Yesterday I cut the tail off Dave's new shirt, and today I hemmed it. I cut the bottom button off and re-sewed it near the spare button.
I've been cutting a backing paper or two when I pass the piano. I've learned that the Buffalo Street Emporium has scrapbooking supplies; I'll look there for paper-cutting dies.
And for cardboard circles.
Weeel, they had card stock and colored paper. She said she'd delete the reference to scrapbooking from her Web site; I didn't mention that I'd never succeeded in finding the real one among the scraper sites.
One more red backing paper and I can put that mess back into the backpack — and start on the cardboard circles.
Access to the sewing room inhibits sewing. Roomba was in here this morning, so I took the elastic box into the parlor and put new elastic into my old muslin drawers, then put baby elastic (19") into the leg holes of PDF Briefs #3. Neither job ever got onto the to-do list, though both have been on the to-do pile for weeks.
Then, as I was tucking the knot of the second piece of baby elastic into the casing, DH walked by carrying Roomba, so I've knocked off sewing and am catching up on various diaries. In particular, I want to write a training-log entry for yesterday's ride.
I had an idea for a quick and easy job that will make a big difference: I looked out two scraps of interlock, and plan to make them into patch pockets. I'll baste one to the shoulder of each of my two shabbiest T-shirts, and wear those for slopping around until one wears out, then pick off its pocket and baste it to the new second-shabbiest T-shirt. No more carrying my timer around in my hand, or putting it into a pants pocket that pushes its buttons, or putting it where I can easily hear it and then going somewhere else.
And there's been a few other things I made a pass at my pocketless T-shirt with.
Now there's only one pair left to put baby elastic in: I got up early yesterday and didn't want to wake DH. Putting elastic in is really boring, particularly when the knot refuses to pass through the hole.
Purely by accident, the pair that remains is pair #4. I'm reasonably sure that I didn't do the others in order.
The raggedy pants I'm wearing need to have all the eyes replaced on the left side, which is the side I open and close. Sewing on eyes is beyond boring. I've seen evidence that suitable eye-tape is made, but no evidence that anyone will sell me some. I should post on alt.sewing.
Both the pocket and this photograph need to be re-done. The shirt is so rumpled that you can't see how the outer corner catches a pleat of the shirt, or how it droops half an inch. If it slanted the other way, it would make it easier to to get my right hand into it — perhaps when I pick it off, I'll slant it on purpose.
Fawchunately, I planned to pick it off when I sewed it on — just not quite this soon.
A yellow pocket is made, but I want to press it before sewing it to the blue T-shirt.
Even in this state, the pocket has been a great convenience when I carry a timer around. DH wears his on a lanyard around his neck, but I find that quite annoying when I finish a chore that he started, and usually tuck the timer into my bra to keep it from swinging around. Now I can put that one in my pocket too!
I had a turn: the icon to call up this diary is still set to January-June, which hasn't been polished yet, and I stared at the last entry saying "Has it been *that* long?!"
On washday, I discovered that I needed to snip only one stitch to release the pleat caught in the pocket. Then I put the T-shirt back on as soon as it was dry, and had spilled food on it before sunset.
I'm planning to press the yellow pocket that I mean to put on a blue T-shirt today — after I put away the stuff I piled on the ironing board so Roomba could clean.
remember where lobster-claw mittens
are
I let Roomba into the right side of the stash closet yesterday, and decided that while I had the boxes all disarranged and couldn't use the sewing room, it was a good time to get a start on sorting out my old manuscripts.
In between piles of papers, there were the mittens I've been doing without for years. The thumb of the right mitten needs darning, so I wrapped them in a red bandana and put them on the shelf next to the weight-lifting gloves that are wrapped in a green bandana. I hope I don't get a chance to work on either before my tooth-cleaning in August!
I also found, and put on the shelf, two pairs of black hand-knitted socks I'd forgotten owning, wrapped up with a darning egg and some black Medici in a furoshiki that matches my loud black cotton-print suit.
Doing this entailed dusting both of the cluttered shelves over the bed. Since we'll run Roomba in the bedroom today, this was a good time to knock clumps of dust to the floor.
And I found the collection of ten pieces of fabric for making resistor-code page numbers for an alphabet book that I began for — I forget who, but he has surely grown up and started a family by now — so maybe it's time to resume work on the alphabet book! I unfolded the fabrics and clothespinned them to the hanger with the pages of the alphabet book, and moved it from the laundry room to the stash closet. I think they were in the laundry room because the twill from which they were cut is too wide to hang in the stash closet.
If I ever decide to push happy faces, the yellow scrap can spare a few four-inch squares. But such closely-woven fabric requires a thimble and a small needle, which would restrict it to the more-experienced students.
