Making Simple Things More Difficult

Here's Matilda modeling the poncho, and Agatha modeling the beret.
So nice to see the girls cooperating.

What can I say, it's a gift.

I decided that I needed a beret to go with my poncho. There was a large enough piece of the border material to make a circle, but then my beret would have had stripes, and that wasn't the look I wanted. So, I folded the pattern piece into quarters, scanned and printed it out. I wasn't sure I could do what I wanted, so I printed out three more so I could place the pattern pieces on the material -- and learned I didn't have enough material to do it that way. Folding the piece into eighths made it possible to use the largest amount of the bordered material, and use only two wedges that used very little of it.

I added a half-inch seam allowance to my pattern wedges.
Also, printing on "draft" uses a whole lot less ink.

Wedges cut out and arranged before pinning.

At the top, there's a bit I need to hand-sew, because I wasn't able to get the sewing machine to get all the way down, once I had several wedges sewn together.

I can stick my finger through the hole in the center. Easily fixed.

I think I need to sew in a basic lining, because the inside is kinda ugly.

I did stitch down the edges at the base of the crown, and considered doing that to the wedges,
but didn't want to stiffen the softness of the upper crown, or make it look too tailored.
A lining may be in order.

All in all, I am enormously pleased that my idea worked as well as it did, since I was pretty much winging it. I think this is a pretty sweet use of the bordered material I love so much.

So that was my Sunday evening.

On Saturday, I made this:

The pattern came from Fleece Fun, and is super-easy. Unfortunately, I learned that I have good reason to hate and fear buttonholes. Because I suck at them. I ended up sewing a tight zigzag instead, and it worked pretty well.

I'm happy with how the hat turned out, but I think I should have gone with a medium instead of small, as it's a bit snug (even with the ribbon untied). For reference, my head measures 22". Unfortunately, as cute as it is, I don't think I like the style on me. It's basically a cloche, and not my preference. I hemmed the edge with a zigzag stitch, but I think it would be really cute if it was hemmed with a short straight stitch, stretching as you sew, making a lettuce edge.

Anywho, if you haven't yet visited Fleece Fun, go. She has so much there -- for free! -- that you're crazy not to check it out. Her satin hair flowers are going to end up on my thrift store hat redo, as soon as I get some more satin.

UPDATE:

I lined the beret and it looks much better. I was concerned that it might change the way the hat lies on my head, but it doesn't appear to have done so.

I also ripped out the zigzag hem of the leopard hat, and restitched it with a straight stitch, pulling the fabric as I went to ruffle it slightly. It's cute. :)

From the Basic Hat with Ribbon pattern available at FleeceFun.com

 

Not Even Cold Enough

Goofy weather; I finally got an old project completed, and it's not even cold enough to wear it.

When my daughter was a toddler, I bought a pattern, material and thread to make a poncho. The fleece fabric was clearanced, and I just fell in love with it. My daughter is now 15.

Our old house was small, and so in an attempt to make more space, my material got put into one of those Space Bags. Clever me, I even thought to put the pattern envelope, front facing out, in with it, along with sequins I had bought to embellish it and the thread in a small margarine container. Once the air was sucked out, I had a much smaller project, and everything was in one place.

Now that I've gotten more comfortable with the sewing machine, I rediscovered that shrink-wrapped decade-old project and finished it! Huzzah! Thursday night I cut out the pieces, Friday I sewed it up, and this morning I added the darts I should have put in to begin with.

I used Butterick #3649 (©2002, looks like it's out of print), view A, but modified it. The 60" material I bought had a wide border, and that was what I wanted. That view had two pattern pieces, one diamond-shaped front piece, and a triangular back piece (cut two). Bah. That wouldn't have used the border to its full potential, so I cut four triangles, carefully getting a chevron for the front and back, but the chevrons do not match. I would have needed another yard (at least) to do that.

It's a smaller poncho than I typically prefer, but it's probably a better size for me to wear so that I don't look like I'm dwarfed by it. And, after looking at it, and playing with the sequins, I decided not to use them after all. The border pattern is busy enough that it probably doesn't really need anything else. I have a ton of the upper half of the fabric to make a shirt or something, since I only used the border edge, and enough of the border pieces to make a hat, I think.

Fast & Easy: yes it was
Views C & D are basically, "Hem the edge of a huge rectangle,
sew on these leaves (C) or this fake fur (D)." For that, you need a pattern?!

