Sis's fall sewing

What will it be?

Boiled wool jacket

My jacket is progressing very nicely, though slowly.  Because the fabric is so thick, each piece had to be cut out separately.  Then each edge had to be trimmed down to size and the overlap for each seam marked in chalk before it could be sewn.  This morning it took all the way through Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, Dvorak's Serenade for Strings, and halfway through Beethoven's Fourth, which is a wonk of time, and which brings us here [these are just interim photos, mind]:

The color in the pictures above is really washed out.  Actually it's a lovely blue-ish brown, like this:

This is a way cool button Sis gave me for my birthday (the national holiday we all celebrated last week).  I'm thinking about using it on the boiled wool jacket.  Or maybe not, it may need buttons all the way down the front.  She also gave me this really useful needle cushion.  I can hardly wait to stick something in it!

So that's where we are at the moment.  Tomorrow I'll do the sleeves, collar and pockets, plus any fiddly bits that need taking care.  I am really pleased with it!

It's National Sewing Month!

And I'm sewing again!  Sis and I have challenged each other to sew every day of September.  Except (for her) when off on fabulous vacations, and (for me) when celebrating a birthday.  This morning I cut out the muslin for a boiled wool jacket, using this pattern:

The fabric is a lovely dark brown boiled wool I bought from Emma One Sock last year.

After that I'm going to make myself a 49er jacket.  (I am myself a 49er so I especially deserve one.)  Over the summer I picked up a 1948 pattern that will be just perfect once I've graded it to my size.  For the fabric, I'm going to use a brown and cream Pendleton plaid I bought in Portland last year.  And I have a lovely dark brown wool for a skirt to go with it.

Art at Woodland Park Zoo

Actually, it was a very cool dark rainy morning, so I didn't take a lot of pictures.

Carousel bear

Which way?

Salt

Snow leopard

An odd visitor to the penguins

And this one from last June, on an entirely different sort of day:

Art at Point Defiance Zoo

In other words, no sewing.  I'm so tired of summer and it's too warm to sew wool.

Very scary!

Very peaceful

                                         

Handsome Monkey King!

Now we are off to Woodland Park Zoo!

Oh, fluffo! I wrecked my blog

I knew I should have left well enough alone.  I knew I should have exported my blog before I started fiddling with it.  But I paid myself no heed and went ahead and changed it and there's no going back.  So I've restored it as much as I can.  If anyone wants me I'll be in the back of the closet sulking.

Ghosts of sewing past

So yesterday Sis and I celebrated her Bastille Day birthday with a slap-up lunch at the art museum, followed by a prowl through Pioneer Square shops.  I wore this rayon crepe beauty (well okay it looks like a shapeless bag in the picture) which I had hastily finished only yesterday morning. 

And that put me in mind of sewing when I was in college. Sewing back then was a one day (and sometimes half the night) marathon to get the damn thing finished so I could wear it the next day.  Who cares what it looks like inside (aside from Grandma Sally, and like she counts), or if your hemming stitches are so big you could catch your toe in them.  In fact safety pins work just as well!  Anyway, here's a real piece of slapdash stitching from about 1970.  I loved the pattern with its six tucks instead of darts.

And I loved the fabric, some strange totally synthetic something with a crepe weave.

But look at the inside, with its crappy six inch hem!  I'm sure I just slapped it in there, telling myself I would fix it later.  As in never.  Certainly not in the last forty years!

And then there's this.  I remember sewing it in the hot days of August 1970, with clouds of synthetic dust wafting up every time I cut into the fabric.  It had shorts to go with it, which got a sneer from the crappy boyfriend of the moment, who informed me his father wouldn't allow his mother to wear "hot pants."  Not allow, fr'crissake.

And this tiny scrap of a thing from 1967 or 1968.  The waist is 22 inches.  And mind you that's the waist of the skirt.  The tiny me that wore it was even smaller.  And it's only 19 inches long. 

And finally, perhaps the sweetest thing I've ever sewn.  Isn't it adorable?  I made it in 1970 to go to see Hair, and I wore it with orange tights.  And short!  It comes only to about mid thigh.  Forty years later it looks as fresh and pretty as the day it was made.  When I pulled it out of the box this morning there was scarcely a crease in it.  That's the miracle of synthetics!  I sewed almost exclusively synthetics back then, in part because they were inexpensive and I was poor.  But also because the Vietnam War made cotton and wool less available, and silk not available at all.