Student Work: Simplicity 2290

I'm a teensy bit embarrassed to tell you that I just made my first pair of PJs for myself (I've made a couple PJ sets for kids, but not for myself up 'till now). Such an easy thing to make but it seems I hadn't got 'round to it!

My motivation to sew up this pattern came from the fact that I needed a sample for two different classes. This was an Intro to Sewing class for teens/adults that I taught at my regular sewing gig (The Little Bits Workshop) and out on my own for a class I set up, advertised, and registered students all by my little loneself.

But I had the plan for these PJs for at least 18 months, maybe longer. My husband gave me a pair of Garnet Hill bamboo jersey cropped PJs a couple years ago, and they fairly quickly got all hole-y in back. But I loved them so much I just wore them with longer and longer t-shirts to cover up the growing hole. I've been meaning to replace them for, oh, some time, but I needed a kick in the PJs to do it.

So Simplicity 2290 is a super easy pattern (one pattern piece, 3 seams and then hemming) and while it's not cropped, cropping them was easy-peasy to do. The only problem I found was that the crotch depth was ridiculously long on me. I cut off 1.5" and I should have cut off 1.5" more. This was not a problem for any of my students, so maybe it's just me.

Here's how they turned out, next to the original.

New with fabric from EmmaOneSock.com - purchased years ago.

Old Garnet Hill Pjs

And see this hole??? Why am I still wearing these???

I didn't get shots of all of my student's work, but here are a few:

Anne made these for her son - the tail at the back side was a lucky accident!

Hope made these for her daughter.

More dinos!

Paty got this mustache fabric from a man who was clearing out his (deceased) wife's fabric stash.
He is giving the fabric away, per the wife's instructions.

This particular class was one of the most satisfying I've taught, mainly because it was all mine - lesson plans, finding location, advertising, convincing people to take the class, taking payments, setting up the space each week. I was also more nervous at the start - and this is after teaching in various jobs for over 15 years! Four out of the five students are going to take my next class, and the one who isn't taking it wishes that she could. It's moments like this that make all the hustle and late nights and frustrations of running one's own business worthwhile.

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!

I'm Back!

Whew.  That last month of the summer crushed me.  But as of yesterday Belly is back in school and Moop is back at daycare and I am back in my routine.  So glad to be here.

I've got a bunch of finished projects and tutorials and teaching moments to share with you from the six weeks.  I'm excited to start writing (and reading) again.  In the meantime, I have a bit of fun for you.

I taught two week-long camps with my friend Nancy Sidman of Miss Nancy Schmancy at The Little Bits Workshop in River Forest  The first camp had 12 girls, age 9 through 11.  The second camp had 11 girls, age 9 through 13 (the big range led to an interesting social dynamic).  In both camps, a bunch of girls with little or no sewing machine experience sewed a garment and a tote bag in just one week and then walked the runway.  It was crazy fun!  You can watch a video of the first runway show here and see photos here. 

A Few Morsels From the Past Week(s)

I get to teach kids in the summertime and I've been looking forward to this for a few months.  I'm teaching a couple of week-long camps later in the summer, but for now I am teaching 4-6 students on Friday afternoons.  Most of the girls are around 8-9 years-old (and yes, all girls - I keep waiting for a boy!) and for the first class we sewed pillow cases.  They were all keen to sew stuffed animals (I thought they might be too old for this, but I was wrong wrong wrong), so in our last class they got started on stuffed owls.  Here they are with their owl "heads":

There's one girl hiding under the table to avoid having her picture taken.

I finished my next Stitch project (due out in the fall) but I can't show you that.  Cora is very happy because I used leftovers from the project to embellish one of her dresses.  She hates clothes that are only one color, so she's very happy with her new look!

I've been doing a lot of alterations lately but I've got some new garment work coming up.  I also finally kicked myself out of my procrastination loop with my own garment project.  I've been working on this for at least a month and it's not a quickie.  I've had trouble finding longer amounts of time on the weekend to make progress with it, but I did finally complete a step.  I'm following the steps from Susan Khalje's Couture Dress class on Craftsy, but using a different pattern.  So far I've fitted the muslin and cut out the underlining and fashion fabric from the muslin pieces.  Here's the organza (for the bodice) and batiste (for the skirt) underlining pieces laid on the backside of my fashion fabric.  Can anyone guess the pattern?  I'm hoping to hand baste the underlining to the fabric while I'm on vacation next week.

