Simplicity 1068 Skirt and some odds and ends

I received this really funky fabric in one of my Fabricmart mystery bundles. Miss K and I disagreed on who should get to use it. It is one of those crazy fabrics where I never would have bought it for myself but I love it in person. 

I wanted to use it for a Maxi skirt but was too lazy to draft one myself.  I picked up Simplicity 1068 a few weeks back and I like the other options the pattern has too.

Size: My measurements put me in a size 16 waist, 20 hip. Looking at the ease I decided to use a size 16 waist/18 hip. 

Seen here with my New Look 6470 Tank Top

Adjustments: I had to taper in 1” on each side of the bottom of the skirt for lack of fabric width. When I held the pattern up to my body I thought the side slit would be too revealing so I lowered it by 3” – not a good idea.   I forgot to add the waistband height when holding it up. The slit ends up only going to the knee and makes walking easier.  Now that I’ve lowered it, walking is doable, but not as easy as it could be, lol.  For future reference I’ll leave the slit where it is.

Instructions:  This is a super easy skirt to sew. I suggest serging each piece separately, then sewing them together, this makes the slit easy to sew. Anyway, you sew both sides, sew the slit, and add the waistband.  Very fast and easy.  The “one-hour pattern” lives up to it’s name.

Fabric: 1.75 yards of Cheetah knit with ruffles from Fabricmart bundle. Only $2.01!! Yay!  I underlined the skirt with some White Polyester Knit Lining purchased in May 2014 from Hobby Lobby, 1.5 yards for $5.24. Total for the skirt: $7.25.  I was not able to line up the ruffles because I used literally ever bit of fabric I had.  The pattern calls for 1 3/8 yards but extra fabric is needed to match designs, stripes, etc. Plus my fabric was not 60” wide, either.

Thoughts: I absolutely love this skirt.  It is super funky and fun to wear. I have to be extra careful to make sure the puppy doesn’t jump up on me though because this fabric, while with ruffles, has a mesh-like under layer – which snags easily.  I think I’ll try some of the other views with this pattern, too. 

I also made yet another tank from the New Look 6470 Pattern. 

I used View D but omitted the cross over.  This tank is the same as my Gray and White Burnout Tank. I made no changes from what I sewed for that one. You can see the shoulder gather much better in this solid tank though.

I used 1 yard of Bright Red Jersey Knit, cotton/lycra, from fashionfabricsclub. I just purchased it in June for $3.95.  It is pretty lightweight and soft.  I’m not really in love with this top like I am with the gray and white one.  I do wear it often though. 

 

And lastly, I thought I’d share a fail with you. This is a fabric fail, not a pattern fail.  I picked up 2 yards of this cute red apple rib knit fabric in February from Fabricstalkers on Facebook for $8. I wanted to test out McCall’s 7079 for Miss K. 

The pattern reminds me of a skater dress, for girls.  K does not like any cutouts on her back so I used View F.  I cut and sewed a size 10 for the bodice, 12 for the skirt. I used fold over elastic (but didn’t fold it over) in the waistline instead of clear or regular elastic.  I find this much softer on the skin.

The dress would have been great, I think, but the fabric stretched all out and does not have good recovery.  It just hangs on her and isn’t very cute.  The fabric keeps growing. I did not even bother to hem it.  I should not have used a rib knit for this pattern.  So, this dress has been retired to the pajama pile. And I’ll try the pattern in a proper fabric, jersey, next time.

I made K a pair of undies with the scraps of this and she loves those. 

Ottobre 06/2013 #33 Undies

Size: 152 
Fit: the best! I used my cover stitch binder attachment to put on the leg bands

Of course I could not leave out Mr. T. So I whipped him up a pair of Jalie 3242 boxers from scrap fabric.

Size: Q (or EU 155, or US 13). They fit perfectly.

Happy Summer, it’s hot out there!

New Look and Simplicity

 

I made at least one thing on my summer list!  I’ve hoarded had this fabric since I fell in love with it May of 2014.  I wanted to wait for the perfect top to use it for.  I only had 1 yard.  Well, this New Look top is pretty much my favorite pattern ever.  I made it last summer in a purple matte, a blue floral; this year in a solid black, and now with this jewel fabric.  I can’t get enough of it! 

New Look 6470 View B

Adjustments and Size: 14 for shoulder and high bust, 16 at waist/hip; I took 3/4” out of the back neck in a slant to 0” at the bottom.  This accounts for 1.5” total out of the back neck. I added 1" to the hem as well.

