Yes, of course it’s going on the shoulder of the dress.

~Sarah

I finished Josh’s shirt (Burda 7767) late last night (By the way, does anyone else love staying up really, really late and sewing after the world is asleep?) and am 110% thrilled with the result. It’s so incredibly fashionable-looking that it could be mistaken for something from the “Rail” section of Nordstrom. And I’m not really one to speak lightly of Nordstrom, but it does have that trendy, funky style that you see in the “young men’s” section there…

Burda seems to model their patterns’ fit on Josh, so once again, I didn’t have to make and fitting adjustments. (Burda men’s shirts/tops/jackets are larger in the shoulders, but fitted through the waist, and just a smidge longer—well actually about an inch and a half—than all the other pattern companies’ men’s patterns.) And the pintucks are really flattering and fun when combined with the flowered fabric (from the wonderful Heather Ross line for Free Spirit, “Lightning Bugs”).

Now I did, of course, have a bit of an adventure with the pintucks. I have a bit of a habit of not reading sewing pattern instructions very thoroughly. I blame it on my favorite patterns, Burda World of Fashion and HotPatterns, both of whom assume that you have either a fairly high level of skill/knowledge and/or a good sewing reference book. So, I’ve sort of cut the apron strings with sewing instructions. Maybe a bit too much. I skimmed through the pattern instructions, making note that the pintucks should be folded over 3/8ths of an inch. Right, 3/8ths. So, I did all of the tucks on the left shirt front and looked at it. “Hmmm,” I said. “Looks kind of small.” I held it up and showed Josh, “Sweetie, does this look a bit small?” To which he replied, “Uh, yeah.”

So I examined my work and figured I must have accidentally doubled the number of tucks or something. I couldn’t figure it out so just settled on taking the seam ripper to all the tucks. The next day, I still couldn’t figure out what I did wrong (the number of tucks were all accounted for). That’s what I decided to refer to the instructions. I read through them a couple of times, searching for the clue that would solve this problem. Then I noticed it,

Fold the pleats over 3/16th.

Oh. That’s sort of a bit different than 3/8ths. Oops.

That problem solved, the rest of the shirt came together smoothly.

Yesterday, when I had to run over to Bolt to get some more white thread I found the absolute perfect buttons (at 10 cents a pop from the bulk button jar). They were actually precisely what I was looking for. That unusual gold/yellow color happened to be the color of the head on the pin that I’d used to pin the collar shut when I hung the shirt up one evening, and it worked just fabulously with the other colors in the fabric. (You can see the photo with the pin in it over on this post from yesterday.)

I played around with the directionality of the stripes (which are not straight stripes, they’re rather wavy-gravy, which makes them much more interesting). The collar has a horizontal band of flowers on it. The yoke is also horizontal, as are the cuffs. These touches are what really make this shirt seem special.

Josh always is rolling up his sleeves or pushing them up or generally fiddling with them, so I doubt that I beautiful work on the cuffs and sleeve band will see the light of day much.

But, he was thrilled with the shirt and even wore it to have our Sunday coffee at Jim & Patty’s (locals: these are the folks who founded Coffee People—yes, they’re back!).

Josh is so happy with this shirt, and I so enjoyed making it (there’s something deeply satisfying in making something nice for someone you love who really appreciates handmade stuff), that I’m already planning another one. The vision for this one: a nice lightweight white cotton, with the banded collar, no pintucks and an, errrrr, embroidered monkey from the “Monkey Love” embroidery pattern from Sublime Stitching (it’ll be awesome, trust me).

~Sarah

Oh, and I found the PERFECT buttons today when we went over to Bolt to pick up white thread… But I can’t show them to you yet—I sort of feel like they need a big “reveal” on the finish product.

~Sarah

To which Sarah replied, “Good idea. We totally should.”

We tossed that idea around awhile, and on a relatively recent Powell’s excursion (there are many of these such excursions) we picked up the groundbreaking Banners & Flags: How to Sew a Celebration. (For, like $5 or so…)

There’s something really special about books from the 70s—they’re so over-the-top but folksy at the same time.

This one has what is possibly the best book dedication ever.

Hello! Who doesn’t love a parade? That would be downright wrong.

This book covers (obviously) making your own handmade flags and banners (AKA “Sew a Celebration”), and today being Independence Day we thought we’d share some selections out of the flag-making section.

Parts of a flag. (We also learned from this section that a person who’s really into flags is called a “vexillologist.”)

