tollhouse cookie failures

Q for you: do your tollhouse cookies work? mine are always flat. delicious, but never ever even the slightest bit chewy or cakey. wtf? I made two batches for the family in the past week, and they were both the same in spite of my best efforts. i had to face facts: it's me. when my bf makes the same recipe in the same kitchen, they are perfect martha stewart masterpieces..

have you had this problem? what am i doing wrong? OR, if yours are dope, how do you do it?

SIGH. Please do help! xo bex

Renfrews for le Mama

look how cute my mom is in her new Renfrews! she's the lucky recipient of my latest handmade gift/s. And she's already raking in compliments, so I'm pleased with my work!

um, navy is hard to photograph. 

 I gave her the brown one in pieces, saying if she liked the first one (with this gorgeous fabric) i'd make her a second (in a somewhat lamer, but still soft & cozy fabric). She was into it!

no waistband, just a simple hem. 

She also told me that when she was learning to sew knits, that's how they finished things- with bands. :/

fancy posing time. 

um, mom? was that a burn??

no, of course not. she's just sharing. she's also teasing me by telling but not showing me her tailoring books as she watches me struggle with my Anise collar. Another story for another day!

happy new year!!

i maybe just got tired of sewing

just momentarily. stitching up two cowl t's for the moms, i'm ready to get sparkly and untied from the machine. i will power through! only one hour til yoga, anyway

i'm writing today, though, because i've had this fabric in my stash since May and thought it was yucky poly blech (though why would i buy that? i wouldn't...). anyway, i washed it to just put it to work and IT TURNS OUT IT'S GORGEOUS.

go get some. 

http://www.fashionfabricsclub.com/p/7845/Navy-Knit

it's rayon + wool + lycra with a rich dark color and vaguely slubby but only enough so you know it's LUXE. i bet you could make flipping ANYTHING from this and it would be gorgeous. $5/yard, baby. i put it in the dryer. ha!

i have enough, so go buy em out!

ok love ya.
R

tailoring chops in wool. ba boom.

i put another 7-8 hours into my ANISE jacket!

 i finally started sewing pieces together last night. between the four kinds of fabric, and jillion pieces to cut, it's taken me 2 months to gather materials, prewash, interface, and underline. i've gathered all of the fabric from my onsite fabric store, which is pretty sweet. I've kicked ass at not buying more fabric this fall, and i've been so productive at the same time. I think there's something in the 'using what you have' that makes me more efficient. When i have piles of new fabric and piles of new patterns, i get overwhelmed with options and i think more, but i actually sew less. what a good lesson. :)

oh hello, repurposed dress shirt. how are you doing as underlining?

now, back to the jacket! it's such a nice start on tailoring. I've used Gertie's princess seaming tips (from her Craftsy course, sorry there's no free tutorial), Tasia's bound buttonholes, and Tasia's basting and underlining. I should buy more patterns from Tasia, she's really becoming my favorite sewing teacher.

i love how the hand stitches and muslin look like a tailor's shop.  hard to see with hi tech photos. 

 i sewed a couple of pieces together last night just for the satisfaction of a body-shaped item. Then I detoured today into bound buttonholes.

lovely: perfect spacing and straight, even lines.

Aren't they lovely??

oh! they look so ugly in this photo. Trust me when i tell you they are just like ugly tadpoles on their way to being beautiful froggies. 

i love them. i'm going to hand stitch them more...sometime when i watch a movie or something.

here they all are, all flipped in  & triangles stitched. they're small- it's cool. 

I'm excited to put this together and wear it, but also to be really careful in the making process. interesting life balance there. 

what are you learning this weekend??

xo

tis a wee gift fact'ry

i have strep throat. maybe i just have a sore throat. who cares! the point is, i'm still in my jams, and I have been cranking out the sewn jams today. holla!

I'm proud to say I'm keeping it hella local and indie, too, which adds to the happiness.

this is how you buy the fabric. umm.

and then you cut and make an easy hem...

