Me Making Me-Made-May

Back when I signed up for Me-Made-May I thought it couldn't be too hard because I was wearing me-made clothing most days of the week anyway. Of course, what I was actually wearing was the same three knit dresses, all made from V8575, over and over again, punctuated with the occasional long-sleeved top when the weather turned chilly. But that wardrobe won't get me through me-made-May, first because the warmer weather has pushed the long-sleeved tops out of the rotation, and second, because I'm not interested in posting pictures of myself in the same three dresses all month in the MMM'12 Flickr group. So I've been sewing.

First up was V8499, the Marcy Tilton pants that I started here.
They were finished long enough to wear them on MMM Day 2,



but I have to go back to take them in a bit and re-engineer the elastic waistband. The waistband instructions are pretty simple, but they rely on more accurate cutting than I seem to be capable of. The elastic is only in the back, in a casing made by folding over the top of the back pieces (there's a separate pattern piece for the front waistband, but not the back). Which means when the pants are put together there should be extra fabric at the top back. Which, somehow, there wasn't. So I stitched some more fabric onto the back and tried to improvise a waistband using Melissa Fehr's helpful tutorial on elastic waistbands. Which, it turns out, I didn't really understand. So I cut that off and tried sewing on a regular-old tube of fabric to run elastic through. But somehow that turned out to be way taller than the front it had to meet up with. So I set them aside to let them cool.

Two things I learned from this effort: 1. Everyone on the internet has a great method for how to rip out serging easily. None of them work; and 2. I should learn how to do something well the ordinary way before I try to adopt brilliant shortcuts and alternative methods developed by you nimble-fingered experts.

Next up, I made my first Sorbetto in the same fabric as the pajama pants I made for Karen's Pyjama Party..



Now, to be honest, I could fulfill my MMM pledge by never getting out of my pajamas for the rest of the month, as my semester is over, Commencement has commenced, and my job now is to grade, grade, grade. Which I can do in my jammies. As long as someone else goes out to buy food now and then. Or delivers. But, again, there are those pesky pictures. So I decided to take on Shams'sGarment-Formerly-Known-As-The-Tablecloth-Skirt.



Which turned out remarkably well. It's shorter than I'd like because, in following Shams's instructions, I compensated for my lesser height but not my greater girth. But I like it.
Believe it or not, there's more sewing to report, including my first successful foray into Burda Land, but I know how tired you are.

Unique LA: It's a Small World

I mostly use facebook to keep track of my extended family. I was going to say "distant relatives" but actually my facebook connections are mostly first cousins; they are just geographically distant. So I was browsing facebook this morning and saw that my oldest cousin on my mother's side, recently retired to Florida, had wished good luck to an artist displaying and selling her work at a booth at Unique LA's Spring Show this weekend at the California Market Center in downtown Los Angeles.

The artist, Christina Tonges Korn, is my first-cousin-once-removed-in-law. I believe I'll swing by and introduce myself tomorrow on my way home from my law school's commencement. You might want to check out the event, which includes free diy workshops and crafts and free drinks with distressingly healthy names.
Oh, and apparently a prime draw at Unique LA is Caine's Arcade, transplanted from its home in East Los Angeles. I had never heard of Caine's Arcade but a short film about it by Nirvan Mullick has been viewed by almost 3 million people on YouTube and liked by 34,000, including one on-line friend of mine from Toronto. Small World.

That Lovely Month When Ev'ryone Goes Blissfully Astray!

Tra la! It's May!
The lusty month of May!
That darling month when ev'ryone throws
Self-control away.
It's time to do
A wretched thing or two,
And try to make each precious day
One you'll always rue!

Well, there's nothing like a Me-Made Month for that!
Here's Day One, but I don't plan to do this everyday no matter how much you beg and plead.



And speaking of ruing, here is my new aquisition:



She's a 1956 (I think--between 1956 and 1958) Elna Supermatic I "won" on eBay (these are the seller's photos.) And she came with 16 cams! plus some feet, bobbins, and the accessory box.



Plus a cord, knee-bar controller (I grew up with a knee-controlled Singer) and a case that turns the free arm into a flat bed. Made in Switzerland, she will run like a Swiss watch--once I get her going.

Meanwhile I've done something awful to the elastic waistband of my Vogue 8499 and will have to cut it off and try again. So I've downloaded and taped together the Collette Sorbetto pattern to make a top to go with my new PJ Party jammies. I think I will be the last person on the interwebs to make the Sorbetto, but you know, I wanted all of you to work out any bugs first.

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?

No comment.

In the past two days I have had my comments rejected by both a blogger and a wordpress blog. So to make up for that, and to reduce my frustration, and to let off steam because I'm sitting in a faculty meeting instead of buying fabric by the pound with Elizabeth I hereby announce the following:

Yay!
Congratulations!
Oh, I'm so sorry.
That must be really annoying!
What a beautiful dress!
Sign me up!
and
I have one just like that!

Worth Its Featherweight in Gold and Other Delusions

There's an ad running on Craigslist locally offering to sell a 1937 Featherweight for $1000! According to the ad:

Singer 221 has the distinct honor or perhaps there has never been a better sewing machine ever made than the singer 221. As Singer's finest models of sewing machines, 221 was built to last a lifetime…. It was Singer's top of the line in this class for years and one of their most expensive sewing machine.

A pretty good deal, provided the "CARRING CASE" is stuffed with hundred dollar bills.

I passed on the solid gold featherweight but bought myself a used 5'x3' cutting mat. Nice to be able to lay out more than one pattern piece before cutting and shifting the fabric! I gave it a test run cutting the Vogue 8499 Marcy Tilton pants out of purple moleskin.

I have vowed to go slow and be careful with these pants, enjoy the sewing, and avoid frustrating stupid mistakes. Hah! First, even with all my new cutting territory I somehow managed to turn pieces around so I think I've got the (very visible) nap going every which way. Design element. And piece 12 of the pattern has disappeared into thin air. I can find neither the traced version nor the original--it has simply vanished. Fortunately it is just the front facing and I can sort of figure it out, but where did it go? I used to be very good at finding things, but now it's a wonder I can even walk around without tripping over all the bits and bobs I've lost over the years. My house isn't large enough to hold all the things I can't find!

Oh well. I made a trial version of McCall's 6031 but forgot to take a picture before I mailed it to DD in Washington DC to try on for fit.
She got it! She likes it! She wants me to finish this one and make another! I'm excited to sew for someone who looks cute in clothing.

Joining Up and Squealing With Delight!

First, following fearless leader Zoe of 'So, Zo … What Do You Know?': I, KC of The Sewcratic Method, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '12. I endeavour to wear one or more hand-stitched garments each day for the duration of May 2012. And to up my style game a smidge.

Second, I have also signed on to The Pyjama Party hosted by Karen of Did You Make That? You can never have too many pajamas, no matter how you spell them.

As for the squealing with delight, the generous Magpie Mimi has bestowed upon me the Liebster Blog award!



Evidently it is awards season here in blog land. The terms of this award are:

Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.
Thank you very muchly, Mimi!
Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you. Done!
Copy/paste the blog award on your blog.
Done.
Present the Liebster Blog Award to 5 blogs (with 200 followers or less).
1. Quiet And Small Adventures in Ph.D. Land.
2. As I Said.
3. Pretty Grievances (I have no idea how many "followers" prttynpnk has.)
4. Lucky Sew and Sew
5. It's A Sewing Life.

Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment.

I'm on it. I hope Kristin, LSASpacey, prttynpnk, Jane M and Elle aren't already exhausted from accepting awards.