Repurposing

Like most women my age I am going through the transition of having my children go out on their own, sometimes far away from me. For those of us, and that would be most of us, who have the fleeting feeling sometimes that the best time of our lives was when we and our children were living together in a sunny and safe cocoon of simple routines, when we wonder if that was our best zone, and maybe it's gone, I think it is important to remember all the families we are part of in our lives.

After all if I had stayed totally enclosed in the family I had my own happy childhood in, I would have missed the family I started myself. And if I try to hold on to a certain version of my children now, I will miss my place in their new lives and new families. Sometimes the best of us has to be cut up and sewn in usefully as pieces in something else, like a new quilt, or like the buttons we cut off good old coats and save until we can use them again.

If a sewer can't understand making new things, who can?

On applying elastic

I forgot. There was a new twist on applying elastic to the top of garments that I learned from my Ottobre instructions that is worth sharing.

First this is how I usually do it, and probably how you do too.

The circle of elastic is sewn into, well a circle, and pin and marked in quarters. The quarter points are also marked on the garment. The elastic is then stitched/zig zagged/serged to the top of the waistline, stretching to fit between the quarter points. It is then turned and flipped over and top stitched from the right side.

The issue with elastic always of course is that the more stitches you put into it the more it can lose its shape. I have inserted more than my share of bowed out waistbands.

What the Ottobre pants pattern instructions suggested instead was that the circle of elastic was pinned to the inside of the garment at the quarter points and that vertical basting length ditch stitching was added at each of these (which on the pants meant centre front, back and each side seams) and then the elastic was flipped to the inside and topstitched down at the casing line. I used my coverhem which I am trying to use as much as I can these days to increase my comfort level.

Note there was no first line of stitching to attach the elastic to the top of the waistline, only the final stitching of the casing. This eliminated one whole line of needle holes in the elastic and I found that the lines of basting were far more effective at holding the ring of elastic in place than pins, which can move into the diagonal and shift the elastic pretty easily.

Definitely this is the method I will use again, particularly with the coverhem- it was nice not to worry about pins.

Learn something new everyday. Particularly if you sew

Sew like a crazy person

No one is going to give anyone in this household a prize for photography, that's for sure.

But that's not the point.

Yesterday I decided to make a pair of fleecy pants that did not fit into my SWAP, were not on my sewing to do list, and took me away from priority jobs, like cleaning this house.

After a busy week and much human and dog traffic that included wet boots and paws, trekked-in salt and everyone passing through here on the way to other missions, and not doing much maintenance along the way, what I really needed to do was some deep cleaning.

But I didn't. Chilled in my bones all week (do you know the feeling? Your bones are cold and no amount of hot baths, sweaters and even hot flashes can warm them up) I wanted to sew cozy. Real bad.

So taking the advice of my long ago babysitter who advised "Don't worry dear the dust will wait for you, the little people won't." I sat down and sewed. I used a the yoga pants from Ottobre 2-2008 for the top of the pants and the Jazz pants for the longer legs and this is what I got.

Not what I was expecting because the last time I made anything like sweatpants it was when they were in style and these are almost more like leggings with looser bottoms. Really comfortable (because this is a family blog I am not posting the side and back view) and I will definitely wear them with longer tops and to walk Rascal.

The fabric was weird. Something that Fabricmart called a Sweater Knit but actually is more like an interlock on the right side and a micro fleece on the inside. I also cut out a jacket to to with it. Yikes. I am I starting to sew stretchy pants suits? Senior style here I come. Might get to that today, after I deal with the dust. Mrs. H. was right. It waited for me.

This is leading somewhere.

Last night I braved the cold and went out to a hall to a friend's surprise birthday party. He has had a difficult year with his dad dying, and his sweetheart decided a birthday party with the surprise sister flown in even, would do him good.

It did.

Great big huge party with a live Big Band dance band made up of a bunch of the kids who play and of course mittens.

You see that years ago my friend decided he was bothered by single mitts lost on city streets and on snow banks. He saw that so many of them were hand made and it made him feel bad to see someone's expression of caring for someone else left alone in the slush. 

