December MAGAM Travel PJ's completed and a strange phenomenon in my sewing closet.....

December MAGAM Completed 

My December MAGAM challenge of some new travel pj's is complete - and in record time!  Using my favorite 2-hour turtleneck pattern for the top (minus the turtleneck portion) and McCall's 3017 for the bottoms, I sewed both of them almost entirely on the serger.   Aren't they cute!

The serger has since taken a trip to the sewing hospital as it was making a terrible squeeking noise towards the end - it didn't want anything to do with sewing on the elastic for the waistband.  I wonder if the color of the pj's caused it to become sick?  They are a similar shade to hospital gowns.....I didn't read anything in the owner's manual about the machine having an aversion to sewing certain colors.  Hmm, I'll never know.  Anyways, I'm not sure what the visiting hours are in the serger ward, but they tell me it should be back to normal in about a week or two.  Whew!

I used some bird print ribbon that I had in the stash to embellish the bottoms of the sleeves and the pant legs.  And, using the ribbon as a guide, I drew a bird to use to embellish the bottom of the top front.  Don't laugh at my bird - I'm not the best artist in the world, but I think it looks pretty close to the one on the ribbon.

Using some quilting scraps, I traced the bird onto some double sided fusible and fused him to the front and then used the blanket stitch on the sewing machine to stitch him down.  I found the perfect black ball button in the stash to use for the eyeball.

Here's a close-up of the ribbon on the sleeve.

Adding the 3 yards for these pj's to my stashbustin total for the year brings me to a grand total of:

106 yards for 2016!!

Since I started tracking my sewn yardage back in July of 2014, here's where I am so far:

2014 = 48.75 yards
2015 = 68.875 yards
2016 = 106 yards

For a grand total of 223.625 yards!  Holy Cow!  That's alot of stitchin!  Which now leads me onto....

The strange phenomenon in my sewing closet...

Can you see what has happened here?  I think that is actually some empty shelf space in my sewing room closet stash!!!!  Yes - there is a wall behind all of the fabric - I can verify it because I actually touched it to be sure!  After keeping track of the stash sewing over the last few years and trying to focus mainly on reducing it, I can actually see some progress starting to happen with the stash!  I no longer have pieces hidden in other rooms, or piled on the floor in my sewing room, or stacked up on my cutting board (well - there are two pieces at the moment waiting to be cut out).  There is actually some room in the closet!  Are you reading this DH? - That trip to New York is now a "very faint" light at the end of the stash tunnel!  It's faint, but I can see it!!!!

Now before I run out to the store and buy some more fabric thinking I have some extra space that needs to be filled, I'm going to move my 11 shoe boxes of zippers (yes, you read that correctly - 11 shoe boxes of zippers) from the guest room closet into the closet in the sewing room. And with the Sewing Garage Sale coming up in April, I will have to practice some self control there too knowing my goal of a shopping trip in New York is getting closer.  It's going to be tough, but by actually seeing a little progress (finally), I think it might actually happen now!  Whoop!  Whoop!

That's it for me now - I need to cut out those two things on the cutting board and start a new yardage total for 2017.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Sewing Year!

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