Productive Weekend

Well, here's what I accomplished on the alpaca sweater. I read an article in a magazine about seaming knitted items on the sewing machine, and voila, it works! My machine did not even think about eating the sweater.


This shoulder seam looks a million times better than the one I did by hand.


Here's an extreme closeup of the stitches that you can barely see.


And then I ran out of yarn. Yep, not enough to even start on the neck ribbing, and Clara's Loom in Foley was sold out, so I placed a frantic call to In the Making in Birmingham, who is shipping me one more skein. Check out their cool website - they apparently have a blog where they post a pattern every week that you can make over a weekend. (Note to self: The Yarn Cottage in Fairhope did not even return my call - no link for them!)

So instead of knitting, I worked on my pants muslin from the Betzina class. I'm making shorts to work on crotch adjustments, etc. Can you say smiles? This means a short front crotch length, and the advice is to let out the crotch seam, which I did by 1/4".


Okay, much better, but I'm thinking now I need a full thigh adjustment possibly. I left it alone for now.


I was happy with the back crotch, and there wasn't any obvious bagginess, so I didn't do the flat butt adjustments yet.


Just to show you how hard it is to get a back shot without twisting, I had to hold the mirror and line up the phone perfectly. If only I could be so talented at lighting...hey, maybe Drew will let me borrow his light stands he bought for his filming! Also, don't worry about the big wrinkle at the waistline - I didn't press or trim that seam yet.


I'm happy with these so far as shorts, but I know pants will be different because I'll have to figure in knobby knees with the flat butt. Anyway, there are some cool construction things with this princess seam pant. She talks about topstitching the seams, so I did that just for fun, and guess what's right under the front waistband?


Two pockets that I can fit my whole hand into! Clever design.


Since I didn't have a zipper to finish the shorts, I started an official queue for when these are done. I'm going to read up on these patterns at PR and see if one is favored over the other, but I'm thinking the Butterick sheath for my new cotton purchase. I don't think the fabric would be drapey enough for the McCall's. What do you think?


And I've had this black silk charmeuse for years (it was the very first thing I bought at Fabrics.com) and thought it might make a nice sleeveless version of view B, which is the blue velvet drawing on the bottom. Any other ideas of what to do with 2 yards of charmeuse?


Hey, did you go see "Mama" yet?