New Look 6321: cherries sleep shirt

So yesterday I made the owl sleepshirt with all the gathers and the 3 inch cuffs, and today I made a very plain jane style long sleeved sleep shirt using New Look 6321. It's view E, but cut to t-shirt length, and I made it with longer sleeves. This cherry knit fabric is from Joann's. It's a 12 grading to 14. I've made a few nightgowns out of this pattern, but a while ago, pre-blogging.

I actually wear these sleepshirts under my flannel shirts. I've already turned on the heating. Oh, and I have a fire in the fireplace tonight, second of the season!


Instead of using the binding that came with the pattern, I cut a strip of fabric 1.75 inches wide (like the owl shirt) and sewed that on. I think this kind of binding is my new obsession (I continue to obsess with piping and double needle stitching--in fact, I double needle stitch all knit hems now, standard).



I had enough fabric left over to make a pair of underwear using Antoinette's fantastic and easy to understand "make your own undies" tutorial. I could make two pairs but I don't have enough of that black lingerie elastic. I never realized how much elastic was involved in underwear. It's a lot, a little over 2 yards for me. I bought the elastic 9 months ago or so at lucysfabrics.com but they don't sell it anymore. Have to find a new source for it.




I really had a long think about whether or not to post a picture of underwear, but then I got over myself. It's not like I'm modelling them or anything.

I'm taking tmw off from work and I'm trying to decide if I will sew or not. I'm reading a fantastic novel, You Lost Me There, and I might finish it tmw. It's the first novel I've read that is set with a science background (the main character is an Alzheimer's disease researcher at a university.) I also recommend How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else. It's a fast read and quite good.

Good night!

Simplicity 2971-ish: Who gives a hoot?

So I had made this pattern before, back in Sept 2008. Today I broke it out for a nightshirt I wanted to make with some owl fabric I picked up at Joann's.

I did not put the elastic in at the bottom; I did not keep the sleeves as full as they were; I lengthened the sleeve; I made the 10 instead of the 12 this time.

Somehow when I lengthened the sleeves to make long sleeves, I didn't lengthen them enough. After initially deciding to use piping and add a regular cuff and failing because the knit fabric stretched out too much, I wound up making 3 inch cuffs, gathering the end of the sleeve to fit in my new cuff. That worked out very nicely. Thank goodness too, because I was feeling frustrated!



In order to take that picture above, my hand is actually holding up the sleeve (the shirt is on my dressform) and so it creates a very weird looking effect! as if the sleeve is still too short (it's not).

Here's a closeup of the binding. I feel that I have this particular type of binding down pat now. In this shirt, the entire neckline is gathered, all the way around. I used to shortcut gathering by only doing one row of basting. Now I do two rows of basting and it works out really well.




I know I said I would work on a jacket this weekend, and by the quantity of uncut corduroy I bought at Joann's this week, I should, but I think I'm going to make another sleepshirt tomorrow; this one is more basic, no gathers, no funky sleeves. Just a bread and butter raglan sleeve pattern.

Here's the Princeton Farmer's Market flowers for this week:


Good night!

10-10-10 five minute craft

I hit up the Joann's Columbus Day sale today and got a 99 cent Simplicity jacket pattern that I'm pretty excited about--3628. I like how shaped it is. Since I'll have a 3 day weekend next weekend, I'll have some time to work on it then.

Yesterday I cleaned out the living room and den closets, put together shelving, and purged. So there wasn't a lot of time for crafting and sewing.

Here was my 5 minute crafting project. I found the fruit and pinecone picks during the purge and just shoved them into a grapevine wreath--I didn't have to glue them in. I wired up the wreath and put it on the front door.

I think I might play with the orientation of some picks. Right now it looks like a 5 minute effort, ha!


I found some flannel scraps. I just love these apples. I made the scrap into a mini-pillowcase for this tiny Ikea pillow I use for my neck:


And I finally put pockets in the Tweety bird bathrobe I made last year, using some scraps for the pockets.

There was a frost warning last night, but my flowers didn't look too too bad this morning, just a little shriveled:


Princeton Farmer's Market flowers this week:


Possibly my last rose of the year:


And hooray for cupcakes from LaBon, which I picked up on the way to JoAnn's.

Oh! and at Johanna Lu's urging I watched Eleven Minutes, the documentary about Jay McCarroll's first runway show after Project Runway. Highly recommend!