on the interwebs

Cool thing!
The shorts I made the other day were good enough to get me through to round 2 on the Pattern Review Sewing Bee! Amazing.

Waiting til tomorrow to find out the next challenge.


Also, my SAQA Benefit Auction piece, Ramshackle Place is featured on the SAQA Europe and Middle East Blog.

Ramshackle Place

12x12in

They are featuring a donated piece each day from the artists in our region. A link to the blog directly - scroll down and see the ones before Snowden...and return to see the ones after!

And shorts are done.

You can read the details here in my review.


had to have a closure and a photo of it.


and a better look at the front

Shorts in Turquoise

I am using the Pattern Review Sewing Bee contest for motivation to make a pair of summer shorts. You can watch the gallery at that link as it fills up. The deadline for this round is the 7th September.
Yes, summer is on it's way out. But sometimes I am told to bring shorts for physio sessions. So, I want something that I don't feel ridiculous in.
Whether I will get it entered in time, who knows. But it is a motivation.

I thought I may as well see what a muslin/trial pair of trousers I did a few years ago looked like now. I thought I could take the clues and change for something that works now. But! they actually fit! So, I have been just making some changes to the pattern that will suit shorts. I want them a bit looser at the hem than the trouser pattern is at that point.

Also I have drafted the front to have pockets somewhat like for jeans. and the back will have a yoke like jeans.

The main body of the shorts will be from a fine wale corduroy in turquoise. I will be using the fabric with the batik ovals for accents...like in the back of the pocket. maybe some piping? like on the yoke seam? but I will see how that goes. But if they turn out nice, I might wear them for more than just physio sessions! So the turquoise will match most of my summer blouses.

Board Shorts - 1 cont.

I finished the shorts. There are plenty of things I want to do differently.

One of the strange things about the facing on the waist is that each piece was meant to be added to the panel and then the seam for the panel and the facing were sewn all in one go...then turned down later.

So, my idea of adding elastic by stitching it to the seam allowance? not possible.

So I stitched it to the facing and then had to stitch the facing near the bottom to the side seams and so on in order for it not to flop up.
The result is okay, but not very easy to do and not really the result I want to put my name to.

Easily fixed for next time though, by doing the facing the normal way of stitching facing pieces together and adding to the waist. It means the waist seam allowance is continuous and the elastic will be able to be stitched to it.

I also had to add a hook and eye to the zip shield to keep the tension of the elastic from pulling the fabric back to reveal the zip. So, I will adjust the fly opening. I may even add the patterns together so that it is a grown on fly shield. at the end of the day, it will be one less fiddley bit.

But oh well, someone will be glad to wear them!

Board Shorts - 1

Among the many things I have been doing the last few weeks besides running up and down to London and minding the New-to-me-Pattern company contest on Pattern Review was finally having a go at the Board Shorts pattern I hope to use to make up several pairs of shorts to send to Ethiopia. As you may remember, I have sent skirts off for the girls, but now I want to do some things for the boys.

I was gifted this Jalie pattern not long ago.

For the first one I thought I would try to make it like the pattern says. (Very hard for me!)

However, I decided to definitely deviate from the idea of Velcro fly fastenings to a zip. I also left off the little inside coin pocket and the little tie adjustment tabs for now.

The side panels are meant to be colour blocked. So, immediately after realising I hadn't fussed about stripe matching when I cut it, I decided to tape the side pieces together and future models, if colour blocked, will only have it in the different panels. However, I had got on a roll when I cut this first one and had cut 2. so...more stripes not matching on the sides. Oh well. I may even try to adapt this panel to include a large pocket for stones and other things boys need to carry around.

I haven't sewed from a pattern I didn't draft (or use pattern drafting software) for about 15 years. This pattern is one where you have to trace the size you want from nested patterns for a very wide range of sizes. I chose to do a size 10, as it was nearer the measurements I am going by. It wasn't too difficult, but all the patterns are on the one sheet, front and back, so you need a large space to do the tracing. I used my dot and cross pattern paper I purchased when I finished C+G.

If you look at the photo above, you can see the pattern also had only illustrations to follow for the directions. Not too much of a problem, but you really have to look at the illustration for things like what the notches look like to work out which pieces to sew together. So, cue unpicking the zip area of the front because I mistook it for the back in the illustrations. (That was when I was still worrying about doing it 'right'.) Some of the other steps required talking it out loud to my friend Pat to work out what it wanted me to do.

Eventually, I got the shorts to the place where they need hemming and that is where they are now.

I was sort of sewing these along with the contestants in the New-to-me-Pattern company contest (I couldn't enter because I was managing it.) However, I have decided to put wide elastic in the back section in order to make it more adjustable for my friend when she tries to work out which child needs them the most. I will sew it to the seam allowance under the facing.

Perhaps I can do that tomorrow and clear the table for the next major project. (I have been working in a small space on the table about 24in square while these different shorts bits and other things are encroaching further and further!)

and for future pairs, I will pick and choose from the instructions and change to methods I decide will work best for the function I intend for the shorts. As you can see, they aren't made up from fabric meant for surfing anyway.