Activewear for the Win! McCall's 7026

Hey folks! February sometimes does bring good news along with all it's never-ending snow and cold (and more and more cold with all the staying indoors with bouncy children that it brings. Mama's going a little crazy.)

I love entering sewing competitions. They help me meet a deadline, tackle a challenge, and do creative problem solving. I've never actually won any of the competitions . . . until now! I placed second in Pattern Review's Activewear Contest and won $75 to Mood Fabrics for my trouble (hello, new Mood Bag!).

You can see all the contestants here and the winners here. I really want to sew Fehr Trade's Surf to Summit Top after seeing the 1st place project by feldmanTcat and the beautiful color combo she chose.

What did I make? McCall's 7026 jacket that has been in my stash for a relatively short period of time (6 months). I found the fabric at Fishman's Fabrics in Chicago when I was looking for navy taffeta for another project (yes, I know, knits are nowhere near the taffeta. Got to be thorough when looking for the right color.).

I was able to sew this up on Valentine's Day when Devon took the girls out for an extended shopping trip (to buy presents and dinner for me, since the day after is my birthday - more February good times). Four glorious hours of sewing time on a Saturday, when usually I have to work or do chores or ferry children on a Saturday. Ahhhh.

I did not sew a muslin for this one because I figured I would run in it no matter how it turned out. I made just one adjustment - adding 3/4" between bust and waist - before cutting. I'm happy with the fit, and I'm glad the shoulders worked out (bit of a risk, but I don't usually need to adjust there on jackets/coats). Next time I'll add a bit to the length so that I can make a deeper hem, grade down to a size 12 from a size 14 at the hips, and interface the collar (pattern doesn't call for this, but I think it would look nicer). You can read my full pattern review here if you're interested in that sort of thing.

The thing I love most about this jacket is the back. Great design lines, right? I'll have to run fast so that I give everyone the back view.

Another great detail is the cuffs with thumb hole. If you have long arms (like me), you'll want to lengthen the sleeve if you're not adding cuffs.

My new jacket has given me a blast of excitement to keep running till Spring. And I needed that blast.

Can we get a break from the snow? Please?

So my first attempt at activewear was a success. Not sure how much of this kind of sewing I'll do (I'm too addicted to sewing pretty clothes), but it was a lot of fun. Would you use precious sewing time for activewear?

Yay. Snow.

Completely fake action shot.
I don't think it's possible to run like this.

I've Not Died . . .

I've just gone to Instagram.

Greetings to any Readers who have stuck around during my absence. I've had a busy six weeks, mostly good, with lots of sewing projects. But something had to give and it turns out that what gave was this blog. But I have been trying to post projects over on Instagram, as it fits into my schedule a bit better these days. You can find me under PoldaPop and follow my makes here. Like this crazy blanket/cape/silk suit to coat refashion:

I do have an actual blog post in the works and I hope to hit publish tomorrow.

What have you been up to this Fall? - Lisa

Bi-Annual Sewing for Girls

As I've confessed before, I don't do much sewing for my girls. They have a ton of clothes already - a benefit of being one of the last of my age group to have kids, plus having a MIL who loves to shop. I don't even do much buying of clothes for my kids. I can remember purchasing a winter jacket (one season the hand-me-down goddesses let us down) and a summer jumpsuit (just cause I liked it). That's it. But I do make a birthday dress for each girl in time for her party, and the non-birthday girl gets a skirt from the leftover fabric.

The usual process is that The Birthday Girl looks through my pattern or my fabric stash and comes up with a design, and they've become pretty good at spelling it out ("I want the sleeves from this pattern, the top part just like this dress, and a swooshy skirt like your summer dress.") This year I drew a little sketch for Belly so that she could see the fabrics together, but of course said sketch is now buried somewhere in the house, and likely won't be unearthed until sometime next spring.

Belly turned 7 in August so it was her turn to design and command. She picked out her fabric in an Outlet store we happened upon when we visited friends in PA early in the summer. I will admit that my first (internal) reaction to this fabric was to cringe and shudder. I made some small effort at encouraging her in a different direction, but then thought, "Hey, it's her birthday, deal with it control-freak."

