Gratuitous Kitten Picture

Arise from sleep, old cat,

And with great yawns and stretchings...

Amble out for love.

~ Kobayashi Issa

Oliver keeps me company in my sewing room, snoozing by the window...

Solo Sewing

Youth is a perpetual intoxication, a fever of the brain.  

~ Francois de la Rouchefoucauld

Our foster teen had a bit of a traumatic weekend vis-a-vis her Facebook boyfriend - welcome to love in the new century...  So she did a lot of talking on her cell phone at night and sleeping during the day.  

I went ahead and worked on this top for her daughter by myself - there will be plenty of time for us to sew together (if she wants to) in the coming weeks and months.  

I love this top - it is so simple, with only these two pattern pieces - the center front is placed on the fold:  

You cut 4 of the back and 2 of the front, so that it is fully lined - this avoids the need for facings around the neck and armholes:  

The sparkly, ballerina monkey fabric was a bit stiff, so I shopped my stash for a softer pink cotton for the lining:  

After attaching the back pieces to the front piece at the shoulders (of both the lining and the fashion fabric), you stitch the fashion fabric and the lining together (right sides together) around the armholes and the neck and center back seams.  Then you pull the 2 back pieces through the shoulder holes, to turn it right side out.  It's pretty simple and it ends up looking quite nice!  

All you have to do after that is close up the side seams:  

Which you also do in a way to hide all the seams:  

By opening the seams out and stitching right sides together...  

Okay, there is one more "pattern piece" - you also have to cut a long rectangle for the bottom band.  The last time I made this top, I gave the band square ends.  This time, I used my French curve ruler and gave it rounded edges.  

In hindsight, it might have looked better if I had used a drinking glass.  I don't think this curve is the right proportion...  

You put some gathers on each side of the band - but you don't gather it all the way around.  Here is a view of the back - still missing the button holes and buttons:  

The gathers are supposed to be centered around the side seams:  

Here is a shot of the front:  

Hopefully, our teen and I can make the matching skirt together - fingers crossed that the latest drama will subside soon...  Poor kid...  

I hope you had a great sewing weekend and are ready for the work week...  :)

Two Miscellaneous Bits

And in the end, the love you take

is equal to the love you make.  

~ The Beatles

Over the holiday weekend I took our foster teen to Joann's - she possibly wasn't quite as enamored of the experience as I am...  ;)

But she was drawn to those bolts of pre-shirred fabric.  I don't actually consider this a sewing project, but I bought enough of the Dora print to allow her to make sundresses for her little sister, her young daughter and her niece (all living in Honduras):  

At least she added shoulder straps...  (Mainly because we stumbled across coordinating Dora ribbon...)  Man, all that stuff (pre-shirred fabric and ribbon) is not cheap!  

In other news, my husband and I celebrated our 31st anniversary this week.  :)

We pretty much agreed not to exchange gifts this year - and of course we both violated the agreement!  He got me a dozen red roses and I made a guitar-shaped mosaic for him (at one of those paint your own pottery places).  We're going out dancing this weekend to celebrate - hopefully we won't embarrass ourselves too badly on a public dance floor!  ;)

Saturday looks pretty busy this weekend, but hopefully I can do some sewing on Sunday.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!  And I hope you have a wonderful sewing weekend too!  :)

Gratuitous (Stray) Kitten Picture

One cat just leads to another.

~ Ernest Hemingway

It's happened again - we're leaving out food for a stray kitten...

You would have thought we'd have learned our lesson after Sophie...  ;)

Unauthorized Shopping Part II

Books are educational; so you can buy as many as you want.  

~ Sophie Kinsella

You know how I had to buy something else, in order to get the printer cable that I needed on amazon.com?  Well, it wasn't enough to just buy something else - my other purchases had to total $25, and one Japanese pattern book wasn't expensive enough, so I had to get two!  

I know, I know...  It's a nightmare...  ;)

For my second Japanese pattern book, I picked out Simple Modern Sewing by Shufu To Seikatsu Sha.  

I'm afraid I'm less happy with this purchase...  

I think that "simple" must be a synonym for shapeless.  :(

This style may work for some folks, but not for my body...  I never really think that it's a waste to have more patterns in the house, but I don't think I'll be making any of these any time soon...   

Unauthorized Shopping Part I

The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.

~ Erma Bombeck

I have been trying to curb my amazon.com shopping habit recently, but I needed a printer cable and Amazon was selling the cable as an "add-on item" - which meant that I just had to buy something else...  ;)

I picked up two Japanese pattern books - the first is Girls Style Book by Yoshiko Tuskiori and H. H.  Here are some of the patterns:

I love this pintucked blouse!  

There are 24 patterns altogether.  

I think the dresses are particularly sweet.  

The only patterns that didn't seem very well done were the shorts patterns - in all of the pictures where the shorts were being worn by models, they were bunched up awkwardly...  

I'm glad I got this one - there are several patterns that I can imagine making for my friends' daughters.  :)

A New Student

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.  

Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

~ George Carlin

Were you placing bets on how long this would take?  

I helped our foster teen sew for her very first time - we made a pleated skirt with an elastic waistband for her 2-year-old daughter (who is living with our foster teen's mother in Honduras).  We used a pattern, fabric and ribbon from my stash.  

She was a bit nervous and a bit excited, but generally willing to jump in and try things:  

For a person who doesn't seem to be able to go 2 hours without documenting her life with a photo of herself on Facebook, I'm not sure why she rolled her eyes when I wanted to take her picture!  ;)

But she had fun and did a good job.  It was nice to see how quickly she was able to control her speed with the foot pedal and the straightness and location of her rows of stitches.  

We used the Snoopy fabric and added a pink ribbon around the bottom:  

Check out those blue fingernails!  :)

She was surprised and happy with how well it came out:  

Do you think I have another convert?  ;)