So he started to bring them home and hang them on his clothesline. The deal was that if you came to his front door with the mate he would give you the partner back. Most winters he has hundreds and hundreds of mitts on his line. People write him sometimes with stories. "My favourite aunt knit me these grey mitts before she died and I think I lost one when I got off the bus and I would sure like to find it." And he sees what he can do.

This friend of mine has had a pretty interesting career in public life and politics but actually the mitts have sort of defined him, that and he is a wicked ballroom dancer. 

So we were asked to each bring a single mitt to the party and when I walked in the hall was hung with clothes lines and thousands, and I do mean, thousands of mitts of all kinds on them.

The next election will likely be my friend's last. And I can tell you from my observer standpoint in a job there, that once you leave government it is as if you have never existed. That's how it works. But in life, and at a milestone birthday you think about these things, it actually is your interests and your hobbies that say who you are, and what people attach to you, are attracted to in you.

It may be your pastimes are what lasts.

So sew all you want. When the phone is ringing, when you should be cleaning, making supper, and doing responsible things. 

Surely a good life is the sum of all the time you have had just doing what you enjoy.

On stashing

The issue of to stash or not to stash is a burning one in our world, and no doubt the reality check of the recession/depression/slow down is sensibly making us think over the whole fabric collection thing. Two of my favourite bloggers Marji and Carolyn  have written articulately about this, and they have me thinking, and so has the weather.

This week I have been thinking a lot of my background. 

Because it has been so damn cold.

Tuesday I woke up to an email from my sister in Winnipeg who has a 10 year old and a 12 year old (I got married young and had kids young, my sisters did the later marriage and baby thing, but that's another story) that said this:

It's -48 this morning and our Mom is parked outside my door at 5:30 a.m. to take her grandchildren to the pool. Not too many seniors at that age would attempt that without a thought. She lost her husband 16 years ago and look at her now. In some ways and I mean some ways I hope I am just like her.

We grew up when all the winters were like this one and we learned to plan for it. When you grew up in rural Manitoba you have this thing in the back of your mind called "The Big Storm". If the Big Storm came would you have enough in the house to get by? (The fact that half of the family went through the Depression working on the railway, on the farm, or trying to hold on to the one family business really made this part of our culture). So our freezers were always full and there were always cans under the stairs.

I think this has affected the way I look at fabric.

When the Big Storm comes will I have enough to sew?

So I have gone through huge stash collecting stages, regrettable stages of stash busting where I made up totally inappropriate garments from wonderful fabric (some Quick-'n-easy patterns in good silk still haunt me), and back to where I am now.

Collecting with a strategy, because it is so nice when there is a big storm, fiscal, emotional, or just because the local fabric stores have gone down the polyester print drain, to be able to reach out and put your hands on exactly the right thing.

But to be smart you have to do this strategically. To my mind the way a good librarian would build a great book collection.

Here are my rules:

1. Buy large amounts of solids, buy small amounts (one garment only) of prints. AACA (after a certain age) too much print on one body is too much. A top or a skirt, a dress if it's quiet, no more. It is a waste of good money to have 3/4 yard of anything left over and you can't use a print, most prints, twice in different garments without people noticing, most of all yourself.

So 5 meters of black anything for me makes sense (in 3 different garments this same fabric will look like 3 different garments, not repeats). Anything more than 2 yards in a print is just going to make me upset because of the waste.

Distinctive fabrics (this season's colour, print or texture) can and should be purchased only on an as needed basis, i.e. you will be cutting into it this week.

2. Never buy on price. OK, I, and no one else I know, is going to stick with this one because a deal is a deal. However I find this helps : I ask myself how this same fabric will look after 5 washes. That usually does it.

3. Exception to Rule 2. Stock up on notions. I am sure I am not the only one who has been shocked to see how much thread, interfacing, and buttons can add up at the cash, more than the fabric itself in some cases, many cases. If you get a deal on silk lining that you can use in a coat - buy it. Keep the fixings around.

Nothing gets a deferred project on the move faster than having everything you need in the house.

Which brings me to my big revelation of the weekend:

Most of my money-wasting-don't-really-need-it purchases have occurred when I just "ran out to get some thread". Keeping those fevered trips down to a minimum is the best way I have found to cut back on poor stash additions, and to keeping myself under financial control.

