Can You Fix This?—Industrial Tools Edition

The husband brought me another sewing project this week.

That is the end of a very large bag—it’s about 4 feet long by 18” wide and it’s intended to carry one of his concrete saws. (A not-insignificant part of his business is cutting holes in concrete walls, usually for egress windows.) The saw is too long for the bag. He wondered if I could make an opening for the blade of the saw, with its guard on, to stick out of the end of the bag.

Theoretically, yes. And it wouldn’t even be that complicated, except for the fact that I cannot sew an opening into the end of this bag while simultaneously balancing the other 4 feet of it over my head. I told him I could probably do it if he would stand next to me and support the bag. I got out some Cordura scraps—red, even—and I think we will tackle it this weekend. I will sew a piece of Cordura where I want the opening, cut it, turn the facing in, and sew it down, much like making a welt opening for a zipper. The 1541 should handle the sewing easily. Theoretically.

I got the eight yards of UV-coated fabric I ordered from Seattle Fabrics, and now I have no excuse not to work on generator covers.

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I did another interview for the podcast yesterday. I continue to be tickled by the fact that there are quite a few people who want to listen to me blather on about sewing for 30 minutes. The analytics are exceeding my expectations. I am hoping to have more interviews—and a bit less of me blathering—after the first of the year. This is just such a busy time.

We had our church choir practice last night, but it looks like we won’t be having a church choir. (See comment about this time of year, above.) We have enough for a double quartet, but not enough for the songs I had chosen. They require an actual choir with more than one or two people on a part. We are especially lean on the lower parts. The eight of us who came to practice decided that we would work up an acapella piece. That way, I can sing, too, either alto or tenor. And we’re all accomplished-enough musicians that we’ll only need one or two practices.

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I’m making progress on the clothing front, even though some days I feel like the young woman in Rumpelstiltstkin required to spin a room full of straw into gold. I have a lot of straw. Yesterday, I put together two pairs of Linda pants—they need hemming—and a top from the McCall’s 8022 pattern that I made with some stable athletic knit from the Walmart remnant rack. (It also needs hemming.) That athletic knit is very interesting. On the front, it looks like normal jersey fabric:

But on the back, it almost looks like a twill weave, except that it is knitted.

Machine knitting and hand knitting are not always a 1:1 swap—there are stitches that machines do that are hard to replicate with hand knitting and vice versa.

I shortened this latest iteration to a top; I do like the dress length but didn’t have enough of this fabric.

And I am frankenpatterning stuff left and right. In my quest for some nice church-wear basics, I pulled out a few pieces of rayon spandex for a couple of Easton cowls. I love the cowl neck part of that top but I have never been happy with the fit of the lower bodice. Even lengthening it didn’t help. I am going to try a version where I combine the top of the Easton cowl with the bottom of the Burda 6329, which is the raglan top with the neck pleats. I really like the way the bottom half of that one fits.

We’ll see. It’ll either be great or an unqualified disaster.

I am having to write very detailed notes on my pattern pieces to keep track of all these changes and iterations. I only throw out original tracings if it’s obvious they aren’t going to work at all, because sometimes I want to go back and use them for something else.

At some point, I suspect, I may give up on commercial patterns altogether and just start drafting tops from my own bodice blocks.