Yeti - Chapter 2

I'm happy to report that this jacket has been re-homed.  Robin adopted him from the no-kill shelter (aka my closet floor).  Lock, stock,  sleeves and lining.  It looks much better on her than it did on me.

In other news, I hauled a HUGE bag of fabric and patterns to Robin's house this morning, along with a couple of bottles of champagne and some Mexican layer dip.  And came home with only a grocery bag of fabric and a knitting book I snagged at the last minute.  Yeti was piled on top of the bag and everytime I looked in the rearview mirror I thought I saw a dead cat back there. 
The fabric and pattern swap was a lot of fun.  The link above takes you to a much better write-up with names and photos so I won't repeat it all.  But I already have a piece of denim in the wash for some casual slacks - hopefully to replace the sloppy jeans you see above.

Yeti

 It's been a long time since I've posted.  But I wanted to show my personal version of Sasquatch.  Yes, it DOES exist!  I started this last winter, maybe February?  The lining is all done, and the outside is techically done.  But it just isn't working for me.  The shoulders are much to much.  In the photos below the left shoulder is partially darted to take it in some, but not only cannot I not really finish the dart without a lot of hand-tugging stitching, it's then too bulky to wear.  So what to do? I'm thinking of removing the sleeves completely and turning it into a vest?  Or would it still be too much?  What if I made the back out of a heavy/stable knit?  No.... that would mess with the whole collar thing - forget that. 

 

 

Particulars:  this is from Burda, October (I think) 2010.  I went to G Street armed with a $50 worth of Living Social coupons and a desire for a faux fur jacket.  Somewhere along the journey I lost my way.  I wanted a low pile, soft, brown and a plan for a much more recent issue of Burda pattern.  And came home with timber wolf.  I decided to take one more look through my Burda collection before I started and saw this:

 So a new plan was born.  The very helpful lady at G Street gave me a number of pointers.  All of which I used and none of which resulted in this critter shedding in my sewing room.  At her suggestion, I eliminated the side seams and cut the whole body as one piece.  I marked the seam lines with a Sharpie - red was the only color that I could see the markings for, so red it was.  And, apparently faux fur backing is probably the ONLY thing on Earth that Sharpie isn't permenent on, so this resulted in giving me red hands when I work with this.  Not a good thing with working with something that already resembles a butchered animal.  I also used a razor blade to cut - that way I was able to cut just the backing without cutting the actual "fur" (please note that no live animals, other than me, were harmed in this endeavor).  I don't remember if it was G Street lady or Burda that said NOT to trim fur from the allowances but to comb them out of the seam and into the body of the garment, this works great and hides the seam completely.  So far, so good.  But then the sleeves went in - well one of them.  And it was (pun intended) a real bear to insert.  Burda, in their design wisdom, included 2 LARGE darts in the sleeve caps.  Um, yeah.  Well that makes too much bulk to fit under my sewing machine foot so that part was done by hand.  The right one, anyway.  Then I got tired of messing with it and the weather got warm and it hung in a closet all spring and summer.  I pulled out last week, prompted by a Stitcher's Guild thread about sewing winter coats.  Slid it on to see if it really was as bad as I remembered.  Not only is it as bad, I'd forgotten about only pinning in the left sleeve.  This left me with a large, deap, thin scratch down my left arm.  Yeti strikes back!  Last week I repeated the exhausting drama of inserting sleeve #2.  And took some photos. 

Bleck.  I really hate to just toss this - MONSTROUSITY - but I can't and won't wear this THING.  If anyone (is still reading this blog and) has an idea of how to rescue it, I'm all ears.  Apparently the only anatomical item missing from this critter.

