Gotta close the barn door

...after the horse got out !

I'm so sorry everyone, my hotmail account was spammed yesterday and as far as I can tell there may be as many as 5 emails circulating.

Update - at least 7...

Known subjects as of noon Monday -
From the bottom of my heart
Specialy for you
It's amazing
Something special for you
Nice present
Exclusively for you
Present for you

I know most people are savvy enough now to not OPEN suspicious emails (I was never so happy to receive 'undeliverables' as I was this morning) but we do tend to assume some people are safe. With a few exceptions, I don't normally send links or attachments - I hope that will ring a bell with most of my contacts as being suspicious.

Thanks to all of you who emailed to warn me. :-)

Veggie Bed

I finally got the veggie bed cleaned out, a bag of earth added and the poor, neglected new plants in the ground with a good drink of water !

Remember the before ?


And the after...


...so what's in there ?
Back L to R - sage, tarragon, tomato, cherry tomato
Front L to R - mini yellow rose (the largest it's been in 5 years), basil, yellow pepper, lavender, oregano.

The sage, tarragon, lavendar and oregano were planted 2 summers ago and I never expected them to overwinter one year nevermind growing into bushes ! So far I haven't harvested them at all, maybe it's time I figured out what to do with them.

HP - Plain and Simple - Ready for More ?

Ah patience ! I've heard it said about me in regards to the pants BUT the reason my last post was May 22 was because it got the better of me for a bit - the fit was either more wrinkly than I wanted or each tweak had too much of a snowball effect and did more bad than good. It's been on my mind but I haven't done a great deal since my last pants posts - just bits here and there. Lots more reading online and in all the books I have with pant fitting in them.

Yesterday, I got up and decided to have another go at figuring out my crotch curve. I have both a flexible ruler and lots of tinfoil and have tried this unsuccessfully before. I don't remember the results but if I had to guess, it was before I knew that the back curve being much longer and lower than the front is actually NORMAL ! LOL

After a couple of attempts...this me (or at least a reasonable facsimile)

I carefully placed this over my pants and traced it out. The faint red line is the traced curve. Actually, it's not far off my last seam other than that bump that is (or should be) the CB seam. The CF starts a bit to the left, crosses to the SA at the CF curve and at the inseam crosses back over the CB seam where it is just below my last seam to the curve after which it curves about an inch before coming back to the seamline at top of CB.

I sewed this seam from the front to back, joining the original seam at the bottom of the CB straight seam. That bit of vertical fold is STILL there in the front but the back wrinkles are minimized. Now - for the last few weeks I've followed Sew4Fun's suggestion of taking my pics with heels to be able to see the difference between sewing wrinkles and posture wrinkles - I do NOT have heels in these pics.


Didn't like the feel of the front crotch so I sewed the final seam as shown below. I followed CF with the newest line, did not cross to the SA but kept the previous curve under CF crotch, the new seam under the CB crotch and the straight-a-way up the CB seam. Make sense ? I took a pink marker to it...

BTW - you may have noticed the mess in front of the front inseam. I took a 1/2-inch wedge?dart from the CF crotch to the knee. It is the only thing that made that darned front fold less. Was it the 'right' things to try - couldn't tell you, but I'm happier with them.

My final pic - those wrinkles are actually way less than I've ever had in flat feet !


Now to unbaste and copy this on to another pair - that vertical dart worked but made these one's an unwearable muslin :-)

Hope you all had a great weekend.

3rd Blogiversary !

Wow - Kind of hard to believe I've stuck with this for 3 years ! oh, technically it was yesterday but I only noticed just now. Since I generally seem to notice way after it's past, this is pretty close to 'on time' :-)

...ok, so I just went back to see how long it took to write blogiversary posts for years 1 and 2 - I missed them both for timing but my writing is consistent ... on every one so far I've written 'kind of hard to believe' - I was going to edit it out and write something else, but it's true - I rarely keep at something so long. Maybe I'm acquiring some 'stick-to-it-iveness' in my old age LOL

Thanks for reading and commenting, I do appreciate you all.

Waterlogged !

After the sunny long weekend we just had, it has rained almost constantly since Tuesday, and we're not expected to see sun again before Tuesday. We are in no danger of flooding and have had none of the extreme weather our southern neighbours have been subjected to. My prayers go out to all of you dealing with the ravages of the flooding and the tornadoes that have been plaguing different communities recently.

Our rain is only inconvenient and so we are very lucky.

The upside to the rain is that - everything moved aroung and divided in the garden last week has been well-watered in and seems to have recovered nicely from any trauma. They all look good and the rose bush is showing a lot more leaves this morning.

The other upside is - although I will spend this weekend indoors, it will be mostly spent sewing and baking. Laundry is the only other 'must-do'.

The last pant-fit coming up shortly...

Gardening

*** 'lizabeth - now I know you're lurking - you're safe with this one - no butt pictures LOL ***

I didn't get back to the sewing room today. Went to the market to stock up on yard supplies / laundry (3 great days for line drying) / baking (oatmeal cookies and peanut butter cookies) / worked on 2 of the flower beds.