I have four summer jerseys. The two woven jerseys need repairs to the back pockets — the sleazy "taxicab" jersey has a hole where my reading glasses poked through, and the "curry" jersey has the casing worn off the elastic. And the cotton-jersey jersey and the doubleknit jersey have stretched out in the back until my wallet bumps my butt.
Someday I'll pick off the straps on the back of the jersey jersey, stretch them as much as possible, use starch to keep them from springing back, then ease the back onto them.
The doubleknit jersey is nearly worn out — there are iron-on patches inside the keys-and-lipstick pocket — and not worth that much trouble, so yesterday I made four marks one inch apart on each strap and side seam, starting ten inches from the hem. Then I drew a line from side seam to side seam at the top marks, drew a line one inch beyond the side seams at the next set of marks, and the remaining two lines extended an inch and a half and two inches.
Then I folded along the top line, and made a tuck across the back that wasn't quite as narrow as I'd planned on. I used my longest zig-zag and stretched the knit while sewing so that it would shrink back to a reasonable length. Then I turned the shirt inside-out and sewed the tuck flat.
By the third tuck, I'd figured out what I was doing, but while sewing the fourth and last tuck, I broke the needle, found the bubble pack my chosen replacement was in difficult to open, and knocked off for the day.
So right now, I'm going to open the package, finish the tuck, and then zig-zag the edges of the iron-on patch. I hope I don't break a needle wrestling the inside of a pocket under the presser foot.
⁂
All done! It's a clumsy job, but it will hold until I get one of the other jerseys repaired.
The jersey is now shorter in back than in front, but that's without a heavy wallet in the middle pocket.
Wearing it. It was longer in the back than in the front until I pulled the front until it stopped rubbing on my neck. I don't know what to do about that, short of sewing hooks at the shoulder seam and sewing eyes onto my bra straps.
Just felt: the straps supporting the pockets do not overlap the straps supporting my teats. But they come close enough that the flat-felled shoulder seam might transfer the strain.
Yesterday I got as far as clearing the ironing board, in the process moving the trapezoid skirt back to the card table, ready for me to figure out where I left off. Today I pressed the pocket for my second-shabbiest T-shirt, and also ironed a shirt I washed yesterday and the dress I hope to wear to church next Sunday.
I went to Lowery's on Saturday to shop for garish fabric. Found a really splashy print, later saw a sample quilt in which it had been cut into squares. Yes, I could buy a yard of that, put one large square on the front of a poncho shirt and one on the back, and scatter the small squares on the sleeves. Two problems: buying *precisely* the same black is impossible; it was meant to be pieced with contrasting squares, so no matching solid is provided. And black is a *terrible* color to make a summer shirt!
In church last Sunday, I noticed a top made of a border print, with a contrasting band around the V neck. I'd never thought of making a V neck for a poncho shirt — or, at least, I'd never thought that it would solve the problem with turning a facing to the right side. (The slit distorts a facing sadly.) And a V provides the desired pattern on the front — I arranged the ribbon in my white-linen shirt in a V.
I think to get the best effect, I should wash a piece of my unbleached muslin several times, then make a facing and pockets from a garish print. Perhaps appliqué a pieced star on the back. Muslin would be almost as cool as linen, and look better rumpled.
The pants I'm wearing aren't worth mending, but the hole in the knee was drafty and getting bigger, so I laced it together with baseball stitch. I purposely chose a feeble thread, hoping that it would break before tearing the hole bigger.
The hasty back-shortening of my deprecated jersey seems to be working well. I'm wearing it again tomorrow. One of the linen jerseys would be much better on such a hot day, and it would take very little time — perhaps no more than I spent darning the knee of my ragged jeans — to patch the hole in the pocket of the sleazy one.
After precise calculation, I tore off 46" or was that 47"? Gaack, it was 45"! How did I subtract 36" from 46" and get nine?
Ah, well, I did want the sleeves short — and a contrast band to match the one on the bottom would be a good idea.
I need a piece a yard and three-quarters long and forty-three inches wide to make a poncho shirt. The muslin shrinks to 55" wide when washed. Okay, tear off the width, use it sideways, add four-inch contrast hems to match the facing around the neck.
For each yard I tear off, I get thirty-three inches. Divide forty-three by thirty-three, multiply by thirty-six: 46.99, which I somehow made into a yard and nine inches.
Now I plan to hem the torn edges and throw it into the laundry hamper, to go through with every load until worn soft and thin.
First I've got to clear off the ironing board, which is where I parked the user manual for my primary computer when DH found it while cleaning up, to make space on the shelf I've got to throw out some obsolete mail-order catalogs, so those are now on the card table I set up to sort out the trapezoid skirt on.