Front and back, respectively. The little pink flowers on the maroon field is what the rest of the material looks like.

Totally do not match, but I can live with it, because my chevrons
line up pretty well in front and back views.

Detail of the darts I added this morning.

I also added some detail to a beret I made on Wednesday, using some wonderful rose-patterned fleece I bought that I didn't know what I wanted it for at the time. I cut out a rose and appliquéd it to the top, quilting it somewhat with a scrap of fleece stitched between my appliqué and the crown of the beret. I also knotted some embroidery thread as stamens for a little more dimension.

So now I have this awesome finished project, and it's supposed to get up to 42ºF (5.5ºC). Hell, that warm in January in this part of the Midwest, it's practically shorts weather! (Why is it that 40º in January is so much warmer than 40º in June? Isn't that a bizarre perception shift?) I suppose I could wear the poncho over a t-shirt... But not with the hat. I have a tiny bit more fashion sense than that. (The colors totally clash. Non-matching patterns don't phase me at all.)

January's Hat: Snow

Those glist'ning houses that seem to be built of snow
Snow
Oh, to see a mountain covered with a quilt of snow
the song "Snow" from White Christmas (movie)

This photo won 3rd place in the local county fair in the category "Shadows."

I was so happy to have no interruptions for the first day when my daughter resumed school after the winter break, I made my January hat. My inspiration, though it's been scarce this season so far, was snow.

It didn't start out that way; it started out as another practice hat. I had tried the video tutorial for making the pillbox hat and it didn't work. I'm betting operator error, but it looked like she was using felt to make the one in the vid, and since it's naturally more structural, she didn't use any interfacing or lining. I lined mine, but without interfacing or some kind of stiffening going on, my pillbox is too soft to hold its shape. Also, her instructions were not all that clear. The sides of the hat have a bit of a peak; the center of the band is taller than the back of the band, but she doesn't say which side to sew the crown to, and I didn't mark it (she didn't) so once it was cut and the pattern piece unpinned from it I wasn't even sure which was top and which was bottom.

I'm nearly happy with it. I think my contrast-stitching has too much contrast,
and it desperately needs something to give it some body, but it almost worked.

Anyway. I decided to modify (again!) that McCall's pattern #2692 from '86. This new hat uses the same pattern pieces as the hats I made in fleece! I reduced the pieces using Photoshop, scanning them in and reducing them 85% and printing them out. The sides were too long to scan, so I folded it at the center and marked that end of my new pattern piece "FOLD."

Scanned, desaturated, and reduced pattern pieces

I found the random polka-dot patterned dotted swiss material, saw how much of it there was, and figured I'd use that, and added medium-weight sew-in interfacing. I didn't line it. After I cut everything out, I machine-basted my fabric and interfacing pieces together. I stitched the short ends together, pressed open the seam (I didn't use her technique in the video of sewing that down). When I started pinning on the crown, it became pretty clear that reduced the same percentage or not, it was a bit too big. I ended up pinning it together from my basting stitch rather than matching the edges, and then trimming the excess and notching it as usual.

Once I got it all sewn together, I turned under the raw edge and checked the height, turned it some more, adjusting the size of the band until I was happy with it. That got stitched down twice, which gives it a little more firmness as well as securing hem. Most of the side band is now doubled fabric and interfacing, making it pretty sturdy.

Thrilled with my creation, I used matching ribbon and white tulle to make a pouf for the side (sewing the ribbon to the tulle, then gathering the opposite side), securing it with a silver and light blue button from my stash. It still needed something, so I looked to see if I had any white sequins the right size, thinking I'd sew them onto all the smaller dots on the sides. I did have, but didn't like the way they looked, but found some flat clear sequins that I used instead. Each one sewn on using two stitches of white thread... that took far longer to do than sewing the hat! I tried to keep the thread from showing where I could, going between the layers of fabric to the next dot. I could have skipped that and gone faster, but it looks nicer and the threads are not in danger of snagging and breaking.

I have not yet decided what means I will use for securing it to my head, and I'm not certain that it still doesn't need something -- it still looks kinda plain -- but I'm calling it 97% done.

To me, the white spots on an aqua field on dotted swiss looks like snow falling from a blue sky. So, my inspiration, born of a casual "eh, I'll use this," turned into something I'm really quite proud of.

back

front

left side

right side

Making it up as you go is kinda fun!