Let’s have another check-in

[nou]

Our lovely admin invited us to make check-in posts at various points, so...

What’s everyone been sewing recently? I mended a sheet (I’ll put a photo in a comment), made a sleep mask from my leftover silk (details will also come in a comment), and started cutting out what I really hope is the final muslin for my latest round of trouser-improvements.

Comments

[nou]

Here’s a photo of the patch on the sheet I mended (click to embiggen):



The patch is made from fabric reclaimed from a pair of trousers that finally fell apart too much to be mended again. When the trousers reached the end of their life, I cut out and discarded the parts that were badly worn (mainly between the legs and around the waistband and hems), and saved the other parts. This sheet is nice and soft from age, so I wanted to use similarly-soft fabric for the patch, which is why I chose this rather than using a scrap from something new.

I also mentioned making a sleep mask from my leftover silk. The silk was bought to make a pillowcase, which involved two rectangles of almost exactly the same size (a 2cm difference due to the zip-covering flap) so the remainder was a long, narrow L-shape. I cut and pieced it to make a rectangle, then folded that in half and sewed around the edges to make a double-thickness rectangle. I don’t like elastic on my sleep masks, so that was all that needed doing (I roll up the rectangle and arrange it over my eyes, and it generally stays put enough). The nice thing about this was that it meant the wastage on this project was extremely minimal (a 2cm strip of fabric that is now in my scraps box).

[yhlee]

Oh, huzzah! I've always loved this kind of mending job. :D And yay for the sleep mask, that sounds like such a cool project!

[shermarama]

I have been doing a secret-squirrel sewing project when my partner's not around, and have just finished it this afternoon; it's a hi-vis flat cap.

I've made him custom cycling waterproofs in a combination of black and yellow polyester, and he joked that he'd like a matching flat cap for when wearing the jacket in general rainy weather. (I'm in New Zealand, where there's compulsory helmets while cycling, so not for that.) The pattern company I've been buying from a lot recently do a flat cap... So now he has one with a black top and hi-vis yellow sides. (My only regret being that I didn't think to add some of the high-reflectance piping I have to any of seams, though I don't know where that would have gone.)

I'll probably make a proper one in wool / tweed in future, but this was a good way to try the pattern out, anyway.

[nou]

This is one of the things I love about sewing! Being able to make things in unconventional materials/colours.

And thanks for the link — I see they have a free bucket hat pattern, which I have now downloaded. (I do wish pattern companies had an option to download patterns as SVG rather than PDF though, or at least an option to download PDF patterns with the different sizes on different pages rather than different layers.)

[shermarama]

Their bucket hat pattern is pretty good, and I've made a couple in Kiwiana fabrics for a summer Christmas !

They do A0 projector files as well, though I don't know what format - is the issue that it's tied to Adobe for the layers, if it's PDF?

(For these smaller patterns I print the whole thing and then trace off the sizes I want anyway - I've made three different sizes of bucket hat already.)

[nou]

Their projector files seem to be PDF too, unfortunately, but thank you for the suggestion.

The problem I have with PDF is that the only way to properly separate out the layers is to use the paid-for version of Adobe Acrobat, and I don’t want to pay for software that I’m only going to use once every couple of years to do one thing.

I like to have the pattern outlines in digital form so I can make my own amendments to them, move the pieces around for more efficient printing, and easily overlay them on other patterns to make comparisons (I once bought a trouser pattern specifically to help troubleshoot some issues with my own pattern). I don’t mind (digitally) tracing from PDF to SVG, but having all the sizes on top of each other makes it harder.

[ewt]

Finished fixing my waterproof, and sewed a button back onto my blue corduroy blazer.

[nou]

Yay for fixing things!

[watersword]

I;m working on taking apart some trousers that no longer fit me or have stains and deciding what to do with the fabric. Suggestions welcome!

[nou]

What sort of fabric is it? Cotton, synthetic, something else? What colour, and is there a pattern?

[watersword]

A few different pairs, all variations on a theme of "grey with pinstripes". One is 97% cotton, 3% spandex; one is 45% polyester, 29% cotton, 24% viscose, 2% spandex; one is 57% cotton and the label is so faded I can't read the rest :(

[nou]

Ooh, tricky. Do you like the fabric aesthetically, i.e. would it please you to see it around your home? If so then maybe making it into cushion covers would be nice (pieced and/or patchworked if necessary — given the pinstripes, you could do fun things with placing the lines in different directions). If you don’t like it all that much (e.g. if you only had the trousers because you had to comply with a dress code), then cutting it up for stuffing might be your best bet.

[watersword]

That's a good idea! I do like the fabric. (This is a hilarious suggestion because the project I am slowly chipping away at is a sashiko cushion-cover.)

[nou]

I’d love to hear about your sashiko cushion cover! And maybe see a progress photo?

[yhlee]

Beyond being buried in work + RSI lolsob, mostly I have been in Waiting For Fabric And Notions To Arrive from Mail Order Hell. XD

I hand-sew mended, very jankily, a leg that FELL OFF my poor kitsune plushie, but in fairness, while the pattern/design of the plushie is quite sound (I used to make small plushies), the hand-stitching is legitimately terrible and my stitches are (a) buried in long plushie fur (b) much more SECURE.

(My mother compulsively cricitized seam construction in every terribad Sears garment she ever bought, haha.)

[nou]

Waiting for sewing stuff to arrive in the post is so frustrating! Fingers crossed it all turns up soon. And I hope your work and RSI decide to give you a break at some point.

Sounds like we’re all having a week of mending and/or repurposing :)

[fred_mouse]

Minimal sewing this week, but at least I did some. I hemmed a couple of pairs of trousers for partner, and fixed a crotch seam on one of said pairs of trousers.

I've also pulled out a tablecloth that needs fixing -- has a couple of significant holes in it from kids crafting without supervision, and the 'temporary' repairs have now failed. I'm dithering between putting a patch on, and taking out a section (roughly 15cm) and if so what kind of seam I want to do.

[nou]

“Some” is definitely better than “none”!

[fred_mouse]

<3