STM sewing

Previous installment ended on a Sunday.

Monday was washday. Only three loads, despite the unexpected discovery that I had to change both of the sheets on the bed, which meant a whole extra load because they are scenery muslin , and somewhat wider than store-bought king-size sheets.

Even though laundry nowadays is a matter of putting clothes in the washer and coming back when they are clean, it seems to soak up all my psychic energy, and I don't get anything else done on wash day. I miss the days when I could go to the laundromat every other week and get the whole job done in a couple of hours, but I had to buy my own machine when the laundromat ran out of hot water -- wash my dish towels in cold water, in a machine that who-knows-who had used to wash who-knows-what? And after retiring to a town where a tour around the city limits is an after-supper stroll, there is no laundromat at all. On the other hand, I groove on having a clothesline. Not to mention that these days, "a couple of hours" is the whole day anyway, when it involves leaving the house. (I've needed a nap after lunch ever since I was a teenager, but now that I'm officially an old lady, I take it.)

Tuesday was the first Tuesday of the month, when I get a discount at Big R, so I spent the morning shopping and the afternoon in bed.

Wednesday I did nothing at all, except that once when I clicked on a link without checking to see whether it was a PDF file, while I was waiting for Adobe to finish loading so that I could turn it off, I ran into the bedroom, pinned four watch pockets, and sewed one side of each -- standing at the treadle, since the sewing room is so messy that I have to carry the secretary chair out instead of dragging it.

SEWING CONTENT!

I'm a great believer in permanent basting: why fuss getting something to fold in exactly the right place when a quick zap with the sewing machine is easier than pressing, and doesn't come undone at awkward moments?

So my method for hemming patch pockets is to fold the hem to the right side, then pin it with the edge of the hem sticking out a little beyond the pocket, and sew the width of the presser-foot toe from the edge of the pocket.

Offsetting the edges of hem and pocket automatically grades the seam

-- "grading" is making sure that the edges don't all pile up in the same place, and is usually done by trimming the allowances after sewing -- and it also causes the seam to roll under where it doesn't show when I turn the hem right side out and press the seam allowances on the pocket to the wrong side.

I often hand-baste the turned-under seam allowances, particularly when I miter the corners, but I think that this hemp will hold a crease nicely -- if I can find out where the top to my spray bottle rolled to when I dropped it; this sewing room is overdue for a full-scale find-the-floor cleaning.

On the other hand, the fabric is so thick that I'm definitely going to have to miter the corners.

Thursday, I remembered that the watch pockets are going to be caught in the side seams, so only one side needs to be sewn. Which would be fine and dandy, but I'd sewn the same side on all four pockets.

So I ripped out two of the half-inch seams, sewed two more, and pinned and sewed the four hip pockets. And played many, many games of Spider.

Today, Friday, the plan is to press the hip and watch pockets, press a fold onto the curved opening of the broadfall pockets and the slant opening of the pants front, and sew twill tape over all raw edges. And lo and behold, I haven't spent the whole morning writing this.

On the other hand, I haven't had breakfast or checked my mail. Checking my mail absorbs incredible amounts of time, particularly on a day when the Monday-Wednesday-Friday comics have loaded.

content! Today's (I peeked before going to bed) andWednesday's Girl Genius installments are paper-doll pages featuringabsurd fashions designed by the taxidermist/tailor robot. And onMonday, we should *finally* find out what the jaegermonsters found inthe prop room for poor naked Gil to wear. (clicking "send", of course, will wait until I plug in the data cable to check my mail.)

Joy Beeson

Oh how I sympathise. I hate washing :-( Except hand washing :-)

I must have got beyond that stage, I've stopped taking it! Instead I knit and listen to the radio play ...

There's no point. If you like machine sewing.

I had to delete the incomprehensive (for me) seaing jargon :-)

Er - what's a watch pocket?

Yup.

LOL!

You're a girl/woman after my own heart :-)

I'm pleased you had a productive day. Now you need to go for a little lie down ...

