Pocket Equality for Women!!!

 Checking my hubby's  jeans pockets; I have to reach in past my wrist:

Checking my jeans pockets; not even to my knuckles:

Granted, those are the worst of the lot for teeny pockets, but none of my jeans are much better. Crazy.

Trying a Little Hat Making

 So, the next thing to make for the 2022 Start with a Scarf wardrobe is a hat.  I have the fabric; didn't have a hat pattern.  I pondered it a bit and decided I wanted a baker boy cap...think Barbara Streisand in the opening scenes of 'What's Up Doc?'...and hunted around online to see what I could find.

I found this you tube video on drafting your own cap:

Baker Boy Cap

It didn't look TOO hard, so I gave it a try.

1) All the given measurements are in metric.  Which is ok, in and of itself, but I only have one ruler that has centimeters on it...and half of the markings are half rubbed off.

2) She's not always really clear on landmarks...ie, which end of a line to measure from.  I watched the bit about drafting the brim pattern, which starts with a 10.7 cm x 10 cm rectangle...several times, pausing it over and over, and started over about three times.

3) The pattern for the band ended up being an inch smaller than my head measurement (no attempt is made to explain how to fit the hat to a different size), so I made the band longer and adjusted the width at the bottom seam of the hat pieces.

I made a 'practice' hat out of Brussel's Washer Linen ...a remnant from pants I'd made a year or two ago...just to make sure I was close on what I'd done.  Self-lined it, and used French Fuse on the shell, both band pieces, and both brim pieces.  I also cut a brim piece, minus seam allowances, from a plastic folder, to make sure the brim was stiff enough.

I held the plastic piece up to my forehead, and found that the inner curve didn't match the curve of my head at all...if I pushed the ends in, then it either flipped straight up or straight down.  I whacked around on it trying to get it to work so much that I had to scrap it and cut a new one....and for that one, I got a ball cap that fits fairly well and traced the inner curve of it.  It still didn't quite fit but I found that when I put the ball cap on I could put my thumbs under the band at the corners of the brim so ...maybe it wasn't as big a deal as I thought.  Moving on.

It was pretty straight forward sewing;  I found that if I started the curved seams in the middle and stitched them out to the top and bottom ends I got along much better.  Sewing 'with the grain'...in this case, wide to to tight, kept the bias seamlines from distorting.

I sewed the brim to the band/ band facing, stitched the band to the hat and then hand sewed the facing down.  Added the little stuffed ball on top and...I have a hat.

I'm still not quite happy with the way the brim lays...it is pretty low, rather than out straight.  The inner curve still is wider than my forehead.  Maybe I didn't have that 10.7 x 10 cm rectangle oriented right when I drafted it?  And I think the curve in the crown is a little too pronounced.  I did not do the topstitching mentioned in the video; my thread didn't match well enough, lol.

But it's not at all bad for a first go and I won't feel awkward wearing it.  I'll add my tweaks and I'll watch that bit on drafting the brim a couple of more times. Not sure if I will make the final cap or if I'll try another practice one.

We'll see how brave I feel at the time.

2022 Christmas production

A small smattering of pics from the weekend.  The cast picture is from after the 'curtain call rehearsal'...and we're mostly in the bible robes from the nativity finale.  The folks who weren't in the finale are in their...whatever scene they were in costumes, so it is a little anachronistic, lol.  I was ONLY in the finale, because we were short on tenors and I could fill in.    Our Time-traveling Scrooge character was really pleased with his costume; he wanted to keep the cape, lol.  The fabric damage didn't really show up under the lights so all was good.

Now all we have to do is clean and sort and store the costumes for next time.  Rumor has it we will be doing a fairly big Easter production so I kinda think I'm going to have to start sewing Bible costumes.  We just BARELY squeaked out enough for this go.

But first, Christmas.  And sleep, lol.

 

Done for the moment, lol

 

So, this is the finished 2nd skirt...the one that I took wedges out of to reduce the fabric at the waistline by 40".  It was still a pain to gather, but at least it was somewhat do-able.  I ended up making mongo darts in the back, too, so that it was even all around.

The third skirt was made out of another piece of fabric; when I ordered it, I thought it was just two slightly different weave patterns on the same type of fabric, but the 2nd piece was MUCH lighter and I was able to gather the whole 180" to the waistband.  It helped that  the 3rd skirt was for a larger lady, and the waistband was about 5" longer. but the fabric was so much more cooperative.

So that was 3 adult skirts.  I packed up and headed to church as soon as I finished the girl's skirt around 12:30 this afternoon, and I didn't take time to get pictures.  It went together much easier; I was gathering christmas-print quilting cotton; the only problem was my own bone-headed boo-boo.  I put the skirt on and did a quick look at the gathers; they all looked straight and even so I cut all the gathering threads off and sat down to put the elastic in the casing.

And promptly realized that I'd put the wasitband on inside-out, with the opening for the elastic/drawstring on the OUTSIDE instead of the INSIDE.  And I had cut off the extra gathering thread.

I put the seam allowance down and zigzaged all the gathers down, then very carefully removed the seam and gingerly flipped the waistband around and pinned it back down.  

It worked. Whew.

1st dress rehearsal...the basic costume check...is tomorrow.  I already know I'm going to have to make another skirt but we didn't have measurements for the young lady so I'll grab those tomorrow. She's very short so, as not to overwhelm her, I'm only going to use 2 panels on the skirt instead of 3, so it will be easier to gather.  

Hopefully I can get it well started tomorrow night after rehearsal.  This is tech week...not going to have much sewing time.

In other news, the dye job on the subtle Christmas sweater came out well; that's a color I can wear without folks asking me if I'm ok, lol.  BUT there is a bit of seaming on the sweater, particularly on the neckband and...it was sewn with cream polyester thread.   So it didn't take any dye and it shows a bit in a couple of spots.  

Ah, well, it's in the back, lol.

SO...On to Tech Week!  Opening night is Friday...