I hope I can figure out where I left off. I've recently realized that I can make it like eighteenth-century petticoats. Instead of sewing twenty eyes on, sew on four tapes and tie them fore and aft. One is supposed to tie the back apron on first, then wrap the strings of the front apron around and tie those in front too. I think I'll do it that way.
But the pockets under the skirt will be supported by the strings of the front part — no, it will be better to support them on the strings of the back part, same as pants. We have a plan!
⁂
I had saved every Patternworks catalog — throwing those out opened up a lot of space.
But there is still quite a pile on the shelf.
I found a copy of my Lucille Rivers briefs pattern in the pile. I put it into the box where I keep briefs patterns, hemp jersey, and the like. I *think* the original is in the pattern trunk.
I need both card tables to measure the fabric, but it's easier to fiddle with a too-small table than to set up the other card table.
Before washing, the new hem is one yard, twenty-three and a half inches. Which is half an inch short of sixty; I measured again a few inches from the hem: still the same, so I didn't ease it while stitching.
The hemmed length is one yard, seven and seven eighths inches. Measured both on the selvage and a couple of inches in.
Back-tacking again: I wonder how long I can refrain from reading fabricstore.com's tutorials before their insistence on "remember to backtack!" even when it's pointless or harmful ceases to grate? So I think it newsworthy whenever I have a reason to backtack — in this case, because I intend to wash this fabric until it's as soft and thin as the fabric of the old drawers I made as a beta for my first bike knickers. A sharp place in a shirt-tail hem won't get a chance to start a tear — and I plan to cut off the fabric the ends of the hems are in, so it wouldn't matter if it did.
I used 4 mm stitches in case I want to take this hem out before making up the shirt, and sewed as neatly as I could in case I don't.
Current plan is a V neck with a loud — possibly pieced — facing turned to the right side, matching bands at the bottoms and sleeves, pockets made from the fabric cut away to make the sleeves.
Assuming that I'm still interested when the fabric is soft enough.
Somehow it got to be nap time without anything done to the trapezoid skirt except moving it to the card table.
When hanging the wash on Monday, I noticed that a pillow case was torn, and tore off the bottom seam. Yesterday I noticed that the Necchi was set up with white 100/6 cotton, and stitched across the torn end. Since this case won't last very long, I used a backward stitch to secure the ends.
Today I looked over the to-do list for a quick job to post-pone figuring out what I'm doing with the trapezoid skirt, and selected my floral-basket shift. Seventy-five-year-old women have no business traipsing around in floor-dragging dresses — particularly on stairs — so I marked a line two inches (or whatever the width of my tape winders is) from the fold and cut along the mark.
I was looking hither and yon for something firm to put under my smaller cutting mat so I could cut on the ironing board — I'd used the "two sided craft mat" for marking, but didn't deem it large enough or firm enough to support the cutting mat.
Duh! The small cutting mat has its own fitted piece of plywood for just such a situation.
So it's cut and the mat and cutter are put away. I think I can have this dress to wear next Sunday — but right now, it's time for a nap.
⁂
Shorten floral-basket gown
I started a project and finished it in the same day! I tried to stretch the hem firmly all the while I was stitching, to reduce puckering when it's washed.
It looks much nicer three inches shorter.
Then I sat around picking the old hem out of the scrap I cut off. Well, it's no worse than playing Hexavirus. But I'll probably do that too before the evening is over.
I went dress shopping Wednesday. I didn't find a dress, but I did find a pair of muslin pants to wear in the garden. This is *so* much nicer than having to choose between fleece pants and pants that are hardly fit to mop the floor with. Muslin won't last long; I was giving serious thought to going back tomorrow to see whether they've sold the other pair. And I definitely intend to go to Wildman Uniform's "garage sale" tomorrow.
I have decided that there is no harm in starting the correction of my cotton-jersey jersey, because I'll continue to refuse to wear it with the pockets dragging down the way they do. So I laid it on the ironing board and worked a couple of bar tacks to show how long the straps are now.
If I'd thought about taking the picture, I'd have used a bright color instead of the black that was already in the needle.
I wonder why the artificial light made it photograph cream instead of yellow.
Today's work is documented in the Trapezoid-skirt project blog.
My pocket bag has holes in it. Time to move replacement up the priority list. I tried putting a square bottom on the middle pocket, but I still have to reach down between two pockets filled with stiff stuff to get at the coins. In the next iteration, I intend to put both pockets on the same side of the coin pocket. And maybe make a square bottom too; I could stitch the ends of the seam-to-seam pockets to keep them from wrapping around the corner.
