Nailed It…

I sewed like the wind over the weekend, finishing up the brown wool crepe skirt.  Someone asked in one of the comments about my experience with this pattern, Vogue 1324, and I found it a bit of a challenge but not too difficult.  It certainly has more seams than a basic two dart pencil skirt, but the end result is pretty cool, and looks great on.  I had to do a lot of fit changes the first time I made this skirt; I have a fuller waist and upper hip then the pattern calls for, no surprise there, and with all the pieces, it was tricky adding to that area, but I enjoyed putting it together, and found that the lining gave the wool crepe enough body, I don’t think I’ll miss the underlining.

I began plowing through my pile of things cut from the leftovers of my handwoven coat.

I made another tote bag for the guild sale.

And I started on the vest.  You may recall I bought a denim vest a couple years ago at a Cache Outlet in Atlantic City.  I always intended to copy it and last summer, when I was teaching in Asheville, NC, I pulled it out one afternoon when no one needed me for a bit, and started tracing.  I copied each piece, added match points and seam allowances, and then put it away for a few months.

This seemed like a good test of the pattern, some of the prettier areas of the coat leftovers.  So I cut them out, (see previous blog post) and fused tricot strips on the perimeter edges to prevent any distortion or unraveling.  This vest was not lined, and I didn’t want to fuss too much, it was the dry run before I cut into my precious lambskin from Leather Impact in NYC.  The original vest just had serged interior seam finishes, so I duplicated that in this vest.  There are a lot of seams and an asymmetrical zipper.  And this is a bulky fabric.  I trimmed and faced everything with silk noil, which I picked up at one of my trips to Waechter’s Fabric Shop in Asheville.  It was a small remnant and just enough for the task.  FYI, I bought the 16″ separating zipper from www.zippershipper.com, a place I found out about at the American Sewing Guild conference in DC last August.  I wish they had the antique bronze finish in colors, but alas, only the bright gold zippers come in cool colors in a 16″.

Can I say how much I’m thrilled with how this vest turned out?  It fits, is really comfortable, and I’m so excited by the shape and can’t wait to sew it in leather, but that exercise has to wait.

I made a second tote bag from the leftovers from the coat fabric.

I made another hot mat from strips of leftovers.  I have tons of these to make.

I’ll continue to sew like the wind tomorrow, Friday night is the set up for my guild sale and I have a lot to finish up, inventory and tag before then.  I will have bags of leftovers, lots of the light combinations and a few of the mid-values left.  My daughter called yesterday, she is planning to send a box down from Massachusetts with about three dozen items she whipped up out of inkle bands and things she crocheted.  I have a lot of tagging to do.  Though there is a lot of gratitude as well, this time last year, we were still in the dark from power outages from Hurricane Sandy, and I was hunting with a flashlight in the attic for things to sell …

If you live anywhere in NJ/PA, consider coming to the Jockey Hollow Show and Sale, in Mendham NJ.  For information and directions, click here.