Tropical Earrings Inspired these Pants and Sandals Part 1

Part 1 of the Pineapple Express  Pants

It all started a few years back when Miss Melysse, my  beautiful, daughter asked what I wanted for Christmas.

 “ Mom, what  would you like for Christmas?” she asked.

 “ Tropical earrings.”  said I.

 “ Like  what, big bananas, crystal palm trees, shells, what?”

 “Bright citrusy colors, not too big, but not too small. Beach colors.”

 Melissa, always surprises and delights me with her gift choices.

 And that year she did not disappoint.

 Here are the lovely peach and water green earrings she gave me. I love them. And I wear them often. 

But I always had an idea that I wanted a special garment that would go with those earrings and  really pop as a tropical accessory. And then  Pattern Review had a two-week challenge contest. The brief: show a garment made  to go with an accessory that  inspired you.

Enter my “Pineapple Express” fabric.  A lovely tangerine linen embroidered with little pineapples. I love the color, I love the embroidery, and they screamed  “ I will go with your peach and green drop earrings.” I could hear the screams across the store. I immediately bought 5 meters.  When I got home I loved the fabric so much, I went back and bought three more meters. I could see pants, shorts, a blouse and a dress all out of that soft, yummy, sherbet-colored linen.

I live in a resort town, La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico, and summers here are HOT.  Cool, light fabrics in icy colors appeal to me.

 Isn’t it wonderful? It is not as pink as it shows up here. I dreamt about this fabric. I dreamt about me wearing clothes made from this fabric and wearing my deliciously fruity tropical earrings.

 I planned to have many pieces sewn from this delight long before today, but I broke my ankle in January and could not sew for two months.

 During our annual mega-shopping trip in Dallas at Christmas, my Beloved and I visited Designer Shoe Warehouse. This is a dangerous place for us both.  We gear up for this visit, split up at the door, and don’t come out until we have stuffed our beach feet into every and any shoe we think will work  at home. The smell of new leather, the rows and rows of  designer shoes at  closeout prices, and my daughter’s points card all combine to intoxicate us and seduce us into buying far more  than we need.

 “ Oh Melissa, come here, look at these  sandals!”  
 “Wow, Mom, they  go perfectly with your  drop earrings, you have to buy them!”

 I thought the same thing.  I had already filled two shoe bags with sandals of many colors, but these had to come home with me.

 And I knew my Beloved lost in the hinterland of men’s shoes would be swooning with his own finds and would not say a word about  my SEVEN new pairs of  sandals.

 So here are the sandals.

Aren’t they perfect? Don’t they look good on my feet? And don’t they go perfectly with the earrings?

 And look how lovely the earrings and the sandals look with my linen Pineapple Express pants.

 The pants are made from my Sure- Fit Designs (SFD) body blueprint pattern. The style is the elastic waistband pants, also known as Hollywood pants. This pattern is in the SFD book, Pants  that Mix ‘n’ Multiply written by SFD president, Glenda Sparling.

The pattern was easy to draft based on my body blueprint. I found (what a surprise) that if I slow down and  R-E-A-D Glenda’s hints and notes, I will have a successful sewing experience. Sometimes in my haste and with my hubris of being an advanced sewist, I totally flub up. And that is what I did with the first iteration of these pants. I  watched  Glenda's  wonderful videos on  her  educational website, SFD  Learnng Center

 Glenda is a patient and supportive person. She has helped me achieve a very good fit  and gently reminds me to R-E-A-D her books! Each kit comes with a workbook and DVD that walk you through the process.  Accurate measuring is the key. And after the disaster at the start of the Pineapple pants, I realized I had measured the front crotch incorrectly. When I corrected it, the fit improved. I would have wadded these pants, but I am attending  Glenda’s  sewing retreat in July and she asked me to bring the pineapple pants so she could see  what I may have done wrong.  I have re-worked these pants so I am not ashamed to let Glenda look at them closely. Nothing like THAT kind of pressure to improve one’s sewing skills!

 I asked a friend ( bribed her with chocolate and a dip in the pool) to  come over and measure me. It didn’t go so well. She was tired and a little grumpy. Maybe I didn’t give her enough chocolate.

 I watched a Craftsy video on easy zipper application, and I am happy to say that   I inserted a perfect slot  zipper. Zippers have been my nemesis.  I love fly zippers, but lapped and slot zippers drive me wild.

 Here I am at the Malecon beach in downtown La Paz,  

and  at home near my pool. I had been in these pants since 8:00 a.m. so they look a touch rumpled, they are linen ya know.

 Here is a photo of our darling Chihuahua Coco-Nut Ibrahim Garcia he is a rescue dog. He rules the roost and we like it that way.

Tomorrow’s post will show my construction trials, travails and successes.