While working on the trapezoid-skirt pockets, I went to the pattern trunk for carbon paper and discovered that I'd put the pattern for slippers away with the pieces of a pair of twinkle-twinkle slippers pinned it it. Perhaps I'll assemble them late in October. [15 November 2016: I didn't. put the pieces into the pattern envelope and put it into the lower compartment of the trunk.]
I bought new old pants yesterday, and immediately ripped the stitches securing the fake fly. Today I zig-zagged along the fly and cut it off. Put it in "pants offcuts" in case I want a teeny little patch. The "atlantic wash" left an unfaded line where the stitches were; I'm hoping this will wash out. But my T-shirt covers that area anyway. (I'm wearing out some man's T-shirts in the garden.)
While clearing the ironing board to resume work on the trapezoid skirt, I pinned a note to the cotton-jersey jersey and put it in the closet under "summer"; there's no way I'll finish the job in time to wear it this season. And just now, I moved it from the top of the to-do list to the bottom.
I still plan to patch the hole in the glasses/handkerchief pocket of the taxicab jersey. I can wear it over T-shirts.
An unexpected benefit of moving the KikStep from the garage to the sewing room and retiring the ammo box I used to stand on when plugging the iron into the ceiling: When the typing chair is in the bedroom and I want to pause in using the White to make a note here, I don't have to drag the chair back.
I cut the broadfall pockets this morning, and am in the middle of facing the pocket opening. For the first pocket, I folded the edge that will become a mock french seam — I was surprised that simply pinching it creased it firmly enough — and started pinning at the top so the excess would stick out at the bottom to allow for a fold under.
Because of the piecing seam in the scrap of bias tape I'd chosen (and because it is a mirror image of the first pocket), I needed to pin the second facing the other way. As I was about to pinch the pocket and leave a quarter inch of the bias sticking out, the dime dropped and I lined up the raw edges, to be folded under together when I press the facing to the wrong side.
Whoosh. This record is really going to need a pithy summary when I'm done. I doubt that I shall find the time and energy to write it. Perhaps I should take notes at the bottom of the file: "cut waist too small" certainly needs to be on it.
⁂
And this whole entry needs to be copy-and-pasted into the trapezoid-skirt file.
While I had the iron hot, I got my white shirt off the to-do hook. I considered ironing my embroidered-linen poncho shirt for a moment, then realized that it was time to put it away for the winter and it would get wrinkled in storage — so that is off the to-do hook. My second flower-print T-shirt, which I'd been wondering about, is also waiting to be ironed.
Recapping for those who don't memorize my every word: a while back I noticed that my muslin drawers, which I made as a beta for my first pair of linen knickers, are soft and smooth, but still have a great deal of wear in them. I'd been thinking that turning the facing of a V-neck poncho shirt to the outside would be a good way to create the requisite splashy pattern, and seeing the drawers made me think that well-washed muslin would be an appropriate background.
So I tore off enough muslin to make a poncho shirt, hemmed it, and have been including it in every wash since then. It hasn't softened any.
Today, while deciding that there wasn't room for it in today's wash, I realized that what I should be doing is storing it draped over the ironing board so that it gets pressed and steamed every time I use the iron. And the width of it is just a tad less than the length of the ironing board, so that works out.
While working on my black skirt, I noticed that the spool on the machine was on its last wrap, and checked the bottom right drawer to make sure I have more black polyester. I found two spools, both partly used; though each was careful to inform me that this was color 10 polyester, and each was marked with the number of meter/yards on the spool, there wasn't even a faint clue about the weight. I think that I bought a spool of #40 equivalent in addition to my spool of upholstery thread and the #50 equivalent, but the threads on these two spools look just the same. One has a White bobbin in the bag with it, and one has a Necchi bobbin — perhaps I once had a black project going on both machines at the same time?
The spools are different sizes, so I must have bought them at different times.
On closer inspection, the smaller spool has not been opened. So I shall use the larger spool, which is half gone. (checks) Half, possibly less, of a thousand meters, all of five hundred: correct choice.
In the morning I pressed the side seams of the trapezoid skirt and cut off a scrap of cotton interlock to patch a jersey I found on my To Do hook. I intended to take a quarter-century ride tomorrow (I think maybe I should postpone it to Thursday because my back hurts — just checked; the weather will hold) and the torn jersey is nicer than the old rag I've been wearing.
So in the evening I cut two rectangles, rounded the corners, and basted an eighth-inch turn-under with the orangy-brown basting thread. Then I threaded a needle with brown thread and basted the larger patch to the inside of the hole torn by the pocket divider. Back-stitched around it, removed the basting, and applied the other patch to the outside, a little lower.
