Deep Sewing

I have trained myself to sew or in small bits of time here and there, but it’s not my favorite way to sew. I much prefer the days when I can devote hours to a project (or two). I think the current buzzword for that is “deep work.”

I was done cutting the grass in the garden by 8 am yesterday. It only takes about 45 minutes but I prefer to get it done while it’s still cool. I cleaned up and headed for my sewing room. The other Janet—the class coordinator at the store—had mentioned to me that there was a beautiful knit fabric in stock, so I picked up two yards a few weeks ago. I had in mind to make Gail Yellen’s Wrap Me Up pattern. The fabric worked perfectly:

This fabric is what I would call a “hacci knit.” One side—the knit face—is typically brushed and fuzzy. The pattern itself is not complicated, although I might make a few changes if I make it again. It only comes in one size and it’s a bit too small for me. The sleeves end about halfway down my forearm. I know that Gail probably sized it that way so it would fit on two yards of a 54"/60" width of fabric. (What looks like a seam down the center is a fold line that I need to steam out.) To make it larger would require twice as much fabric and seams down the front and back. Still, I thought it would make a nice store sample.

[I am on a mission to make store samples from the garment fabrics currently in stock because we want people to know that the store carries more than just quilt fabric. If some of these garments end up as classes, so much the better, but at least we have the samples.]

After I finished the wrap, I got out the Geranium Dress pattern by Made by Rae. Kaffe Fassett is coming to the store in September for a two-day workshop. (I got a spot in one of the quilt classes!—so excited.) When we were at BU, Ashlee and I talked about making clothing using some of the Kaffe fabric. I’ve already made a couple of tops using the cotton sateen widebacks, and now we have the Free Range Slacks in shot cotton. I thought it would be fun to do a child’s garment using some of the Kaffe quilt cottons, and I know the store can get Made by Rae patterns because I made the Emerald Dress last summer.

I am making a size 6, which is the smallest size in the girls’ size range. By mid-afternoon, I was ready to turn the bodice after clipping all those curves.

I chose to add the flutter sleeves, which were a bit tricky.

The flutters are cut in a spiral. The pattern suggests finishing the raw edge with a zig-zag stitch, but I have a serger so I did a rolled hem, instead. Next time, I will use a piece of stabilizer at the beginning, because getting the point of the spiral under the needle so the thread would catch took some effort.

[Sorry the lighting is so awful—it was late afternoon when I took these.]

The skirt is ready to gather and attach to the bodice. I am kicking around the idea of adding some piping between the bodice and the skirt if I have enough of the blue fabric left. 🧐 Or maybe not.

While I was working on this, the other Janet and I were texting and talking by phone about some upcoming classes. Around 1 pm, Starlink went down and was out for about four hours. I haven’t heard what caused the outage, but even in an outage, Starlink service is a thousand times better than CenturyLink. I have an app on my phone to monitor our network, and when I checked it, I saw the message about the outage. And a four-hour outage is nothing compared to two weeks without CenturyLink service.

I have got to be more intentional about building at least one day a week of deep sewing into my schedule. Two would be better, but I’ll try not to be greedy. Some weeks, that will be easier than others.