Not much to report today, friends. I made decent progress on Michael's jeans yesterday, but let's face it: the second pair of white jeans is never quite as exciting as the first. The button fly should provide some drama, however, and I expect to be reporting on that tomorrow.
Just one major oops moments so far:
Can you figure out what's wrong with this picture? If you guessed that I attached the back yokes reversed, you'd be right! See how in the instructions, the yokes widen at the center back seam? Now look at mine: they narrow. I should have referred to those instructions before I sewed the yokes on.
Don't think I don't make mistakes -- I do, and usually when I'm sewing on autopilot, which happens all the time.
Anyway, basically things are going well. I finished the front pockets, and today will work on the fly.
For pocketing, I'm using a densely woven white cotton shirting I had left over from an old shirt project. Not exciting, but I was a little concerned about prints showing through the white denim.
Oh, before I forget, I must announce the winner of Monday's vintage Vogue pattern contest!
She's a New York mom with her own line of kids baby doll carriers for sale in her Etsy store....
Put your hands together for Suzanne B!
I've never had a New Yorker win a contest before, and isn't it about time?
Suzanne, please send me your mailing address (peterlappinnyc at gmail dot com) and I'll get your pattern off to you ASAP. Or if you're in the neighborhood, swing by, and I'll toss it out the window to you.
Congratulations!
Friends, that's it for today. I'm a little hung over, if you must know, after celebrating my blog-follower milestone with Michael last night at a lovely Austrian restaurant in the neighborhood. No celebrity sightings, but we did manage to polish off an entire bottle of wine (Tuesday it's BYOB night!).
Have a great day, everybody!
P.S. If you have an oops moment you wish to share, please do so below. Don't we all secretly thrill at hearing about others' sewing mistakes -- or is it just me?
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Congratulations, Suzanne! Peter, my oops moments are too frequent to document, as I prefer to bury my shame in rag rugs or "I meant to do that" patches/embroideries/chop it off 4 inches shorter "design decisions."
ReplyDeleteYay! Thank you! I am so excited! Will email you my address soon.
ReplyDeleteHow about this one? Last September, I was working on the jacket from Vogue 8060 when I started having tension problems. The thread was tying knots though the fabric and pretty much refusing to work. I grabbed what I thought was a piece of scrap fabric to test stitching on. I was cussing out my machine and desperately trying to get it to work. After an hour of death glares, swearing, and fiddling with the mechanics, I finally figured out that the feed dogs had worked themselves loose and it was effecting the tension. After I'd tightened them and put everything back together, I discovered that my "scrap" fabric was actually the sleeves of the jacket! And to make matters worse, I couldn't unsew it because of the knotting. I had to toss it in a scrap bag and cut out new sleeves.
ReplyDeleteNo really funny oops-moments, just a tip for pockets of white pants: I recently bought white jeans from Boden, and they use beige fabric for the pockets - which makes totally sense, since so the fabric won't shine through but "disappear" on the skin (just as it is actually nicer to wear beige or nude underwear under white tops, imho).
ReplyDeleteI've done that so many times. I get cocky because I've sewn a pattern before. I start coasting and not paying attention... and before I know it, I've messed it up and sewn the wrong bits together or back to front, etc. One oops moment was when my husband gave me three pairs of newly bought trousers to shorten telling me they were 'all the same cut'. What he failed to say was that they were all different lengths. Having unwittingly used the longest to establish how much to shorten them by, I went and cut the same amount off all three. Only on the last - and shortest - pair did I realise something was amiss. Oh, how we laughed...
ReplyDeletePlenty of sewing oops moments, but I can't remember a particularly good one right now. What I want to know is, what did you order at the Austrian restaurant??? I have made plenty of funny oopses while ordering at Austrian restaurants (we've been living in Austria for two years). Early on, ordered Grammelshmaltz which was translated as "bacon spread" on toast - turned out to be a half-inch thick smear of pork fat (with tiny bits of bacon mixed in) on top of a slab of brown bread. More recently, when I thought I knew what I was doing, I ordered Blunzeng'rostl (or something like that) and it turned out to be a plate of hacked up, fried blood sausage on a bed of raw shredded horseradish, with a sunny-side-up egg on top. Not quite as terrible as it sounds, but not something I'll order again.
ReplyDeleteAlong the lines of what Lola mentioned, there is a great article in Threads #96 Aug/Sept 2001 called Invisible Underlayers by Lisa Shepard (Stewart). It's my go-to guide when sewing light colored fabrics. I couldn't find it online anywhere, though.