I did hold out some hope that she might forget about it or become enamored with something else, but Alas, this was THE ONE.

Details
Pattern: Bodice/sleeves from Simplicity 1435, skirt a self-drafted circle skirt 'cause a girl's gotta have twirl.

Fabric: Neon pink sequined highly synthetic monstrosity from a fabric outlet store in rural PA (not sure how they ended up with this stuff, as most everything else looked bound for an Amish household), knit tricot lining I think from GorgeousFabrics.com, AND some gorgeous RPL that definitely came from GorgeousFabrics.com and had previously been earmarked for a fall dress for myself (sorry, Ann!). Luckily I didn't need to use much for the bodice so I should hopefully have enough left for that dress.

Belt: 1.5" elastic from RuffleFabric.com. They have some lovely decorative elastics - I bought this one to use on a knit skirt for myself. I also made a plain white one that you might see in some of the pictures.

Construction notes: I attached the sleeves in the flat and hemmed (with coverstitch) the sleeves before sewing the side seams (I know, bad form, but it would have been difficult to get the wee sleeve in my serger to coverstitch after the fact). Attached necking binding as per pattern instructions. Added casing to the waist seam and 1/4" elastic. Hemmed with a serged rolled hem as there was no way those plastic sequins would fold. I didn't bother to hem the lining. For the belts, I folded down the ends and sewed with a zig zag stitch. I used velcro on the white belt and trouser hooks and eyes on the decorative belt.

And Happy Birthday to my oldest baby! (What follows is a round of gratuitous proud mama birthday shots. Indulge me, please.)

I have no idea where she learned this move.

Happy with new bike.

Birthday dinner choice? Sloppy joes made by Dad.

You can see some of Mooper's skirt in this shot - a circle skirt with elastic waistband.

The birthday girl also gets to choose their cupcake. These are ring pop cupcakes.
Somebody loves their bling.

Cozy Times

This has been a relaxing holiday for the most part.  It started off crazy busy with a trip to Michigan for the Polderman Family Reunion of Tall People (Devon's family is mostly Dutch with a bit of German thrown in for good measure and I feel super short when I am around them).  Then back in time to spend most of Christmas Eve building the doll house Santa brought for the girls - seriously, I was up until 2:30am and Devon didn't make it to bed until 3:30am.  We are not very skilled elves when it comes to this kind of thing. Then after Christmas the family visited in order to celebrate Mooper's 4th birthday (the amount of TRASH we have generated from all of the unwrapping of kids' gifts is astounding.  Our recycling will be backed up for at least a month).

But then the family left and my final 2013 client projects were all done and we just melted into a PJs-till-lunchtime routine. I feel like I've caught up on a year's worth of sleep deprivation. We've had tickle fests and movie nights and sledding and a bit of crankiness and painting and alone time and a lot of lounging. And today we can't go outside because it's -14 degrees (with -45 degrees wind chill) and school has been cancelled tomorrow due to cold and it looks like this:

After a few days of laziness I jumped into some sewing projects for myself and the family (because sewing for myself is how I relax).  I have two girls' baptism dresses, two woman's dresses (one for me and one for a friend), and a top to share with you in the next stretch. And then this little guy was one of my last projects in 2013. I sewed it up for Belly's kindergarten teacher from last year whose baby is due right about now:

Mrs G was a wonderful kindergarten teacher - funny, creative, the right kind of firm, smart, and just cool - the kind of person I'd want for a friend in different circumstances. I've got my fingers crossed that Mooper gets her when she starts in 2015.

The elephant pattern is from the book One Yard Wonders, which is the first sewing book I owned.  The book is full of good projects for beginners, and stash-busting projects for the more experienced.  This pattern is super easy and takes less than 1/2 yard of fabric.  It's my go-to gift for new babies because the trunk is so much fun to chew. I haven't made one of these guys in a year or two and I think the next time I make it I'm going to add a seam to the head so that I can insert the ears instead of attaching them with a slip stitch (it seems like even a medium-strong baby could yank them off without too much effort). This elephant was made up from the stash of shweshwe fabric that my good friend Candice hauled back from South Africa for me.

