Gifts and Gratitude 2020

Gift sewing this year was making masks. Some holiday ones as well. 

I did not color sample my custom Spoonflower print on the right from the left one by Kelly Gilleran, but I would have if I'd thought about it (I matched from his little mittens, and then decided to buy the cocoa print to make more masks with). It wasn't until I got them back from Spoonflower that I realized how perfect they were together, and that I could make that cocoa print last through all six masks for the recipient family.

https://www.spoonflower.com/en/fabric/5675022-hot-cocoa-by-kellygilleran

Cotton poly lining from sheets.
I won't run out of sheets any time soon

Slicing knit jersey for more mask straps

Me modeling mask. One I made for me.

Cutting a box template and covering it with velveteen to line a wooden jewelry box for my niece.

Made a variation on the McCalls raglan hoody pattern, which really is a men's sized pattern despite the newly redone cover artwork. We'll call it the boyfriend hoody.

This pink stretch velvet shed little sparkles all over the sewing room, the cutting table, me, my clothes, my lungs....this is why I was vacuuming the room and started the Serger Tragedy.

Pink stretch velvet top much less of a hit. I'm batting about .000 with sewing for the niece these days.

And a scrap of the flannel jams for the boy. He doesn't need them, but I loved the print, the flannel washed up nice and fluffy, and they made him smile. 

 

This has been a rough year at Ernie K Labs, even before the pandemic. Enormous family upheavals: got new job, got furloughed, spouse left. Enormous local upheavals (my city is not a riot zone and please stop killing black people and tear gassing small children) got  back 5/8s of job (that seam allowance joke is lost on my boss).

I don't know what's going to happen next in my life.

I bet most of you don't either.

HOWEVER, I have a place to live and I have 5/8s of a job. I have 8/8s of my health insurance, courtesy of my company

I am grateful to my sewing family. You got me through this, with toddler videos, pants theory, engagements, babies, cosplay even when there wasn't a place to play. 

 I loved reading all your posts and seeing your photos.

Please know you are loved.

Breaking up the Power Broker

If a book is too big to carry around, chances are you will  never read all of it.

Robert Caro's "The Power Broker" is one of those books.

This is from the gift guide of New York Magazine,  2014, probably late November.

I'd thought of this earlier, was delighted to see this, and been meaning to do this, I've been stuck at page 500something for a decade, and the only reason why I'm doing this now is that this photo, long gone from my files, reappeared on my FB feed.

I copied the cover and pages that might get lost in reassembly.

You want to peel back the cover off the spine to keep as much as you can for the new version

And then you break it

And cut it

I wrapped the cover around the page bundle (in the trade, it's a signature), gluing it on the spine.

I glued in the page that would have been lost to page gluing. Did it for all three 'volumes'

I brushed the glue in to cover and keep it even.

Any white glue will do.

I used whatever heavyweight paper I had. In this case, Bristol.

I copied the maps to put them in the other volumes for reference.

If you're curious about those maps, here they are in color

https://www.nycurbanism.com/blog/2019/6/11/robert-moses-legacy-map

I am struggling with a bag recipe post that is proving to be a bigger pain than I thought. It's an easy make,  except when it's not. Hopefully this week. 

Weighted Blanket Project

A pal wanted a weighted blanket.

They are supposed to help with restless sleeping, and anxiety.

I watched a fair number of videos

"Man Sewing" Rob Appell has a nice one

https://youtu.be/svqiyDlJmus

And I figured it out.

I decided to make one that would just cover the torso and the upper thighs, so we could see how it worked. If it needed to be bigger, I could make more panels and sew them together.

I used a thrifted sheet, backed with flannel, and sewed through all three layers, leaving the channels open at one end.

Others work out from the center.

Your results will vary.

The math for the number of sections is how big you want them to be. 

I had an unfilled four inch border around the filled section. 

I started at the bottom, I felt that the first set of square pockets (3" square) looked overstuffed when filled, and sad with a little slack in them. Also there was enough movement in the pellets to make noise, and Client didn't want noise.

So I unpicked and sewed the remaining tunnels to make them half as wide

(while making sure the tube I was going to use to fill them still fit)

Tube rehearsal reenactment. I didn't take enough photos. 

The math for the weight is:

the person's weight, divided by 10, plus 2.

He's 140, so 14 plus 2: 16.

You are supposed to divide the weight by the number of pockets 16 lbs = 256 oz.

256 oz divided by 80? 3.2 oz, I weighed them - 

lets stop right here.

