Blame it on the bobbin

My sewing machine and I are in a bit of a war right now. It's probably my fault - I stopped using it for a few weeks, it got lonely, it took revenge. But I've been working on some super secret Christmas projects, and I have never had this much trouble. Needle coming unthreaded, thread breaking, bobbin running out in the middle of a seam (okay, that one might be my fault), bobbin tangling, thread tangling. And then, while attempting to untangle the bobbin at one point, I accidentally pulled the bobbin case out, and it took me forever to figure out how to put it back in.

These are the slowest moving "quick" projects ever.

My nemesis

Back again

Hello, lovely people in my computer! I've been neglecting you. In my defence, I've also been neglecting the sewing. No sewing, nothing to talk about. It's the time of year, you know? Plus I needed fabric before I could do anything.

However, I went to the giant Fabricland members sale, and now I have PLANS. Meanwhile, a couple of pics of skirts in the real world.

I got a couple of compliments on the skirt - mostly on how cute the rickrack on the bottom is. Heh. The rickrack made all the difference.

I don't know about this look. I am finding this skirt incredibly hard to style. I blame the pink. In any case, I just wanted to wear it, so I pulled out the black, but I don't love black except with other black, so it wasn't my favourite.

What next?

I went to do some sewing tonight, and realized that I have no ongoing projects for the first time since I re-unpacked the sewing machine. Horrors! So what do I want to do next? I do have a couple of Christmas projects I could start working on. But my fabric stash for clothes is pretty minimal - the only thing I have fabric for is a summery shirt. And it's not so summery out there anymore.

I do, however, have a rather large stash of patterns.  So perhaps I'll pick a couple and then go wander through some fabric stores.

So here's what I have. Two tops:

Simplicity 3750

Butterick 4985

...three dresses, two of which are possibly odd retro patterns that were $2 each:

Colette Crepe

Butterick 4790

Simplicity 3833

...and a bunch of skirts, some of which I'm not convinced would actually look good on me:

Butterick 5613

McCall's 5431

Simplicity 2152

Vogue 8749

And then the things I won't be making now. Knit dresses for when I learn how to sew knits (part of the pattern sale):

Vogue 1027

Vogue 1194

 And a dress I love that is a little beyond my skills right now. But one day!

Colette Rooibos

What do you think? Have a favourite?

Number 3

I finished this skirt today. It's the same pattern as this skirt, although it looks pretty different to me. I liked the pocket so much I made two, as you can see. I also cut the skirt to be a bit narrower. And I made my own waist tie, out of the same material as the pockets (a pink and green check, if you can't see it).

I'm also wearing the same shirt in both pictures. I think this is a sign I need to stop making skirts with green in them.

This skirt feels much more homemade - the fabric is a pretty light (and cheap) cotton, but it also has a certain amount of stretch, which caused the hem to pucker a bit. Up close it's not the cleanest looking thing. But I love the pattern mixing. I'm not totally sure what I have to wear with it, though.

Outfit post

Proof that I actually wear my sewing projects - I wore this to work last week (and then had to wait until I replaced my camera batteries to post it).

Finito.

I'm back...and I have a skirt!

Today was my last sewing class, and I managed to finish the skirt. Hooray! Even better, I'm really happy with it. I will wear the hell out of this skirt. I'm already planning another with the same pattern. Maybe navy (I know!) with orange contrast for all the topstitching? And maybe an orange band around the bottom if I can figure out how to add that onto the pattern?

I'm so happy I took the sewing course. Sure, I could have managed on my own again - I figured it out enough the first time. But there were things, like dealing with the fabric, that I might not have thought to figure out. And having someone help me interpret my first real pattern was so helpful - mostly to remind me what all the different stiches meant! I feel pretty confident that I can figure out another pattern now. And there's always the internet to help.

Proof that this was more involved than my first skirt:

Look! It has a real waistband and a zipper. And I clearly picked my pattern well (without realizing anything about what I was doing) because I didn't have to blindstitch the hem, which seems to be fairly time-consuming, at least according to the woman in my class, the best sewer there, who had only managed half her hem in 2 hours.  Her skirt was pretty full, but still.

Once you fall into the Etsy trap...

How much do I want this pincushion? http://www.etsy.com/listing/80171243/large-pincushion-vintage-lemon-bar

Ooh, or this one shaped like a pear! http://www.etsy.com/listing/80176102/large-pincushion-cheeky-pear

So ridiculously adorable. Also would solve the problem of continually losing my pincushion among all the other tomato pincushions. I wonder why the tomato became the accepted standard?