new pants

OK... so I didn't actually make the pants. (You may remember that I tried to make pants this spring but got so discouraged that they are balled up in my sewing drawer with the pins still in them and everything!)  But what I did do was make them work.

Picture yourself browsing you local Goodwill or thrift store, in my case looking for crummy jeans to paint in, and what do you find hanging on the end of the rack but a pair of like-new mustard yellow jeans (and I am SOOO into mustard yellow right now!). You try them on and they fit perfect! Except....

I'm 5" tall. So I'm pretty used to finding long pants in stores. I bought them anyway. The only issue with shortening this particular pair is that they had zippers at the ankle. "That will be a pain," I thought! That is , until I realized I could hem them completely above the zipper!

I carefully took out the zippers (Mustard yellow metal zippers... I'm holding on to these for a future project!), then finished the raw edge on my serger and folded up once for the new hem, using perfectly matching thread leftover from my picnic blanket skirt.

I'm saving those for later!

Thrift store shopping is one of the ways you can make some sewing skills really pay off! Now I have a pair of perfect length, on trend, nearly brand new, mustard yellow skinny jeans for less that $5!

orange with sparkle toenail polish for Halloween! so hot!

a quick knit

No, no, you haven't stumbled onto a different blog! I occasionally knit, and not terribly well. The most complicated thing I ever knitted was a mitten. That's right, ONE mitten. But knit 1, purl 1, yeah I can do that. Especially when using a quick-to-knit chunky yarn!

As you might remember, I'm really into mustard yellow for fall. I love how the introduction of just one new piece in a new color can transform all your basic outfits into a whole different season. Recently I've  pinned a lot of looks with cozy infinity scarves. They are kinda trendy right now, but also kinda ingenious as you don't have to keep fiddling with you scarf to keep it wrapped up right.  I picked up one ball (skein? package? what's the technical word for it?) of chunky Lion Brand Yarn (I've used them before and are always pleased with my results) and set of large size 13 knitting needles at the Joann Fabrics. I think the all together the cost was under $6. Not a bad investment to try out a trend.

I did a rib knit (k1 p1), 12 stitches wide. After I got going on it I realizes that 1.) it was too wide and would be way too chunky to wrap around the neck twice and 2.) I wouldn't have enough yarn to make it long enough to wrap around twice anyway. So I knitted until it was long enough to wrap loosely once around, then finished the edges and whip-stitched the ends together to close the loop. I finished the whole thing in one lazy Sunday morning watching t.v. on the couch with Mr. Sew Rachel, and eating way too many popovers (Mmm). That's my kind of knitting project. 

So it's really more of a cowl, but a slouchy cowl that gives the illusion of an infinity scarf. Next time I'll only do 8 stitches wide so I can actually wrap it around a couple times, and there will so be a next time! I already love this thing and was a red one and a black one, AND my sister in Philadelphia totally crocheted me a super nice grey one! It's in the mail as we speak and I promise to show you all when it gets here!

a yellow, linen, picnic blanket skirt!

First off, CHECK OUT MY NEW BLOG BADGE! ------------->

And second, I made Tilly and the Button's Picnic Blanket Skirt!

I'd been pining after a mustard yellow skirt for a couple seasons (even though yellow is usually NOT my color), pinned some inspiration photos on pinterest.com, then spied some yellow linen on sale at Joann's a few months back and took the plunge! I originally planned on making a pleated, paper-bag waist skirt using the Adventures in Dressmaking tutorial, but eventually concluded that a paper-bag waist may not quite be the most flattering look for me. I'd been wearing my Gertie Gathered Skirt a lot, so decided to try Tilly's skirt which had a similar silhouette.

I made only a few changes from Tilly's design. Her's calls for cutting one rectangle for the skirt back, and two rectangles for the front, once stitched becoming a long piece roughly 2.1x your hip measurement. I had two yards of fabric, and my hips measurement is 38", so I decided instead to cut just my fabric lengthwise for the entire skirt piece putting me at just under Tilly's recommended measurement BUT a seamless piece. That did mean I had to omit the side pockets since there were no longer side seams. In retrospect, I wish I had dealt with the extra two seams to have had those pockets.

I also didn't include the interfacing in the waistband, but not on purpose! As I was moving along I thought to myself, "weird how she doesn't put interfacing in the waistband..." Actually, she does tell you to do that in an earlier step that I obviously wasn't paying enough attention too! It's totally wearable (I've already worn it on more than one occasion in fact!), but it would lay a lot nicer with the interfacing.

Another thing I will do differently in the future involves the placement of the buttons. I put the first one on the waistband then  the rest evenly 3" apart, but the skirt likes to pull apart that section where the waistband meets the skirt. Interfacing may have helped with that as well, but in the future I will start with the waistband button, then a button directly below the waistband AND THEN start with spacing them 3" apart.

On the plus, the linen was lovely to work with! It held a nice crease when creating the plackets, and it was just nice to work with a simple woven again. Remember how I needed to re-learn to use the automatic buttonhole foot on my mom's (now mine) machine? It turns out most of the feet she gave me don't actually go with the machine, including the buttonhole foot! I know it had a buttonhole foot so next time I'm there I will search for it, but in the mean time I FREE-HANDED THE BUTTON HOLES AND THEY CAME OUT AWESOME! (Can you tell I'm a little proud?)

 And topped it all off with lovely brass buttons. :)

Lastly, here is my mother-in-law's cat that kept photo-bombing my photo shoot. Until later!