Late to the PJ Party!

Despite the racket you are all making at Karen's Pyjama Party I managed to sleep until almost noon--in my defense, I as up when the party started still wrestling my PJs into being. But I'm here now enjoying the festivities and trying to catch up. Thanks for inviting me, Karen!

1. The jammies as of this time yesterday:


I'm using Butterick 6837 because I own it, OK? The fabric is quilting cotton that must have been $1.99/yard at FabricMart, otherwise I can't account for it being in my stash. Close up it's fairly pretty but back up a few feet and it's a kind of muddy brown. A dead simple make, complicated only by my propensity to pick up essential tools (scissors, tweezers, elastic) and drop them into some other dimension where they hide for hours at a time then reappear when I've given up looking for them. Oh, and I took Karen's advice to achieve crotch awesomeness by stitching from the seam intersection, but failed to give any thought to how this might work on a serger. But here they are, already broken in with a night's (and morning's) sleep.



Pay no attention to the hobbity woman in the middle of the picture--look at my beautiful bougainvillea and plumbago!

As for reading material, my bedside is littered with crossword puzzles, sewing books, London Reviews of Books, Ulysses (still and probably forever), and law school textbooks. Plus this:

My history with Dorothy Dunnett goes way, way back--I read the first three (of six) books of The Lymond Chronicles while Dorothy Dunnett was still working on the fourth and had to wait, haunting bookstores and libraries through high school and college, for her to finish the story in 1975. Now Lady Dunnett has a huge international following, but then I was all alone in my obsession. I waited impatiently for her to write some more historical fiction but after several years I gave up. I graduated from law school and had my second child in 1986 and was far to preoccupied to notice that The House of Niccoló, a prequel to my beloved Lymond Chronicles, had begun to appear. I didn't learn about this series until all eight volumes were published, Lady Dunnett had died, and an idle search on the World Wide Web brought it all back to me. These books are wonderful but extremely dense with historical detail and literary allusion, complicated plots tightly woven into fifteenth-century politics and trade, demanding (and rewarding) intense concentration that I seem to have in much shorter supply today than I did forty years ago.

What was the question?

Men's Shirt Sewn-Along!

I am pleased to declare that I have completed my muslin for Peter's Male Pattern BoldnessMen's Shirt Sew-Along. Astonishingly, it seems to fit my DH, except that the shoulders are a bit too wide and the sleeves too long. But the latter is not a problem because I made so many mistakes on the cuffs that they are best rolled up and hidden.



The shirt only looks like it's made from a paper bag--it's actually made from a thrifted bed sheet, with buttons I snipped off some other shirt I found in a closet. ("Hey," says DS, "Isn't that my shirt?" Of course not!)

I took a few construction photos but not many--I keep forgetting! Here's a couple, showing how I did the hem on my Singer 15-91 Elizabeth:



Elizabeth is so satisfying to sew with--er, after I got the bobbin shuttle put together right after breaking a needle on it, that is. I decided to switch machines thinking it would be easier to stitch a narrow rolled hem on the straight stitch machine where the hole in the throat plate is only as wide as the needle. Also, my Brother XR-9000 pulls a little to the left. I switched back to the Brother to sew the button holes and buttons, which was major entertainment! I broke another needle on a button hole, which made two today (one per machine) and also two for my lifetime!

I learned a lot making this muslin. I'll get more practice making the same shirt out of the fashion fabric (with short sleeves), but first I have to make something to wear in Me-Made-March '11! One thing I learned, however, is that it's worth a few bucks to get someone else (like, JC Penney) to make DH's shirts!

I'm A Winner!

Yay me! I entered Toria's e-Bay Queen/100th post giveaway over at her delightful Welsh Pixie a week or two ago and I won! Toria posted pictures of fabulous items (be sure to check out the yellow shoes!) she had won on eBay and asked us to guess what she paid. I figured I might have a shot at winning in a random drawing if everyone guessed wrong, and anyway I like typing this: £. But I won, as we lawyers say, "on the merits"--I correctly guessed the price of appraised an unknown length of lovely lace. Thanks, Toria!

So on the theory that Toria's readers might be checking me out today, here are some pictures to look at. First, a recognizable piece of a Negroni shirt just to show I really am working on the MPB Sew-along, really! Although it looks like I'm making my muslin from a paper bag, it's actually a khaki-colored bed sheet. In this picture it's lying on an olive/gold/rust moleskin I bought on sale from FabricMart that, if all goes as planned, you'll be seeing a LOT of during Me-Made-March '11.



Second, this is a billboard I pass every day on the way into my office. The clothing on offer at this Korean Italian tailor's establishment is very conservative and, well, establishment, but I love the jolly androgeny of the models sporting these suits. When its lease expires this shop will close so that the school where I work can expand and open a dormitory. That will be great for us, but I'll miss these guys. Or gals.

Me Made March '11 for Me!

Once again this year, Zoe of So, Zo, What Do You Know? is hosting her "Me Made March" challenge

"to encourage those of us who make and/or refashion clothes to actually wear them in their everyday lives."

Go visit her site and sign up!
I made my pledge pretty general:

'I endeavour to wear at lest one hand-sewn or hand-refashioned item of clothing or accessory each day for the duration of March 2011'.

I reserve the right to count RTW garments I have shortened myself as "refashioned," although I hope it won't come to that.

Let's see if I can manage to finish my MPB Men's Shirt Sew Along shirt done by March. I'm already through step 2--can step 3 be far behind?

Pattern Weights & FrankenShirt

I'm lagging a day or two (and counting) behind the MPB Men's Shirt Sew-Along, but I did get started yesterday. I traced off my pattern and marked it up. Negroni is probably the wrong style altogether for DH: The chest and waist measurements for any given size differ by 8", while DH's chest and waist measurements are the same! The muslin will be composed of pieces ranging from S (cuff) to XXL (body). I've also decided to try one long sleeve and one short: DH wants short sleeves but I want to learn to put on the cuff.

Here's an action shot of my tracing with handy Tomato Paste pattern weights. They work quite well. Small mammals, however, do not work very well, no matter how willing they are to volunteer.

Slight Change of Plans

I've decided that, to get the maximum value out of the Men's Shirt Sew-Along, I will switch to the Colette Negroni pattern Peter and so many others are using. I made this decision partly to give me an excuse to visit Sew LA, where I've never been and which carries Colette and Kwik-sew patterns.



That's a bit of my car in the picture, but it turns out the parking lot is exclusively Domenico's so I had to blow through the store pretty quickly. I did manage to pick up the pattern (the last one), a tailor's ham (I had one on my Christmas list but somehow no one took me seriously) and a point turner before anyone caught me trespassing in the lot. And then I ran back in to take a picture. And to tell the nice clerk/hostess (ashamed I did not get her name) about the Sew-Along.



Turns out the restaurant was closed anyway.