My First Sewing Memory: The Black Singer Makes it's UnWelcome Entrance

My First Sewing Memory: The Singer Sewing Machine Makes Its Unwelcome Entrance

It must have been 1957 or 1958. My father bought a brand-new Singer sewing machine for my mother. My mother never asked for one. The idea of sewing or owning a sewing machine never entered my mother's head. There was an antique Singer sewing machine complete with working treadle in the cellar, that no one used. This new one was my father's folly. A door-to-door Singer sewing machine salesman had come calling. A few months earlier it had been the door-to-door encyclopedia salesman.

He showed my father all of the wonderful things this newest of the Singer sewing machines in the line could do. It had attachments to make beautiful buttonholes. Round buttonholes, keyhole buttonholes and the standard rectangular buttonholes. It had a zig-zag attachment that allowed the machine to make simple,embroidered designs. It had gadgets to make ruffles, and blind hems and of course a zipper foot.

The Beautiful Black Singer 301

This machine was beautiful, it was shiny black with gold lettering and the Singer logo in gold. It had a carrying case that looked like a piece of luggage, tan with brown leather trim and and cream top stitching.The buttonholer and zig-zag attachment came in their separate, burgundy, plastic cases and there were felt-lined spaces for each of the cams that went into the attachments. It was like handling fine jewels to remove these attachments from their cases. And the smaller attachments came in a forest green box adorned with the Singer logo.

It was fast, powerful and quiet. I was mesmerized. My mother, not so much.

In fact I have a mental picture of her standing with her arms crossed and scowling...if it were possible smoke would have been streaming from her ears.

My father was showing off a little, sample dress he had made for my Ginnie doll with embroidered designs and little round buttonholes. He was telling assembled aunts and uncles that once she learned to use the machine, my mother would be making all of our clothing, and would re-upholster the furniture. He justified the expense by telling everyone how much money my mother would save by doing all of this sewing.

My mother was a baker, she loved to bake and made many wonderful treats from scratch. We would come home from school to a kitchen fragrant with the smells of fresh baked date-nut loaf.

Sewing was not for her, never! She refused to ever even try it. 

But that machine got used for decades. All three of us sisters learned to sew on it. We shared it. I don't remember fighting over sewing time, even though we fought about almost everything else.

Mini-skirts and Nehru jackets, bell-bottoms and bikinis all came to life with that old Singer sewing machine. My brother's girlfriend even came to the house to use the machine.

In 1968 I sewed my entire portfolio for my acceptance to the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York on that old black Singer. I left it behind when I went off to college. In it's place I had a basic Singer Touch and Sew. It did not do nearly what the old Singer sewing machine did.

Years later, I used the old Singer sewing machine to make all kinds of crafts for a craft store I owned in a ski town in Colorado. In fact I used that machine well into the 1980s. Over the years, from time to time, my mother would ask about the old Singer.

"Don't ever sell it or give it away," she said. "It was a nice machine it would be a shame to let it go."

This from a woman, who on that day back in the 1950s would have bludgeoned my father with it, or at the very least baked it into a pound cake for him to bite into.

It was a workhorse. And I am sure somewhere, someone is using it right now. I never told either of my parents that in the 1990's I sold it, and bought a machine that was not a Singer.

And now in 2013, I have decided that  my mother was right. I should never have sold he Old, Black, Singer. Nothing makes  buttonholes as reliably as the singer with it's buttonhole attachment and templates.

 So I went to eBay and bought... wait for my next  blog post to see what I did.

Woman Shamefully Neglects and Abuses Important Sewing Tool for 13 Years!

Do you remember that wonderful,quirky PBS series connections? You know the one where a fly  bites a donkey's bum and the abacus gets invented?

We ll here's my connection:

 After my Christmas visit to Dallas, I came home with all of the sewing supplies I needed.

 I cleaned and organized my sewing room: and here is the proof:

 I shopped in Dallas with an organized plan. I purchased  lovely fabrics that all work together and these were going to  be my entry in the  Artisan’s Square Sewing With A Plan contest (SWAP). My darling Miss Meliss gave me a gift card at Hancock’s.

There are not a lot of fabric store choices in Dallas and I cannot shop in Hobby Lobby, they are anti-choice and against Marriage Equality, they don’t get my money.

 I had  ordered notions and thread online and shipped them to Miss Meliss.

 I  filled in  with fabrics and notions at Jo-Ann's and came home  ready to sew up a storm, and enter the SWAP contest and many contests at Pattern Review.

Here’s the connection: on January 5th we went to our usual Saturday breakfast with Patricia and Gordon at Maria California. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and a little crisp for us.

Coco-Nut Ibrahim Garcia

We decided to take Coco-Nut Ibrahim Garcia for a walk on the Malecon. Then I was going to go home and sew.

 We were walking and talking, and I was snapping  pictures of the sun on the water, and the  shells on the beach to send home to my snowbound friends. Suddenly my foot rolled and I fell and could hear my bone crack. The pain was excruciating and came in waves followed by nausea and numbness.

Alas, this is not a story about my broken ankle, it is about my long –misused, and abused sewing tool.

 So after the cast was put on, I was unable to stand to cut fabric, or put pressure   to use the foot pedal on the machine. The cast was heavy, I was in pain, uncomfortable and depressed.

