Comic Relief: Underwear!

Happiness is....stripey underwear that makes me smile!

Thanks for your comments on my last post about the Maria Denmark Lotta Lady Bag!  It is one of my most favorite bags ever.   At work I need to carry my laptop back and forth to another building with my notebook and it is perfect for that.

Here's a pair of UW I stitched up back in September, but never blogged.

The fabric is from PR Weekend Chicago, in some dive-like fabric store.
The elastic is from Pacific Trimming in NYC.

I use ATP's "Make Your Own Undies" tutorial whenever I make undies.  I don't enclose my elastic like she did, but rather zig-zag on my picot edge elastic RS to RS then flip it over and zig zag again from the RS.  If anyone wants pix of what I mean, let me know!

One of my friends calls this "comic relief" sewing, in between my larger projects.   It takes me about 90 minutes from cut to finish.

So, even though this was supposed to be comic relief, it had its own drama.

I had started this pair on a weekend, then got to the point where there was 20 minutes left and was too tired to finish it off.

Came home after work one night that week and thought I'd feel accomplished and finish it....

Then this happened!!!  This has NEVER happened to be before to this extent.  Somehow the fabric/elastic got sucked down into the throat plate and I had to unscrew the plate and physically remove the fabric/elastic out.


When I removed the bobbin casing I got to see all the lint inside.  Great opp to clean it out!

And this is what it looked like, stuck in the throat plate

It actually tore my elastic!!!  But I didn't have enough to cut the new piece of continuous elastic, so I had to make do with what I had.  So now one of the leg holes has two joins in it instead of one.

I put it away for a few days and then went back to it again and finished it off.

But without a bow, the UW looks a bit....naked.
 
So I made my own bow, having no white bows in my bow stash.  I know from experience that making my own bow and cutting ribbon like this makes the raw edges fray after washing.  I googled to see if there was a way for me to finish the edges, but didn't like any of the suggestions....

So I used Fray Check on the edges of the cut ribbon.  The Fray Check does sort of stain the ribbon, so I cut the tails slightly longer than I wanted, dabbed on the fray check, let it dry the requisite 15 minutes, then used my rotary cutter to cut the new edge so that just the very edge of the ribbon had the fray check on it...which is hardly visible.  

I have washed and dried this UW several times now and can report that the ribbon is only fraying on the top edge...next time I might leave more of a buffer and/or make sure that the fray check really covers the whole cut edge...maybe I didn't go far enough?  Or just buy some white bows.  My local Joann's doesn't have any of the size/style I was thinking of, and Pacific Trimming didn't have any either (they had other colors but no white bows!)  I might have to buy them online then.

Here's a little holiday cheer, the Christmas Tree in Palmer Square in Princeton.  I spent last Saturday at work, and went into town to grab some dinner afterward.  Seeing the tree is always a nice treat and a great way to wrap up a productive day!

So, are you tempted to make your own undies???  Or have you already?

Be well!

Firsts of 2013

Sorry, Flickr won't cooperate tonight and won't show my rotated pix as rotated.

I am still fitting the Sewaholic Thurlow trousers.
I started on Dec 31.  I'm on muslin #4.
And still have far to go.
Luckily I'm enrolled in "Altering Pants" on PatternReview.com, and Angela Wolf started helping me fit them to my body last weekend.

That necessitated buying my first bolt of muslin.


A whole bolt of muslin is actually kind of dreamy.
Finally my first wearable garment off my new sewing machine and my first underwear of the year!

Black Fabric: hmmm...probably Joann's.
Iron-On Patch that wouldn't iron on, so I sewed it on: Definitely Joann's.
Hot pink elastic: Pacific Trimming, NYC, MPB Day

I think it's adorable.

I made chicken pot pie tonight, from scratch, even down to the cornmeal crust. The kitchen looked like my sewing room does after a project. 

The recipe from Cook This Not That is MUCH better, but in that recipe I used store-bought phyllo dough and I liked the idea of the from-scratch-ness of this recipe.

Sadly, the cornmeal crust didn't taste like much. It probably needs a boatload of butter and some sugar to make it better, ha ha.  The filling doesn't have any milk product at all.  Traditional pot pie has cream and lower-cal ones use skim milk.  This one just uses chicken broth.

I'd say this dish is like the wearable muslin of cooking.  I'm going to eat it (well, the filling at least) but it's not going to be made in this form again.

But it looked adorable in the cookbook in red ramekins:

I hadn't been to the PPL for a while and it was fun to browse during lunch last week. SO many books I couldn't carry them all, so I got these to start:

I leave you with this.

I helped my friend Debbie learn a bit more about her sewing machine last weekend (which was really fun to hear her reaction especially as she didn't know her machine had so many features, like automatic threading). That was another first, showing a friend new sewing machine features.
We went to the Ardmore Farmers Market so I could relive some college memories.
Ok, ONE more.

Delish!
Well, just ONE more.

Ok, this is what I really came for:

The same woman who served me in college served me last weekend. With the same chocolate chip cookies I adore.  LOVE.  Almost as good as mine.  Different than mine.  But yummy.
Be well!

A domestic Sunday

Hey, my parents got their electricity back yesterday at 12:20pm!  12 days without power from the grid.  They are tough stock.  A crew from Arkansas helped them out--I love all these crews coming from out of state to help us (the state of NJ) get back on our feet again--thank you!!

