I’m a sewaholic

After much thinking I finally confess: I’m a sewaholic. I’ve been browsing projects made using the Sewaholic patterns for weeks. There were two things that made me take the leap: the fact that these patterns are for pear-shaped bodies like mine and these gorgeous pants!

I was feeling a bit limited in my sewing since I’m only making skirts and dresses, and let’s be honest, what I wear most, especially during the cold months, are pants. One of my favorite pants broke recently. It’s was not from misuse, it was just that it was completely worn down; and it’s not easy to find bootcut pants nowadays! And after much experimenting, I know that this is the shape that flatters me most (the things I would wear if I had perfect legs…).

As the shipment from Canada to Spain is a bit expensive, I decided to purchase two patterns: this Thurlow Trowsers and the Cambie Dress. I bought both patterns on the 6th of this month and exactly 10 days later they arrived at my home. It’s my first time with tissue paper patterns and I’m very glad that all my measurements are in one column! Splendid, I’m size 6, period!

One thing I missed was a metric version in the printed version, but you can always check it online. It comes with written instructions and diagrams that I’m sure will be very useful. I can’t say more for the moment, since I haven’t even cut the pattern, but I’m planning to do it very soon.

For the ones planning on making this pants, please check Lladybird’s site. She’s made several of these and has published on her blog step by step pictures. I’m totally checking those out!

Tutorial: how to fix jeans pockets

You know how men stuff their jeans pockets. I guess it’s the collateral effect of not carrying a purse like we do, where you never know what you can find at the bottom. In their case what you can normally find at the bottom of their pockets are their keys. Koen carries around a gianourmous amount of keys: from our place, from his office, his lab, and I’m sure also old keys he doesn’t even remember. The result of carrying this around is a hole in one of his pockets.

I first thought I could darn it, but I then checked the other side.

And I realized this was beyond mending. The cleanest solution would be unmounting the whole pocket and replace it with a new one, but for that you need to reap part of the lateral pants seam and then sew it again, and I was not sure I was able to do that. Denim is quite hard and I don’t know how my machine would manage several layers of it. It could have worked out but I was so afraid of ruining a perfectly wearable pair of pants that I decided to take the middle way: I was going to reconstruct the pocket. I confess that I delayed this for a while, because I was not sure how it could result and whether I would be able to finish it in a satisfactory way.

I bought a very similar fabric to the one used in jeans pockets and I decided to cut the bottom part of the pocket, being careful to keep at least a an inch an a half of  the bottom from the side seam (don’t cut it too close to the side seam).

I used here an air erasable pen. I doesn’t really matter what you use here, since nobody will see it. Then you breath deeply  a couple of times and then you cut it following the line you previously marked. Yes, you cut it. Don’t be afraid.

Once you have cut the  bottom part of the pocket, just place it on a sheet of paper and trace the shape of the pocket.

Add then two inches of seam allowance at the top (where you cut) and a quarter of an inch at the bottom (where the seam is). In my example I made a mistake and added half an inch here, but I fixed afterwards.

You see that the upper line is not straight anymore. It doesn’t really matter. What happened here is that, as this line is on the bias, it stretched out a bit, but it will make almost no difference at the end.

Note that this goes on the fold. Once you have it, you just have to cut it out and place it on you folded fabric making sure the fold is parallel to the grainline (have you prewashed this cotton fabric, right?).

The bottom seam of a jeans pocket is very similar to a French seam. It’s overlocked with the right sides together and then sewn a quarter of an inch from this seam with the wrong sides together. I don’t have a serger so I just did a normal French seam, but you can experiment and see if you get better results with other technique. You pin the pocket and prepare it to sew.

Sew it then a quarter of an inch from the edge using a straight stitch of less than 2 cm. Think that we want tight and durable stitches here so use a small stitch length. Check the thread color used for the original pocket. In my case it was a bluish faded white, so I decided to use white thread. It’s Sunday, I have white thread and anyway nobody is going to see the outer side of your pocket.

