October MAGAM determined, Pool noodle project and a Garment Bag completed

October MAGAM Determined - 

Hello everyone!  It's been over a week since my last post so I am way overdue for an update.  I've selected my "One" MAGAM project for October - which will be to make a pair of workout pants.  I know, I have tried to make workout pants before and failed miserably, but since then, I've read so many good things about the Jalie "Cora" pant, that I have a feeling this pattern just might be "The One!".

The fabric I will use for the Cora pants is some animal print poly/spandex along with some plain black spandex that I picked up during my last trip to Mill End fabrics in Reno.  The reviews I have read all say that the waist in the pattern runs small, which just might be perfect for me.  I prefer to have a tighter waist in my workout pants.  There is nothing worse that doing a few burpees and then having to keep pulling your pants up afterwards!!

Pool Noodle Project - 

I've collected all of the supplies I need for my Halloween costume this year.  Have I mentioned that at my employer - Halloween IS A BIG DEAL!!  The CEO does a company wide speech which everyone attends in full costume, everyone gets pizza for lunch and the decorations on each floor are awesome.  There are costume contests, decorating contests, pumpkin carving contests - you name it, we probably have it.  I won 1st place with my carrot costume a few years ago too!  Really no work gets done this day, but it's all in good fun.

The theme for my area this year is "TV".  So - with that being said, below are all of the supplies I need for my costume.  Do you have any ideas of what it might be?  Leave a guess below in the comments if you do.

My supplies are below:
- 2 pool noodles
- 3 pipe tubes of pipe insulation
- cardboard box
- Gray, tan and yellow felt
- Red cello wrap
- 3 sets of round eyeballs
- 1 bag of freezable ice cubes
- 2 cans of spray paint
- 1 small piece of foam used for a cushion

Garment Bag completed - 

And lastly, I finished the final item on my September Sew for 30 list of projects.  The garment bag is finally done!!  This was a pattern traced and given to me by a dear friend.  It's Butterick 4156.

It's made from a piece of cotton I've had in the stash for quite awhile.  I knew I would never make a garment out of this, but thought the print was so cute, it would be perfect for a garment bag.

Since I didn't have the pattern instructions, but the traced pattern, I had no idea of how much bias binding I needed - so I just started cutting out a bunch.  When I had a pile of what I thought would be enough, I started sewing.  In the end, I was 6 inches too short - not too bad for just guessing!  I just out another strip and finished the binding.

I added a 2 inch piece to the sides as well so I can carry more than one garment and items won't be flattened.

Here's the back view.  I sure I will get a TON of use out of this garment bag.  Each month I bring in Show and Tell items for my local sewing guild meeting and I'll no longer need to bring a clear plastic bag with me to cover my items.  Yippee!!  I'll finally have a garment bag to keep them neat and tidy while transporting.

The garment bag adds a total of 4 more yards to the Stashbustin quest - which brings my YTD Total up to 95.125 yards.  OMG - I am closing in on the 100 yard mark!!!!

That's it for me today.

Happy sewing everyone!

Star

April MAGAM Challenge Completed!

Vogue 1382 - It's a split personality on this dress.

It's total Rockstar on the outside....

With an innocent cherry print on the inside....

If you remember in my layout picture, I had included some snap tape along the front lines just as a "maybe" feature.  Well, when I had completed the front panel, it definitely needed something so I started playing with the snap tape.

I pinned the female side of the snap tape to the long sections on the middle front and the male side of the tape across the front and across the same section on the back.  After standing back and starring at it for awhile, and asking the DH's opinion (as if that really mattered!), I decided to go for it.

And here it is sewn in place.  I was careful to make sure that a bump on the snap tape didn't hit at the highpoint of the bust - as that would have looked, well, just wrong if you get my drift!  Also - aligning the tape so one of the snaps didn't fall on a seam line took a bit of fidgeting.

I cut out pockets from each of my different fabrics because I wasn't sure exactly which one I wanted to use.  I finally settled on the black and white plaid ones.  

The armhole is quite low and it makes a sort of oval shape towards the front as you can see below while on the dress form.  

 The darts I added to the front and back helped out with the fit.

My invisible zipper is a little visible at the snap tape line, otherwise, it just wouldn't zip with the extra bulk.

The lining is comprised of a striped linen on top and a polyester cherry print on the bottom.  I used some green rick rack to separate the two.

