That's a Wrap Skirt!

Sorry for the brief absence! This weekend was a whirlwind of expected and unexpected adventures. I've got a lot to discuss now, and I bet you're just dying to hear it! First thing's first, though: all of the pajama pants are now DONE! Here is SM, modeling the scorpion pants we all know he needs now:

Now his legs are protected by a swarm of venomous arachnids!

My pants are also done, and I really like them, but I'm not great at taking photos of myself so you will have to wait a bit to see them! In lieu of a finished product, here is a random photo of my pincushion sitting on top of the fabric:

Artsy!

Now, once I was done with those pants, I scurried right along to my next sewing project, that flowery pink wrap skirt from the Sew Everything Workshop. Because I wanted to wear it to a party on Saturday night, this was my first sewing project ON A DEADLINE. I work well under pressure, and I can happily say that this was no exception. I tackled a few major new concepts with this project: darts, easestitching, and a sewn pull-through hole for the waistband ties. I also took a lot of pictures, because I *loved* how the fabric looked in the morning light from the window in my sewing room.

This is my first practice dart on a spare piece of fabric. Gorgeous, no?

I'll happily admit that I fell right in love with this fabric from the moment I saw it. A few weeks ago I got it into my head that I needed a flowy white skirt with a pink floral pattern on it, but I also didn't want it to be too busy. The color on this print was exactly what I wanted, and that unique white silhouette pattern seems like the ideal way to balance fancy with subtle. I adore patterns of all kinds, but they're hard to wear, and I'm always looking for ways to look interesting and unique without smacking people in the face with loudness. Anyway, I was happy to learn to sew darts on a fabric I loved, and here is the final, pressed result in the skirt:

Crisp!

After sewing the skirt's four darts and hemming the sides, it was time to add the waistband. I'll admit that I would've liked the ties to be a little longer, and they don't look perfect on the ends, but overall I think they turned out OK. The most interesting part was sewing a little hole for the ties to go through on the side. I had a little trouble translating the instructions to what was actually going on in the garment, because the hole was stitched at the seam of two pieces that would eventually be folded in half. Once I realized that the stitch that created the hole was the seam between the two pieces, I figured it out pretty quickly, and here is the result:

After this, I had to attach the waistband/ties to the body of the skirt, but the seams didn't quite match up the way they were supposed to:

 I have helpfully illustrated the seams that are supposed to align. Given this little conundrum, I decided to try out a technique that the pattern didn't explicitly call for, but which seemed appropriate: easestitching. I used the method recommended elsewhere in the Sew Everything Workshop, and put a single stitch with a very long thread about 1/2" from the edge of the "longer" piece (the the skirt body). I then tugged on these threads and used them to evenly distribute the wrinkles in the skirt body until the seams roughly lined up:

 I pinned it here and stitched, and... Voila!

Semi-Victory!!!!

The seams... Sort of lined up! Anyway, they are even, and it looks fine in the finished piece, even if it's not picture perfect. I made the very silly mistake of pinning the wrong side of the waistband to the right side of the body the first time around, and I didn't figure it out until halfway through the seam. Aside pulling that out and starting over, the rest of the project was relatively simple. Putting in the VERY LONG stitches along the top and bottom of the skirt and through the waistline was kind of a pain, because the fabric tended to get a little bunched up and wrinkled, and this got worse the longer I sewed continuously. Because of this, the tail end of the stitch, around the end of one of the waist ties, does look a little wonky. Does anyone know how to prevent or alleviate this problem? Pressing the finished product helped a lot, and it looks pretty flat and tidy in the end.

So, all in all, I'm very proud of this garment. It's the first thing that I chose and made completely for myself, and I wore it to that party Saturday night and got a lot of compliments! I'm still sorting through photos of my outfit from Saturday night, but here's a sneak peek to give you an idea of the finished skirt:

Glamorous!

