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New Year, New Skillz

Happy new year.
So, I'll keep this update short:

By totally ripping her idea off, I made this:
It turned out pretty nice. Also, extremely simple idea; you should try it.


gold silk shantung, beads, fabric glue, headband.

In a strange turn of events, I've done some real work on the Giant Western Button-down Nightmare Shirt. Though it's been a little scary and a major source of procraftination*, I am quite pleased with it so far. I'm not sure how this happened, but it's almost done.

Because I made this pattern from tracing an existing shirt, there were several areas that I wasn't very confident about, including the yoke around the neck, everything about the sleeve, and a few other crucial seams. The sleeve fit into the sleevehole perfectly, much to my surprise. You can see below how the yoke did not fit perfectly with the shirt front lines. Unnervingly, I won't know if I did the collar and neckhole right until I try to install them. I'll either triumphantly tell you when they work or..cut the shirt into tiny pieces swearing that it never existed, the bastard. (Fingers crossed!)


By the way the yoke was not lining up with the shirt front (see the middle bottom of the picture), this was lining up to be a shirt-tastrophe, but through sheer luck, it worked out alright.


I hope you can read that, suckers.


My button-hole fear is over. Throughout my entire sewing life, I have been terrified of any pattern requiring button-holes, no matter how cool the end product would be. I would not even try it. By some miracle, I was able to successfully stitch 15 fairly nice button-holes, with the 4-step button-hole function on my Brother. I am a button-hole badass.

Those of you who don't know what a lottery win this is for me, 4 steps to creating a button-hole are 3 steps too many. Most nicer machines have a 1-step feature which makes a button-hole the exact size of the button you provide for it. No guessing, no finger-crossing, it just does it. They are really nice, but also a bit more expensive. I was gearing up to buy a new sewing machine to complete this project, but now I don't have to. Just lovely.

My friend gave me this shirt, and it might be a good shirt-surgery project. I have a couple ideas up my sleeve, so stay tuned for that, and hopefully more.



*I do not know how to do the TM symbol, so until I learn, enjoy the asterisk.

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