Mary

to say "there is no absolute truth" sounds like an absolute truth ? but unfortuneately it is a self-condradicting truth :)

robb

Joy Beeson wrote: Many things of interest

You are a woman after me own heart.

'll nap later.

Wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

:-((((((((((((((

That's like being a success at being a failure ....

Mary

A small pocket sewn inside another pocket, originally to hold a pocket watch. I use mine to carry a key (with the pocket safety-pinned shut), and I make two because I was always and forever putting the watch pocket on the wrong side. Sometimes I pin the key into the other pocket and carry a folded Federal Reserve Note in the watch pocket.

You can see a watch pocket in the first picture at:

that this was before I got the idea of catching the watch pocketin the side seam, and also before I realized that I'd use fiftypercent less fabric if I cut my jeans out two pairs at a time. Note also that I once again forgot that the right side is the inside, and turned the hem on the broadfall pocket to the wrong side. I got that right with the hemp pants -- and I'm using tape that almost matches, so it wouldn't have mattered much.

(Pauses to get drip-dried tape out of the shower before DH gets dirty. Naturally, the correct tape was the only bolt that didn't have a note saying when it had been shrunk, so I had to boil it.)

Joy Beeson

Ah! I see, thanks. Never knew what they were for, my father used to call them ticket pockets and kept his tickets in them so that he could find it easily if an inspector got on the bus or tram.

A son calls the little pocket in the rh pocket of jeans a 'johnny pocket'. Large pockets inside jackets are usually called 'poachers' pockets'.

I like the idea of a passport pocket ...

:-)

Thanks,

Mary

Last time I saw the term "broadfall" was at the Amish store. I'm just betting you know what petzing is too.

Phae

According to Google, it's a surname.

I did get the broadfall idea from a Friends pattern, but broadfall pants were common farmers' clothes in the -- I think it was seventeenth century, giving way to narrowfall pants in the eighteenth. I never cared enough to track it down.

I did learn that there are broadfalls constructed on a different principle, with a button-together yoke called "bearers" under the flap, and pockets, if any, as an afterthought. The example I found on the Web had a pocket like a vest pocket in one of the "bearers".

Just checked Wikipedia to see whether someone else had done the research, but the only place "broadfall" appears is in the article on U.S. Navy uniforms.

And Google served up my own web page. Plus some unsupported assertions that broadfalls were popular from 1700 to the middle of the nineteenth century. And one unsupported assertion that fashion switched back and forth between broadfall and narrow fall whenever people got bored. I'm none too sure what "narrow fall" is.

Joy Beeson

Petzing is often done with a dull knife or bone scraper. It is a technique used, on the white organdy caps worn by married Amish women, to form tiny pleats and fullness in the cap. Without damaging the fabric of course.

So many arts nearly lost....

There are some men's fashions I wish would come back. The high collar and cravat for instance. :)

Phae

:-)

I've not heard the expression 'broadfall' but in Britain men's breeches from the C17th to much later had a 'fall' as a front cover for their bits. It had a button at both top corners. All men's breeks, from the peasant to monarch, had a fall in the C18th, the only other way of wearing what we call trousers had no opening at all. The fall was a progression from the cod piece. There were no pockets.

Mary

I haven't been able to pin down the difference between "broad fall" and "narrow fall" exactly either, but the ones I've seen that were called "narrow fall" by a museum docent had a fall width of about 6" -- the edges of the front flap were about where you'd expect front darts on modern pants. Broadfalls had flap basically from side seam to side seam.

has some narrowfalls showing some of the inner construction.There are some interesting garments out there on the web... this pair ofpants especially made me glad for modern developments in patternmaking.On the other hand, they'd certainly not have the fitting issues some folks obsess over:

ROTFLOL! Those look *exactly* like the pants worn by the crew on the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) when we took the tour last summer. I was dying to ask our guide (who was in period uniform) if they were comfortable, but did not want to embarrass him.

