Christmas catch-up

Well, my Christmas sewing was a huge success. Yay! The project that I didn't mention was the 5 drawstring pouches and zippered bags I made for friends (one set was already in the mail when I took the photo).

Aren't they fun fabrics? It was so much fun picking them. Although if you can believe it, these were much more trouble than the shirt and skirt - I had to buy more fabric twice, once because the fabric I bought was far too stretchy to work with and I needed something different (the top blue flowers), and once because I bungled it so badly I had to start again (the stripes). But I got them all done in time, hurrah.


And then there's the presents for my parents. I didn't get a picture of the skirt for my mom before I gifted it, mostly because I was sewing the buttons on Christmas Eve, and the skirt didn't look like anything without them. (I got the shirt buttons sewn on minutes before leaving to catch my flight out.) But here are my parents wearing their new clothes.

No, I'm not such a terrible photographer that I cut their heads off. Close, though. Both things fit perfectly (yay, again), and they both seemed genuinely thrilled, not just with the thought, but with the final product. I was awfully happy.

Now I can do some more sewing for myself! I'd bought some fabric in the fall to make another version of the skirt I did for my class, because I liked it so much. So I pulled that out today, and struggled through the effort of prepping the fabric (side note: this is the most time consuming part for me. so annoying). In then end I decided on another pattern I had, just for fun. I layed out the pattern and started pinning, but didn't get very far - it was very hard (and painful!) to get the pins through this fabric. After putting multiple dents in my fingers I figured it was enough for the night. But still, it feels good to start another project, even if it is, yes, one more skirt.

I made a shirt!

I feel like I just reached a new level in the sewing video game.

I have a bunch of half-started posts talking about this shirt, waiting for me to upload photos. (I clearly haven't reached any advanced levels in the blogging video game.) So here's how it started: I decided to make presents for my parents. My mom used to sew quite a lot, so it's not like a handmade shirt would be a novelty for my dad, but I thought they'd both appreciate the concept. So I found a shirt pattern and a skirt pattern (I wanted to make a vest for my mom, but thought that might be beyond me if I couldn't actually fit it on her).

Pinning and cutting takes me *forever* because I have to do it on the floor, and between the cats and my creaky body, it's slow going. So I did them both before starting any sewing. (A smart idea, as it turns out, because now it's the beginning of December and I haven't started sewing the skirt for my mom, but at least I'm not staring at a giant piece of fabric!)

The shirt was interesting - lots of stuff I hadn't really done before, like the collar. When I went to put the collar together, I realized I'd misread the pattern piece, and had only cut one when I was supposed to cut two (duh). And I didn't have enough fabric to cut it out in the direction it was supposed to go (not to mention that the fabric is striped, so it would look odd if I cut it in the other direction). So I ended up cutting two halves and sewing them together first to make one piece, then checking every three seconds to make sure the Frankenstein half was on the underside of the collar. But it worked! You can barely even see the join.

The only thing that's left to do is buttons - they're done by hand, so I can do those at my parents' if I need to. Also I really need to start actually sewing something on the skirt, so I feel slightly less panicked. The pattern looks pretty easy, but you never know. First step: change the needle to the special denim needle I bought (aren't I fancy).