 1) contract napkins. towel fabric from stonemountain: $18.75 time spent cutting and hemming: approx 1.25 hrs. My friend offered way more than that for these, so i'm going to double her order tomorrow. (love ya, Syl!)

finished product!

2) Cation's dolman sleeve top! I have been eyeing this one for ages, but there are so many things already on the table, especially in the knits area. BUT my bird fabric + Cation seemed like a perfect gift for my fake gf. i left out the back seam to make it backless, cause she's slutty like that. ha!

back view, hanging nicely :)

let's be frank. it doesn't work to just leave out a seam and call it a feature. you know that. So I hemmed the raw edges, duh, and then crossed it over a bit at the waist. 

surprise! 

  

namesake dolman sleeves with neat sleeve bands. 

 it's kind of a long top, and i didn't figure she'd want her jeans/pants hanging out of her top, so i stitched the lower section closed about 3 inches up. see, up close: 

 then i rolled the top center corners in, a gradual hem that went from about 1/4" to 2' at the top.

sneaky tip top

that made the draping more effective...then i raised the top inner corners up a little and trimmed about an inch off the top, again for draping. i'm so intimidated by those drape drape books, but somehow not so intimidated that i won't just make it up myself :)

full frontal 

pretty neck and crossover feature showing from the back. 

i love how sewing combines fashion and math and spatial problem solving. and creativity, and colors and cool people.

Now back to the cutting board for mama's present (s)!

what are you making?? and should I make ornaments for the children??

t shirt weekend

so much for being done with knits? I wandered into the local fabric shop a couple of weeks ago and scored $10 worth of remnant table fabric: a hot cocoa-colored soft rayon (?) almost sweater knit, and a little bit of baby blue with a tight stretch knit. I knew the brown was for a cowl neck t for me, and thought I'd experiment with the blue for little man clothes. and that's just what i did!

For the boy

A mixed media raglan tee from sewing for boys. the little man is growing like crazy right now. While I think  he is in good shape with pants and outer layers, he needs some simple Ts.

Changes from the pattern: i did a double needle treatment on the neckline, because i am not into the messy construction of zig zags and exposed seams everywhere.

For the same reason, the sides/arms seams are also done against the instructions, with the seams inside the shirt. The pattern is designed to leave hems unfinished (how was i going to get those armholes around my machine arm anyway??) but i'm not sure the boy is going to go for it. nothing to do but wait and see i suppose.

one more thing- when I traced out my pattern pieces, i used a size 2/3 width and 4/5 length (he is a perfect store size 3 for the moment). Even though it's supposed to be slim fitting, everything else in the book has been SOO wide I just thinned it down by default.

cost $5 for fabric, 2 hours for cutting and putting together. i loooove how easy this book is!

for me,
A cowl neck renfrew (from sewaholic), finally, in a proper full yardage way. I was frustrated to have to pull out a long seam of tight zig zag stitched because of an error in the pattern, but luckily Tasia recently wrote a blog post on how to handle the crazy cowl collar, which made it go like cake once I was there.

a poor artist blames her tools, and also i do not love my crappy machine.

what's funny is that this one is supposed to have finished sleeves and hem, but I opted to leave them raw. I used to have a black shirt like this that was a really nice fine cotton and I wore it to threads, i loved it so much.

So when I tried this puppy on and the unfinished sleeves hit at my wrists, i just left em. Ditto the hem- it's landing at a nice length now, just right for a cami to peep out from without being bulky.

well that just looks like a natural fit. 

 i don't need any bulk at the middle to make me self conscious, so here we are, a matched set of completed and yet also unfinished tees.

matchy matchy

cost: $8 for fabric and thread, 3-4 hours of cutting just right on the grain, sewing, picking, and sewing again.

i also made curry, granola, mac and cheese, and a long homework assignment. what did you make this weekend?

xo r