I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday season and a good start to 2014.  Onward, Ho!

Peek-a-boo!

Multiplication by Duplication

One of my favorite requests from clients is to replicate an existing garment.  I enjoy doing this because I know the new garment will be a favorite because the client has already road-tested the style and fit, AND because there usually aren't any tricky fitting issues that come up in the process.  I use the method described in Steffani Lincecum's book Patternmaking for a Perfect Fit (I was pleased to note that Sunni of A Fashionable Stitch also recommends this book).  I'm also in the process of taking Kenneth King's Jean-ius Craftsy Course, so I'll have another method in my arsenal soon.

And can I just say how excited I am to copy my favorite jeans????!!  I bought my favs for $10 from Burlington Coat Factory.  The quality of the denim isn't great, so they only made it about a year, but I LOVE them.  Can't wait to have another pair in good quality denim (or 3 . . . and maybe one in stretch wool instead of denim . . .).

You can check out some of the other garments I've replicated here and here.  My latest request was to copy two favorite knit tops.  The first was a simple peplum top from Old Navy:

The only real change my client Susan wanted to make was to have the sleeves swapped to elbow-length.  

The biggest challenge in copying an existing garment is accuracy, which is fun for me because I get to unleash that meticulous, picky side of my personality (instead of inflicting it on my family, friends, or home).

Pinning side seam and waist seams

Pinning through onto paper (I iron the filler paper from shipped packages),
and I find it helps to wiggle the pin a bit to make the hole in the paper a bit bigger.

Connecting dots and adding seam allowance

Susan chose a jersey fabric that we found on Fabric.com for the peplum top, from Michael Miller's Heaven and Helsinki stretch jersey line.

I have the top paired with a jersey skirt I made for another client.

The second top was a black swing top with asymmetrical side seam inserts.  The original top suffered a bleach accident.  Susan wanted the sides changed so that they became symmetrical.  She chose a black bamboo/rayon jersey from Vogue Fabrics and a funky print jersey from Mood.  I didn't get a picture of the original, but here are the copies:

I have to say that this process still feels like making magic to me.  I'm always anxious that it won't work or won't fit well and (so far) it always does.  One of these days I'm going to get around to replicating my own fabric top, a poplin blouse I bought from Anthropologie about 10 years ago . . .

Student Work

I had two adult classes wrap up this week and I wanted to share some of my student's work.  These women were lovely to work with and I'm sorry the classes had to end!

In my Monday morning class, I taught four ladies how to make a messenger bag.  I didn't get photos (yet!) of two of the bags, but here are the two I managed to capture.

Lori's bag - wide messenger

Lori's bag - back pocket detail

Courtney's narrow messenger bag - sorry for the iPod blur!

UPDATE: The two students who didn't quite finish during class time due to child-related absences sent me a photo once they had finished up at home:

I had two students in my Tuesday morning class and we did a variety of practical projects: hemming pants and tops, mending holes and tears, making tote bags and zippered pouches.  One of my students had saved a maternity dress for 10 years because she had a vision of what it could be.  I didn't get a before shot, but here's the tag to prove it's maternity status:

She wanted to take this tent-like jersey v-neck maternity dress and turn it into a fitted dress with a plunging neckline.  And this is what she created after adding front and back darts, taking in the side seams, and hacking away at the front and back neckline.  I think we probably removed a total of about 14 inches to get this:

I loved working with these funny, interesting, motivated ladies!

Iron Graveyard

Do you ever feel afraid of your iron?  I recently realized that I've been feeling that way for the past year or so.

My fear has been all about its death.  Especially death while I'm trying to meet a deadline or in the midst of a sewing marathon.  Will this be the moment that it steams its last?

My iron graveyard

When I started sewing, I had a Black & Decker iron that I purchased the year I graduated from college (1996, to be exact).  It didn't really steam worth a damn and the temperature was hard to control.  But since at that time I was sewing mainly with quilting cottons, I got by.