Out of my starting 6 fabrics, I managed to use a piece from each of them to make up this dress.  I'm pretty impressed with myself!

This dress = 3.75 yards (for the the outside fabrics and the lining fabrics)
YTD yardage = 42 yards

Until next time - Happy sewing everyone!
Star

March MAGAM Completed - Vogue 9108

My March MAGAM Challenge - More, More, Moreish March is complete and I am very happy with it!!  Here's Vogue 9108 - a Marcy Tilton pattern.  Warning, this post is quite picture heavy, but I hope you will enjoy it.

Front View

Side View

Back view

I first started this garment by doing a few pencil drawings to determine the placement of the fabrics.  I settled on version #5 as my final garment.


And the final version came out pretty darn close to the concept....

This jumper is described as "close fitting thru bust", but that's where the close "fittingness" stops.  I started by pin fitting the tissue pieces together on the dress form to see just how much I was going to pinch out before I even cut out the pieces.  Here's the front view just pinned together.

And side view - just look at how much tissue there is!!

Next, I started pinning out big triangles of tissue.  Starting at the top, I kept the bustline the same and then folded together a big chunk and pinned again.  I started by folding out 5 inches from the center back piece (for a total of 10 inches) and 10 inches on the side back pieces (for a total of 20 inches overall).  Here's a before and after pinning view of the back. 

And the same before and after pinning of the sides.

I did not pin out any fabric on the front pieces to start with because I wanted to see what the jumper would look like so far.  And, I knew I could take in the side seams to make it work.

On the back panel, the hem is supposed to end about 4 inches above the side back panels as you can see in the pic below.  I didn't care for that hemline, so I added in a piece to the back to make them even.  I guess I could have just extended the back panel a few inches, but that didn't occur to me at the time and I made a separate pattern piece for it.

After cutting everything out, I sewed all of the front pieces together and all of the back pieces together along with the straps and did a pin fitting of the side seams on the dress form.

I still needed to remove more fabric.  Here you can see the back side panel is pinned another 6 inches and same with the front piece.

The center back panel sagged funny on the upper back so I decided to pin out some more fabric and make further adjustments.

I ended up taking about 6 inches off of the straps - which moved the entire back section up quite a bit.  The good thing with doing this is I can wear this jumper with a strapless bra and without the t-shirt underneath on hotter days.

This picture isn't very clear, but you can see how much fabric I removed on the side seams.  The pic on the right has a faint line of red basting I did prior to sewing.

Here's the final garment once completed.

Of course I had to add in some fancy trims....

The back now lays nice and flat with no sagging with the addition of the box pleat in the back.

The criss-cross straps in the back are pretty cool.

Here's the original and my version front views.

And the original version compared to mine for the back.  You can see my straps are alot higher, there is alot less fabric in the back and the addition of the back bottom panel piece changes the hemline.

I am super happy with how this jumper and top turned out.  

I started with a size Small and after all of the tissue pinning adjustments and final alterations, I ended up removing 54" from the bottom hemline.  That might give you an idea of just how much fabric is in the original pattern.  

This entire garment was made with pieces from the stash adding a whooping 5.125 yards to my YTD total of 27.875 yards.  Whoop!  Whoop!  

Happy sewing everyone!

Star

February MAGAM Challenge Finished - Half successful.....

February's MAGAM Challenge was a double whammy for me.  One of my goals for this year was to make my own workout wear and with the theme for the month being "Freaky Fearful February" it was time to give workout wear a try.  And I did give it a try....but it didn't end well.....I am very thankful I was using old scrap fabric for this trial pair rather than some good stuff.

Using Butterick 6295 as my pattern, the workout pants started out ok.

But when I tried them on the first time, I found a hole in the front thigh.  I don't know if I accidentally cut the hole or if it was in the fabric to start with.  Regardless - there it is...

And, the bottoms were so big from the hips to the waist, that I started taking them in on the serger with reckless abandon. Now the one piece yoke in the back had a seam up the middle and the seams didn't line up properly with my careless sewing.  And the front - well - let's just say without a gusset in the pattern it was starting to creep into places it wasn't meant to just during the try-on stage.  I'd hate to imagine where they'd end up during a workout!  At this point I still had the waistband to put on - which was now way too big.  And to top it off - the white fabric was completely see thru!  There was no way I was going to ever wear these so into the bin they went!!  I'll be purchasing myself a Jalie pattern with a gusset for my next trial pair....I hear the Jalie Cora leggings are good....