Ok, it felt like a very domestic Sunday.

A little cooking...

Chicken rice and artichoke soup, with too much Parmesan cheese thrown on top...

A little baking....

Nestle Toll House chocolate chip with walnut cookies from scratch for the Thanksgiving Potluck at work tmw.  My house smells SO good!

A little sewing....
version #6 of the jeans muslin (next time it will be the real deal....are you ready???  Am I???)


With a fisheye dart to take out excess length at the side seam that was creating unflattering waviness in the hip area (I actually had to make this dart bigger!):


And  a quick gratification project, this lovely pair of UW...
fabric: Joann's
elastic: either Daytona or Pacific Trim, NYC




iron on patch:  Hobby Lobby (recently opened in NJ)



And finally, a little snow with the ginkos...

Be well!!  Good night!

I only used to dream about stitches like this...

...and now they are mine.  Thank you, rolled hem foot!  And thank you, Noile


Exterior
This is the start of the ruffle for B5638.
 
Interior

I dreampt of more hot pink and brown underwear....

And that happened too...

This time with a "wild" patch.
Be well!  Or wild.  Or wild & well.

I'm bananas for this underwear!

In case you missed it, my PR Weekend Chicago retrospective is here.   A big thank you to those who commented on it!  It was really a blast.

Oh yes Andrea, I have made the banana appliqued underwear!  and 3 more pairs today.    And I now have a flickr set devoted to the undies I've made.

Here is the May 17, 2011 collection:


Let's see those appliques close up, shall we?  All appliques were purchased at Vogue Fabrics, Evanston, IL, at Sewing Pattern Review Weekend Chicago.  All elastic is from sewsassy.com.  This picture depicts the colors the best:


First up, boy shorts with banana applique.  Fabric is from Jomar from PR weekend Philly 2010.  Yellow elastic.  LOL that you can see the tailor's chalk "F" to the left of the bananas.  Yes, those bananas are sequined!


The remaining three pairs are bikini style underwear.  Let's pretend these are jersey tomatoes, ok?  Fabric from Joann's.  Red elastic.


This pair of underwear is not a lemon!  Same brown fabric from Jomar, PR weekend Philly 2010.  Yellow elastic.


Dog bone applique.  100% organic cotton t-shirt from the Princeton Environmental Film Festival 2009.  I previously made the front of the shirt into panties; this is the back of the shirt.  Brown elastic.  In this pic the fabric looks pinky; it's beige.



So even though I wrote a summary of PR weekend yesterday it didn't have any pix of what I bought.  Here are the 7 fabrics I bought:


This luscious wine colored border stretch cotton print is from Vogue.  It's the only piece I haven't washed yet.  They had a piece of this fabric draped on the wall to look like a cowl neck dress with the red border as a sash/belt.  Gorgeous.  Several of us including Jacqui bought it!  It was in two colorways:  wine and navy.


Here are the other fabrics I bought at various other stores.  The only knit is the yellow stripe.  I washed and dried it twice and it's already starting to pill. Well, for $2.69 a yard, I should have known.  I might still make a pair of underwear with it with the full understanding that they are not going to last long. I should make myself sign an agreement to not get upset when the fabric starts heavily pilling.



Appliques from Vogue; ribbons and pink & white piping from Soutache;  black & white piping, and elastic from New Rainbow; pearl trim from Chicago Fabric, Button and Yarn Co.


And the freebies!  LOVE the design on the PR bag.  Plus it made it easy to carry around purchases during shopping day.


And the other swag:

Very nicely done, vendors!!  You've outdone yourselves this year.

I want to sew some clothing soon...I'm thinking it might be an easy skirt to get me back into the land of exterior garment sewing...I have a list of clothing to make based on what people were wearing at the weekend but I don't have most of the patterns yet!

Be well!

pig finger puppets and gold zebra striped undies

While I was in Austin I saw this ad in the local newspaper and LOVED the "toe puppet" pig and how its snout is a button (their pig is green). So I made a version of it tonight.



Starting materials: the inspiration pig in the ad; button for nose; beads for eyes, scrap of fabric that was a sample from Lucy's Fabrics.com (that I had always wondered what I would use for...today was the day!). I drew a pattern and cut it out.

Here's what it looked like when I was half-way through; the back isn't sewn on yet.


Here's the back of the pig:


I think it's totally adorable! I'm in love!  He's coming with me to work tomorrow!

and of course, what you've all been waiting for, the zebra striped FOE, but it's in gold, so, tiger striped?


I sewed on this "adventure" label; very appropriate, don't you think?


It's only my second time working with FOE.  I'm still getting the hang of it.

At Antoinette's recommendation I bought the elastic from SewSassy.   Click on the link and it will take you to their elastics page; scroll down to get to the zebra section.  As always, the undies tutorial I use is from Antoinette.


I have an old, old, old UFO that I have been waiting for the right neck trim.  I think the black and white zebra FOE might just be my ticket!

Some labels I might use....

Thanks everyone for your warm wishes about the conference I attended!   The plan and visualization I had done was to knock their socks off; mission accomplished!  The panels went really well and I got some of the best feedback ever, and it felt good to share my knowledge.  Austin is a great city and it was fun to meet up with Antoinette and Leslie.  The hotel was really rockin' too.  Free hot chocolate delivered to my room every morning!

 

I wish you all a successful and healthy week.  Be well.