Turn the pocket inside out, press it and stitch it again a quarter of an inch from the edge. Don’t forget to backstitch.

See how beautiful that French seam looks!

Leave one inch not sewn or you can just reap an inch at the end (the left end on the above picture). Only the second seam, leave the first intact.

Then turn this inside out and place it inside what is left from the original pocket. Pin it in place.

Stitch this with one inch seam allowance and pull this new part so that you have your pocket as it should be when you’re wearing your jeans. Re-stitch that last inch of the French seam going also over the original part of the pocket and finally apply a zig-zag stitch to both edges together. Here you can do the same as with the bottom edge and do a French seam instead or just a double seam. Remember that it needs to carry some weight and possible sharp objects.

Pull from the other side and admire your new pocket.

The color is not exactly the same but with some washes the difference will fade out. And again, who’s going to see the inside of your pockets?Well, only if you want to make clear that you ran out of money.

But you know, when you stuff your hands inside, they feel exactly the same!

Go out then and enjoy your new pockets, stuff things inside and you’ll wear a permanent smile because no one’ll notice it!

A-line skirt

I started a class about pattern drafting almost 1 year ago. My first project was a skirt of which I’m not especially proud. It’s an ok skirt, but it’s not exactly what it was meant to be, and now I feel some basic concepts were not explained during the class (or at least I was not aware of them). Because of that and because of my great behind I haven’t made any more skirts until very recently (dresses with circle skirts don’t count).

After a lot of thinking I decided to join this Craftsy class. It’s about designing and sewing your own A-line skirt. I was a bit afraid that I was going to pay for something that I already knew and that it was going to be worthless, but I couldn’t be more wrong. There were three concepts that were pretty basic but that also were eye-openers for me:

• How to sew on a blind zipper without having puckers.
• How to sew the facing to the zipper with the machine.
• The importance of square angles at the sides (waist and hem) when designing the skirt.

After a couple of muslins this is the result:

I think the fit is quite good and those muffing pockets are adorable. I’m definitely making more of this for this summer.

Following the instructions of the class was very straight forward, simple and clear. Deborah Moebes makes everything look so easy, you just want to jump to your sewing machine and start sewing.

I confess that I had a bit of trouble designing my skirt due to my pear shaped body, but taking into account the square angles concept, I could draft a quite good pattern.

When I started this blog, it was almost exclusively about knitting. I always wanted to learn sewing and I’ve been doing some since last year, but getting my own sewing machine was the real starting point. The only problem is the invest of money a new hobby requires: acquiring the tools and knowledge. Between that and all the ideas flying in my head about future designs I’m getting a bit stressed. I think it could be due to the different nature of sewing compared to knitting. Knitting is a very slow process, so slow that you sometimes forget what you’re doing while you keep knitting stitch after stitch, it becoming an almost mindlessly process while you’re watching TV. With sewing it’s very different, because it can be very immediate; a skirt can finished in one or two days. And some of the process can’t be done in front of the TV. You need to get up from your chair, measure here and there; and the sewing machine is a lot more noisy than your knitting needles, even if they are metallic. I have the impression that it just takes more of my attention and it can become a bit obsessive. I’ve already had some insomnia nights just thinking how I’m going to make this or that, how I’m going to cut that fabric, how the final garment is going to look like.

I guess I just have to take it easy and try to switch between sewing and knitting to try to avoid becoming obsessed by any of the two. But you know, I’m queuing up so many projects in my mind that I could have a complete wardrobe. And I also would like to learn embroidery!

Note: I want to make clear that I’m not getting paid for writing this post. These are just my honest thoughts about the class.