ReplyDeleteToo many oops moments followed by an unruly amount of sailor language--and I'm not a cursing type of gal. Oh well. I almost always spill something--coffee--on what I'm sewing. Yikes.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to post that I secretly like the white denim with yellow topstitching. It's sunny and fun! And well, I'm on a serious white kick and I'm just waiting for someone to sew up a man's white linen suit with a kind of J Peterman attitude. Maybe I can talk my husband into one.
I was teaching one of my friends to sew, and she was making a dress for her little girl, and I walked away for a minute, and when I came back she was looking at the dress saying, "What did I do wrong?" One of the puffy sleeves was set in upside down.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Amy: I like the white jeans with yellow topstitching. In fact, I think the reverse would be even better: sunny yellow jeans! Or maybe that's just my longing for anything sunny, up here in the Pacific NW...
ReplyDeleteMy biggest oops was when doing a hand-beaded trim band around the top of a strapless bodice on a cocktail dress: after 23 hours of beading the very precise repeated motif, I discovered that I had added a half-inch to every pattern piece EXCEPT the band, resulting in a significant gap in the beading. Which I strategically finagled onto a side seam, where it could hide under an arm... Mostly.
I also am finding myself very fond of the yellow topstitching on the white denim; very spring-like and fresh. I might copy it, although I haven't even had time to play sew-along this round.
ReplyDeleteI have a great pair of white corduroy pants I got from Bonobos and the sides of the pockets that touch the fashion fabric are beige but the insides of the pockets are their signature printed fabric. Sort of fun yet still safe. The Kwik Sew pattern cuts the front pocket for the jeans all in one piece but it wouldn't be a bunch of trouble to divide it and cut from different fabrics. Just an idea.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Lola above: use skin-tone linings for white garments. Beige, tan, brown, palest pink - whatever best matches the wearer's skin.
ReplyDeleteOops moments? Quite a few. . . how about the boho-hippie "easy" peasant blouse. Designed to have voluminous gathering at neckline and cuffs of raglan sleeves, the front, back and sleeves were all similar large trapezoids, and somehow after sewing the raglan portion of the sleeves I sewed each long side of the sleeves to what should have been a side seam of the body (instead of sewing side seams, then sleeve seams). Good thing I realized something was wrong before putting in the work of gathering it.
-- stashdragon
Thanks for the inspiration. Just started sewing here about 6 months ago and getting ..or am already...addicted. IT is more fun and moe work than I thought. Keep up the good work. Steve
ReplyDeleteSince reaching 1000 you've already added 27 more. It's sort of exponential.
ReplyDeleteI can't even count the number of oops at this point -- the one I keep making is trying to sew with fabric that is too heavy for the pattern. I gravitate towards twills and denim but then have no fabric suitable for summer patterns.
ReplyDeleteI've had so many oops moments the DH now simply suggests I start a new project rather than beat a dead horse.
ReplyDeleteHe has enough experience to know a happy puss with a new something-or-other is far superior to a grumpy house frau stabbing pins into fabric.
Last oops moment? Oh sure! That occurred yesterday while deeply distracted by Charles James dress on "The Tourist".
I loved "The Bad Seed" though her mother annoyed me to the point I wanted to knock her over the head with MY tap shoes. And remember never to fall asleep in excelsior!
ReplyDeleteMy most recent "oops" was on the very pair of jeans I'm making right now. I traced the front in white chalk onto the black denim and then realized I couldn't fit the back on! so I had to replace the front and now hope that the white chalk will wash out. Gotta be careful not to press over it with a hot iron! this is why I get all the pattern pieces on before a cut a single thing!
ReplyDeleteSorry that I didn't post an oops as I was distracted by that "Seed" girl. After not sewing for about 20 years I decided to make a bib apron and attached the yoke backwards and just put the whole thing away unfinished and stayed ashamed until I read your post about throwing away projects. What a freeing experience!
ReplyDeleteI finished hand hemming a white skirt and announced my achievement with a "TaDa!!" and an extravagant gesture, thus spilling my glass of red wine on the skirt- ooooops!
ReplyDeleteOUCH!
ReplyDeleteGreat comments, everybody!
ReplyDeleteM.T., I had duck meat loaf and Michael had Wiener Schnitzel -- both delicious.