A New Gizmo

I love my sewing machine.  My grandmother gave it to me several years ago, after realizing that she just couldn't sew anymore. It may be my most treasured material possession.

It's a Bernina 930 -- a workhorse that I've used to sew clothing, draperies, quilts, upholstery and even a very heavy fabric awning.  It sews a multitude of stitches, many of which I have never even tried.  However, it doesn't make great buttonholes.  It makes decent 5-step buttonholes, but 9 times out of 10, I choose to hand-work a buttonhole or make a bound buttonhole.

Several times I have considered purchasing a newer computerized machine with all the fancy options, but I was mostly happy with my 930, and just couldn't justify buying a newer machine.  Then I realized that with my short shank presser foot adapter, I could use this with my 930:

Greist Vintage Buttonholer, style #1

It was patiently waiting for me on ebay for the low price of $18, which included shipping.  This model is from 1956, and it arrived in perfect shape.  It makes nice buttonholes with five little templates and even comes with a keyhole version.  I used it for the buttonholes on the waistband of my red pants.  It was fun to watch, simple to use and they came out very nicely.

The width of the stitch is adjustable and the stitching will appear thicker by running it around more than one time.  Here is the 1 1/8" keyhole buttonhole in contrasting thread:

I'm still figuring out the nuances of lining up the fabric and stitch width, but it's super fun, and I'm very pleased with my purchase. I'm a little worried that I may never hand-work a buttonhole again!

Spring Cleaning

My husband has been politely reminding me to get my sewing room cleaned up for quite some time.  Why does he care what my sewing room looks like, you ask?  Well, because my sewing room is actually our dining room!  It is really a nice place to work: it has great natural light, it's near the kitchen, and the table quickly expands to 96".  Unfortunately, I also tend to pile my fabric and patterns and tools on it, too.  So I agree, it can be quite messy.

Several years ago, we realized that we rarely used the dining room and my husband had the idea to convert it to a "craft" space for the kids and me.  A few friends (including real estate agents) warned us not to do it, but we had no intentions of selling in the near future.  We added some built-in cabinetry to house the supplies, as well as a pop-up mechanism for my sewing machine, so we can quickly hide it when we do use the room for dining.  In theory, it would work as both a formal entertaining space and a sewing studio.

In practice, I have taken over the entire space with my various projects and the cabinets are over-flowing with fabrics and patterns and notions, and things are rarely put out-of-sight.  Sometimes, I start a second (or fifth) project before cleaning up the previous project(s).  I'm just not very organized.

Fabric waiting to be sorted

So I began by pulling out the contents of the cabinets, piling it on the table and started sorting through it. In order to get a better idea of what I was storing, I measured the fabric and cataloged everything.  Even after throwing out the smaller, unusable pieces, I have over 80 fabrics in my stash!  Most of the fabric is left-over from previous projects, but 35 pieces are at least a yard in length, and 20 pieces are completely unused.  Before my clean-up, I had no idea that I had a hoarding problem.  Okay, I knew I had a hoarding problem, now I recognize the extent of it.  I have sworn off purchasing any more fabric until I've worked through some of the stockpile.

Fabric Catalog (in Excel)

The cataloging slowed the process a bit, but after seeing how much fabric can be stuffed into the cabinets, I wanted to have the inventory information at my fingertips, mainly so I can avoid any future impulse to run out and buy more fabric (at least until I've worked through most of this).  It's a simple Excel spreadsheet, making it easy to filter by color, content, size, etc., so in theory, it should be quite useful for me to find a fabric quickly.  We shall see.

I now have a lot more space for storage and I know where everything resides (or is supposed to reside).  I even set myself up with a little system where I have a fabric storage bin to hold everything I need for the current project (assuming there is only one), and it's easily stored during any hiatus in sewing or for entertaining dinner guests.  It sounds good, in theory.

Love my red jeans!

My red jeans were a ton of fun.  I initially thought that all that red would be too wild for pants, but after toying with the idea of sewing pedal pushers or shorts instead, I decided to sew them long anyway, if for nothing else but to experiment with the pattern.  I also comforted myself with the fact that I do live in Razorback Country, so red pants are probably always socially acceptable here.

