How bad at selfies am I? LInky party over at Anne's

I erase or heavily edit most of them on my computer so you don't have to see them.

But if you have some you would like to share with others, 

Anne M Bray is having a linky party of the collective missteps.

http://spygirl-amb.blogspot.com/2019/04/bloopers-outtakes.html

Head on over and play!

The only mirror anywhere near work is at the post office...

Pulling patterns from pants

"Hey, can you do me a favor?"
Famous last words.
My sister's pal needed new pants for work and not finding them to fit her.

(and don't we all? I wish I could link you to the monologue Merrill Markoe did on the endless hunt for the next pair of black pants, but think about it for a minute and you know what I'm talking about). 

I was volunteered. And I am doing my duty, Sister.

I didn't take enough photos. I put this job off and then I just did it.

Two pair of pants, doubleknit, both black, hard to see the seams, tracing off onto thumbprint tracing paper.

This is the only process photo I have, and I am pretty happy I have this. I could not see the seams very well, and I didn't have enough organza to trace them onto, or the will to purchase more organza for this job.

My workaround was to put pins in the points of the seams of the part I was tracing, at the points where direction or grain changed, and I played connect the dots with the pinheads on the tracing paper. It worked really well and gave me a more accurate read of the garment than just flipping back and forth with the paper and randomly stabbing with the pencil.

Kinda like this. Kinda. 
You remember how to connect the dots, right? 

I barreled right on.

I pinned the pieces onto the dress form to keep track of where I was in the process. And yes, this was a good idea, as I got lost and redid a piece by accident.

I traced the corrected pages onto muslin (bedsheets in this case) with a wheel and waxed paper. The wax makes a bigger line. 

Longtime readers will recall that this was the origin of my trusty TNT jeans pattern.  I did this years ago, following Kenneth King's 'Jeanius' video class on Craftsy/Bluprint, tracing onto white fabric. It skips the intermediate step of paper, but I wanted the chance to correct and consider the pieces, overlapping them and seeing the connecting lines to true them up. It is entirely possible these patterns will be made up by someone else, and I wanna do the right thing right now. 

So I cut them out

And sewed them up

With a long basting stitch

And some old thread

That spool is so pretty

 And here they are. Ready for the client to come over and try them on, to see what alterations need to happen.
Well, the striped ones need the teeny waistband.
But ready enough.

Mending Royalty

Mending March continues as #mendingmayhem on Instagram, which is how I'm rationalizing this late post on mending.
Mend all year long with the hoi polloi!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2018/11/13/thrifty-prince-charles-keeps-bag-scrap-material-repair-suits/

Rusty is sneaking up on you

or

https://www.newgeology.us/presentation24.html

It is important that all repairs should be reversable as history changes

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/circuit-court/man-gets-six-year-term-for-damaging-10m-monet-painting-1.2025914

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/restored-monet-painting-worth-10m-unveiled-at-national-gallery-1.1851484

Bride of Dignified Pullover: Collar Transplant

Somehow, something went wrong.

Yes, the back is super wider than the front.....

I made a toile from the edited pattern. The back is enormous

And fixing it is .....pointless

I've had this problem before; move one thing an inch, next thing over needs moving an inch. 

In the end, I was chasing the seams around the bodice.

In the middle of a long walk, it occurred to me that I need to transplant the new collar onto a shirt that already fits and stop chasing the errors
(we aren't even near working on the sleeves...yoinks). Then I can slash up the new pattern into sections for my knit pieces.

And I HAVE that shirt pattern already. 

https://erniekdesigns.blogspot.com/2017/03/a-sleeve-that-will-do-mostly.html

So all I have to do is trace off that pattern, and redraw the new collar opening onto it. 

I'm going to open it up a little, and lengthen the sleeves.  I was going to add some ease, but this is for knits and it will have plenty as is. I might put the bands back on it (scaled down a little)

I can open up the bodice and make it a little wider, toile that, and then decide where to divide the body into blocks for my ....collections of shirt images

And I'm going to reuse the sweatshirt fabric.

I still have about a yard left. There's enough between the toile and that yard to make this second version. For once I used a long stitch length

Just in case this happened.

HEY! Thanks Previous Me!

But then, this happened. Just hanging out at Pacific Fabrics, like ya do....

Alexander Henry Flying Machines 2016

HOW DID I MISS THIS???????

So I had to do this. I didn't leave any for you, and I've used it all up. The Cutie summer 2018 dress, updated with the 2019 Arm Expansion Pack (going to try to make the Lady Arms sound like an advancement, rather than an aging side effect). 

now with more arm

Still too chilly to wear without leggings and a sweater, but DAMN

So the pullover in progress went into a project box and we'll come back to it presently. I gots work this week. Mmmmmmoney!

Have a good week, folks.

Today's soundtrack: Morricone https://youtu.be/yRDDflQlvgc
and 
Herrmann https://youtu.be/ANn3qjr-0fg