Thursday, April 12, 2012

Clover pants

Hi Friends!  It’s another rainy day here in Southern California and I’m here to give you an update on my Clover project.  

So far, everything had gone smoothly.  I’ve been allotting about 20-30 minutes at the end of the day to sewing and I find that not only am I getting my sewing fix in, I’m making progress on my project.  Its slow going but progressing nonetheless.  (Sometimes I think I should change the name of my blog to The Slow Sewist instead because it certainly would be a more accurate portrayal of my sewing style, heh).

I traced my pattern pieces and made the necessary adjustments.  I cut and marked my fabric and stay-stitched the waist bands, etc. (I used some leftover yellow fabric for one of the waistbands.  It will be facing the inside and won’t be showing.  It would have matched with the pocket fabric but you will see what happened with that)



I moved onto the pockets.  I was going to serge the edges to keep them looking professional but my serger was acting up.  After several attempts and yards of broken thread, I came to the conclusion that my serger must have been damaged in the move.  One of the needles is hitting the needle plate and a new needle isn’t doing the trick.  I will need to take it in for adjustment, I think.  Drat!


So, I figured I would just do a zigzag stitch around the edges.


But, the pockets turned out to be really wonky after that.  The fabric I used for the pockets is lining fabric and very light weight.  I don’t think it was happy with the zigzag stitching.  *sigh*.



I decided to move on and cut new pockets out of some quilting fabric that I’ve had for years and I absolutely love.   Isn’t this pretty fabric?  It’s from a civil war collection (whose name I can’t remember) and I heard that they don’t make it anymore.  Anyhoo, it’s a little more substantial than the lining fabric and it looks good against the navy.



Instead of zigzagging around the edges, I decided to use my pinking shears.  But, low and behold, I had trouble with them, too!  They kept on getting caught up in the fabric and weren’t being very helpful.  I haven’t had this problem with them before so I don’t understand what’s up with them.  They weren’t cheap pinking shears.

I finally got the pockets sewn onto the waistband and the front waist of the pants.  Tonight I will be sewing the darts and the legs together and do a little fitting. 



Wish me luck!






4 comments:

  1. That is great that you get a bit of time each day! Makes the fun last longer, too. I am very much looking forward to seeing the finished Clovers, as I have heard SOOO much about them.
    My pinking shears just started misbehaving also. I can only cut a couple of zigs before the fabric gets stuck and nothing moves. They are some cheap Fiskars-type shears though.
    Good luck!

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    1. Mine have done the same and since my serger needs adjusting, I'm out of luck. I'm going to have to do some creative seams on the Clovers so they'll look more professional.

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  2. Dressmaking is often far from relaxing - I swear and my daughter thumps the machine. Pete's mam used to rage apparently but produced lovely garments.
    Why do we do it? It's great when it all works out.

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    1. Yes, it is great when it all works out. But, I guess that's why we call it an obsession. We must conquer the sewing demons, lol.

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