Sewing Project #3: Christmas Stocking

With a cozy pair of pajamas and a fun but not terribly flattering poodle skirt under my belt, Christmas time was fast approaching. I was working on the Colorado Quilt in bits and pieces, but got excited about the idea of making a custom Christmas stocking.  After perusing some options, I decided to go with a big three pattern, McCall's 5549 to be precise.

I used view B for the basic shape, and went about designing my own decorative elements.  Putting my newfound quilting skills to work, I started with piecing together 2" squares for the main portion of the stocking from Christmas-y cotton quilting fabric.  After adding batting and an underlayer of tulle, I quilted the squares "in the ditch" so-to-speak.  I then stay-stitched around the shape of the stocking inside the seam allowance and cut it out.

I then added red corduroy toe and heel covers with Christmas-y white and gold piping at the edges.  The piping I found was really neat, although I unfortunately don't have any photos.  It looked just like cording you would find anywhere, but it was attached to a flat woven edge.  Very easy to insert.  The trickiest part was lining up the toe and heel pieces on the two sides.  The piping made that especially difficult, as it was significantly thicker there than in the other spots, which made it want to shift.

For the lining, I used a poly shimmery gold brocade that was a bit tricky to work with and unraveled everywhere.

With that done, all that was left was to add a cuff.  I ordered some faux polar bear fur from some place online that I don't now recall.  I stitched it to the lining fabric to create a loose cuff that I could add to the stocking top.  I should have done this first, but afterwords, I cut holy leaf shapes from stiff interfacing and steamed some green satin to the shapes.  I then attached the leaves to the cuff with a single stitch down the center to look like the stem of the leaf.  Three red buttons in the center of the leaves made cute holy berries and the cuff was ready to be attached.  I sewed the lining layer to the stocking with right sides together and then hand-stitched the fur layer in place so that the stitches wouldn't get in the way of the fun bounce of the fur.

The green of the satin is a much closer color to the greens of the cotton in person than they turned out looking on the camera.

A view of the top/inside of the completed stocking.

I was incredibly, absurdly, ridiculously happy with how the stocking turned out.  I enjoyed the ability to be original and creative with the elements of the piece, and I also loved working on something that came together so quickly.

Poodle Skirt

For my second project, I knew I wanted to make my own Halloween costume.  I'd never gone as a 50s girl, and a poodle skirt seemed simple enough.  I settled on pink acrylic felt and McCall's 5681.

I really enjoyed the process of making the skirt, but was not at all pleased with the result.  Two layers of thick felt gathered at the waist does nothing for an apple girl's figure, especially one with such a short torso.

My biggest problem was the petticoat.  The pattern back calls for netting or tulle for the petticoat fabric.  In my naivete, I assumed they were realitvely the same thing and bought tulle.  Needless to say, tulle did not give any boost to the heavy felt at all.  So, I got petticoat net and tried again, this time with a stiff lining fabric underneath.  That had some structure to it, but still didn't give the skirt much shape.  I wanted to add a ruffle to the bottom of the petticoat but ran out of time.  I ended up wearing both, as seen in the photo below.

After my unenthusiastic wearing of the ensemble on Halloween, I decided to move on to bigger and better things.

MC Hammer Pajama Pants

For my first project, I wanted to tackle something easy and usable.  I decided on pajama pants as the ideal.  No sleeves or zippers to mess with.  And if they came out really terrible, I could still wear them without being embarrassed!

I stumbled on "It's so Easy" 3548 from Simplicity, so I picked out some nice flannel fabric from JoAnn's (in the middle of the summer in Denver) and got to work.

In the end, I was very pleased.  Not only did the pants actually look reasonably like pajamas one might buy in a store, but they were actually long enough! I have long legs, and while I can typically find ready-to-wear pants that are long, I have yet to come across long-length pajamas.  I didn't think ahead and cut the legs any longer, but I used a large size to start with and hemmed as little as possible.  Having pajamas that come down to the tops of my feet made such a difference in the cold winter months!

I call them my MC Hammer pants because the legs are VERY wide.  It's kind of like walking around wearing a blanket.

Welcome!

After over a year of obsessively following accomplished sewists in the blogosphere (see "Inspirations" on the right) and salivating over their skills and creativity, I have decided to create my own sewing story, one stitch at a time.

A little background: I have always been very interested in fabrics and textile arts.  One of my grandmothers was an extremely talented quilter who hand-quilted every quilt she made. The other was an amazing knitter who sewed only when she had to but could make anything you could imagine with yarn.  I was always interested in sewing and had each of them show me tidbits here and there.  My family moved thousands of miles away when I was six, however, and summer projects weren't enough to get me going on my own.

This is what I have to live up to: a quilt made for me by my grandmother when I was just a baby.

Jump ahead 20 years to the summer of 2008.  Both of those wonderful women have passed on to the next phase of life, and I find myself in a new community, far from family and friends, feeling empowered after moving 1,000 miles with my husband and two cats because we wanted to.  I suddenly decided to no longer feel as though I could not sew because I had never been taught.  I wasn't going to wake up one day and suddenly have the skills I felt I would need to be able to enjoy sewing.  Why not enjoy the process of sewing, even if the results are less-than desirable for a long time?  So I went out and bought myself a sewing machine and started sewing...