Baby Sling

I made a baby sling for my friend Bomboniera. Apparently they are all the rage with celebrities these days. I was explaining to another friend what I was making, and he nodded and said “oh yeah, like Angelina Jolie”. So Bomb, you’ll be rocking it like Ms. Jolie.

I tried to find some pictures of glamorous celebrities wearing them, but although I could find plenty of pictures of “celebrities”, I’m really not so good with the celebrity gossip, and I wasn’t entirely sure which celebrity I was looking at, or often, how celebrated said individual really was. So here’s a picture of Laura Bennett.

And here is a picture of me, modelling what I made. The sling is filled out here by a five pound bag of flour which Spouse Phor insisted on calling “Nikita”* for the duration of the photo shoot. Note also my multi-tasking as I both wear Nikita in the sling and engage in scathing political analysis of Mike Huckabee.

Simplicity 7513 — drawstring pants

A month or so ago, my friend Grace sent me a bunch of patterns in the mail, including a couple for a drawstring pants. I wouldn’t normally buy a pattern like this for myself, since I don’t generally wear drawstring pants, but pants-sewing is a bit of a personal bugaboo for me. I figured since I had Simplicity 7513 in my stash now, I should go ahead and make it up just as an exercise.

Recycled Sewing — Some inspirations

From the L.A Times, a piece on how to revamp an old cashmere sweater.

From Wardrobe Refashion’s flickr pool, a sharp striped shirt repurposed from menswear:

and a capri-sun bag:

Lining. Or Not.

I was planning to line the skirt I’m working on. The wool is kind of scratchy, and I even had a fabric picked out for the lining — and recycled to boot!

These gold silk pants have been with me for a long time, but as you can see, they are through.

I must have had these at least ten years. When they were new, I wore them out clubbing. They picked up a couple of stains in their life, but for years I wore them under long skirts and tall boots in the wintertime. Silk makes fantastic long underwear. (Yes. I’m a woman who’s not afraid of unconventional unmentionables.) It seemed in the right spirit that this fabric should go into the lining of a sturdy wool skirt.

Bias

Pattern pieces are cut, and I’ve made some bias strips. I made a test piece to see how the finish looks with or without whipstitching.

What say you? Add the whipstitching, or keep the bound edge clean? There’s a comments box down there, people.

Below the fold — how to make bias strips, if you’re interested.

Pinstriped 8-gore skirt: Pattern alternation

After having drafted the basic pattern for the pinstriped skirt, it’s time to cut. Unfortunately, there are some problems with this pattern — namely that the fabric from the deconstructed pants doesn’t allow me to directly lie the pattern piece on top.

The biggest problem is from the back welt pockets, which I’d like to retain in the new garment. But the pattern is too narrow, and doesn’t completely cover the edge of the welts.

This isn’t an insurmountable problem. I just need to tweak the pattern a little.

The first thing that I’m going to do is to create a new pattern piece that is double in size. I’m then going to cut that apart off-center, so I’ll have two pattern pieces of unequal size. One will be larger, cut to accommodate the welt pocket. To preserve the fit, there will be a second, smaller piece. To put this another way, I’m going to cut a pattern piece as if I was cutting for a 4-gore skirt, and then I’m going to split it off-center. Like this:

Easy, right! Now all I have to do is cut two of each off-center piece, and cut four of my original pattern piece.

Easy skirt pattern

The basic pattern I’m using for this skirt is a simple 8-gore knee-length pattern, copied from a skirt I already own.

The original skirt is a knee-length skirt made from 4 equally sized pattern pieces. It’s just folded along the seamlines, and then folded in half so that my new pattern piece will be 1/2 the size of the original pieces.

Making this pattern is a snap — just trace, and voila! Because of my design detail, I don’t need to add seam allowances here.