And up last in my show-and-tell is a dress I actually finished about a month ago.  I was almost too embarrassed to post it because I've made this dress (Simplicity 2580) so many times.  But I love the fabric - Groovy Bricks ITY Jersey from GorgeousFabrics.com so much that I just had to give you a peek.  One of my upcoming custom garments came after I wore this dress to book club.  Maybe I'll actually get photos of me in the dress sometime soon.

If off with the girls to rural PA for a week.  Cheerio!

School Projects

Belly, my oldest daughter, finished her first year of school last week.  Kindergarten - check, onto First Grade!  I wanted to make gifts for her teachers but when you include aids and specials and that meant eight gifts.  I left this 'till the final week to do, so this meant something pretty quick. 

Belly's contribution:

My contribution:

Zippered pouches for aids and specials

Book totes from apple corduroy for her main teachers

 

I figured her two male teachers wouldn't want a pretty little zippered pouch so they got Chipotle gift certificates instead.  The only simple male sewing project I could think of was boxer shorts and that didn't seem appropriate!

 



To save time, I interfaced the pouch fabric with a fabric-like fusible interfacing (Pellon SF101 shape-flex woven interfacing) instead of lining them.  I sewed the pouches up on my fancy serger using a piping foot to attach the zippers, and each one only took about 15 minutes from cutting to fusing to sewing. 


I also just hit my one year milestone with teaching sewing.  I teach primarily at The Little Bits Workshop in River Forest (if you're local and you want to take a class, go here) and I really liked the skirt project I led on Monday night.  I've found that while students dream about sewing their own clothes, I have trouble filling those classes with students opting instead for simple home dec project classes.  I had a group of students from my last beginner sewing session who were a bit more gung-ho, so I put together a one-night class to teach them to make a simple jersey skirt. 

My inspiration was this skirt, which I found on Pinterest, but I changed the drafting formula and the waistband:



Elle Apparel Socialite Skirt - tutorial

I made a couple sample skirts (I'm wearing the stripey one as I type), one with pleats and one without:

Keep in mind that my students have only been sewing for about a month and not all of them even have a sewing machine at home.  Here's what they made in three hours, from drafting to cutting to sewing jersey fabric for the first time:

You can't see it in this photo, but Nora did a fantastic job matching stripes!

My mantra through the class was, "Your first skirt won't be your best skirt," but they turned out really well.  I can't wait to see what their second and third skirts look like!

Camp Runway

Wow, now that was fun.  Nancy Sidman, another local seamstress, and I led a camp at The Little Bits Workshop in River Forest.  We had eight girls (mostly age 10-11), eight different patterns, six sewing machines, twenty-five hours, and one handy assistant and from this motley mix we helped the girls make the clothes for their own Runway Show.  The challenge we gave the girls was that whatever they made had to go with at least two items that were in their closets already (I did this so that they could walk the runway twice and to stop them from making something completely impractical). 

I started to get nervous that we wouldn't be able to pull this off a few days before camp started.  We had met with the girls at our local Hancock Fabric's store to help them pick their patterns, fabrics, and notions.  About half of them had some sewing experience but at least three of them didn't really have any sewing experience going into the week.  I'm not sure any of them had made something from a commercial pattern.

And it was a crazy week.  We kept a running theme about the importance of making mistakes, and by about Day 4 we had the girls exclaiming proudly, "Hey!  I made another mistake!"  Unlike the real project runway, there were no tears or meanness, but we did have the last minute sewing on of buttons and repairing of seams.  The girls were a ton of fun to work with, although I did vastly underestimate the challenge of reading a pattern while eight young girls chattered constantly in the background.  And we all worked hard, VERY hard, to pull this off.  I don't have pictures to show, but you should absolutely check out the video of the Runway Show on Little Bit's website (it's the QuickTime link in the middle of home page).  It comes complete with music, a runway carpet, and revving fire engines (the workshop is across the street from the fire station in River Forest). 

Here's a snap of the certificate (printed on cardstock, no less) we gave them after the show:

And now I have some dreams I'm trying not to indulge in for the moment about taking this show on the road.  I'd love to do this with other girls (taking into account all I learned from the week), and I wonder if Nancy and I could get a grant to do this with girls who have fewer advantages than those from River Forest.  We will definitely do it at Little Bits again next summer and I know a few girls who will be back with us!