It's starting to look like a coat!

If felt wonderful to sew seams...and I'm happy with how the it is coming along. I like having the seams marked, even though it is very labor intensive to thread trace. All the pieces are fitting in so nicely.

I also made a sample of a double welt pocket. I decided to follow the directions in Tailoring:The Classic Guide to Sewing the Perfect Jacket. For me it had the clearest instructions and pictures to go with it that made the perfect sense to me. I am really pleased with the way the pocket turned out and I will use this type and method to make under the flaps on my coat.

Practicing the welt pocket

The above show my first attempt ever to make a welt pocket; I'm glad I finally did it! While it doesn't look perfect, the width is not even across the welt, this is easily fixed, I just wasn't extremely careful when folding the welt. There is no bunching or pulling at the ends, which makes me happy. This is a single welt with the flap sewn on top. One thing I like about it, that if the welt is not perfect to my eyes, it will be covered up by the flap.

I want to do a little more reading about the technique, since I have made one I think it will be easier now to see what the tutorials are talking about.

Two outfits for the same interview

So, out of the blue I get a call from the public school system (World Languages department) for an interview for the position of long term substitute for Spanish class. I already have two part time jobs that keep me pretty busy, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to go to the interview. Anyways I get to the high school for my 8:40 am appointment to be told that they are very sorry but they have me schedule for the following morning. They apologize I say ok and leave. So now I have been seen in this first outfit so I have to come up with another for today. This time around I decide on a more casual outfit, because from what I saw there I would still be overdressed in comparison (and I was).

Anyways outfit for day one is the skirt and jacket from Simplicity 4500. I wore a RTW long sleeve-t.

Outfit for day two is New Look 6429 which has been made and reviewed so many times I never bothered to review it myself. While I wear it a lot because it is very comfortable the torso length for some reason is short on me, so the band which is attached falls too high and really makes me crazy every time I look in the mirror. I made it so long ago I don't know if I lengthened it but I always do. It was cold today and the neckline is a little low, so in the spirit to be sort of conservative I wore a turtleneck with it.

Ready to padstitch

I finally had some time this weekend to work on my coat and you can see how far along I am in the pictures. I am now ready to padstitch, I actually started late last night. Once that's done I'll finish shaping the coat front(applying tape to the lapel and securing the hair canvas).

Next I'll practice with bound buttonholes. It seems it would be easier to do them now before attaching the side and back, but all tutorials I've read wait. Is there a sound reason for waiting? I hope my more experienced readers can enlighten me ;-)

To a healthy day

Wednesday night my poor DS the youngest came down with (what I hope) a 24 hour stomach flu. By 6:00 am on Thursday it had been so bad I called the doctor's office to be told that I was looking at taking him to the ER for dehydration, so I had to be on the lookout for signs. I'm thankful that he was able to keep enough fluid down to avoid that trip.

I was never any good at pulling "all-nighters" when young, at this age the warning "do not operate heavy machinery" certainly applied. Come to think of it, "handling light machinery" also applied.

Enjoy your holiday (for those of us in the US) and stay healthy.

The weekend and a couple of hats

I made these hats for my nephew. It was nice to start and finish a project in a short period of time, I'm used to having a project on my needles for months. If you are interested here are the links for the patterns:

Snowflake hat
I used leftover Plymouth Encore yarn in worsted weight

Fair Isle hat
This pattern only uses two colors but I wanted to use several. I also repeated some of the patterns all the way to the crown. I bought the yarn for this project, Berroco Comfort DK which is really soft and washable.

***********************
On Saturday I spent my morning with Cidell. It was a last minute thing and great fun. I met her at her ballet class to observe and then we got together for coffee. We hardly talked about sewing but we had plenty to chat about, imagine that! :) I also got to ride in Nigel (her new car), what a fun car! I planned on taking her picture next to Nigel, I even had my camera in my bag, but somehow it didn't happen, oh well.
************************

Not much happening as far as sewing, I hope to have some progress to show on my next post.

Thread tracing in progress

Well I was hoping that this post would say "thread tracing done", but no such luck. Anyways I have done the majority of it. I am taking extra care in marking pockets and buttonholes, I want to make sure these come out as nice as possible.

I really had to squeeze all the pieces of the coat in the cut I had, I only have left scraps that will be used for the welt pockets and bound buttonholes. No waste with this project!