Beverly

". . . projects are made or broken on the cutting table ? the actual sewing part takes up less than a quarter of the time . . . "

-- J. Gottfred

Joy Beeson

Well, I can't be too slow, as I plan to compete this costume in Columbus in 2 weeks, but I've been working all day on a costume from the SkyNet TV movie of 'Hogfather' by Terry Pratchett.

I'm doing Violet - a Tooth Fairy, and the ruffles are driving me batty! Chiffon ruffles on everything! I'm all poked about with pins and taking a dinner break before wading back in.

Wendy Zski

They're exactly like the (knee-length) breeks Spouse wears when we're in Georgian kit, he finds them extremely comfortable and far less hazardous than a zipped opening ...

Mary

12 Monday 2008

Washday again. There were only two loads, and I'd resolutely sworn not to play Spider, so I should have gotten some work done, but I edited my Web site instead.

Incoming e-mail had introduced me to two links I thought I should add to my "Get Out Of Here" page, and while adding them, I noticed that the page has grown enough to require a table of contents, and after figuring out how to do that in hypertext -- previous page TOCs were plain text -- I realized that the entries really ought to be links. I had done that before, and remembered where I'd done it, so I could just copy, but I learned the hard way that when you want a link to jump to a header, the name tag must go inside the header tags.

FRIDAY

I did get the pocket edges pressed last Friday, but when I got down the box of narrow twill tapes, the one I deemed most suitable for the pockets wasn't marked as having been washed. I thought that I *had* pre-shrunk it, and it appeared to have been re-wound, but without a note written on the bolt, I was afraid to risk using it. So I unreeled the bolt into a saucepan, filled the pan half full of water, brought it to a boil, put the lid on, turned off the fire, let it set for a few hours, then hung the tape over the shower head to drip dry. Boiling is the easiest way to shrink small notions; you don't have to take elaborate precautions against tangling, and you don't have to wait until you have a load of that kind of wash. And it's probably more thorough than machine washing anyway (particularly when you have a "safe" water heater set for incubation temperature).

The downside is that even without soap, boiling is a very efficient cleaning method. Unbleached tape is apt to come out white, and the last time I boiled black tape, I got large amounts of dye out of it. On the other hand, it came out of the bath still black, and it's nice to know that the dye still in it won't budge for any normal laundry methods.

The black tape leached so much dye that a sample skein of wool yarn I dropped in with it also came out dead black. Which was a disappointment, as the water had been a thrilling purple when I dropped the wool in.

SATURDAY

A major family event two hours south of here took the whole day, but I did manage to roll the tape back onto the bolt. And write "boiled May

2008" on it.

SUNDAY AND MONDAY

Pinned hem tape to four watch pockets and four hip pockets. The watch pockets, though smaller, were less fussy: since one end of the hem is to be caught in a seam, I can let the tape stick out a bit at that end. It sticks out a lot on the first one I pinned -- I allowed for turning under the end, which is neither necessary nor desirable on the hem of a patch pocket.

I'll have to do some stitching before pinning the broadfall-pocket hems. I've emptied the Grabbit and there aren't a lot of pins still stuck in the pattern pieces.

But if I don't get it done before DH goes to bed at ten -- it being

9:23 now, and stupid out -- stitching will have to wait until tomorrow. I want to use the treadle for all straight stitching, and the treadle is in the bedroom.

Off to read Usenet.

(Later thought: three pins each in eight pockets is only twenty-four pins. I'd better put "pins" on my shopping list.)

"Grabbit" is a brand of magnetic pin cushion.

Joy Beeson

Written on Friday, 16 May 2008

I left off this narrative at Monday.

Tuesday was lovely, so I went exploring by bike.

I guestimate the distance at twenty-five miles, which is really pushing it for my current condition. (I'm fat, old, lazy, and it had been over a week since I got on the bike at all, let alone rode far enough to justify changing shoes.) In addition, the route was all rolling hills -- such exercise as I've been getting has all been on the flat -- and the winds were five to ten miles an hour. That doesn't seem like much, but if you ride at ten miles an hour into a ten-mile-an-hour wind, you work as hard as you would if you were riding at twenty miles an hour -- and wind resistance scales as the

*fourth* power of relative speed.

