Merry Christmas

I was strangely smitten with this pattern when I saw it, nostalgia for the granny comfort of it. Something my Ma or Gran-ma would have worn in the 70's.  I got it on sale recently on the Vogue pattern site.  Much to my amusement, rifling through my vintage patterns on the very day this pattern arrived, I found this:

It may be hard to see details with my terrible lighting, but the robes are EXACTLY the same.  The vintage version gave an option of a tie belt.

And  never mind sizes changing, look at that $1.00 price verses today's  $22.50!!!  I would NEVER pay that for a bathrobe pattern.  I thought I was kind of crazy for committing to buying fabric for this thing, but blame it on the nostalgia!

The tradition of late pajama pants at my house is strong and thriving.  I'm glad I'll get them done eventually.  It used to be homemade cookie ingredients I bought and never made, until the kids started baking them up.  I threw out more than a few jars of green and red sprinkles.

And Happy Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, or whatever you may celebrate if you're celebrating.

Then I found myself

right in the neighborhood of G Street Fabrics! I took someone to look at an apartment in Rockville MD today .I wondered briefly about fabric opportunity; this is just outside of Washington DC and is much more urban than my slower lower Delaware world.  I shook it off because it was Sunday and  I was sandwiching this 5 hour round trip adventure between two night shifts. I did just have to ask the landlady if there were any near by fabric stores and she said "G Street".  I've been hearing about this store for years, and GPS had me 7 minutes away.

Because both time and money were not budgeted for fabric today, I was determined to get in and out and sin gently.  As you can see with that $16. total, I did just that!

I found lovely beefy ribbing that I needed for my sweatpants, yayyyyy!

that's a blurry dark pen for perspective.

I passed rows and rows of other lovelies without grabbing any because I had no specific project in mind that I needed anything for.  I could not resist grabbing SOMETHING from the $2.99 room, as it's nice to have stuff you don't mind wrecking in practice.  I found this Dia de Muertos spandex/poly blend, not to thin or too shiny, great for a thirteen year old girl to be inspired with.  Mmm, no, she said. So I'll use it for something, or not.

I grabbed elastic and a bra back on the way out, dying a little at not being able to spend time with all of the threads, buttons, and trims on the way out.

The store was smaller than I expected, smaller than Mood in NYC.  The selection was vast and included apparel fabrics for ever scenero, quilting, home dec and upholstery.  A separate little store sold Bernina sewing machines. The sales staff seemed knowledgeable (not much time for chat today, on my part) and very pleasant.

I would so love to visit this store again, with more target fabric in mind, more time and money allotted.  I don't think the apartment thing went through though, so it might be quite some time before I find myself in Rockville again.  All scheduled  Airport trips for my family will have to be done during normal business hours, as Rockville is fairly close to that airport.

Style Arc Shelby Sweatpants

I purchased this pattern at least a year ago.  I started a pair in a fabric I hated and satisfied myself with pattern fit.  I don't know why I took so long to make a "for real" pair.  So, finally, I'm working on them.  I'm surprised I've only seen one blog post about these, and nothing on pattern review.  They seem to be trendy and comfortable.

One thing I did know about Style Arc is that some of their pattern instructions beg you to go your own way.  This particular pattern demands it for the pockets.

First of all, the bag was too small for my big hands.  Probably that was my first clue that I should have just gone ahead and redrafted, especially since I needed to draft a facing to turn in and under the edges of the window opening over the zipper.

The instructions (found separately under a tutorial on their webpage) call for you to just mark the pants front, slash as indicated, and turn under. I think that would be pretty tricky without a facing, especially since next step is to slap the zipper underneath and stitch around.  Nahhh.  THEN they wanted you to sew the bags to whatever zipper edges were leftover working around all of that fabric flapping around. That would have been enough to make me abandon project right there. If I do it again I'll draft a new pocket all in one piece, with the facing piece in the middle and insert like a coin pocket in a bag.  I had already cut out the pockets and didn't want to waste that fabric (the ghost of my frugal sewing mother telling me not to DARE)!

Had I redrafted and recut, I might have avoided this.  I was thinking, do the same to the top and the bottom. The one edge was never meant to wrap over the zipper, and when sewed to do so it meant it could never meet the edges of the other side of the bag and would become much smaller indeed if trimmed to do so.

Don't you hate it when you are sewing something thinking, man this would be a PAIN to rip out and it's really a premonition.  I bought this little ripper for quilt ripping. It's miraculous on cottons, but worked pretty well on this knit as well.  The knobby end feels like eraser rubber and grips and pulls at stitches you've busted with the pointy end.  A plain eraser will work as well, but this is just kind of handy attached.  I think the point on this one is just a tad slimmer than my standard seam ripper too.

So, I've just got waistband and cuffs to finish these.  I didn't like the ribbing available at my closest Joanne's, 50 miles away, and I'm a little leery of trying to get the right match online, so I'm using self fabric for cuffs and band.  I hope to make another trip to NYC's garment district this spring and will stock up on some in basic black and white in different weights and widths.

much better, much less trimming needed.

AND I learned how to knit a pair of socks!!  The toes are only different shapes when toes are not in them.  I'm pretty pleased with these.