The next step is to find my scraps of hemp canvas, baste one to the back, re-stitch the pocket divider I had to rip back to apply the patches, work a bar tack, trim the canvas to a small circle around the bar tack, and overcast this "button" to the inside patch. But I ran out of enthusiasm, and read today's paper instead. Haven't gotten to yesterday's paper yet.
The canvas isn't in the duck & denim box, not in the linen box, not in the pant-weight linen box.
The I don't think it's in the unbleached, box, and that box is at the bottom of a stack on on the top shelf, but (deep breath) . . .
Nothing in there but seersucker and gauze.
I guess that a piece of my orange cotton canvas will do just as well. I won't match the other patch, but it's on the inside. And the interlock patches aren't the same size and shape.
The freshly-patched jersey is also warmer than the raggy one, as I discovered when I tried it on. But it's the last of those that I made so that they could be opened at the neck for ventilation. (I noticed that I never opened them at the neck, and started using my T-shirt pattern modified only by adding pockets.
The stitches holding the new patches on aren't as small and careful as the stitches repairing the other pocket divider, but they will do the job.
Then I tried it on and realized that this jersey went on the injured reserve list long before I started carrying a cell phone, so I put my phone into the candy pocket, stuck in a pin, and then replaced the pin with two bar tacks connected by a few running stitches. Don't need the running stitches, but it saves ending the thread and starting again.
And it appears to be ready to wear tomorrow. Unless I patch the leak in the magnifier/handkerchief pocket of the sheer taxicab jersey this evening. It's still warm enough to prefer linen to cotton.
⁂
Gone be downright hot, so It's good that I did patch the linen jersey.
It's hard to patch the corner of a pocket. I put the patch on the inside because that is where the wear comes from, but wasn't able to get it low enough to cover the entire hole, so I loosely darned it and put another patch on the outside. I put one edge of the outside patch over the flat-felled seam the pocket is caught in. It was easier than I expected to make the transition from stitching all the way through to catching only one layer. Well, nearly all of the back stitches passed between the layers of the flat-felled seam.
The skirt now lacks a few bar tacks and a hem. I'm tempted to turn the hem up the way it is, since uneven hems are all the rage. But I still want to wear my wizard suit for Halloween — or, rather, The Family Fun Fall Festival.
The side seam allowances seem inclined to stay put without being sewn down.
ROUGH012.TXT: I have read a klutzy
way to make bias tape. I
added that to the to-do list yesterday, and also
did it. It was a note to add a paragraph to
the file on bias tape. While in there, I
added a reference to the laser-level entry in
Tools.
I also made progress on sorting the boxes and baskets yesterday and this morning. My yarns are almost organized. I found a couple of knitted bands that, as near as I can make out, were meant to be thigh-high stockings — though what I should ever have wanted such a thing for, I can't imagine. Perhaps I'll bind them off and call them roll-brim children's caps. I haven't yet found my black persian wool, but I did find a glove cuff — seems too small to be a stocking — with a little black persian in a sandwich bag.
And I see that I listed "sort yarns" separately. Might get to scratch that off. Haven't touched the bags of yarn hanging on the back of the door yet. Did get the box of Greylock off the top shelf; there may be room in it for the samples of weed-dyed Greylock scattered here and there.
link to pocket essay from forgotten forum
(icon on desktop)
There is no icon on the desktop and I haven't the
foggiest idea what I meant by this.
The suitcase I've been shuttling from sewing room to bedroom and back again every Roomba day is back with the other suitcases. Now I need to find places for the stuff that was in it.
sort boxes and baskets of
yarns All the boxes of yarn
are back on the shelves. And now that the
shelf in the walk-in closet is organized, I see
that I can put a lot more stuff on it. If
it doesn't weigh too much.
I found two of my missing steel knitting needles, in a swatch of hand-dyed alpaca. The other ball of that yarn has a swatch on bamboo needles. I've no idea what I was doing and don't recall acquiring the yarn.
I was thinking that despite a late start I'd got a pocket bag made all in one morning, starting from a vague design and a few scraps left on the table after I made the trapezoid skit, when I realized that it was way past lunch time and my cream of mushroom soup had boiled. So I'll leave that last seam for the afternoon.
The hardest part of this project will be writing a project blog and editing the pictures I took.
I stirred in a little milk and the soup was just fine.
⁂
Make new pocket wallet
It isn't quite what I had in mind, and the extra at the bottom is way too wide, but it will confine my stuff and fit into my pocket, and I can reach in and get my coins.
I should have made it more like the original.
I think I'll stash the old one in my pattern trunk. After I photograph the finished product.
I may or may not get around to processing the pictures. I did label them and delete some of the hopeless shots today.
