A Shirt for the 4th

This is the new shirt I made Shawn to celebrate the 4th in. It was fun to make and worked up fairly easily. The shirt fits well, and the brighter colors are very festive.  The best part about this shirt is the fact that I used a whole piece of fabric that I just purchased on the shopping spree at M&L fabric last month. The piece of fabric did not even make it into the stash.  It went right from bag to washer to cut table to sewing machine. Good, one more piece of fabric fulfilling its true destiny, being a shirt, not living in a box.  

Matching Stripes

“The stripes should match” or at least that is what I have always been told. The stripes on the last two sleepers I made did not match, so I am in the process of altering the sleeper pattern so that they match up better.  I have made many sleepers from this pattern before, but in thinking back, I have not made that many striped ones until very recently. On some of the previous striped sleepers I’ve made, the stripes have been small so there was only a small amount of adjusting needed in the sewing to get the stripes to match. On the last two sleepers for my nephew Tyson the stripes were much larger so there was no easy way to match them up. I have lots of striped fabric to make into sleepers, so I really want the pattern to let me match the stripes up.

This task sounds easy, but alas it is not.  So far, I have put many hours and a lot of thought into the lining up of stripes on this sleeper pattern and I have developed a great respect for pattern makers.  I believe I finally have a working pattern.  Now  I need to find some striped fabric in my stash, which will not be difficult,  and cut a sleeper out using my new pattern. In matching the stripes I had to make the sleeves wider and raise the front of the neck about 1/4 inch.  I hope that these changes will not alter the fit of the sleeper too much.  The original pattern seems to fit fine.  While I was altering the pattern I figured I might as well adjust the feet a little too.  It always seems while I am sewing the foot pads on that the feet don’t match.  I hope that in making these changes I have not strayed too far from the fit of my original pattern.

To alleviate some of my stress on the new fit of the sleeper, I called my sister who has made many sleepers from this same pattern and has actually seen her kids and grandkids wear the sleepers.  She suggested that when using a striped fabric to run the stripes up and down instead of around.  I disagreed due to the stretch but she said that the babies tend to grow in length, not width so actually need the stretch in the length. She saw that with the extra stretch in the length, the baby did not out grow that sleeper quite as fast.  I thought she made a good point.  She also said that the neck fits well on the original pattern, so I should cut the neck down in the front or put a tab over the zipper pull.  This got me thinking that I will make both changes to the pattern. That way the zipper is in the same starting spot and the pull of the zipper will not irritate the baby’s neck.  Thanks for the help big sister.  So I think I am ready to start cutting out a sleeper using my new pattern with the changes.

Upgrades

It is my husband’s fault again.  I have not been able to blog because he has been upgrading my computer.  It now has a new hard drive and a new dvd player, as well as several software upgrades so I am now good to go.  I have not noticed must difference in my computer, but he says it is much better.  I can’t blame him totally for the lack of a new post because I have not been sewing quite as much recently.  Summer is here, and so is all the summer activities, including a trip to Las Vegas.
But, now that it is summer and the temperature is increasing, I will actually be indoors more, enjoying the AC, so more sewing projects will be coming.

    

Patience 3.0

Ever have one of those days?  Me too.  I shouldn’t have even turned the sewing machine on.  I decided to make my new nephew, Tyson, a sleeper from the scraps of the Buzz shirt.  I knew that the fabric was flawed but I figured I could work around it.  Well, the fabric turned out to have more flaws than I realized causing much more effort and time to cut around them.  

Then I started to sew.  I thought I had cut carefully, but my stripes decided not to match.  My guess is that the non matching stripes have more to do with the stretch of the fabric than the cutting.  Also due to the stretch, my machine was having a hard time starting seams.  So, sewing the seams together took more time and care to get the seam started.  Next the zipper decided to give me trouble.  I murmured at it a lot, but this did not help it go in any easier.  I should have given up at this point, but I was determined not to let this sleeper get the better of me, so I did the embroidery.  

The design looked cute and simple, but no.  Tigger’s face stitched in the same color as his stripes, for which I did not pick a dark enough color, trying to make it softer for the baby.  When it was done stitching, Tigger looked like he had a blank face.  I selected a darker brown and re-stitched the stripes and face.  But as the designed finished the turtle, it became apparent that I should have picked an even darker brown, but I did not dare stitch a third layer of stitches on the design.  Before embroidering the design, I was going to unpick the zipper one more time and try again, but after the embroidery mess, I decided nothing could improve this poor little sleeper.  

With defeat in my heart, I sewed the side seams, feet and cuffs.  To my surprise, they went well, no real problems like before.  See, I tell myself, once I let go, it all fell into place.  So, with a sigh, I decided that the lesson learned is a sewing standard, patience.  

P.S. I titled this entry 3.0 because it is not the first or last time I will be taught the sewing lesson of patience.