A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That

Sorry, still no photos of my fabulous creations, not even the rockin' skirt I made from a small piece of watercolor stretch sateen (I guess) from G Street's THE WALL using a pretraced Burda pattern that garnered me more compliments than everything else I've made put together (hmmmm?) and caused me to blow my promise of no more run on sentances right out the window.  Whoof!
Over on SG there was a discussion by a relative new comer over whether she needed a serger or not.  Now I refrained from just screaming out "YES! of course you need a new sewing **insert any item here**" and just read along.  She was finally convinced even without my obviously logical direction and ordered a Brother 1034D from Amazon for $198 - I get free shipping with my Prime membership.  It arrived on Friday - just in time for my DH to witness my "yet another piece of stuff to pile up in the sewing room" but when he saw the price realized, I guess, that he cared even less about it than before - and that was pretty dang little.  Anywho - it's a sweet little machine.  Came threaded straight out of the box, but of course I managed to unthread it pretty much immediately, but it threads really easily and I can now do it in about 2 minutes start to finish - faster than tying off old threads.  It has 2 videos, couple of extra feet, the trim trap and a (really smelly plastic) cover.  My plan is to set up the Bernina to coverstich - the Brother is strictly a SERGER (does to rolled hems, though).  First attempt at threading the Bernina to do this is a fail.  MUST KEEP TRYING.
The front yard is now all mulched, weed and feeded, and mowed.  The back is almost done - needs a few more bags of mulch and annuals planted in the newly dug out and dirt replaced area.  We used the dug up clay to fill in under the back steps.  The deck has been washed down, the storage shed straightend up and half a bottle of Advil downed.  I maybe glad to be back at work to rest a bit.  No, I take that back.  I'm not.
We made an amazing Indian chicken dish for dinner on Saturday night, I've only attempted a curry once and it was dissapointing.  This wasn't a curry but it was lick the plate good and it was a blast to cook in our new kitchen together.  WHAT?!?  I forgot to tell you we remodeled the kitchen?  Bad Bad BeeBee.  Let me see if I can cobble together some photos of the before and after for you, later - my browser on this computer doesn't really play well with Blogger.
And the dog is clean, my car repaired (long, boring, maintence story that I will spare you), my sewing room straighten up to better showcase my new serger, new yogurt in the fridge and the grocery shopping done.  I feel so accomplished.

I have Sewn

But not photographed. 
Most of my sewing really isn't photo worthy, actually.  I'm pretty sure most of you have seen a pair of black pants before, right?  And you don't need to see the long stashed UFO that I cut out about 2 years ago from a floral rayon using a Burda wrap top pattern that I finally marked and started on, the whole time wondering if this match of fabric to pattern was going to work, if I really liked either the fabric or pattern, if it was going to fit, and if I would ever wear it to decide none of the above and tossed it in the trash along with my pledge to create no more run on sentances.  Nor do you need to see the epic fail of a silky-poly border print skirt that had just a bit too much body for the style I attempted, just fugly, but I have another panel to try again someday. 
But you DO need to see my uber-cool Vogue top with the exposed zipper down the back.  Granted you don't need to know about my first attempt at the zipper where - at the very end of construction - I zipped the pull right off the top of the zipper (though to be perfectly frank I wasn't excited about my installation - it was a tad wonky).  But the end result pretty much rocks and it's always great when you complete a beautiful sleeveless summer garment just in time for it to snow.  In April.  Seriously, as a side note, in a singe 2-day weekend I had on my heat and my AC.  And you need to see my other version of the same top that I finished a couple of weeks ago.  I made Vogue 8419 (which is now OOP - too bad it's a great pattern) a couple of times a few years ago and then stashed the pattern away and forgot about it.  But it's actually back in style with the retro look to it, fits me well and goes together easily.  And once I got it back out I just didn't put it away.  In my shopping excursion a couple of weeks ago I saw a number of tops similar to this style and with the exposed zipper, both versions sleeveless.  Et, Viola, I am in style. 
I still have a t-shirt cut out to sew together, I was just to lazy to change serger thread colors.  Maybe this week.  My DH will be home this weekend and next weekend so there will likely be very little sewing going on in chez BeeBee for the next little bit.  But perhaps more dining out and even a round of golf?  It could happen.