So I was surprised to come home neither tired nor sore -- the benefit, I suppose, of all that base I laid down when I was forty and fifty.

Unfortunately, I'd bought a copy of _The Little Lame Prince_ at an antique store in Sydney, and I fooled around reading it until I had no time for my afternoon nap, only a short lie-down before supper. As a consequence, I was too stupid to darn socks at Handwork Circle, so I finished reading _The Cyborg and the Sorcerers_.

Wednesday was the day I taught embroidery to three children who had finished their Pinewood Derby cars early.

Thank goodness one of the children had sewn before, and could thread her own needle! She did a very nice job of satin stitch, but got only three of her six petals finished; she said she had an embroidery frame and "string" at home and could finish on her own, so I gave her one of the cardboard circles to mount it with.

The other girl running-stitched a star, with her father patiently standing by for the last half of it, and helping with the paper on the back. I looped a piece of yellow eighth-inch ribbon through a hole punched with my #8 crochet hook so she could wear her medallion as a necklace. The "sewing" part of the lesson was short-circuited, as I did the gathering stitches myself to save time.

The boy, younger than the other two, selected a square of fabric with no design stamped on it, just the circle to guide the running stitch that stretches the embroidery over the fabric circle. I've got to stamp more of those for next time! I need more stars, too, and more strips divided into squares by partly-drawn threads.

I gave him an air-erasable marker to draw his guidelines, and he sketched a jagged sort of star, with dashes between the points. But this faded too fast to suit him, so he drew another set with red permanent marker. He stitched with blue and green and purple, and I secured his ends -- and one middle he'd left hanging -- and made a medallion, then he pasted a pinker-cut circle he'd written on to the back. I didn't have time to teach proper pasting, so he rubbed a glue stick heavily in the middle of the cardboard and stuck the paper to it. I did make him rub it thoroughly through a piece of waste paper, and he ran off happily with his medallion. (This wasn't the first time he'd run off! But doing something real is so much fun that they come back.)

Needless to say, I didn't feel like sewing when I got back, and my backpack had been in more of a mess than I expected, so I'd spent most of the morning getting it organized to take to the class, but I did find time to get started sewing the hems on the pockets.

Thursday: frittered most of the morning away, but finished up the hems, sewed passport pockets on all the broadfall pockets, and got a start on attaching the watch pockets. Left the first broadfall pocket I'd stitched a watch pocket to under the foot, so that I could stitch off it to start the next one. But even though I also put the back edge under the foot to keep the pocket folded, when I opened the machine this morning, the pocket got caught in the mechanism and collected a black stain. By good luck, it is in a spot that won't show even if it fails to wash out, so I've gotten my lesson very cheaply.

Friday: Got it in my head that I should write up my embroidery lessons for my Web site, and spent most of the morning on it without even getting to the point where I copy in my check list.

But I got a little done before nap time, and after our evening walk, I finished attaching the watch pockets, then folded the broadfall pockets in half and sewed the bottoms. I meant to move over to the Necchi to put a row of zig-zag on each, but after three rows of straight stitch, I decided that that looked plenty secure, and raveled out a few threads to thin the edges and pre-empt fraying in the wash.

Then it was time to baste the pockets to the fronts. Oops! When I was doing all that mad hemming, I forgot the pocket openings on the fronts.

I unfolded the canvas that is going to provide waistbands -- it's convenient to keep the pile of pieces covered to keep the smaller bits from straying, not to mention keeping the cat off -- and studied the front pieces for a bit, then covered them up, closed the sewing machine, and went outside to plant parsley, basil, and arugula, then weed the potatoes and asparagus.

Tomorrow the morning belongs to the farmers' market and the library; I'm not expecting to get much done.

Joy Beeson