More Molly-made pottery

After my five week class ended, I signed up for the ten week class. It's a lot of fun and slowly my projects have been getting much better. First, they had us make cylinders to practice pulling shapes and then shaping cylinders into vases and things.

I have made a ton of things, but these are the only four finished objects I have now. four cylinders that I decided should be small flowerpots. They still aren't perfect, but they are much better than anything  I made in the first class!!!

After bisque firing

Glazed and finished: spodumene, iron red, josh blue and celadon green.

I planted my tiny seedlings in them with a layer of rocks in the bottom for drainage. Lavender and three mints. 

 For scale, the biggest one (blue) is about five inches tall. I have ten more vases and things that are being glaze-fired right now and i'll post about them soon. This class has been taking up most of my free time that I usually sew during. The class is three hours on Wednesday nights, but then I go in after school another day or two to trim, glaze or throw more pots.

The weather is getting nicer ad that makes me want to sew summer clothes, plus there's only three weeks left of my class so expect more sewing soon!

An Epic Fail, or why I need a walking foot

I got that big piece of velvet in seafoam green color with all of that free fabric from Alicia. My original thought was "om nom nom" and I knew I would make a jacket out of it, a Cordova jacket! I wanted to do a trial run with the pattern and this fabric would be perfect!

Andrew saw the fabric and said ew. I ignored him. 

 Sadly, he was right. Just for the record, I didn't even finish it. After I put in the zipper, I could tell it was a lost cause. So it is not hemmed at all.

Problem one: Velvet. I was like "No, man, I got this." I made a velvet dress before, it'll be fine... Yeah, thinking back, I rush-made a really shoddy red dress for the last day of school before Xmas break. Seriously, go look at it. Such a turd. So since that was my sum total of velvet experience...

Solution: I need a walking foot for my machine. I tried my best, but the pieces would get fed through at different paces and every. single. piece. was. off. I did find a picture online and looked through all of my miscellaneous feet, but I don't have one. Sooo.....something to buy soon.

Oh lawd!

 Problem two: Style + fabric, use some logic please.

The Cordova pattern is for a nice, slim jacket with some detailing and a zipper front. There have been some very good versions that I have seen around the interwebs. Trisha made nice purple one and Tasia made nice tweed one. Everything about the fabric, color and style is all wrong; the sleeves look absurd. It looks like some poorly done costume for an un-researched movie set in the 1800s, minus the not-yet-invented zipper. I am frowning just looking at the pictures. Sooooo ugly.

Solution: Sometimes it is necessary to sit down and actually think about if a pattern and a fabric will

LOL I know!

 Problem three: the zipper. Seriously, if you can't find a zipper that matches (which was impossible at Jo-Ann, the only place I looked) you should not use a random, white, separating one from your stash. Plus it was a little too long, so I cut an inch off the top. The top. So now there is no metal stopper, and the tab can just shoot off into the atmosphere. When I realized this, after I had sewn it in (unevenly, due to no walking foot), I just quit. We're done here, folks.

Solution: Find a damn zipper that matches!

Saggy McDroopertons

Plus,I think the fit is too baggy in general even though I made my usual size 2. It will definitely need some sizing down if I make it again.

Now that it's finally starting to feel like Spring, who cares about jackets!

Feel free to say whatever mean things you like about this wad of crap! I have zero attachment to it and it will be going in my freecycle fabric scrap bag. Oh no wait, I already did that. Haha!

Finally, some sewing loot!

On Friday after work I was able to go to that estate sale of the two spinster sisters who loved to sew. I am sure that it had already been picked over quite a bit, but there was still a lot of stuff. 

There was a whole room of fabric, but it seemed like they hoarded solid, bright colors in heavy polyester. Ick. I found six prints that I liked. 

 The blue and pink flowers are sheers, a magenta flower print and the blue rectangles is a heavy 60s style poly. Who knows... The light green has a nice faux Asian print and then blue polka dots. So the fabric was $15, but it's definitely enough for six dresses.

 The trims were $3 a card, so I only got three. Just for reference, the cards are like a foot long. Each of these trims are about an inch wide. Shades of blue, Murica red white and blue, and a hot pink with flowers in the center.

