Monthly Archives: August 2013

Plackets, Plackets

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I finished another polo, for Seth this time.

With all my polo sewing, I decided I needed a polo shirt too. I have a shirt from DownEast that I love that’s getting pretty old and ratty. It’s not exactly a polo, but it does have a placket. 
I am wearing the DownEast shirt in this family photo from a couple of years ago:
Jon helped me change my scoop tee pattern around a bit to make it into a pattern for the DownEast shirt. We added a front yoke and a back yoke to the pattern and moved the neckline up. Then we added a placket and a collar.
We made the placket shorter than the DownEast shirt because I hate wearing layers so I wanted it to look okay without an undershirt. 
Then I made a practice shirt to test the pattern. The practice shirt has a ton of mistakes in it. The placket kicked my trash. Seriously. And I have a problem sometimes with my gathers. I get them all arranged so nicely, and then when I serge the shirt together over the gathers, the gathers break and disappear. It happened on my shirt so there’s only gathers on one side of it.
But I am so happy I finished it. And I even like it, especially for a first attempt. Here it is:

I’m going to make another one after I finish some school clothes For Seth, and I’m going to put lace on it like the DownEast one. I tried lace on this one, but I didn’t think the lace went very well with the polka dots.

Polos

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Yesterday I finished a polo shirt for Owen. I have to say the placket was pretty involved and took awhile to figure out. But I got through it and Owen likes it so that’s all that matters, huh?

He has been sick the past couple of days and so he’s been pretty cranky. When I had the shirt all finished except for the hem, I tried it on him to check the length. He walked around the house like a proud peacock.

When I tried to take the shirt off to finish it, he was inconsolable. But I hemmed it real fast and put it back on him.

Jon’s brother asked me awhile ago to make him a polo shirt. I had no idea how to do the placket, and that’s why I got this pattern to make the kids’ polo so I could see how to do it.

But Jon has a lot of time on his hands right now since he’s in between semesters. So he beat me to it and drafted a pattern for a polo shirt for his brother himself. I was pretty happy about that, because I’d much rather sew than draft patterns.

We sewed the polo for his brother together today, and it was a lot of fun. He did most of it while I cut out another polo for Seth. But I hemmed the bottom and sleeves. And I ironed all the seams, because Jon’s not into silly details like ironing.

I think it turned out amazing and I already ordered some fabric to make Jon some.

Jon wearing his brother’s shirt.

Also, Jon figured out a much easier way to make a placket than the way my polo pattern says to make one. I love the way that man plackets ha ha ha.

French Terry Annihilation

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I bought two yards of red french terry knit fabric. Then I completely annihilated all of it by making Seth and me a pair of shorts out of it.

I am in love with french terry. It’s so soft and a wonderful weight for bottoms. I think we’ll all be wearing a lot of it this winter.

This picture isn’t flattering the shorts, but I like them in real life. They have fun pockets too.

We match!

Children’s T-Shirt Pattern

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My children’s t-shirt pattern is finally finished! Except I can’t call any of my patterns mine, since Jon does tons of the work for them too. They are ours.

I have been trying to pattern for long enough now to know a little bit more about what I like and don’t like. I like to draft a pattern, on butcher paper, in the size that I need it. Then I love to sew the pattern up.

I don’t like to do the pattern grading, or any of the parts you have to do on the computer. That’s good, because Jon likes to do that kind of stuff and he’s really good at it. So together we make a good team.

I had fun making a girl’s shirt for my friend’s daughter for this pattern. Girls’ clothes are definitely cute!

You can purchase the pattern from my Etsy tab or from the Pattern shop tab at the top of my blog. And don’t forget you can try the size 4T for free, along with a detailed tutorial for how to construct the shirt. You can find that tutorial under the Free Patterns And Tutorials tab. Thanks!

Maxi Dress

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I finished a maxi dress this weekend. I used a pattern that came with a class I bought on craftsy.com about sewing with knits. I lengthened the pattern since it was for an above the knee dress. I also took out a ton of taper because it was too full for what I wanted.

And the bodice needed a lot of work. It fit way, way too big on me. I think that even on someone a lot more chesty than me there would be excess fabric in this pattern.

So here it is.

It was really windy when Jon took these pictures.

The Latest Two

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I wanted another shirt with shirring down the sides, since I love the first one I made like that so much (see last post). So I made another one.

But this one didn’t turn out nearly as well as the first one. The fabric I used was really sheer and hard to work with. It had little recovery, so it stretched out a lot when I was making it. I think once it’s washed it will do better. We will see.

I really struggled with the collar since the fabric kept rolling and slipping. One day I want to have a huge ribbing collection so I’ll have the right color of ribbing for any shirt. But until then, I often have to use the same fabric that the shirt is made out of for the collar since I don’t have the right color of ribbing.

 But I will wear the shirt anyway, because things don’t have to be perfect. I wore it when we went to Mesa Falls yesterday.

Sewing is a really good way to learn that things don’t have to be perfect. There is usually a way to fix any mistake.
I also made another pair of shorts for Seth. I’m trying to build up his wardrobe before school starts.
He was really excited to get his picture taken, as usual.