Misaligned

Happy Monday, everyone! The pajama pants are almost all done: PS's are complete, SM's simply await hemming, and mine should be done by the end of the day. Soon I'll post a bunch of eye-candy (hopefully) of the finished products, but for today I want to talk about something that has consistently gone wrong in this project: alignment! No matter how hard I try to do everything right, cut every piece precisely, etc, I keep ending up with these sad little errors:

ARGLE
BARGLE
TOOMANY
PHOTOS










OK, let's break this down.

PROBLEM #1: PIECES DO NOT END IN THE SAME PLACE

Awkward

So this has happened every time: The inside of the front and back pieces of the pants are not the same length. For a while I puzzled over how to line them up, given this problem, and I decided it would be best to match the notches and let the ends line up how they might. This always resulted in what's going on in the above photo: the top corners are like a centimeter apart! What is going on? Is the pattern screwy? Am I doing something terrible with my cutting? Unfortunately, I only have a varnished wood dining-room table to cut on, so I put down a flat sheet of cardboard underneath the part I'm cutting so my scissors don't carve up the finish. I hope the little elevation off the table isn't doing this... Anyway, This eventually leads to the front and back edges being lined up wrong when it comes to sewing the crotch seam. I try to even it out as best as I can, and trim of the extra. But it makes me sad! So... any tips?

PROBLEM #2: SEAMS DON'T LINE UP RIGHT UGHHHHH

"Join us. JOOOIIIINN USSSSSS. LOOOOOOVE UUUSSSSSSSS."

See how the seam goes all zig-zag in the middle there? That is supposed to be a continuous vertical line, because it is the inside seams of the legs. They should meet up in the middle, but they do not. I don't know what to do about that, except... sew better? Again, I am lining up by notches, and I'm pretty sure those seams were closer together or correctly aligned when I pinned them, so at least a part of this problem comes from the way I'm sewing. Sometimes I catch myself pushing the fabric a little bit, so I know I need to check that bad instinct. But if anyone's got any more specific advice, I'd love to hear it. The worst part about this problem is I'm not even getting better about it! The above shot is my pants, which I made third. And here are SM's pants, which I made second:

See? Much better. So. Yeah! I'm getting worse. Or just fluctuating randomly.

ANYWAY, I don't want to be too much of a downer. For the most part, everything is going well and I'm SUPER DUPER THRILLED that the things I am making are turning into wearable garments. Here is a sneak-peak at the "Project Finished" entry:

YAY FEET!

BUT WHAT'S NEXT?????


Good question! Yesterday, I went out shopping again with my mom, and got all sorts of things for my next three projects. The first is a late mother's-day present for that same mom:

Yes, my mom liked the skirt I was wearing in my first OOTD so much that she wanted me to make her one just like it (shape-wise, not color-wise). I think I've mentioned before that we are cute people. Anyway, I'll be making view A up there on the upper-left of the pattern. Although View E intrigues me, and I may tackle it for myself in the near future. When this skirt is done, my mother has requested her own photo-shoot for this blog, so look forward to that!

Project #2 is a Sewing-Machine Cozy from the Sew Everything Workshop. Oilcloth seems to only be available in patterns best described as "mad tacky," but this is the one I liked the most. So there you go! I'm going to try to whip this one up pretty quick, so expect pictures in the near future.

I don't think I can fully explain why or how much I like the cat in this photo. LOOK AT THAT CAT!?

Project #3 is the "Breezy Easy Wrap Skirt," also from the Sew Everything Workshop. At some point I had a magical vision of making a skirt for myself in basically the exact fabric I managed to find, so I'm pretty excited about that.
If you have any tips for making these projects (which include gathering! and darts!), leave them in the comments. These will probably keep me busy for the next few weeks of spare-time-crammed-in-between-work-that-actually-pays-me-money. Have I mentioned that if you'd like me to sew you something, you should definitely ask me right away? I have ideas for myself, but I really want challenges and reasons to make all sorts of things. So please let me know if you want something. ALSO, since I really want to make kids' clothes, do tell me if you have children and would like me to sew something for them. It would make me super happy!