So to me the issue is not whether or not to stop stashing, but how to stash smart.

The way the vendor situation is developing, and the way the choices are narrowing, I am not totally convinced that fabric purchasing will soon become more work than it is now. So I better get a start on this.

Am I the only one who doesn't wish she could get into some sort of fabric shopping time machine and go back to the fabric stores of her youth where Egyptian cotton, decent shirting, Swiss dot, and sandwashed silks were there by the bolt?

OK, off I go now. To sew up some nice warm fleece pants and stay inside. I hear we have a big storm coming.

Ottobre tops finished

As promised, earlier in a busy week, here are the two Ottobre tops I finished for my SWAP.  I agonized over the longer top because I was worried about the mutton-dressed-as-lamb thing with an empirish waistline but I am pretty happy with the way this turned out. There are long ties that sort of integrate the under bust seam into a waistline and the lower part is panels, as opposed to under bust gathering so that helps too. The grey top is another version of the blue one posted earlier and I like the slight ruching at the bottom that serves as a pretty decent foil to the midriff/waistline issues that come with the territory. Easy to do with about 6" of clear elastic zig zagged into the side seams, stretched over about 8". Trick is to start the elastic about 2 1/2" above the hem so the sides don't pull up.

Pants are a product of my pant fitting experiments.
 I could wear these knit tops to teach in, they are essentially T skirts but both in nice rayon knit and with some details I think they look a little more than that, I hope.

Virtuous sewing

It is amazing how we sewers are totally uninspired by routine, fix-up, repair, alteration type sewing.

Case in point is a black straight skirt I made last year but was never quite comfortable wearing. It just felt too tight even though measurement wise there was not reason that it should have. After leaving this skirt in the to-do pile for about 10 months I finally dragged it out last week and figured out that for whatever reason the lining was too tight. I came too this conclusion by ripping open the lining side seams and finding that it was suddenly just fine - I could sit, walk, climb stairs without feeling like I had to take mini steps. No idea why this was (hang on ... is that the skirt that I changed the centre back seam on to accommodate a vent and move the zipper to the back ... did I forget to add the new seam allowance to the lining... bingo I think we have a winner).

OK anyway. It was obvious that I needed to add to the lining side seams and I didn't want it to look too crummy. So in the end I grabbed my Value Village silk tie collection ( I think I was once going to make a quilt) and cut two pieces from the thinner end and inserted it in the lining. Sort of cool looking I decided.

Note to self. If you have to do a repair/boring sewing job try to find some creativity in it to give yourself the energy to actually get it done.

Ten months is too long for any 20 minute job to be in the in basket.

A top machine

Well no not really but I have been working on two more Ottobre tops for my SWAP and am pretty pleased with myself, because I have tried something new and easy and it worked. Both tops will have to be hemmed and photographed in the next day or two but here are the details.

Simple I know but for me something new.

I liked the blue jersey top I did a few days ago enough to try another version. My SWAP colours are black, grey, red and white (boring I know but the assignment this year was to do a typical week) and one of my tops is from some grey rayon knit that has been festering waiting for transformation for a while now. A grey top is not the most exciting project in the world so for the neckline and sleeve binding (the sleeves in this pattern are gathered slightly into sort of cuff-like binding) I used some patterned knit that I had a scrap stuck away in a corner. Why only a scrap when I bought 3 meters of the stuff is a good question. Suffice it to say that sometimes, despite long experience, I sew something that I know will not suit me, because I am so entranced by the picture on the pattern envelope. Of course this meant only that some perfectly good fabric got wasted on a droopy old dress that even my husband noticed was highly unflattering. So out it went with some remnants saved because I couldn't face a complete sacrifice. That remnant became the binding for my grey top, and this totally simple thing that most other sewers have done, made me feel so creative.

Second innovation was to finally, five years after I bought it, use the belt loop maker attachent for my coverstitch serger to make ties of top #2 which is a variation of the first pattern,

Pretty slick and completely skill free as a process. Of course the fabric was very stretchy and I was not able to fold under or zig zag the tie ends without mega distortions, so for now the end are just knotted.

Off to bed now, school tomorrow.