As with my solid black version, I wanted to have the front part of the cowl lined with the entire shirt (because I hate cowl linings flipping out).  I only had a yard of this so I made the bodice front, cowl, and cowl lining down to the underbust line with the jewel fabric (all in one piece), and then attached some of the leftover black fabric from the solid top at that underbust line – making the bodice all lined.  It worked out great.

Fabric: 1 yard, “Brazil Knit Print” from Michael Levine, Inc. (lowpricefabric.com). purchased May 2014 for $12. It is a poly spandex blend ITY.  Very soft.

Thoughts: Um, I love, love, love it!!  It exceeded my expectations.  I plan on making a cardigan to go over it in the fall/winter – fabric and pattern already bought. 

This top is navy and not black like I first thought so I wanted some navy pants to go with it. 

Simplicity 1283  – Mimi G Style

These pants are supposed to fit a pear shape well (according to the reviews on patternreview.com).  So I took a chance.

Size: My measurements would put me in a 16 waist/ 20 hip.  I looked at the ease and decided to go with an 18 at the waist and 20 everywhere else. 

Adjustments:  I measured the flat pattern for hip/thigh/waist size as well as crotch height/rise.  I decided 2” of negative ease would be ideal.  The hip only measured 39” even though the pattern states it measures 43.5”.  This meant I had to add 1.5” to the hip (equaling 3/16” to each hip edge).  I had to shorten the pants by 1” because they were so long.  I also took a whole THREE inches off the crotch height!!  When I held the pattern up to me, the pants came up to my under bust before the waistband was even added! Wowza.  That is why I shorted the crotch height.  They still come up to my belly button. Anyway, this meant my front dart was no longer needed and my back darts were shortened.  I was not going to sew a zipper into knit pants so I omitted that.  I cut the waistband  on the cross grain instead of the straight of grain like the pattern wanted.  I added 1” elastic to the waistband and sewed it on in the round, like I would on any knit pants.  This worked out great.

Fabric: 2 yards Navy Blue Double Knit, 98% Polyester 2% Lycra. Purchased February 2015 from fashionfabricsclub for $9.90 total. 

Thoughts:  The pants are comfortable in fit.  The fabric is a bit scratchy to wear.  It makes a swoosh-swoosh sound when I walk so……  I’m not sure how much I will wear them.  They look great with my top though so who knows!  I like the pattern enough, it has potential – I just need to buy softer fabric and try it again. As you can see below, I need to address the center back as well, it dips there and is loose.

Milk & Cookies with the Walking Dead

Hello, hello!  I have a bit of a backlog of sewing projects and I’m working on getting pictures of them all.  I figured I’d start out with a big post of the Kid sewing I recently finished before I share more of my makes. 

It started with a trip to Hancock's in which Miss K fell in love with this milk & cookies print.  She decided I had to make her some new pajamas.  She was very specific in what she wanted too – no collar, button up shirt, pants.  Ok, I can handle that.  She has grown in size since I last made her pajamas like this so a test pair was in order. 

Pattern: I started with Simplicity 2046 also known as 2738 for the top and Kwik Sew 3604 for the bottoms.

 

Size: The reason I had to use 2 patterns was that I last used the Simplicity one in my pre-tracing days (2012) to make rose, squirrel, and ladybug pjs as well as some sports pjs – therefore I only had this in a size 10.  K is in a size 10 in shoulders but not in waist/hip.  This was easy to fix with the top but I was not in the mood to adjust pants from a 10 to a 12.  So I used the pants from Kwik Sew 3604 (because K didn’t want the collar on her shirt).  The pants I used a size L (10) for length and XL (12-14) for width. 

Fabric: 2 yards of 54” wide Lime Green Dot Flannel from fashionfabricsclub for $9.90 total.  I purchased it in January 2015 for a dress for K but I never got around to making it and it screamed pajamas to me.  I wanted to break up the fabric a bit so I added some yellow grosgrain ribbon to the bottoms of the pants (I just eyeballed it) and also to the pocket.  Then K picked out these sunflower shank buttons I’ve had forever and it was perfect.  Although I despise hand sewing, it was worth it to sew on these shank buttons to complete this outfit. 

Thoughts: It was easy to sew this up.  The directions are super simple in both patterns and I had no issues.  The top is a bit poofy on K’s chest and the pants are a bit poofy as well.  They work great for pajamas and she always grows. 

Next up I set off to cut into Miss K’s precious milk & cookies fabric.  I wanted to try a different  pattern to get a better fit (dangerous with her favorite new fabric and no muslin of the new pattern). 

