Two Things...

First things first...This week I have been working on a project completely unrelated to any of my planned sewing.  I have been working on an embroidered western shirt that will go into a fund-raising silent auction.  I have until March 31 to finish it, and right now I am about 2/3 of the way finished with the embroidery.  The silent auction is part of a fundraiser for my roller derby team, so given the audience I used vintage tattoo flash to create the embroidery.  Here is the tracing:

I used the more traditional motifs, such as nautical stars, roses, and sparrows.  I have a black stretch sateen for the shirt itself, and some lime green piping to go along the edges of the yoke.  I am using a BurdaStyle pattern for a shirt with both bust and waist darts for shaping, and I have pearl snaps for closures.

The yoke itself is just an overlay that goes over the shoulders, so I just used the shirt pattern to trace off the pieces.  It was simple enough to transfer the pattern to the fabric, I just laid tracing paper underneath my drawing and used a knitting needle to run over all the lines...the pressure then transferred the tracing to the fabric.

Here is a closeup of one of the finished front yokes:

To keep the stitches from coming out with wear, I took a piece of fusible interfacing (Fashion Sewing Supply, of course) and pressed it over the stitches on the back.  It won't show, because that will be in between the layers of fabric on the yoke.  Here are the finished fronts:

The eventual results will be very similar to this shirt I made for my husband:

I did say that I had two things...the second thing is a shout-out for Fashion Fabrics Club.  I know that a lot of people hate their slow shipping but let me tell you how awesome they are.

I recently purchased four lengths of fabric from them, and because their warehouse is about 4 miles from my house, I always just go into their front office and pick up my order rather than have it shipped.  Their slow shipping is because of some unholy alliance between FedEx and USPS...they always have my orders ready to pick up in a couple of days.

Anyway, I have a terrible habit of not entirely READING the fabric descriptions and one of the fabrics that I selected was laminated (how did I miss that?).  So when I got there and saw it I was a bit confused.  The ladies in the front office took a look and one of them said "Oh, you know, we have that exact fabric in a non-laminate.  Let me get one of the warehouse guys to get it down."

Except it was 10 minutes till 5, and the warehouse was already closed and locked up.

So, rather than saying "Sorry. Come back tomorrow" she opened up the warehouse, climbed all the way to the top shelves, pulled down the fabric along with 3 more similar ones just in case I wanted to look at those, brought them to the office and rolled it out and cut it right there on her desk.

Anyway, I know that going TO the warehouse isn't an option for most people, but even if I did have to wait for shipping, I would still be a loyal customer at FFC.  Their prices are better by far than most other vendors, and occasionally you get one that isn't exactly what you expect...but with their prices, I just use it for muslins (and let's face it, normally when I get one I don't expect, it's because I didn't read the description to begin with and made assumptions based on the photo).  But, reopening the warehouse at 10 minutes to five is really above and beyond; not to mention with thousands of fabrics, WHO can actually look at something and say "Oh, yeah...we have another version of that one?"

I'll have a finished western shirt soon...stay tuned, and I hope the rest of the embroidery turns out well...