The frock coat is ALMOST done. The lining is finally in and sewed down. So all that's left (and that I hope to finish later tonight) is all the decorative crap and buttons. Then I promise lots and lots of pics.

Well I started actually putting pieces of the frock coat together today. I really think it'll need a lining, but it's turning out pretty good.
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My pack rat tendencies are showing themselves. Every time I step into Joann Fabrics to pick up ONE thing, I come out with an armful. Alright so what if I use the excuse that they're closing the store to open a new "super store" in a couple months so everything is like 40-50% off? That rectify it somewhat?

Anyway, I've been eying this brocade fabric since I think the first time I went in there to start these projects. 40% off... eh why not?

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And so... after I couldn't get a good creative thought to come out of me to save my life in writing today, I decided to go work on sewing.

After spreading out all my patterns and wondering what I wanted to do, I decided to put in a bit of ambition. I'm going with a full outfit pattern.
http://simplicity.com/dv1_v4.cfm?design=4923

I'll use that blue fabric I found over Christmas and make the entire pattern. Pirate coat, vest, pants and shirt. The coat and pants will match, the vest will be the blue with poinsettias. (See my first sewing post for what it looks like.)

Since the pattern calls for Velveteen for the coat and I'm using a fuzzy polyester instead, I'm going to have to do a liner. Which isn't a big deal, but hopefully it'll give it that extra fullness.

Oh, and I realized I am actually LEARNING. *laugh* Cutting out the pattern, as I cut out pieces, I'd go "Oh! I know what this piece is and how to make it!" Which is always nice. Though this coat is going to be very interesting to make. Hopefully I don't mess it up too badly haha.

Well, other than buttons, I now have a vest mostly done. The front is that black brocade and it's lined. I'm not quite sure what happened... but it's got a "puffy" effect. *laughs* I tried ironing it and it helped a little, but oh well. It at least looks vest-like! I may try and do this again some other time, I've got enough of the brocade to do it.

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I'm going to strangle Adam. It's only my second shirt and I'm having to do custom designs already. He's such a brat. Anyway, got to the sleeves and had to make him test fit like 15 times to make sure it was lacking sufficient "poof" as well as length.

Basically, I had to cut 3" off the width of the sleeves and 3.5" off the length to remove the poof but still give them some fullness that he was satisfied with.

It still needs buttons (I'm dreading putting 6 buttons on this thing.) But we don't have any he likes, so that comes some other day.

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Well, so far, the start of my second project is going well, and being a pain at the same time. Let's just say I've been doing a ton of having to restitch things several times but progress is good.

Adam wanted a plain black cotton shirt with "less poof". *rolls eyes* Anyway, so out of the patterns I had, I've decided to try this one. http://www.mccallpattern.com/item/M4092.htm
for a couple of reasons. The second being that I plan to use the vest pattern off of it as well for my vest. *grin*

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It's DONE! Well okay, not 100% done, but 99.5% done. All that's left is to put cording through the eyelits, then it's done.

I've learned that I can't make buttonholes for crap. But, the shirt is now done. In making the cuffs on the sleeves, I realized part of what I did wrong on the collar, but well, it's good enough as is for my very first try. I decided that the image for the collar of "clip the corners" was actually supposed to be a diagonal cut like on the cuffs and not 2 triangle snips. *shrug*

( So... here's the shirt! )

It's mostly shirt-like!!! I'll claim I'm pretty darn proud of how the sleeves came out. And I figured them out without asking Elle about it! Woo!

( Look! It's a shirt! )

With such little progress between a few days of working on it, I'm just summing up the days together. I made some decent progress today, but I have this feeling I screwed up somehow.

I had gotten stuck on Step 9. Asked Elle and she swears a step was missed. Once I sat down and figured out what the pictures were actually showing me, and realizing it was not to scale by any means, I figured out what I was doing was right. The collar still looks REALLY thick compared to the pictures on the pattern cover, but it'll work, I guess.

The part I haven't figured out yet... is why it told me to clip the corners because now I have these ugly cutouts in my collar.

( Anyway, here's the pictures )

Famous last words? 2 hours later I mostly completed... step 1. :P Or at least to the point Elle would give me the English translation for. (Who would have known I needed a secret decoder ring to understand patterns?)

I promise, the cut line is straighter than it looks in the pictures. I don't cut straight lines, even with the help of rulers, but it's not THAT crooked.



