Practical projects and crafts

Month: August 2016

Cicadas, Heat and Long Summer Evenings

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Technically the longest day of the year is the first day of summer, but to me it’s evenings in August when the air is hot and sticky and summer has been here long enough everyone feels laid back and the main sound in the evening is the buzz of the cicadas that feel like long summer evenings.  Soon it will be fall, but it still feels like the middle of summer.  This may be because of the nice hot humid weather we get here though….

I’m happy to say some craft projects have made pretty good progress this month.  Not fast progress, but I figure any progress counts since there’s a tiny person who gets most of the time right now.

My hat is actually getting close to done.  I have a little more than one repeat of the pattern to do and then I just need to do the decreases, which generally goes pretty fast.  So that’s a happy thing.  I’m looking forward to having my hat back!  And this time I’m going to try really hard not to lose it!  I haven’t lost many hats/scarves/mittens and I always feel bad when it happens.  I think before I lost this hat, the last thing I lost was my favorite scarf in college.  I worked evenings at one of the libraries, and I set my scarf down in the restroom when I was getting ready to go home.  I realized it a few minutes later and went back to get it, but it was already gone…  I guess I just hope someone ended up using my scarf and my hat and enjoying them.

I also made progress on my skirts for work.  These are the knit skirts using Butterick B3134 (assorted gored skirts in woven fabric). My theory was that I could make it in knit fabric which would be easier (no zipper, no finishing, no lining, no ironing!) and would be more forgiving since my body is still changing size/shape.  It turns out I was right.  The only issue was that I forgot I should take it in more to account for the zipper, but that was easy to fix before I put the waistband on.  I also added elastic to the waistband to make it more stable (I didn’t bother with interfacing).  I started with the black fabric since I had enough for two skirts in case my first attempt needed a lot of rethinking, but it turned out great.  All I have left to do is hem it!  I just need to decide if I’m doing a twin needle hem or a zigzag blind hem.

If I finish these, maybe I can make some of my dresses, or the little winter hood or the fabric wreath… there are always more projects, but that’s part of the fun.

Summer Dresses for August

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Usually I make myself a new summer dress every year for the 4th of July. I started doing this when I wanted to enter a contest for one of my favorite sewing patterns (Colette Hawthorn). And while I never got around to actually submitting my entry (though I finished my dress!) I decided I really liked having a nice new dress right before the massive humid hot weather of the middle of summer rolled in.

Since then I’ve made myself a new dress every year, sometimes two when I’ve been really ambitious. This year for obvious reasons I missed the 4th of July for my new dress, but I think August is still pretty good!  So this year my goal is a summer dress by Labor Day, maybe three dresses if I can manage it.  Luckily I have lots of help from the fuzzy household residents. They very much enjoy cutting out fabric.

I’ve also researched how to use knit fabric for my gored dress pattern (it’s a basic Butterick pattern B3134) I’ve made before.  This seems simpler than drafting my own right now.  And since it’s knit fabric I (hopefully!) won’t have to line it and it will adjust as my shape changes (hopefully!).  Also I can just serge the seams rather than sewing and finishing them all.  Also I shouldn’t have to iron it.  And I got my fabric from Nancy’s Notions so I’m hoping this means it will be good fabric of a nice weight that won’t pill a lot.

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