Obviously I don't want to use the Emily pattern for that since it would look too much the same. I'm kind of thinking about trying something like this with it-- I really like that asymetric button-front, as well as the different stripe directions, and I've never done an asymmetric button-front so that would be an interesting design challenge. I'm just wondering if the stripes are too wide!


So now that I've bored anyone who might possibly be reading this out of their mind, I will say that all these patterns (at least the major manufacturer ones) are subject to change-- I'm going to look at patternreview.com to see what other people have said about these first. I've known it's out there for awhile, but haven't ever tried using this resource. So if the patterns are said to suck, I may reconsider my choices. Even if it means buying more patterns.