Creativity | Sewing | Sewing for me

Some linen and lace

June 27, 2012

My children are getting terribly neglected, aren’t they?

Well, Anya won’t wear some of the many things that she has in her closet, so I ask you…why should I make more?  Kai on the other hand doesn’t much care what he wears, and rarely matches.  He’s happy with athletic shorts and t-shirts, so that is what he wears most of the time.

I even BOUGHT him clothes this Spring.  I know!  Amazing!

That means more sewing time for ME!

I picked up this nice piece of linen blend and have just been waiting for inspiration to hit me.  I like those easy, breezy linen pants I have been seeing around, so I thought I would give it a go.  I didn’t want a drawstring, so I decided on an elastic waist.  I took a pair of jeans that I can pretty much just pull off zipped and buttoned, added a little ease, and used that as the template for these pants.  I figured out how high I wanted the rise to go, and figured in my 3″ knit-covered elastic waistband.  I like long pants, but I figured these would be sandal pants for summer.  I made sure to make an extra wide hem just in case I changed my mind and wanted them longer.

Now, this is the reason you should make a muslin out of a lesser-loved fabric before going whole hog on your nice stuff.

It didn’t fit right.  It was too baggy, as I added too much ease.  *sob*

Trying again…much better fit.  Too bad they are just out of some striped ticking and I’m not sure if I will wear them much at all. We shall see, I guess.

I also wanted to make a lace shirt, as they seem to be very much in fashion this summer.  They are nice, as you can wear different colors underneath it to change up the look.  I got this piece of knit lace in the one-off run bin at my fabric store, and there was only a yard of it.  I wanted a much looser shirt, but it didn’t have the width to do that.  This was as much width as I could get out of it.  I still added a bit of  extra width than normal and a mullet hem.  The arms and neck needed to be stabilized, so I used a small width cream bias binding on it.  I didn’t want to use a knit on the hems as this is really apt to stretch out.  The bias tape worked great and gave it a nice stable look.

This weekend I hope to get some time to sew with Anya.  She said she wanted to learn to sew, so we shall see how our collective patience handles that!

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