While we were primarily interesting in the “how-to” component of the book, the types of flags and why they’re made is one of the most interesting sections of this book (this is actually really interesting because it goes into detail about using flags not only for celebration but designing them as protest symbols to affect social change—which has been a long tradition in the U.S.).

Star placement on a traditional American flag.

Applying the red stripes. There are very specific proportions you use to make a traditional U.S. flag.

Techniques for stitching on the stars on the blue background.

One of the author’s original flag designs.

(Oh, if Levis still did last… The demise of the indestructible pair of Levis is often mourned around here…)

And, finally, being a seventies book, there’s the requisite rainbow flags.

We haven’t started on our flag yet, but this book certainly has all the principles and guidelines you need to design and sew your own flag. We’ve been particularly thinking that we could take inspiration from this flag we saw appraised on Antiques Roadshow recently.

Of course, we’ll add our own twist. Just wait and see.

~S & J

1. Locate some old plastic Adirondack chairs, and clean them well (you don’t what to immortalize old cobwebs). We’d suggestion first looking in your garage (everyone seems to have some of these sitting around). If you don’t have any, check garage sales, dumpsters and/or sales at Target. They’re cheap. And comfy. And pretty damn ugly.

2. Get yourself two cans of contrasting colors of Krylon Fusion for Plastics spraypaint; this will makeover one chair. You must use this type of paint. Anything else, you’ll have a huge mess on your hands. It takes one can of each color, per chair, more or less. For some reason, neither Lowe’s or Home Depot carries this brand; we found it at Fred Meyer, and hardware stores seem to have it too. They have a ton of colors, including some new, intriguing-looking metallics. Avoid the new textured spray paint for this project—the stickers would likely grab onto the texture and destroy all your hard work.

3. Get some weird foam stickers. We got our in the “foam” section at Michaels. They have all sorts of shapes and sizes—stars, letters, monkeys, you name it. You could use regular stickers, too, but these will make your life easier in the long run. So go with the foam ones, assuming that the foam section of the craft store doesn’t scare you too much. (Consider yourself warned.)

4. Move your chairs to a well-ventilated area, and lay out a drop cloth. Or do as we did and use the yard and just mow the lawn afterward. We’d suggest following the safety precautions on the can of Fusion. Don’t breath this stuff, okay!

5. Select your color that you want to have as the dots (or whatever shape you’re using). So if you want a red chair with blue dots, select your blue paint.

6. Spray your chair with the base color. You don’t need to be thorough, but you do need to make sure that you’ve got good coverage of the area that you want dots on. When you’re done, it should look like the photos below.

See how we just focused on getting a good coat on the places we planned on having dots? The nature of this paint means that you don’t have to worry about having even coats at this point.

7. Let dry. The can suggests waiting an hour before adding a second coat, and that’s what we did, which turned out fine.

Now the fun begins…

8. Take your “foamies” (we were not aware they had a name until we googled “foam stickers” to write this tutorial), and stick them randomly all over the parts of the chair that you’ve painted. Stick them on firmly. We had a few that weren’t stuck on solidly, and we got slightly funky results. A nice random scatter works well. We used around 20 medium-sized stickers for each chair, but it really depends on your preferences and the look you want. Your chairs should now look like this:

9. Take your contrasting can of spray paint and completely coat your chair, stickers and all. Give it a nice thick, even coat so that there’s none of the previous color or original plastic showing.

10. Let dry. Wait at least an hour. It dries to touch really quickly, but takes some time to set.

Now even more fun…

11. Start peeling. This is why the foam stickers work so well. Because they’re very thick, it’s easy to grab them and pull them off the chair. They should lift right off. It there’s any foam left behind after you peel off the stickers, don’t worry—it rubs right off with your fingers.

12. Voila! Let these set for a week before you use them. The Krylon Fusion needs to cure. The colors will also deepen. After a week, you can clean them like any other plastic, if they get dirty. (We suggest a garden hose.)

Enjoy! There are more pictures over at this Flickr photo set, too. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments section!

~Sarah & Josh

I cleaned up the horrific mess that was on our, er, dining table (which sees more thread, needles and fabric than plates, cutlery and food)…

(I’m thinking the dire situation with our workspace may have been adding to my creative funk caused by my impending unemployment. Just maybe… I’m also thinking it would be a brilliant competition to see who could name the most items in this picture. But that would be truly disturbing.)