Road trip

I haven’t been here for some days. You know, sometimes life gets in the way and one can’t find time to blog. Last week we had some days off and decided to take a road trip to the south. The plan was reaching Cádiz, but that was all. We still needed to get there, find hotels, come back and get lost in the way. Our first stop was Mérida, where we visited an old Roman theater which is still being used nowadays for its original purpose:

After that we continued South and visited Seville. It was getting warmer and warmer, but I’m always a cold girl and still needed my Bliss on.

The poor thing is peeling horribly, but it’s so soft, warm and comfy that I can’t stop wearing it. Well, I have to confess that I’m not wearing it right now because the temperatures raised a bit, which means I’m constantly wearing Freija, made from a bit thinner and also more durable yarn. It’s amazing how different Malabrigo Worsted and Rios can be. And talking about Malabrigo Rios, during the trip I had a chance to finish my Scroll Lace Scarf with Malabrigo Rios leftovers from Freija:

I was having doubts about either following literally the pattern or making it it in garter stitch. The border is clearly garter stitch, so after a couple of tests I decided that it would look more consistent just continuing like this. It also prevents it from rolling and I didn’t need to block it. In fact, after I finished it I couldn’t stop wearing it, admiring it, stroking it.

Yeah, and also making stupid pictures with my phone while it was Koen’s driving turn.

The whole point of this trip was visiting Cádiz, but I have to say that we felt a bit disappointed.  The coastline is completely ruined, since they built almost at the sea shore.

You cannot see it on the picture, but we were waking on a normal sidewalk, and just at the other side of the road there were ugly tall buildings.

The old part is a bit more beautiful, but it looks it was not really taken care of for a very long time.

The trip highlight was Tarifa, such a beautiful city at the most South of Spain and just across Africa:

You can see Africa behind us, and you can also see my beautiful Scroll Lace Scarf that I was not able to take off my shoulders. And also my very full and ragged handbag, but please, pay no attention to it. Koen is wearing a very strong sunscreen on his chin because of an accident he had some month ago with his bike, after which he got some stitches here and there. Luckily nothing too serious.

It was very windy there, and we learned it’s a location that attracts wind surfers. You can see Koen’s long hair blowing with the air. He really needs a haircut, but we recently heard that Maxi, the local vintage hairdresser died last January of a motorbike accident. He’s really missed by the rock community here.

Tarifa was not only beautiful and blindly bright, but it gave the impression of receiving a different tourism than the other cities we visited. It’s definitely more taken care of, with its beautiful fountains, gardens and white buildings.

And also funny street names

We continued the drive and expected to visit Córdoba, but they were having the local festivities and it was so crowded that we couldn’t do anything but escaping from there.

And I continued with my knitting, this time working on a pair of Hermione’s everyday socks. I made this pattern so many times that the next one will be just plain vanilla socks. I swear it!

You can find more pictures of our journey in my Flickr.

Spinning workshop (part 2)

Last Saturday I attended the second part of the spinning workshop. Sadly this time I forgot my SLR camera at home. I realized it when I was already at the metro, but at least I had my cellphone with me. It was just a pity that I was going to work with spinning wheels for the first time in my life and my camera was at home! I have to say that the drastic weather change gave me a bad migraine so I guess I have an excuse. I had to take painkillers and the teacher explained that those were not very good for coordination, so no wonder my spinning didn’t go very well.

The first thing we had to do was just pedaling and nothing else, and then get used to pedaling while doing something, talking, singing, … The teacher learned in London thirty years ago and she told us that her first time she had to pedal while singing a song about parts of the body and touching those parts.

Then we started to spin combed wool and later on the carded wool we had prepared the week before. I don’t know if it was the headache, the painkillers or the weather, but I found problems coordinating my hands and foot. It’s one of those things which requires a lot of practice.

After having some yards of wool we proceeded to ply it and these are the mini-skeins we made.

One of the girls was also plying using the drop spindle. I takes much longer, but I think that’s going to be my next step at home. I still don’t feel very comfortable with the spinning wheel and I find the drop spindle very very relaxing.