I distinctly remember writing up how I revised the wallet, but it's not here and not in the project blog.
I spent Wednesday morning darning my blue hat. I must find the pattern I made that hat by amd use it again; my blue hat fits better than any of the others.
When I hung it on the big lamp bulb after washing it on Tuesday, I thought I saw a dime-size hole in the crown. Since the hat is very old — I've already machine-quilted the crown side of the hand-quilted brim to keep the shreds of the lining from falling off — I thought that I'd buttonhole around the hole and let it go at that. But that would look funny; I should fill the hole with a bit of needle lace. Lying awake in the night, I meditated on quick and easy forms of needle lace, and eventually settled on throwing threads across the hole, connecting each of several points around the circle to each of all the others.
At some point, I realized that this would render the buttonholing unnecessary.
So I meditated on the mathmatics of lines drawn across a circle, starting with the degenerate case of only one point — which is indistinguishable, for this purpose, from no point. I selected six points as the most-suitable darn, and worked out how to lay the lines with one needleful of thread even though all the points were odd vertices.
If an odd number of lines meet at a vertex of a network, then a tracing of the network must either end or begin at that point, and one would need a separate thread for each pair of odd points.
But, aha!, I meant to cover each line twice — go out under the hole, and come back to the same point over the hole. That converts all those points to even! I forget how I planned to take advantage of that; it had something to do with working the two triangles first.
It is also the case that all those lines are long, unsecured stitches. I planned to take care of that by overcasting the two passes together, trapping the crossing threads between them. This overcasting probably figured into my odd-vertex evasion.
Come morning, I found that it wasn't a hole, but a tear, and not only wider than a dime, it was wider than a quarter. I ended up using a pill box to trace my circle.
And when it came time to mark the points, dividing the circle into eight parts was ever so much easier than six, and more lines was suitable for a bigger hole anyway.
I forgot that the excess of lines was way out of proportion to the excess of points! It took a long time to lay all those lines. And the two sides had cloth in between, they had to be overcast separately.
And my neat method for laying the lines works only for six points.
Though I was quite certain I made a line underneath for every line on top, quite a few of the underneath lines are missing.
I overcast only until some of the crossing points were secured, and quit when I used up the I-forgetieth needle of floss even though I had one more piece cut. Most of the overcasting on the back has to do with securing the beginnings and ends of needlefuls.
I wonder what use my six-point plan had for the long-enough-to-thread-into-a-needle tail I left at the beginning. Perhaps some day when I have a genuine hole to fill, preceded by a sleepless night, I'll reconstruct it.
But for worn holes, I think that ironing the pattern on and backstitching around it would be a better idea. Doesn't require a hoop, which was very hard to install on a hat; the sweat band got in the way.
I've noticed another hole, suitable for backstitch reinforcement, near the first one. But closer inspection shows that a streak of crown near the brim is badly worn all around.
So I'm hunting for the pattern I made it by. None of the hat brims are marked "blue twill", but I'm pretty sure that I've found the correct crown pattern.
The search led to sorting out the entire pattern trunk. I found a folder dated 1992 that has a scrap from my red-flowered skirt pinned to it. I'd had no idea the skirt was *that* old.
I've marked an envelope to put hat patterns in.
While Roomba was at work in the sewing room, I changed the elastic in my black pantyhose. The creeping down owes to the hose being the same diameter at the thighs as at the ankle, so that the fabric tries to move to the narrower parts of my leg, but I thought that functioning elastic in the waist would help.
Opening the casing proved difficult because the stitching was complicated and black-on-black, but once exposed, the elastic pulled right out; I'd feared that it might have been caught in the stitches.
Quarter-inch elastic is too feeble. Half-inch elastic seemed just right, but I had only two pieces. The white one was too short and the black one was even shorter, so I sewed them together. This emptied the spool of black polyester I found in the White's drawer.
I wanted a contrast thread for closing the casing, in case I need to open it again , and to mark one of the identical sides as the back. The other #10 embroidery needle was threaded with two strands of white silk, so I used one of those. I think the hose are supposed to be wool, so silk is appropriate.
I should be more comfortable next Sunday.
Trying pantyhose on is almost as much fuss as putting pantyhose on. All I got out of was the futile plucking at the toes trying to discourage the fabric from stretching transparent right where my toes are ugliest. I've been giving serious thought to wearing black knee hose under my pantyhose.
Waist elastic in black pantyhose
I moved "darn mittens" up on the to-do list, and moved "twinkle-twinkle slippers" to the bottom.
I'm rather glad that list items don't have dates; some of them are embarassingly old.
16 November 2016 I do have a button that automatically inserts the date. I don't think I'll use it.
Added "mend darts in undershirt" to list; didn't date it.
