Saturday Girls

Every other Saturday is Lesson Day around here. I have 6 girls from age 10-17. I start at 9 am and I finish up at 6. Lesson days are so much fun! I get to hear all about the trials and tribulations of the 5th grade (so cute!) and high school (nope. don't miss it. ) The girls are all so sweet and really devoted to learning all about sewing .

Wanna meet them?

Kayla started with me in November, She had done a bit of sewing with her grandmother but as her grandmother is in a different state, it was hard to keep it up. Kayla is very interested in making just about everything she sees. Each week when I show what I have been working on, I know she is going to say " I wanna make that!" Kayla has finished our first project together- a stuffed heart wall hanging that incorporated some different stitches on the front, her initials and a small topstitched heart at the bottom. Kayla really was careful stitching around the curves of the heart. Great job Kalya!

Next is Rachael. Rach has been taking lessons with me for about a year and has graduated up to patterns! Woohoo! Here she is cutting out her tissue pattern for her Pajama pants. Everyone starts out with the pattern as their first one. It doesn't matter to me if you are 10, 30 or 87- when we move onto patterns you make this one. Why? It has two pattern pieces and is easy to alter.
In the background of this photo you can see some of my recent projects hanging up. There are itty bitty dresses I made for my new baby niece to be Molly ( Steff! If you see this picture before the shower DON'T LOOK!! ) There is also the skirt I made from the Sew Serendipity book. Also the muslin and version one of a jacket from the same book. The jacket still needs buttonholes but I haven't done them yet because I got mad at the jacket. ( Long story. I will tell that one some other time. )

Then we have Nina. Nina is also making the pajama pants. She is cutting out the muslin from her pattern pieces here.

When we make a muslin, sometimes it is hard to tell what side is what . So we write on the fabric with fabric pen. I thought it was cute Nina signed her name underneath the note to ourselves. And put a little smiley face.

This is Haley- world meet Haley, Haley meet world. Haley is so funny we have blast at lessons. Here she is modeling her First Skirt. It is hard to see in the picture but the fabric was actually a really soft white and purple check. She did a really nice job. Currently we are working on a tote bag. We cut the pieces last week and will be assembling next lesson day.

Tori began lesson with me in December. She doesn't say too much but I can see the gears turning in her brain each lesson. She is like a sponge just soaking up all the info. She is working on an envelope pillow here with buttonholes. She got an awesome new machine a few weeks ago and buttons are a breeze. Hooray for the automatic buttonhole setting on sewing machines!

Oh and see my pretty pretty chairs in the background? They go with my pretty pretty new table.

And last we have DAISY!!!! Daisy had to drop out for a little while as school commitments we taking up all of her time. But she is back and we are working on a pair of pajama pants. Daisy has been accepted to a fashion design program for college next year. I forget where... I think it she said Mary Mount up near DC. I think. I will check. Her family is also moving this summer so we are now in cram mode! We have to get as much knowledge into her as we can before she goes. So after this we are going to do as many items from patterns as we can fit in :)!! Here she is cutting out her muslin from the altered pattern.
And that's it- those are my Saturday Girls!

You might say- there are two blog posts in two days! How is she doing this? What lit the fire under her? Well, I am stuck at home with strep and had to cancel lessons. I am also procrastinating finishing up a huge window proposal for a client so I am blogging :) :) :) I have to get out the calculator , use all available brain cells and put all of my crazy notes and samples into some sort of coherent professional looking presentation.

I have also done all of my emailing to clients and students. I checked both bank accounts. Read the news (Hooray Egypt!) . Read MSN gossip ( Charlie Sheen can drop off the planet- I am so sick of reading about him!) . Checked facebook. Looked at slide shows from fashion week. (Really people? Some of those runway fashions looked very badly constructed. ) I read some sewing blogs. I converted a step-by-step off of Sew Mama Sew into Word so I can print it out and work on it down in the sewing room. It will be a cute top for Eden for this summer.

I have run out of things to waste time with so I guess I have to do this proposal ! :)

which of these things is not like the other?

Leticia has started commercial patterns and for our first pattern we made PJ pants. I use this pattern for the first commercial pattern my students tackle as it only has two pattern pieces. The alterations are also fairly easy .

We altered the pattern a little bit and made a muslin. She wore that around her house once or twice to get an idea of how else she wanted to change it. We then altered the pattern again tp suit her and made another muslin. This time it was perfect so she then made the pants out of a fabric she chose.

I love this fabric. I love the happy dancing skeletons and all the wonderful flowers.

Here they are on my beautiful , lovely sewing table.



I also love that we added pockets to the pants, which do not come with the pattern. We just drew ourselves a little pattern piece right there as we were going along.

For our next pattern project, Leticia got to go pick out her own pattern. As she is a part time nurse in school she wanted to make her own scrub tops

She chose this one. Over all the pattern is pretty good so far. We are about halfway through the muslin. This pattern has a lot more pieces to it- front back, 2 pocket pieces and a neck piece. The pattern instructions could have a whole lot more clarity in them but I just write in pencil all over the pattern as we go along. When she makes this on her own I will have filled in those gaps for her :)
Now here is where we had a bit of a giggle. Look at the pattern front at drawing of the gal wearing the scrub top. She has super long barbie legs. This gal does not eat breakfast, has birthed no babies and never eats dessert.
Now when we open up this pattern, look at what we see on the inside! Do they look like the gal on the cover?

No! They do not! They look very different from the gal on the cover!

You can see on the far right one, I drew in what Leticia and I kinda look like. (Less belly for both of us and in my case, less behind.)

Really what happened here is that the pattern is offered in two multi sized packets- XS- Xl and XXL-6X. As the sewing instructions are the same for all sizes, both packets just have one set of instructions. This is a how to alter the armseye for different sized arms. These drawings are really for the larger sizes. But even the larger sized packet features miss-never-eats-a-muffin: same drawing that is on the cover of the small sizes.

We just thought it was funny how differently the pattern was portrayed outside and then inside.

I guess if they had the other larger size gals drawings on the cover, then no one would buy the pattern. We all try to buy clothing that we think might flatter us in some way. But no pattern is this world is gonna make a gal go from what is drawn on the inside of the pattern to what is on the outside. When they do, put me down for 2!