My weekend has started ! !

Yup, I'm off for the weekend and only go back to work on Tuesday !
S'all good :-)

And now I'm packing, because the reason for this loooonnnng weekend a trip to New Brunswick for my Aunt/Godmother's 100th birthday. Birthday today, party Saturday.

The bus leaves tomorrow morning at 6am, so I'm headed for bed shortly.

My new baby laptop is travelling with me - I'm hoping I'll be able to connect wirelessly (?) at my Dad's. My brothers usually don't have any trouble so I should be fine. Blog reading will be a good use of time in the mornings while I'm waiting for everyone else to get out of bed. I think I'm the only early riser.

Have a great weekend everyone :-)

Comments on the Tee

Thanks for the comments on the tee, Ladies.

I wore it to work today, and it was very comfortable. But, let me tell you, it got noticed !!! I work in a casual office but we don't dress very exciting, I noticed today that there is very little pattern or texture in the women's clothes. Some, but not alot. The guys, of course, are just in pants and shirts for the most part.

Gwen - it was a conversation starter, for sure.
Trena - I'm not the rebel type by nature, but I'm gonna give it a try, carefully LOL :-)
Gaylen - the rose placement is a total fluke, lucky, huh? But if you notice, there is a headline "Agency to Promote Organ Donation" right at the bust line. I only noticed it later in the day today, but I could say I did it on purpose, no ? As to 'what's the worst that could happen'? well, I'm so not a rebel that I picture my machine exploding on me if I do anything wrong - it wouldn't, would it ?
Faye - you wouldn't have been alone, I got 'read' all morning ! It was pretty funny actually :-)

BWOF 2009-02 (108) - version 2

Yes, it's 3:50am and I've been wide awake since 2:30 (and not much impressed - it's going to be a long busy day)

So, to make the most of the time, here I am - with t-shirt pics. When I finished it Tuesday, I hung it up and took a couple of pictures myself.

The inside showing the serged seams.


The hem - I did give up on the coverstitch but I did manage to figure out the twin needle on the regular sewing maching. The wonder tape helped immensely because the fabric was sooooo slippery. The hem is ok but the instructions on my machine say not to make the stitch length any longer than 2 when you use the twin needle - it's a VERY short stitch & I wish it was longer. I don't know why the length is supposed to be that short but I'm going to set it longer and very carefully try a sample because all the things I've read lately for twin stitch hems say to make your stitch longer (maybe 3 or so) - It would look alot better.

I didn't get a chance to have DH take pics on me until last night.

The newsprint fabric is very lightweight (poly/lycra ?) was from the same Wazoodle order as the first pink tee (about $4 for 1.5m). I didn't like it when I got it but someone (can't remember who) on PatternReview used it and I liked her shirt alot. Now I can't decide if I like it on me or not.

The fit on this one is better than the pink. It's a tad longer in the body, it sits better on the shoulders (small forward shoulder adj.) and I love the long sleeves - I can't buy RTW long enough in the sleeves !

The serger was dropped off at the service center last night after work. It needs a cleaning and I want the tension disks checked. The tension for the right hand needle seems 'off'. They'll check it out today and I 'should' be able to pick it up tomorrow morning.

Visitors on the Blog from NB ?

I just noticed that I've got a visitor on the blog from Saint John, NB.

It's my hometown & I have to admit, I'm very curious to know who it might be.
Someone I already know ?
Someone new, maybe to meet ?

It was a productive evening

I picked up wonder tape on the way home and used it to sew the hem of the t-shirt. It's all done, I'll post tomorrow once I ask DH to take a pic.

I measured and logged in the fabric I bought last week. The guy cutting the fabric was pretty generous. I asked for 3 m of each piece. 3 of them were 3.4 m and 1 was 4m (the brown print was the end of the roll and he threw it all in once he got to 3 m and saw there wasn't much left)

Four more discloths finished and ready to use.

Another Tee ? Not yet :-(

Edit - 8:50pm - it's rethreaded and playing nicely 'at the moment'

**********************************************************

But it’s soooooo close !

After more than one pitched battle with the serger (of which I only won some of them) - It looks like a t-shirt & it fits but it has no hem.

You need to know I have absolutely NO comfort zone with my serger. DH bought it for me in the late 90’s (1997-1998 ?) and I was terrified of it. It languished in its box for close to 5 years or so before I psyched myself up enough to try to use it. I was looking for a simple 2/3 maybe 4 thread serger. The year we bought it, this one was Singer’s top of the line 5-thread serger with cover stitch. Yup, simple :-)

Yesterday morning, I went down to the sewing room to finish the tee. In about 1½ hours, I

• serged the neckline, turned it under and sewed it down.
• serged the opposite shoulder with a piece of ¼" clear elastic
• serged the sleeves in flat
• serged the sleeve hems, turned them up and sewed them
• serged the sleeves and sides in one pass. So far, so good, no problems !