Pattern: This time I used Simplicity 2771

Size: I used a size Small for the shoulders, Medium for waist and hip.  I used a combination of the pants sized Small from this pattern for the front, and the Kwik Sew pants from above for the back. I had K try on a pair of these I made for T (coming up); they were tight on her rear but great in the front.  This combo worked out well. I also made these in short sleeves instead of long because of lack of fabric.

Fabric: Milk and Cookies Blizzard flannel from Hancock's.  I used almost every darn bit of the 3 yards at 44” wide. It was a real squeeze.    It was $9.57 total and we purchased it on June 26th.  Miss K went on to Etsy and found these adorable chocolate chip and Oreo buttons that went perfect with the fabric so we had to order them ($6.98 total with shipping and we only used half the package).  They were shipped and to us really fast (like 2 days).  Ugh to more hand sewing because these are shank buttons too. 

Thoughts: K loves, loves, loves these.  She wore them right away and actually hounded me for a few days to get them finished! Awaiting the buttons was the hardest part. The fit is great. I like the fit of this top much better than the first Simplicity one above.  I do not know how I will get K to take the off to wash them!

I must address the collar of this pattern though.  I read on Pattern review that the collar was a problem for some people.  I can understand why.  The directions for these steps are TERRIBLE!  They have you sew 1/2” from the edge as a guide for pressing.  They also have you clip the curves along this part – but then they have you align and try to sew this clipped part to the collar.  The directions and photo make you believe that you are attaching eh un-clipped side but NO you attach and sew the clipped side to the bodice front!! It is pretty challenging to get around that curved point.  Other than this part, the rest was easy to do; you then sew the facing to this band, trim the seam allowance, fold inward and then fold over the other side of the facing’s seam allowance (where you sewed that 1/2” guide and then stitch in the ditch from the front which catches the edge of the folded facing in underneath.

 

And now for Mr. T

Pattern: Simplicity 2771 pants only

Size: The first pair I made was a test pair before cutting into some special fabric.  I traced off a size Medium (10-12) per T’s measurements but lengthened them by 2”. 

Fabric: 2 yards of Riley Blake Boy Crazy Stripe Orange cotton that I bought in May 2014 on sale at fabric.com $5.52 total. 

Thoughts: The length was perfect on these but they were already showing a bit tight.  They fit ok, but not for too long. 

So for the special pair I bumped up to a straight size Large (14-16) – I do not want him to grow out of them too fast!  I used 2 yards of “Skybound the Walking Dead Zombie Character Black” cotton fabric from fabric.com that I just ordered for $15.96 total.  I did not realize how large the print was – sort of disappointing.  Mr. T and Dad love to watch the Walking Dead together so I wanted them to both have special pajamas for these nights.  T loved his pants.  They are a tad big but that is what I wanted.  Mr. SunnySewing (aka Dad) also got some pajamas pants but we shall save that for a different day when he’s in the mood for a picture). 

So now I’m pajama’ed out and back to sewing for me.  I have a top and 2 skirts to show you soon plus I got a new machine!

2015 Summer Sewing Plans

Every year I make a plan and I end up straying from the plan.  It is very easy for me to get distracted and I tend to sew spur of the moment with patterns.  Nonetheless, here is what I’d like to sew this summer. (With a few carry overs from last year)

Tops:
New Look 6470 – Brazil ITY Print
Let’s do this finally.  I’ve had the fabric since May 2014 and finally worked out the pattern.

Completed! Seen here. 

Vintage Simplicity 4813 – blue gingham stretch woven
another thing on my list for some time.


Jalie 2804 – crossover tank – maybe this cool cotton/lycra I have






McCall's 6796 short sleeves version – maybe this Gray striped sweater knit

Dresses:
Simplicity 1801 in a tank dress, knee length – lobster lawn

made sept 2015 here 



McCall's 6559 – ity tank maxi dress – chevron ITY





McCall's 6957 – tank version, no high/low – purple ITY

completed! seen here and here




Shorts:
Simplicity 7196 – I’ve been working on this muslin forever! – Navy Twill

I am still working on these. there have been 2 or 3 muslins.....




Sewaholic Thurlow – I’m ready to tackle this one again – Dark Brown Herringbone Flannel


Misc:
McCall’s 6696 – Slip - Champagne Beige Charmeuse


Burda 12/2008 Pajama set – Striped floral Charmeuse



So there is what I’d like to get sewn in the next 2 months.  I’m sure there will be other patterns thrown into the mix as well but I hope to stick to this for once, lol.