Other Projects Getting in the Way

This Sunday my niece and nephew came over and the little guy finished an outfit that had been in the making for a while. It is a blue shirt printed with motorcycles, with two stripes of flame-print fabric. The pants are of the same fabric as the shirt. He has decided that in this outfit he will be "like Ghost Rider, Aunt Missy!!" Apart from the fact that I may have a small issue with the movies that his father lets him watch, I just don't see this goofy of a kid pulling of the "Look, I've got no head, just a flaming skull" look. Maybe if he were more morose:

Anyway, he always likes to help with his ensembles. He especially likes to iron, because it makes the steam billow up. But his favorite is using the buttonhole attachment. He sits on my lap and watches it while it goes around it's template, moving the shirt around underneath it. If he had his way, every one of the shirts I make for him would have 20 buttons.

Also, I need to do some more work on the Burda OOP Top/Dress:


I wore it to work on Monday and that giant, wide, tall vampire collar spent the whole day working its way up to my ears and basically filled me with rage. When I wasn't angry at the collar up around the back of my head, I was tucking the facing back in.

So, I am going to sew the facing down inside the shirt. I will use an invisible stitch the way I would do a hem, and since it is under the collar, even if it is slightly visible, it is really not an issue. I have noticed that Burda patterns have very narrow facings, and this one was no exception. I know that some people hate the wide facings that the Big 4 drafts, but I prefer them because they stay in place better.

If I make the dress version of this, I will narrow the pattern at the hips...while it is fine as a shirt, it would be a bit baggy in dress form if the skirt started there. I might also redraft a wider facing, and while I'm in the redrafting mode, I need to take the shoulders in a bit. One of the reasons that collar creeps up, is the back of the shirt itself seems very "tall" from the level of the shoulder blades up to the back of the neck. I need to fold out some of that height and then redraft the armscyes. Other than that, the fit is good, and these are "fine tuning" issues that really only came to light after wearing the shirt for a day.

I also got a couple of nice lengths of fabric from my Grandmother. She had purchased 2 five-yard lengths of quilting cotton to start sewing with again, but she has been taking Chemotherapy and it really has sapped her strength. She said by the time she felt like sewing, she would be sick of looking at the fabric, so for me to take it. I was super-happy, because I love both of them. I'll definitely make something for her, but the rest is mine, all mine!!!



I think the gray with the birds would be perfect for one of the vintage shirt dress patterns I recently picked up, and the yellow flowers would make a great shirt, maybe these two patterns would be the way to go:



I am not hopeful that I will get anything done on my safari dress this week, since this is one of our craziest weeks of the year at work. I will be doing 11-12 hour days and in all honesty, when I get home I just fall apart. This weekend I have to go to a wedding on Saturday, and then another wedding in Chicago the next weekend. But that is the wedding that the pink vintage dress was for, so I'm good there! I need to prewash some fabric for my niece, since now SHE wants a new dress for the wedding, too!