We've got 6 beds that need work in a bad way - I didn't do anything last year and they're overrun with grass and weeds. Today was the day to start.

All stocked up and ready to go...

I started on the bed that needed the least work-a quick fix I thought, NOT...

4 hours later...I'm pretty sure this is the first time that this bed has ever been mulched - will help with the weeding for sure :-)

In the meantime, hubby was working on the iris bed. This is 16 feet long by about 18 inches deep. I'd love to make it 2 feet deep or more but that's going to mean digging out a LOT of rocks ! This bed has yellow and purple irises, perennial geraniums and lots of grass. We have to dig it all up, clean out the weeds and divide what we're keeping, replace the edging and dig in some fertilizer and earth before replanting everything.

It started out like this...


...and after a lot of digging, it's about half done...the irises on the right are the ones I divided and will replant. Everything else is coming out (there are 3 geraniums in the bed I worked on - temporarily til they go back in with the irises)

Hubby found this hidden in the irises - our neighbour gave us a couple of raspberry stalks 3 YEARS AGO and they've been living neglected in this pot with a couple handfuls of dirt ever since. I figure anything that can survive that ought to be planted, no ? LOL

I decided to give veggies a go again this year. I picked up a yellow pepper/basil/regular tomato/cherry tomato
...have to clean out their bed before I can plant them though.


Still so much to do.

Back to work tomorrow for me.
Hope you all had a great weekend.

HP Plain and Simple - another tweak

My goodness - thanks everyone !

Kay - if I understood you correctly, then I've just done it...I knocked off the point of the front crotch curve and made it a curve about 1/2 of what it was at what was the corner point.


Now, the one thing I HAVEN'T done yet is to clip out all of the extra fabric at the crotch curve. I was paranoid about cutting it out then finding I needed it later. I've just had a brainwave and enlisted hubby's eyes and camera. He took another set of pics after I rounded the point of the crotch curve. There is a fold of fabric on the inseam of my left leg both front and back. I don't want to have to make separate adjustments for each leg so figure I'm stuck with some wrinkles. THEN I remembered I hadn't cut out the excess curve fabric. I put the pants back on and folded all that seam allowance to the OTHER side of where it had been and the folds CHANGED sides !

So, now I'm off to bite the bullet and cut out some of that crotch SA.

HP - Plain and Simple Pants - 1st round of adjustments

I've been playing with this most of today. I'd decided to trace out the size 10 lines from just above the hip line. My hope was that this would give me a fit closer to 'me', keep all those nice straight lines intact and take in some of the crotch bagginess. It kind of worked.

Mary Beth so kindly pointed out that I might do well with an L-shaped front curve. I decided to cut the size 10 lines 'as is' and see what's what. Well, what's what wasn't good ! No evidence LOL

I scooped the front crotch into an L-shape and tried 'em on - a bit better but still saggy/baggy. Pinched out another wad and sewed another 'L'.

For the back, I dropped the CB seam down 1-inch and carried the 'L' over to the crotch point.
The good - I'm very happy with the (non)shaping over the hips (I'm just not really curvy LOL), very happy with the straight lines still being straight, very happy that the back wrinkles are less (just look at my right butt !!!).

The bad and the ugly all in one - There are still poochy folds both front and back although less.



I'm thinking now that I should shorten the crotch extensions - I can't think of any other way of getting rid of those folds.

More basting coming up...

HP - Plain (yes) & Simple (not so much)

Well, they fit at the waist and over the top of the bum but unless I'm misreading the problems, they're just overall too big.

The good - all the lines are straight, the knee line is AT my knee, that L-crotch does seem to be shaped like me.
The bad - too big, lots of folds - both front and back, you can't actually see the L-curve doing its thing because of the folds at the inseam.
The ugly - the front crotch - oooh boy !

My measurements put me in a size 14. After measuring the pattern pieces, I cut a 12. I almost cut the 10 but it required more confidence than I had :-). The vertical grainlines are thread traced, as well as the knee line - I forgot to trace the hip line. Both the zip and the waistband are basted on.

DH took distance and close up shots of all 4 sides. The front view is pretty gross. LOL. The back has lots of wrinkles, but they look different from the last pattern I was working with. They're all more vertical or diagonal rather than the horizontal bunching from before. At issue is the amount of fabric at the crotch - it's like wearing a diaper. Both front and back have too much fabric. Like about an extra inch, maybe more, of folds. Side seams from waist to hip are poochy. My hip is much flatter than most patterns, I think.

I've checked out my fitting books and online to see what do do about the extra folds but didn't find anything. Going on the basis of 'just too big', I think I'm going to recut them smaller - the size 10 may take out enough of the fullness to get a better picture.

So, without further ado...the first muslin.





As usual, I'm open to any suggestions.

Slow and Methodical

No basting yet - I figured if I'm going to make adjustments, I'd better set the stage.

Last night I transferred all the markings and thread traced the kneeline and the grainline. The grain was marked about 3 inches from the inseam. I folded the legs in half and threadtraced the grain at that point.

It's not going to be a quick and dirty muslin - marking and tracing took ages !

More progress tonight...maybe even pics...stay tuned...