I selected a pattern today and decided to make my hat from scraps of the "oakwood" color cotton-and-linen twill pants. I'm not sure there's enough fabric — those pants were patched a lot. I'm definitely going to have to piece the brim, but I may be able to do it by cutting four quarters instead of two halves. I've found three pieces big enough to cut crown sixths from, and all in the same direction. Alas, not all of the scraps have the straight-of-grain marked. I suppose that cutting a segment on the cross wouldn't be a disaster, but I'd rather not. I think I can tell by the way the twill runs.
I'm going to have blood drawn tomorrow; I should take some darning, but I mean to go on a quarter century ride afterward, and don't want to haul mittens to Oswego, so I intend to read one of the magazines I'm going to dump at the emergency room.
I read *two* of the magazines I dumped at the emergency room.
While dressing, I noticed that the elastic on my underpants wasn't holding them up, and decided to shorten it. I found the cord showing through at a seam and pulled it out, which revealed that the rubber part had broken, leaving a long section of just casing. I started to untie the knot, then realized that there was no reason not to cut it out, then forgot that I was cutting it on the stretchy side of the knot and it pulled back inside the casing — so I pulled the other end, threw the elastic into the wastebasket, took off the pants, and left them on the ironing board to deal with later. I think I have some slighty-used elastic cord that will last the time these pants have left.
I started getting ready to mark the oakwood twill for cutting. It's possible that I could get a hat out of those scraps, but quite definite that it wouldn't be worth the effort, so I put the oakwood back into the linen box and looked at the unbleached scraps. It's obvious to the casual glance that these are all too small — I've kept them for making interfacings and the like — so I laid out the unbleached "russia drill". It's a soft, loosely-woven fabric entirely unsuited to the jeans I bought it for, but the scraps should make a lovely hat. And this will about use them up — I must have cut those two pairs of pants very economically. Or perhaps they required patches early and often.
So I dug the pants out of the "archive" section of my closet; it's going to be warm white pants season soon, and they should be either salvaged or cut up into skillet wipes. Or one could be cut up to patch the other. One has been patched with unbleached muslin, and two more muslin patches are pinned to it.
Meanwhile, back to cutting out the hat (right after I start lunch cooking). I found six pieces big enough to cut crown segments from immediately, and five of them already had a thread-straight edge. Pulling a thread for the sixth was alarmingly easy — one of the reasons the pants wore out almost instantly. The sutler who sold me this "durable" cloth should revise his description; it's taken from period sources and does not apply to the reproduction.
So the crown is marked, there's a more-or-less rectangular piece that should be plenty to cut four brim sections, and two crosswise strips (from straightening the end), either of which should yeild a sweat band. Since the fabric is thick, I think I'll brush one edge with undiluted starch so that I can zig-zag it instead of turning it in.
Then I'll have to paw through the pants-weight linen to find a black brim lining. The box is about half full of black, so this should be easy.
I think I'll use Pat Erny's "super crisp" interfacing.
On second thought, the fabric is so thick that I don't think I need any interfacing at all.
I got only three brim sections from the piece, but selected two scraps to piece together to get the fourth. Also cut a strip to be the sweatband and painted one edge with undiluted bottle starch. It sucked the starch right up, which bodes well for its worth as a sweatband.
Today, after the wash was done, I sewed the two scraps together and cut out the marked pieces. I haven't marked the fourth brim piece yet because the seam hasn't been pressed.
Then I sewed the three brim pieces together, and sewed the crown into two halves. While doing that, I realized that in assembling materials, I had forgotten tape to cover the crown seams.
In making the first half, I forgot to trim the seam allowances before attaching the third piece, but it trimmed adequately after. I remembered to trim the seam before adding a third piece to the second half — before noticing that I'd sewed the second seam on the other side from the first. Fortunately, I'd trimmed in such a fashion as to make lining up for the re-stitch easy. Also sewed the sweatband into a circle. It seems a little tight, but it's cut on the cross-grain and will stretch.
I have to press before any more stitching, and it was time to lay the table and put a TV dinner in the microwave. After supper, I looked at the box of tapes. Right on top was a reel of half-inch unbleached tape, a cheap loose weave just perfect for the job — but it hadn't been shrunk. Further pawing showed that I had a substantial amount of the previous purchase of the same thing. It's a bit lighter in color, but I attribute that to the boiling.