But on a trip to the in-laws (yes, I packed a sewing project, just in case), I tried my mother-in-law's Rowenta Focus.  It was big!  It had steam!  It was hot even at the tip!  And it had multiple temperature settings (not just hot-getting-hotter).  I was in such raptures over it that she let me take it home.

After about 18 months of heavy sewing and pressing, it died.  One day it just wouldn't get hot.  So I took out my Black & Decker again and searched on Ebay to see if I could find a used iron.  Note to everyone:  THIS WAS A BIG MISTAKE!  DO NOT DO THIS.  Okay, I got a new Rowenta (Powerglide 2) for $35, but from the moment I started using it, I knew its time was short.  It had great steam but poor temperature control.  And I could just tell it was ailing - some sort of psychic black aura that surrounded it like a shroud.  Whenever I went to press something I heard this song in the back of my head.  And I'm sure I hunched my shoulders just like the kid in the video, too.

It did hang on, surprisingly, for 6 months, but last week it, too, died.  So while I DID NOT want to spend $150 on an iron at this particular time (didn't the Sewing Godesses understand that I really wanted some pretty new labels????), I did my due diligence on Pattern Review's website and narrowed my choices down to a Reliable V100 Digital Vapor Generated iron and a gravity feed iron, Pacific PSI-5E, both available at Wawak.com.  When I remembered that I sometimes like to iron things in front of the TV, the choice was clear and I clicked "buy" on the Reliable.

Then I waited, glad I had the Black & Decker as back-up, but I didn't really trust it with the silk for the wedding dress.  Friday, delivery day, arrived and I must have checked the front step about 30 times.  No box.  No box.  NO BOX!  Even when the tracking status on the Fedex website said "delivered", I still had no box.

And then on Saturday morning, after 17 years, the Black and Decker died.  Now I had no iron.

I tried dealing with Fedex over the weekend and they were useless.  Luckily I live in a great town and when I posted on our Facebook page that I was in need of an iron, I had two offers within 5 minutes.  On Monday I called Wawak and they were fantastic!  The woman I spoke to knew who I was from my phone number, so I never had to give her my order number (not once and certainly not SEVEN times like with Fedex) and she had a message to Fedex and a new iron on it's way to me within about 3 minutes.

And this is the big, beautiful iron that arrived on Wednesday:

Can't you just hear the stars sing?

It's heavy, so I don't have to push when I'm pressing.  It has glorious steam and heats up quickly.  And, fellow sewists, you can disable the auto shut-off feature.

It even purrs.  Listen:

We'll have to see how it lasts, but I am now armed with a jug of distilled water and I plan to treat it with love and care and hug and kiss it every day.  When it's off, of course.

Pattern Pyramid Giveaway!

Back in February, Debbie at Sew I Think I Can Sew ran a Pattern Pyramid Giveaway and I was the lucky winner!  So the pattern pyramid exchange started by Karen at Did You Make That? made it's way back to the States from Canada and into my hands.  I now get to run my own giveaway and I'm excited to keep this going!

Here's what arrived from Debbie:

A lovely package of patterns all wrapped up in some crepe-y aubergine fabric, topped with a fancy closure, just for lovely me.  And here are the patterns:

I think I'm going to keep the Style Sew Simple 2373, mainly because I like the collars.  I'm adding these items to the parcel before sending it on:

The pattern is one that I picked up in a thrift store a while back but I've since decided I have other patterns like it closer to my actual size.  I picked up the fabric in a different resale shope, and it's about 2.5 yards of vintage cotton (44" wide).  I already washed it but it's not really me so it deserves a new home.  I hope it will make someone a lovely summer dress or top!

Here are the rules for entry in the giveaway:

You must have an active blog.
You must leave a comment and include your email.
I will randomly select the lucky winner.
I will then post off the patterns and fabric.
The winner gets the fabric and can also pick one pattern to keep for themselves, then host their own giveaway. They will randomly select a winner, post the remaining patterns to that Person, and the fun continues!

Anyone, anywhere can enter the giveaway by posting a comment below by midnight Central Standard Time on Wednesday, March 13, 2013.

Let the good times keep rolling!