From the Netherlands For Africa

Vlisco, a company located in a small town in the Netherlands, has been making fabrics for sale to Africa for 170 years. It really has a very interesting history. I like the way the African women assign their own names and meanings to the designs.

These fabric designs are quite different from those sold as "African" fabrics here in the U.S. This fan print appeals to me.

And this one. Very interesting. I can more easily imagine it in a quilt than a garment.

I found a website where you can buy some of the Vlisco fabrics but they are expensive. Sadly, I don't think I will be buying any.

(Sorry, I can't get the images to fit no matter what size I choose but I'm just going to leave them. I know I could download them, resize them and then upload them but I'm not going to bother this time.)

Change of Seasons

My closet is only about five and half feet long and it has a narrow door that makes it difficult to reach the ends. Only about two and half feet of it is easy to reach. I have to play contortionist to reach the rest. The only good thing about it is that it's all mine. My husband has his own, identical closet so I don't have to share. Five and half feet is not enough closet space for a woman, especially one who sews. Once or twice a year I do take a few things out and take it to Goodwill but I keep putting more in than I take out.

After nearly two decades of living with this closet, not sure I could stuff one more garment into it, this past spring I decided to buy one of those big plastic storage containers for my off season clothes. I stuffed it full of sweaters and jackets and flannel shirts and put it in the closet in the spare bedroom which, as my mother-in-law used to say of a small outbuilding she had, "You could hide an elephant in there." It was hard. I felt like I was sending my beloved mostly-made-by-me clothes into a black hole. What would happen to them? I need them all to be in my closet where I know they're safe.

October has been lovely, almost like summer, but the last few days have been cold. Well, not really cold but definitely time to face the fact that summer is over. So today I got out the winter stuff and put my summer dresses in the storage container and into the black hole spare bedroom closet. It was really terribly hard to do. It felt like I was saying goodbye to my lovelies indefinitely even though I know that's not true. I might have to go visit them every day for a while. But my comfy cozy flannels are back, which is good, because I'm going to be needing them but I'm going to miss my dresses and summer.

Slow Projects and Intermittent Blogger's Guilt

I hate it when I don't post anything here for more than a week but I suppose that's the nature of sewing blogging. Whenever you finish a project, that's when you blog and if you don't finish anything for a week or two...

I feel like I need to come up with an idea for a weekly blog series but, 1, I haven't thought of anything that would be either entertaining or informative and 2, I'm afraid I would have trouble being consistent. Actually I do have what I think is a pretty good idea for a limited series - just three or four posts. I'm going to take some pictures and search for some old pictures and start that soon(ish)

For the past two (going on three I think) weeks I have been working on a Granville shirt. It's actually going well, so I don't know why I'm not getting it done faster. I have been doing one little step at a time and then stopping and sometimes I go back to it the next day and sometimes it ends up being two days. There are so many things I want to get done, I'm tempted to put it aside for a while and start something else but I have always had this fear of not finishing things. I feel like have to finish each thing before I move on to the next.

So, what are you working on? Do you do one thing at time or do you work on multiple projects at once? How do you motivate yourself when you feel stuck?

Slippers

I have found it impossible to find slippers that I like. All of them are either too much or not enough. If they cover your entire foot they have enough insulation to keep your feet toasty warm on a 10 mile hike in the snow. Seriously. I wish they made snow boots as well insulated as a typical winter house slipper. The solution, of course, is to make my own. I am so happy that I know how to sew.

The pattern is Green Pepper 837GP. Green Pepper has some very interesting patterns for things you might not think of making yourself. I have made the slippers before and I wasn't entirely happy with the result but now I'm experimenting.

The ones I made before were all polar fleece but earlier this year I found this great soling material. Since I used that I had to make insoles of polar fleece. I wish I had taken pictures of the process. What I did was, after sewing the slipper together with the soling linked above, with the slipper still inside out, I sewed the fleece insole over the top of the slipper, with the right side of the insole down and leaving the heel open. Then I turned it to the bottom of the slipper and hand sewed the heel. I hope that makes sense. I fear that I'm not very good at explaining things.