Thursday was Ladies Craft Night at the church. From the Banner:
On Thursday, the first, I packed up my overmittens and darning supplies, pinned my church keys to my pocket, and went to Ladies' Craft Night at the church. The church was dark and empty and the Fellowship Hall was set up for a small dinner party, but I'd come to darn a mitten, so I dragged an armchair to directly under one of the fluorescent lights and set to work. As usual, the hole was much larger than I thought when I cut the first thread extra long so that I could do it all on one needleful. It took at least half a dozen needles of yarn. Working black on black with my second-finest yarn, it was just as well that I didn't have anybody to talk to while I was workng.
Tonight I'm planning to darn the other mitten. If there's a Tupperware party in the Fellowship Hall, I can go to the Prayer Room.
I washed my typing hat on Monday, and now it's no longer too loose to wear outdoors. The edge of the black brim-lining shows through the sweat band, and, if you look closely, through the crown. I must remember to trim the seam allowance of the lining when I assemble my russia-drill hat.
Yesterday I put new elastic in the underpants that have been on the ironing board since 19 November. The scraps of cord elastic were all too short, and I didn't want to cut a new piece or tie two knots, so I put in one of the three pieces of quarter-inch elastic salvaged the last time I threw out a bra. Turned out that my nifty new bodkin was too large for the casing, so I reverted to using a big blunt yarn needle. Quarter-inch took a little persuading to sit straight in the eye.
Then I shortened an elastic that was sticking out of one leg of one of the underpants I washed on Monday (which I didn't fold and put away until Wednesday — too cold to hang outside, so they were on racks in the parlor).
Today I *finally* got back to sewing! I pressed all the seams in my hat, cut out the pieced section of hat brim, cut four hat-brim sections from coarse black linen, and pinned four pieces of twill tape to the seams of the crown. It proved easy to line them up: the twill marked the center of the tape, so when pins stuck into the middle of the tape pierce the seam on the other side, the tape is right. I pinned, then adjusted, and none of the pins needed to be adjusted much; some were spang on.
But instead of opening the treadle to sew them into place, I warmed and ate a slice of left-over pizza, and now it's nap time.
Slept late, but sewed what I'd pinned, then joined the hat brim into a circle and sewed the two halves of the crown together. The crown seam nips off the top of two triangles because the intersections of the first two pairs of seams were too close to the cut edge to suit me, but the meeting is symmetrical.
Also took the 100/6 thread off the Necchi and set out black polyester to thread it with, for sewing the brim lining together.
Been staring glaze-eyed at the screen wondering what else I meant to say. Must be nap time.
Washed clothes in the morning; in the afternoon, I sewed the brim lining together — picking out two or three of the seams because they weren't straight — pressed a bunch of seams, sewed twill tape over the seam joining the two halves of the crown, sewed a name tag over the spot where two of the previous tapes had been cut a millimeter too short and weren't secure under the final tape, sewed the brim lining to the brim, pressed the lining away from the brim, folded and pinned the lining into place.
Next step is to quilt the brim. I'm planning to back-stitch with black thread close to the edge of the brim. I think maybe I'll do the rest of the quilting with white thread and touch each stitch on the lining side with a black Sharpie.
Nice to finish a sun hat just after cold weather settles in!
Saturday was the first day I've worn my wool-jacketing jersey, other than for trying it on. It works.
Correcting the pencil pocket on that jersey has moved to the front burner. I had to sit down and open the zipper to get the pencil out. Didn't help that it was a golf pencil instead of the half-worn pencil I like to put into a pencil pocket.
I quilted the brim yesterday, using ecru thread for the whole job. (And I should have remembered earlier that I have ecru thread!)
I worked spaced back-stitch close to the fold of the black, then running stitch the width of two-line tape from that fold, then squared off the ends of the two-line tape and used it as a guide to running-stitch an inch and three-eighths from the fold. I plan to leave the white specks inside the brim alone, unless they bug me.
This morning I sewed the brim to the crown, and had started to pin the sweat band when I realized that twenty-one inches was half an inch too small. There are no scraps left that are long enough to cut another sweatband, so I cut a piece an inch and a quarter wide, took out the seam, and inserted the patch with seam allowances slightly wider than before, which made the patch five-eighths of an inch wide. Now the band can be stretched to twenty-two inches — that is, the folded band can be stretched to eleven — and that should be just right, since my head measured twenty-two inches and the band should be slightly stretched to keep the hat on.
After my nap — I don't know how long after — I'll re-thread the Necchi and zig-zag the patch. Then I'll have to erase all but one of the blue marks dividing the band into eighths.
I started with pins marking the eighths, but such thick fabric is impossible to line up with pins in it.
Then I decided to wet my washrag and rub the marks off now, to be sure they are dry when I sew.
The crown is still going to have to be eased onto the band. I think that I should make a new hat pattern with slightly-narrower segments. Or perhaps it would be better to make a brim pattern with a slightly-smaller hole.
Continue to 2017
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