Still trying to figure out how the "inside" of the little square piece will end up eventually on the "inside" of the shirt. But I think I'm going to have to buy Elle a bat to hit me with if I keep asking her how the hell I get it there. *smile*

Alright, maybe this is just me but when the very first step in the sewing instructions make no sense... I'm in trouble. The patterns are now all cut out and I have large swaths of material laying all over. So far so good? Well... until I got to the "Sewing Directions" for the pattern. Then it all fell apart.
( I'm an engineer, this should be easier! )
Elle... I'm thinking 10 months is hopeless to have any real clue about any of this. *groan*

Well I learned a couple amusing things today.

1) I now know why hubby and I are never really satisfied with store-bought clothing.
2) Ironed patterns get staticy and stick well to long haired cats.

OK so went out tonight... got a new iron, ironing board (my previous ones were like 30 years old, figured it was time for a new one), a scissor set, a rolling cutter, a self healing board and a few other misc things.

Got home and started measuring hubby and I. Well, in pulling out pattern pieces, we're anywhere from a XS to an XL for various pieces. *laughs* Hubby got tired of me holding pattern pieces up against him to measure. But... I think I have it now. The front and back pieces are medium (amusingly, hubby and I both have a 40" chest ROFL). Arms are large, cuffs are extra small (hubby has petite wrists it seems), collar is a large, and for the front facing we agreed to go with the "female" piece in an extra large (which was shorter than the guy's extra small and we figured would work better.)

So I get everything sorted and start ironing the pieces. I can tell there's static but think I'm OK. Well... one of the small pieces fell off the table. Fudge decided to come smell of it... piece stuck to cat. Cat ran around trying to get it off, finally somehow managed. I ran over and grabbed it before he got curious again.

So now... pieces are ironed and all ready to go. Tomorrow I'll get the material ironed out and do a quick pattern pinning. I need to trace the front and back pieces out at the specific size to see about a pinning against hubby to see how it all fits before I really start laying the pieces.

I know this will go faster once I figure out how things fit us and how the patterns work. Until then, I'm just working on it a couple hours a night. The cats are having a grand old time trying to figure out what the heck I'm doing.

OK parents are now gone, dining room table is mine. After pulling my very first pattern out of the envelope I realized a few things rather quickly.

1) I need a new pair of scissors.
2) Hubby speaks Greek and has no sense of space.
3) I need to put at least one leaf in the dining room table for enough space.
4) I need one of those cool fold-able cardboard cutting surfaces.

If there's more I need, I haven't gotten there yet. *chuckles*

Well I pulled the pattern out and started spreading it out, trying to get a general sense of things. I figured out, table (while big enough for at least 6 people) is not big enough for sewing purposes. (At least for a newbie like me.) So I moved to the floor where the cats quickly figured out "Hey look! Paper to sit on!" So I had to shoo two cats off before they damaged it and yell "Hey!" every now and again as they started stalking it. With it all splayed out before me I had no idea how I was going to find enough room. Looking through the books Elle suggested, I noticed that most pictures had rough cut-outs of the patterns.

OK in trying to not mess up as much as possible... I went up to hubby and said, "What do you think I should do?" (Note: Hubby has never sewn in his life as well.) Well he comes up with a great idea... once I figured out what he was talking about and when I realized I could manage a smaller scale then he was thinking.

His idea was to not cut ANYTHING out. We'd go tomorrow or Wednesday to pick up a large sheet of tracing paper. I would then mark EVERY piece onto the tracing paper and cut the tracing paper out. Good idea... but then I have to write down what each piece was and it made me go cross-eyed just thinking about it. So I compromised. I did a rough cut out of each pattern piece, larger than the largest size. Then when we get the tracing paper I can make copies of each piece. His thought it "Yeah but what if you screw up cutting out rough copies of each piece?" (He's so trusting, isn't he? :P )

It was in cutting out the rough pieces that I realized, I need new scissors. I thought they'd work, but after hacking through the thin paper and not trusting my scissors to cut even Christmas wrapping paper... I decided I didn't want them used to cut nice materials. So new scissors are next on the list.

The material is washing and "shrinking" as we speak. So tomorrow, I may go out and get a cutting board, scissors, a roll of tracing paper and put another leaf in the table to have enough room. Half of this is trying to picture back to 18 years ago when I used to sit and watch my grandmother sew clothes for me and thinking "I remember this is how she did it."

So... it has begun. *gulp!*

Elle... this is all your fault. You wanted a sewing journal, I'll see what I can remember to do.

Anyway, day 1, sorta. The patterns are all still happily enclosed in their packages, but I found some material I just had to have.

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