The blanket filled up at 8 pounds. I have a spare bag now.

This filling and sewing technique worked for me.

The bigger pockets are at the bottom, the skinnier longer ones towards the top.

So the tube goes in

You stand it up

Stick in your homemade paper funnel

This is the secret sauce. You figure out how much each section will need and you use a measuring cup. I cannot stress enough how boring cleaning up tiny plastic pellets is, or working them back and forth to make a clear area for stitching.

Be consistent and pay attention and it will go much much faster.

There they are in there. also helps that the tube wasn't longer than the sections I was filling. I cannot tell you enough to pay attention to how much goes in each section with enough slack to prevent things from exploding or stitches from popping.

I did handstitch some. I did that 'thread a couple needles on the spool' trick from this month's Threads letters column. 

However, machine sewing goes faster 

IF

when you come to the end of the row and set up to sew your set of filled baffles,

you have pinned a path to sew that is: 

1) wide enough for the presser foot (I used the narrowest one. A zipper foot would work as well)

2) Has absolutely NO PELLETS IN IT

(so if you had to move some to the side for the next set, you pin that area closed)

You are creating an alley for the foot to travel down with no bumps to make the stitches loose and no pellets to break your needle.

This is the most time consuming part of the job.

Consistency will pay off big time here.

My finger is where the alley is.I'm running my finger down to keep checking for pellets.

The other key thing is: you will want to set up on a table that will support the blanket. It needs to be entirely on the table, or it will slide off quickly.

You will need to be able to hold the work up and not make the feed dogs pull it while you're stitching.

 Any lateral stress will break the needle.

And that is a pain.

It took the better part of two days, and it only would take 8 pounds of pellets.

It has worked really well. It's just big enough, the shorter baffles are cozy

The orange lateral lines are the stitching lines for closing the baffles, one set at a time. I went back and put in two sets with a gap in-between to allow the blanket to bend and be folded.

One side has flannel to keep the blanket from sliding off, the other side has fabric that is covers the other side, is wrapped around the edges, and is not quilted through except around the outside edges. It's there for structure, aesthetics and to protect the baffles from being torn.

He's pretty happy with it.  We'll see if he needs it enlarged.

Sewing for Friends Continues: the Doug Edition

Doug's beloved Pendleton silk aloha shirt had run it's course. And the idea of making a new shirt for him has percolated for a long time.

That shirt has been hovering on the rack in the back of a lot of photos.

The black floral on the rack.

It's time came this spring.

I took a million photos of fabric in stores (redacted here for brevity).

We shopped the stash. The red cowgirls almost made the cut, but the barkcloth is too heavy for this.

We went to the store. Pacific Fabrics is open after work so this stuff can get done.

He chose the Japanese double gauze. 

The measurements were taken, a style was agreed on. A pattern was dug out and altered.

I may have four thrifted copies of this one pattern, Simplicity 5581. The bucket hat is lost to time, sadly, but the cargo shorts (not pictured) found their way into another envelope. 

Kind of a "one stop shopping for summer" pattern set. To add to the envelope space crunch, both mens and boys sizes are included. And they never all make it back into the envelope when you take them out - they just expand.

But this photo made me really look at the stripe option for the first time. Huh.

That could be very cool. 

Because there is not going to be a chest pocket.

This is where I admit to you, dear reader, that double gauze looks really frumpy to me, and no more so than with topstitching.

You know the classic 70's topstitch with the deep trench of thread, compacting the puffy fabric and giving that fat sloppy edge?

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK
this image taken from
http://kathyloghry.blogspot.com/2016/08/thats-so-70s-pantsuit.html

This is also whyI hate hate hate stretch denim patch pockets. They always look dodgy to me. Same reason.

And IG followers will notice that a lot of the inprogress questions were resolved on that platform.

So it did, indeed, get a front and a sleeve turned.

After all that, it's just a men's shirt.

Buttons auditioned. Still can't find those white pearl buttons.

The one in the lower left is from a huge set (20?) that looks like clear yellow plastic with straw bits. They don't go with anything, but they always get another audition.

One good thing about double gauze is you can catch stitch through one layer to secure the facings or the hem.

And it does not show. 

I hate my buttonholes.

I want one of these dedicated buttonholers from the dry cleaners. Or I want them to make my buttonholes for me.

I did grade out a lot of the seams (lotta layers in double gauze, awfully lumpy). 

As well, I did fake flat seam the side seams.

Which are easily hand sewn down.

And it's a shirt.