As you can see, they don't match. These are actually my second attempt. The first ones were perfectly matched with an orange dot on top of each one but they turned out a little too small. The ones I had made before were a bit too large so I tried making these just a teensy bit smaller but they ended up too tight. So I tried again with the fleece I had left and ended up with the ones you see in the picture. I am mostly happy with them. The heel seam bothers me a bit, which is embarrassing to admit since it's hand sewn. I might try to re-work it, but it's really not too bad.

I made a pair for my husband with a full lining. They're brown so they wouldn't show up well in a picture and, anyway, he's not around to model them right now. I'm thinking about making a pair with a full lining for myself.

The pattern includes all whole shoe sizes from infants size 0 to men's size 13. I can sew a simple pair in less than half an hour. With the insole or lining it takes a little longer, naturally.

Summer to Fall

At first I was thinking of this as "one last summer top" but this would be great with a cardigan or light jacket, which makes it perfect for the kind of weather we are having right now: 50° (F) in the morning and 80° in the afternoon.

This is New Look 6963 and one of the 2-yard pieces that I bought back in July. (Which seems much more recent than it is) I don't have much more to say about this other than, I love it. The color, the really cute sewing notions print, and my current favorite shirt pattern. This one's a win. (The print being almost perfectly matched in front is a complete accident.)

Too old? Or old enough?

I don't remember if I said this before or just thought it and never said it. We go through phases of age appropriateness. First, when we are little, our mothers dress us in adorable little things and we're fine with it. I was more than fine with it. I loved all the cute bright colored, lacy, ruffly things my mom made for me. Then we go to school and suddenly that's "baby stuff". We are Too Old to dress that way. What we consider that we are too old to wear changes over the years but overall the Too Old phase lasts well into adulthood as we feel we must look a certain way in order to be taken seriously. Eventually, if we are lucky, we realize that we never stopped liking the bright colors and cute prints we used to wear when we were little and that life is too short to dress to please other people. We are not too old to wear brightly colored novelty prints; we are Old Enough.

I already decided a few years ago that I have reached the Old Enough phase but sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I have this internal battle between Too Old" and Old Enough. For example, I desperately want this Laurel Burch fabric but my Inner Stuffy Person keeps telling me, "You're way too old for Laurel Burch." My Inner Five-Year-Old and my Inner Old Lady are trying to gang up on her but Inner Stuffy Person is pretty stubborn. I'm really hoping that Inner Five-Year-Old and Inner Old Lady win though.

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I do have some finished sewing to show off and I will really try to get around to it this week. Yes, I actually do still sew, not just buy fabric and patterns.

Pants or Trousers and Finding the Right Knits

Warning: This is going to be a long, rambling post with maybe a little bit of ranting.

First of all, before I get into the main subject I want to talk about what we call these things. I was born and have lived all my life in the U.S. so I mostly say "pants" but I understand that in the U.K. "pants" only means underwear. Is that correct? So, a while back I decided that, in order to be more international I should start saying "trousers". But I'm finding that I can't get comfortable with that. You see, in my mind "trousers" is an old-fashioned word for a male garment. That's not an official definition; it's just the definition I have in my head, right or wrong. It's stuck there and when I use it to talk about a modern women's garment I have the uncomfortable feeling that I'm using it wrong even if I'm not. I'm a little more comfortable with "slacks" but I think of those as a dressier garment. Again, not an official definition. But now I'm not even comfortable using the word "pants" on the Internet because I'm afraid someone will think I'm talking about my underwear. Of course, I'm probably just flattering myself to think that I have more than one reader. So anyway, I'm probably going to keep on calling them pants because that's what I am accustomed to.