Only one more pass with the serger to clean finish the hem and the hemming itself. I should have had a new tee ready for pictures before 9:30 am - ‘should have had’ - have I ever mentioned ‘Murphy’ and I are very good friends ?

Halfway along the serged hem, the upper looper thread ran out. Had to re-thread the whole darn thing, of course. (this takes me forever each time - with the instruction manual right in front of me, step by step)

While rethreading, I remembered Gaylen mentioning that you can use regular thread when you want to match the color. So, I decided to attempt my very first coverstitched hem. Pulled all the threading out of the machine and moved on to switching from overlock to coverstitch. This took about 43 hours - I’m sure it will get quicker in time ! LOL

At the end of the this long and painful process what did I see ? A perfectly threaded serger all ready for a coverstitch hem….ALL IN WHITE THREAD ! I forgot to change to my red thread for the needles AARRRGGGHHHHH.

Got the red thread, rethreaded the needles and …………………….nope it didn’t work ! Right needle thread kept breaking. I did get one presentable sample of about 3 inches. It will look great once I figure it out.

At 11:30pm I gave up, pulled all the threads out of the serger and went to bed.

This is what it looked like...not even the needles are in, see them sitting on the table?

By the way, I have a new best friend - an LED light so I can actually see what I'm doing inside the serger. It really works !

The Serger Won

For Now.


Progress on the t-shirt tonight ? 3 hours and one shoulder seam to show for it :-(

It's bedtime - We have another scheduled bout tomorrow - I intend to win ! :-)

Thanks

Sorry, I meant to post this before now but...Ann at Gorgeous Things and KimP at Cotton Creek Sewing nominated me for the Sisterhood Award and I wanted to say - Thanks !

Collection Enhancement

Someone STOP ME, please !

Fabricville had a sale ... it followed me home, I swear :-)



It's all polyester but I don't have a problem with poly so it's ok.

12 meters - 3 m per piece all for 'buy 1, get 2 free', on a sale day where you also get $5 off for every $20 spent.

Regular price on this (including 5 spools of 500m Guttermann thread) was $180.

Actual bill $54.00 !!!!!!!!!

I'll add it to my collection total once it's all washed and logged in the excel sheet.

Off to work on my 2nd BWOF 2009-02 (108), maybe I'll finish it tonight.

Weekend's over

My goodness they go quickly ! Wasn't it Friday just yesterday ? :-)

Ah well, I intended to work on another t-shirt this weekend. I wanted to try another BWOF 2009-02, #108 to tweak it a bit and to get more practice on knits while it was still fresh.

We had a beautiful 2 days though, and I spent most of it either upstairs near the windows or outside (we took the puppies for the first walk of the season today - you can't walk a chihuahua in winter in Montreal).

I ventured downstairs after supper tonight and worked on my pattern pieces (forward shoulder adjustment of 1/2" and I adjusted the bust so it is on line with the 42 not the 40 as I'd originally made. The pieces are all cut out but now it's bedtime...I don't dare sew at 10pm.

In the meantime, I did ask DH to take pics of the first t-shirt. He is now nominated to take all my pictures - the only one I've taken was horrible - LOL - it's worth waiting for him to be available !

Now that it's been washed, the seams are a bit more wiggly. It's a color WAY outside my usual, so much so that the compliments I got were on the color not the t-shirt. That must be a good thing - no one asked if I'd made it.




I'll finish the next one and post pics once it's done.

I've got Mine :-)

I took a walk at lunchtime and picked up my March BWOF. Yaaay, I've got my reading for the bus ride home tonight.


Can I just say again 'I LOVE my local dressmaker shop' - Garnitures Dressmaker Ltée !

They are very small and carry a bit of everything (sewing, beading, knitting, cross stitch). I can buy muslin either 112-150 cm wide in 5 or 10 meter lengths, at $12 or $15 dollars (last time I checked muslin was $9.99 at my chain fabric store). They have many different kinds of interfacing, including hair canvas and everytime I go in, I see something I didn't notice before - today I saw .... wigan.

Now, to be fair, before I needed wigan for my coat for the Great Coat Sewalong, I had no idea what it was :-( and so I would 'never' have noticed it in the store.

At that time though, quite a few of the participants did not have easy access to sourcing this item among other things and so Marji graciously sourced and put together packages for us so we would have what we needed to make our coats.

I now have my own source for the next time I need it (assuming that is, that I finish 'this' coat).

I know we are not in the league of New York for sewing supplies, but I am starting to realize just what a wonderful resource this little shop in downtown Montreal is - and since I only work about a block away, just how lucky I am. What will I find the next time I venture in ???