As a reminder, I "cloned" a very comfortable pair of RTW pants.  The RTW aren't jeans, they're  Jones New York dress slacks in a slightly stretchy RPL that looks like wool. I love them so much, I'm afraid I will wear them out, so I want to make a few extra pairs for myself.  I was a little concerned about how denim would fare with this pattern -- even if it is stretch denim -- but it's been fine.

Draft of pants front pattern - pockets added.

My dress pants do not have pockets, which I find rather annoying, so I added them to my pattern.  Because pockets that pop out can also be annoying, I utilized the pocket stay method, where the pocket runs from the outside seam to the fly.  In order to help contain the stretch along the bias (thus utilizing my pocket stays as a built-in girdle), I stitched two semi-circles that roughly follow the bias of the inside pocket piece.  That's in addition to cutting them so the lengthwise grain runs crosswise, which reduces the capacity to stretch a bit more.  Next time I should probably just use power net!

Pocket with bias-controlling stitches (in red)

I picked up some really fun, multi-color paisley quilter's cotton in coordinating shades to use for pockets, waistband facing, bias tape and bias hem facing (since they weren't quite long enough for even a 1/2" hem).  The coordinating cotton is what has made this project so enjoyable.  I'm not normally a paisley fan, but it really works with this crazy denim.  The red center of the "amoeba" matches my red perfectly.  I found as many uses as possible for the paisley.

Pocket applique'

I finished them Saturday morning and wore them the rest of the day to run errands.  The only thing I would change is to reduce the ease a bit, since the denim has a tiny bit of stretch.  They are really comfy and I am surprisingly not self-conscious about gallivanting around in bright coral-red pants.  The pattern is a keeper, too.

A Little Wine Goes a Long Way

I'm referring to Wine-colored dye, of course.  This dye job has been intense!

Saturday morning I was gung ho to convert the pink mistake to the perfect color denim.  The Rit site gives formulas for a few hundred hues, and I aimed to emulate "Nantucket Red".  The formula for my selection was 1 part Cherry Red to 4 parts Tangerine.

Going for a lighter shade of 566.

Unfortunately, my local source for dye did not stock Cherry Red (surprise).  So I substituted Wine and brought in some Tan for muting (the Bubble Gum and Tangerine seemed so bright).  The first sample I mixed proved the Wine was so strong that it overpowered the Tangerine (and looked a lot like Raspberry).  It took 10 samples.

I love potion number 9!

After several test swatches, I narrowed it down to three choices and settled on #9 -- it was a bit more on the "rust" side than what I initially thought I wanted -- but I really liked it nonetheless.  So I calculated the perfect combination of dye for 3 yards of fabric (compared to a 2-inch square piece), and mixed it up in my sink on Sunday.  After 5 minutes, it looked like a giant piece of raspberry fruit roll-up.  I was horrified.  So I ran it through the washing machine with a cup of bleach, and it came out orange -- Carrot Orange -- which was not what I wanted either.

I tried "color remover" and it looked exactly the same, still Carrot.  I wasn't giving up!  I soaked it in pure Scarlet.  It was still Carrot, how can that be?  Around 10:30 Sunday night, my husband patted me on the back and told me "You gave it your best try."  I wished I had just ordered some pants from Murray's Toggery Shop for $72.50 plus shipping and enjoyed my weekend instead.  Why did the formula not work on a larger scale?

Today when I came home from lunch and saw the wrinkled pile of Carrot, I gave it one more try.  I mixed Scarlet with Wine and soaked it in the sink for the afternoon.  It came out really red -- Tomato Red -- but it's a nice red, and I'd rather have Tomato pants than Bubble Gum pants or Carrot pants.  It's still not #9, but that's fine.

So I washed it and dried it and ironed it and started cutting out my pants...except that I am about 3 inches short of fabric for the pants! What?!  Did I shrink it that much during the several hot dye baths and washes?  I've seen this movie before, and it's getting old.  So maybe I will make some shorts, instead.  Either way, I'm having some wine.