I recently decided that I need more knit pants. A few years ago I decided that I was not going to wear knit pants anymore because "only old redneck women wear knit pants". (Hush! I am not! I'm listening to Bach's Cello Suites right now. Rednecks don't listen to Bach.) I started making pants out of stretch cotton twill, which looks really nice and is comfortable, though not "Am I still in my pajamas?" comfortable like knit pants. I still do have several pairs of cheap knit pants from Walmart and one good pair from L.L. Bean and I have been wearing them around the house when it's not too hot for pants. (I mostly wear dresses in the summer but this summer hasn't been ridiculously hot.) My problem is not that they're wearing out. Even the cheap ones are still in really good condition but the pockets are not big enough for my Galaxy S5. (Yes, I'm one of those people.) So, basically, I was down to one wearable pair of knit pants, the ones from L.L. Bean.

So of course I decided to sew a few pairs. My ultimate goal, more like my impossible dream, would be to find a fabric like or similar to the cotton/spandex fabric L.L. Bean uses to make their Perfect Fit pants. (I would buy more of those but they only come in a few dark, dull, and very uninteresting colors.) Ages ago I bought two pieces of cotton spandex knit from SpandexWorld.com and made a couple of long sleeve t-shirts. It was a fairly hefty fabric, thicker than the average t-shirt but it would be just about right for pants so two or three months ago I ordered two pieces for pants. One, burgundy, was a little disappointing, too soft and lightweight, but acceptable. The other, a nice olive green color, was perfect - sturdy with a firm stretch. Just what I wanted. I sewed the burgundy fabric first and I'm working on the olive green right now, almost finished. Just a couple of weeks ago I decided I wanted more. I need a grey pair and they have a lot of other nice, tempting colors so I picked out one of those just because. Here's what I got:

That green is apparently very hard to photograph. It looks nothing at all like the photo on the website (They call it Jewel Jade.) and not much like my photo. It's a very bright green with just the slightest hint of blue. It's not the color I thought I was getting but I like it. I love it. I'm just not sure if I want pants that color. They describe it as "heavyweight" but it is lighter weight than the olive. (which they no longer have) The grey fabric is extremely lightweight and not suitable for pants at all. Maybe leggings but I don't wear leggings. I could but I'd have to make something to wear with them. I don't have any tunics with pockets. Must have pockets.

Anyway, this is my issue with Spandex World and buying knits over the Internet in general. The descriptions don't tell you what you need to know and are very often just completely wrong. The grey fabric ("gunmetal") is described as being 6 ounces per square yard. The burgundy that I bought last time is also 6 ounces per square yard and they are clearly not the same weight.* And that's just the weight. Fabrics with the same percentage of spandex can have very different stretch and recovery. Spandex World does offer swatches and yes I know I should have ordered swatches first. I would say that "I will always get swatches from now on," but a further issue is that their shipping charges have gone up and are outrageous. Really outRAGEous! Almost as much as the fabric itself. I almost didn't order when I saw the shipping cost. Because of that I am done with Spandex World!

(*By the way, I also bought some cotton/spandex knit from Girl Charlee what was supposed to be "12 ounces per yard" and it feels exactly like the 6 ounce per yard burgundy fabric.)

There was a time when I thought I would never order fabric over the Internet because I want to be able to touch it before I buy it. But then I looked at online fabric retailers and I was hooked. I live in a rural area. There are only two places to buy fabric that are fairly nearby: a small quilt shop and Walmart. The next nearest places are in Tulsa, about an hour away from me and when I am looking for something specific, more than half the time after taking the time to drive all the way there it turns out they don't have anything close to what I want. I am entirely confident about buying quilting cotton online. There are variations in weight, hand, etc. but I always know pretty much what I'm getting but with knits I feel like it's a complete crap-shoot.