 There were two pattern cabinets full of patterns and they had them organized by style. It was mostly 60s-90s heavy. I wonder what they did with their older ones? Or they got into sewing later in life? It was fun to dig through and everything was a 32/34 bust, so that was cool.

 Some dresses, a nice costume pattern, some embroidery guides.

 Nightgowns, a Swirl style wrap dress and the "romance on a bridge" one just made me laugh.

Unopened tracing paper and a nice McCalls with an elastic(!) waist! I'm definitely making that one!

There were also just rooms of clothes they had made for themselves, but none was really my style. Just tons of solid bright colors and short sleeve boxy blouses. There was also a strange hipster girl with a tri-pod camera taking pictures of things in an artsy way. That was interesting. 

All in all, some good loot! I think the total was like 35 bucks. Yay!

Leapingly Lovely Leggins

Since I had leftover knit from my Renfrew I just made, I decided to try out my legging pattern, McCalls 6173. There are two versions: one with side seams and one where the leg is all one piece. I made the second. I bought this on sale at Jo-Anns for 99 centimes.

I declined to read the instructions, of course. I am TOOOO smart for that! (You see where this leads...) So then, since there was no waistband piece, I just folded it down over the elastic and stitched. Then I went to try them on and OH my god I looked like a recent entry on "people of walmart"!!! They were soooo indecently low and made quite the magnificent muffin top. I took some pictures to show Andrew later for laughs and then ripped it all out. I then made a normal waistband and they look fine. 

I modeled them for with my matching shirt for dramatic effect:

 I made an extra small and they are too tight. I foresee blowing out a seam in the near future. Also the back does not accommodate my butt and when I sit it slides down too much.

 I think next time I will try the other version with side seams and see if that fits better...

 So that pattern was a dollar, the fabric was a gift and I already had the elastic, so let's say the leggings cost $1. Nice!

Knit Renfrew for spring!

Last week I wanted an easy project to follow on the heels of an epic fail, which I will post later in the week. I decided I would make a Renfrew with some of the knit fabric I received from Alicia last month. So here is my pattern, I made the cowl neck but with short sleeves. 

At first when I wore it I wasn't happy with it hardly at all. Now, looking at the pictures, I like it more. For some reason I made a zero instead of a 2. The sleeves are a little too tight. For future reference...

Close-up of the neck, which is nice. 

I think I could use a little more ease in the bust, so that back wouldn't pull like that. Again, should have made a 2.

I used a knit needle and that's about it, since my machine does not do anything other than straight stitch. Finishing with the bands solves the problem of horribly home-made looking hems. I had Andrew take pictures and as we went outside he was confused as to what I had made. So I think it looks store bought. its certainly not worse than anything from Forever 21!

Happy Weekend!

April Giveaway Winner!

The winner for April's giveaway is SunnySewing! Sunny, please email me your mail address at mollysewsblog /at/ gmail.com! Thanks for entering everyone!

My Cambie Bridesmaids Dresses

For background, here is everyone helping me choose the fabric from four choices. I ended up going with a celery green silk dupioni from Fishman's Fabrics here in Chicago. The lining is Nude Bemberg rayon. The fabric came out to about $75 per dress, which is way nicer and still less money than a David's Bridal anything!

I decided on the Cambie dress long before; actually, I let Stephanie and Vicky choose between that and the Lonsdale and that's what they wanted. Oh, I am so democratic. 

Here are some under construction photos when the dress was almost complete: here. 

My mom made Vicky's dress, as they live near each other. It looked wonderful! 

Vicky

 I made Stephanie's a sewed in the zipper the morning of the wedding, thereby forcing my mom to sew the lining to the zipper. Both dresses had to have the lining shorted a bit; the silk poofs out because it is crisp, but the lining falls straight so it was handing out a little. Mom fixed that as well. Thanks, Mom!

Steph

Steph reading my poem selection by ee cummings

Nice side view

before the ceremony. What great bridesmaids!

They looked great and the dresses turned out exactly as I wanted! Yay!