I had much more success with the top pattern though. Here's the top (with purchased pants).

The top has a built in, lined shelf bra that can hold lightly padded cups.  This was a first for me.  I used completely the wrong fabrics for the shelf bra, but since this was my practice top, I didn't really care.

The straps criss-cross on the back.  There is a little gaping between the straps in the back though when my arms are raised up.  And, you can see a line where the shelf bra joins the casing for the elastic.  No big deal, but it's visible.

No gapping between the straps when the arms are down.

I did wear this top during a Boot Camp class on Monday and it was very comfortable.  No riding up when doing mountain climbers and no fidgeting with straps moving or falling off.  I used a narrow zig zag for the seams and they didn't pop and a double needle for the hem and it didn't pop or stretch out either.  I will be making this top again, but next time, I will sew the elastic directly to the shelf bra and eliminate the casing all together.

Total yardage used for top and bottom = 4.75
Total yardage YTD = 16.625

Happy Sewing everyone!

Star

February Garment a Month Challenge

Have you ever have one of those sewing days where everything you touch seems to go wrong?  Well, this was one of those times.  Thankfully, I was just working on the muslin for fitting purposes and not the actual garment.

So I'm making Vogue 1135 - a Chado Ralph Rucci designer dress with lots of pintucking and gussets, and bias pieces, etc. for my February garment.  Well, to start off with, I had the wrong size pattern and it looks a nightmare to try and size it down a few sizes.  Since it's now OOP and I bought it ages ago (probably not paying attention to the size and just grabbing it on sale), I knew it wouldn't fit.  Thankfully, ebay came to my rescue with a new, smaller pattern.  That was the first mistake (wrong size pattern).  Here's the pattern drawing below.  I had the DD size (12 - 18) and needed the AAX size (4 - 10).



Then, I decided to buy some cheapo knit fabric from Wal-Mart to make my muslin.  Now, I can't really blame the fabric for the sewing mistakes that I was about to make, all I can really do is blame it on my lack of concentration and trying to rush the muslin.

Once I traced the pattern and cut out the pieces, the errors began to multiply.  First, I sewed the wrong sides (or would that be right sides in this case?) of the top front and back together.  Well, I didn't notice at the time, but this caused me to sew the gussets under the arms in incorrectly as well - not just one time, but 3 times!  Holy cow!  I think that is a record for me.  Then, the midriff piece went in incorrectly as well.  Oh joy!

Front view of the muslin

Next came the skirt.  Somehow I managed to trace the correct "Cut Here for Lining" line on the front, but managed to trace a tuck line on the back - so now my side seams don't match either.  Aye, yi, yi!  I did, miraculously manage to sew these two pieces together correctly though.  Yippee - one piece is right (sort of)!

Back view

As you can see here, the bottom side seams don't match at all!  The dress looks really, really frumpy from this angle too!  It did fit me much better than my dress form buddy.

View of the other side isn't any prettier!  Just so you know, those little square dangly pieces at the underarms are meant to be there.  They are little stabilizer squares because the angle of the gusset is so sharp, it needs a little something extra there so the seam doesn't rip.

So now my muslin is sewn half right sides together and half wrong sides together. Lovely!  Oh well, at least it's the practice garment and not the real thing!  And, I know how it fits.  Maybe I could add some lace to it and wear it as a nightgown!  Ha! Ha!

All is not lost though - I did learn quite a few things from this:

1. I do not need to install the invisible zipper in the back.  I can pull it over my head just fine.

2. I do need to take it in at the back waist a little.  This will make it a little more fitted in the waist - and cause another problem in the process - the lining up of the pintucks.

3. Because I will need to take in the dress at the waist, I think I will wait to do the pintucks south of the midriff panel until the garment is almost finished.  I may even leave off the last pintuck on the top portion above the midriff panel as well because of the waist fitting.

4. I need to be more diligent and accurate in my markings.  There are alot of circles and squares and notches that need to line up in this dress so I need to take my time when cutting it out and be sure to mark every single one of them!

5. I will trace the pintuck lines onto the dress, but understand that they will need to be adjusted - probably freehand the final lines when the dress is near completion.  

6.  Lastly, give it a break for a few days!  I think I've been thinking about it too much and need to do something mindless for awhile!

Until next time!

Happy Sewing!