Simplicity 1803, First Try

Have you ever bought some cheap fabric just to try out a new pattern (a "wearable muslin" as some call it) and then fell in love with the fabric while you were sewing and really really hoped that it would turn out perfect? That's what happened here and, well, it's far from perfect but I'm going to call it wearable.

I want to use Simplicity 1803 for a great piece of fabric I have that I love too much to risk on a new pattern, especially one with a square neckline, which often does not work for me, so I bought this floral print at Wal-mart. When I bought it I merely liked it. Once I started sewing it I quickly started to love it.

The fit of the bodice is just all wrong and, as I feared, the neckline is a little wide for me. I'm finding it very hard to keep the bra hidden.* But, in spite of that, I mostly like it and I will wear it.

(*Forgot to mention, it does have strap keepers. Where the bra tries to show is at the corners of the neckline. I do have one that works with it a little better. Must buy more of that style.)

I didn't make the tie belt because I generally hate them and whenever a pattern calls for one I put elastic at the back waistline instead and it always works out beautifully. This one wraps around and ties in front though and I sort of like the way it looks on the pattern envelope so I might make one with the belt sometime. Other changes: I don't like unnecessary seams down the front of the skirt so I used a plain skirt from another pattern. And of course I added pockets. Must have pockets.

Here's a look at the back. Believe it or not, this is my first scoop back dress. I wasn't sure if I would like it. I thought it might feel weird because I'm not used to it but I do like it and I definitely want more like this.

I found something that looks helpful: Raising or Lowering the Bust Point on a Princess Seam. I have searched for this at least half a dozen times before and didn't find anything so I was thrilled to find this. It actually looks very simple and it's one of those things that makes me feel a little bit slow for not having figured it out for myself. I don't think this is the entire problem with the fit though. This will require some more experimentation.

(I had the hardest time getting good pictures of this dress. I took a bunch of pictures last week and didn't like any of them, and I had forgotten to take any of the back, so today I set up again and took more pictures and those were even worse so I ended up using the very first picture I took. The more sharp-eyed among you will notice that the facing was turned and peeking out a little bit. Oh well. I don't like to sew down facings because of the stitching showing but I might have to on this dress if it keeps being a problem.)

Never Too Old

This is not really about sewing but it is about clothing so, close enough? This delightful lady is 87. (article) I'm not on Instagram but I'm tempted to sign up just so I can follow her. Feast your eyes on the color, style, and confidence.

No, I'm not about to start dressing like that. Not really my style and besides, my fashion-conservative husband would either divorce me or try to have me committed if I did, but the point is, she's doing her own thing and enjoying what's left of her life. No matter what your age, life is too short to let other people tell you what to wear so wear what you like, what you feel good in, and don't be afraid to be a little out there. And one of the greatest things about sewing is that we can. We're not stuck with what the fashion industry thinks we should be wearing this season.

Just a List

This morning on my other blog I posted a list of 10 Ordinary Things That Bring Me Joy. Of course one of the things is fabric. Then it occurred to me that since I haven't posted anything here in what seems like forever and I don't have anything finished to show off yet I could just make a sewing related list, so...

10 Kinds of Fabric That Make me Ridiculously Happy

1. Brightly colored prints with a black background. I'm working on one of those right now.

2. Delicate, old fashioned floral prints.

3. Paisley. I have always loved it but the fact that someone thinks it's evil makes it even more appealing to me for the humor aspect of it.

4. Fall leaf prints. My mother was especially fond of these so they're sentimental for me as well as the fact that I simply like them too.

5. Antique document or ephemera prints, such as sheet music, handwriting, newsprint and advertising, etc.

6. Cotton lawn. It amazes me that something as ordinary as cotton can be so fine and delicate. I don't sew with it very often because it seems too fine for everyday wear. I always imagine that this must be the fabric that angels wear.

7. Fun or silly novelty prints, especially insects, chickens, sewing notions, and ordinary household items

8. Plaids, flannel or any other plaid fabric

9. Batiks

10. Almost anything pink