Finished Quilts

Monday 22 April 2013

full disclosure

Saturday saw the sun arrive in all its loveliness to coincide with a day of sewing inside for the lovely ladies of the East Midlands MQG.  Ten of us gathered at stitchcraft in Grantham (a fab venue and great cake!) for a Weekender Bag workshop.  Lots of photos of the day are available on our Flickr group, including some of Di's fab-u-lous finished bag.  Mandy helped us all out, including providing canvas and wadding scraps.  Despite my best laid plans, I had managed zero prep beforehand so I spent the morning cutting cutting cutting.  I had to leave at lunchtime and I still have more cutting to do.  I'm MM'ing it and here's a preview of how it's going to look...

still to be ironed!
I'm worried a little that this will stay in its box for the next 6 months so I think I'll plan to do a little every week to keep things moving.

This week I've committed to doing at least 1 hours sewing kids' clothes (KCW Spring 2013) each day .  I started a day early trying to take advantage of the super long naps the wee man has started to take (nearly 3 1/2 hours on Saturday and over 2 hours yesterday).  Nudged by the lovely Mary, I dug out my (as yet untouched) Sewing For Boys book and decided on the Treasure Pocket Pants.  I pulled some Essex linen and a lovely wee check from the stash and got cracking.  I found the pattern really difficult to follow - I think this was because I'm a total dressmaking novice but it wasn't very clear until I googled and blog read and worked it all out.  It didn't help that there was an error in the size of one of the pattern pieces, which I only discovered after I cut everything out and couldn't figure out how to put it back together.  Why do they not check these things properly?

Anyhoo, after some fun with elastic (not), I made a faux fly front, French seamed the seams and sewed it all together (minus waistband and hem). Ta da...

#epic fail
Can you see what I've done?  I didn't even notice that I'd sewn the legs wrong and created a long skirt rather than troosers until Laughing Boy asked if they were really for the wee man.  Then I looked and D'oh!  Now, my wee sister tells me I'm too hard on myself and there would have been a time in the not too distant past where I would have had a right strop and probably burned the monstrosity long with all of my books and dreams of being a competent dressmaker.  But I am not like that these days...it's all a learning process and full disclosure of oopsies is good for the soul.  So I finished for the night, had a wee glass of wine and caught up with Broadchurch (last one tonight!)

Refreshed this morning, before I started work, I unpicked and resewed and once again...tah dah!

much happier
French seams, baby yeah!
I'm hoping the lovely Patrick would approve! So I hope to get the wee man to try them on tonight so I can sort the waistband and hem and finish them off.  I'm thinking of making the easy linen shirt next.  All good prep for starting my own clothes making journey #excited

17 comments:

  1. They are so great! He's going to look totally dapper.

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  2. Oh Moira! the bag is going to be fab and the trousers look so cute!! Well done for persevering!

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  3. LOL how fantastic!
    You obviously didn't see my note on facebook telling you to check the errata!
    I've made the easy linen shirt too, but I must confess he has never worn it - something to do with it being a bit big and not very warm last summer - maybe this year! Do check the sewing for boys flickr group and ask questions there, they are pretty fast at responding in my experience. Onwards and upwards! xx

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  4. I love that you had the calmness and composure to take a photo of the 'skirt' first rather than just unpicking it madly - the urge must have been overwhelming! And look how brilliantly they turned out! Patrick would be proud of you :)

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  5. Haha the trousers thing is totally something I'd do! I would LOVE a Melody Miller bag, good choice!

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  6. Those trousers are so cute but I have to admit to sniggering at the tiny skirt making error ;-). Can't wait to see the MM bag x

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  7. Wow - cool pants (trousers)!! I'm attempting a shirt... I will do a full disclosure too !!!

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  8. Your wee troos look awesome!!! I am so impressed you stuck with them, too. And your bag will be amazing - a little at a time is a good way to go I think.

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  9. I'm in awe of anyone attempting the Weekender bag, it looks so difficult! The trousers are fab

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  10. I apologise in advance but sweetie your first photo made me laugh so much I almost lost my cuppa... How did you manage to sew the legs together?! Much improved... lol

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  11. Good for you with sticking with the trousers. It is so annoying when you realise what you have done isn't it. Nevermind you have it all sorted now. Your MM bag will be fab. It is a good idea to do a little often as it is quite boring doing the QAYG! Di x

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  12. Yay for the weekender bag being started, and yay for those trousers..... how funny! I am looking forward to seeing the progress on the bag at the next EMMQG meet up. And I have already booked my spot on the sofa for Broadchurch tonight..... can't wait x

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  13. I love how you sewed the trousers in to a skirt :-) I am in awe of your skills, the trousers look fantastic

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  14. Ha, ha, love the skirt turned shorts, that's exactly the kind of thing I would do! :o)

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  15. You couldn't just have called it a kilt and gotten away with it? LOL. The trousers look great and like they were well worth the unpick!

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  16. They are fab, well done you! I sure Patrick would approve, but if he did, Ann would give you evil looks!

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