Anyway, I set aside the dress I’m working on in favor of making something lovely for my sweetie. Josh has been so great while I’ve been a bit of a pill and was so wonderful on our anniversary, making us special commemorative T-shirts. Recently I had picked up this pattern from Burda the last time I was at The Despot, thinking it would be a nice men’s shirt pattern for J-boy. I sacrificed some white, floral striped fabric from Heather Ross’ “Lightning Bugs” collection from FreeSpirit (I’m a bit of a FreeSpirit junkie, I think) that I had originally intended for myself.

I haven’t made a ton of progress, because all of the pintucking (eight on each side of the shirt front) is quite time consuming, and I have a tendency to get a wee bit compulsive about the evenness of the tucks. Just a wee bit. Really. I swear.

But, I’m certainly liking the result so far…

There’s something inherently less stressful about making something that’s a labor of love for someone you love than, say, making a dress to wear to work. (Especially when you’re looking for work. Eegads… I didn’t even think of that factor until just now when considering my whole creative funk situation. Geez… No wonder I couldn’t make progress on my damn dress!)

Anyway, I just adore pintucks. Granted, I’m also firmly committed to pleats, but their petite, more refined cousin the pintuck is one of my favorite design elements—one I don’t get to use very often. There’s just something to structural and appealing about the ‘tucks. Sadly, pintucks are not the most flattering blouse style for me, although I do have an ancient pintucked skirt that I really like. So it will be fun to finish up this funky shirt for my hubby.

You gotta appreciate a guy who gets excited about his wife making him a floral-striped tuxedo-inspired shirt…

~Sarah

P.S. We’re still not certain that our commenting function is working reliably. So, if you feel compelled, we’d appreciate your trying out the commenting to see if it’s working for you (it’s an intermittent problem, of course). If you can’t seem to leave a comment, please drop us a line at sewersewist [at] gmail [dot] com. Thank you! We really want to get this issue resolved ASAP.

What do you think?

~S & J

It looks like we’re having an intermittent problem with the commenting function here at Sewer-Sewist. So, if you try to leave a comment and you’re told to enter a security code and there’s not one to enter or there’s some other problem with trying to talk to us, would you be so kind as to drop us an email and let us know so we can continue to work on the problem? We can always be reached at sewersewist [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thank you so much!

~S & J 

In fact, I started what I think will eventually be a really fabulous dress, the HotPatterns Metropolitan Coat Dress (the shorter, short-sleeved version).

 It’s a great dress, huh? I’m making it in another fabulous fabric from Bolt—this one’s a smoky blue cotton with a bit of stretch (hooray for stretch!). I think it’s European, too, which equals triple bonus points, you know. I hit a few roadblocks (i.e. the yardage requirement on the envelope is very, very wrong—it takes about 3.5 yards of 60″ fabric, not 2). But, it was going along well.

I started this about a month ago.

Then I found out that my position at work is being eliminated. Which means I’m out of a job on June 30. This has been really tough on me because I’ve never been kicked to the curb before, and I work in the public sector, which means it’s even more unusual—although marketing’s always the first hit for cuts pretty much everywhere, so it’s not that surprising. (We’re facing budget cuts—the bad economy’s affecting everyone, apparently.)  Basically, the stress of this whole experience has really gotten me in an awful funk and has left me feeling pretty damn uncreative.

Anyway, I guess it’s a bit weird to write about this in this medium, but I did want to explain what I’d been up to and why I’ve been so absent from Sewer-Sewist lately.  When we started this little site we never in a million years thought so many people would be interested in what we have to say about sewing and crafting, and follow us so closely, so I want to recognize that loyalty by being straight up with y’all. Know what I mean?

Thanks for letting me share, everyone…

~sarah 

No, not our “Blogiversary” (that’s next month), but our real-life, actual anniversary was yesterday, June 17. It was our third, although we’ve actually been a couple since 1996.

Being the crafty type Josh made us customized, hand screen printed matching T-shirts (sort of matching, actually, one in magenta, one in baby blue) as a surprise. We’re not the sort of couple that normally wears matching T-shirts, but these are pretty awesome. Check out the screens ready to go.

And they’re in German, an homage to wacky eighties band and concerts shirts. Josh’s creation is a tribute to the Moon Family Band—catchphrase: “A Girl, A Guy, A Dog - A Drum, A Flute, A Howl.”

Trust us, it’s a very funny/clever inside joke.

And a tribute to how the Moon Family Band (that’s us), together, can do just about anything.

~Josh & Sarah