  While we were waiting  for a friend to get us a borrowed wheelchair, my Beloved was using my sewing room chair to roll me around.

 But it was not rolling easily and it should have been smooth and fast. After all we have tile floors.

 Mary my mechanical genius and shell-artist friend came over. I asked her to turn the chair over and see if the wheels were somehow locked.

 “ No wonder!” She exclaimed ”The wheels are impacted, they need a hair cut.”

 She flipped over the chair and this is what I saw:

 All five wheels looked like this!

I started pulling stuff out  it was wound tight before I started

 So  I decided to clean out the five wheels. Armed with  scissors, tweezers, a seam ripper and a box cutter I went to town. With my  injured leg propped up on the sewing machine case, my Ott light aimed at the chair I  went in.

It was like an archeological dig. I pulled out a 1 x 3 inch scrap. And exclaimed: “ Ah this is my  robe, the one I have to replace, I made that 11 years ago!” It was incredible what I found.

                                                       Look, there is a safety pin wrapped around the wheel!

 

   I developed many techniques, there was the “Crocodile Technique” where I grabbed a bunch of thread and rolled and rolled it around the tweezers, much like the death roll when a crocodile grabs  it’s prey.

 Then there was the "Dental Probe", where I  went in deep in the cracks of the wheel and gently pulled out yards and yards of thread.

 There was metallic thread, serged thread tails, yarn and all kinds of scraps.

 I worked at this project for five days. On the maid’s day, I could not hear her working, I was rolling around looking for her, and found her raptly working on a wheel tweezers and box cutter in hand.

 It was addicting to us both. I scooted her away and said I was my project to fill all of the hours I would have been sewing.

 “ And, I said (in Spanish) don’t throw away these piles of thread, I am  going to take pictures and write a blog post!” 

 My leg swelled and throbbed in the cast, my neck aced, my fingertips were numb, but I persevered.Each one of these piles is form ONE WHEEL

  My leg swelled and throbbed in the cast, my neck aced, my fingertips were numb, but I persevered.

And now my  lovely chair rolls again!

all clean and ready to go!

And here's a little something from La Paz:

My End of the World Purple Metallic Pants

Here I am in the Lobby of the Costa Baja Resort Hotel

We have a group of three couples  we call the “French Connection” because two of our friends are French, each married to one of our Mexican friends. We usually have dinner at each other’s house and enjoy a dinner, some vino ( French of course) and  lots of laughter. Our ages range from 36-77, and we don’t feel the  age differences at all. In November we decided to go to Steinbeck’s restaurant in the Costa Baja Resort Hotel. Here in La Paz on the shores of the Gulf of California ( a/k/a Sea of Cortez) two great men have  made an impact, Jacques Cousteau, and John Steinbeck. They are considered local sons.

 Well  we had a wonderful time at dinner. The chef prepared a tasting and wine pairing menu. We were a touch tipsy, and all decided that since the world was definitely  (or maybe not) ending  in December, we should fore-go Christmas gifts and come back for a dinner, stay in the hotel and have breakfast at the other  restaurant, Mosaic.

 So I wanted to have a smashing outfit for this  important occasion.

I drafted my first  Sure-Fit Designs basic patterns, then using  Glenda Spurling’s book, Pants That Mix and Multiply, I made the  faced waistband pants. The fabric is a Purple, metallic, stretch, denim. The only stretch fabric I ever buy is knit fabric.

 But this gorgeous  fabric jumped off the table and into my arms.

 I had to have it.

Since the fabric was so subdued I decided to  kick it up by  adding an exposed zipper to the back. I top-stitched the zipper in Purple, metallic thread.

Exposed zipper top-stitched with metallic thread

 I made three muslins and sent  photos to Glenda. She was patient, and encouraging. I was ready to quit. I was disheartened about how ugly my body looked.

 But my third  “muslin” made from some royal blue  bottom weight cotton poplin, turned out very nicely. So nicely that when I return form my Christmas trip to Dallas I plan to  insert a matching zipper, I used a pink one that was in my stash. And  I will finish them.

My third muslin

  I will remove the waistband and  do the faced waist.  I bought 8 meters of this fabric. I am thinking of making the asymmetrical blouse from one of Glenda’s  books, Sew Sensational Shirts but I will reduce the flounce or remove it. And I will either use a contrast on the  flounce or embroider it.

 Back to the purple metallic, stretch denim pants.

 I don’t usually parade my petite derriere on the internet, but in the interests of science, I am showing you the superb fit I obtained.

 We had a lovely dinner, and  thankfully we were staying at the hotel that night. It seems like the wine and the dessert Tequila  was especially strong. After a three-hour dinner, I stood up and almost lost my Purple pants, they had stretched so much!

 In this photo I am  pinching the fabric tightly to hide the bags from the stretch.

  About the fit:

 Glenda advised me to make concave darts to  allow space for my curves.

  And to also widen the darts after the first fitting.

 My waist is considerably smaller than my hips, and I like to accentuate it.

 So I did widen the darts to over an inch to accommodate my curves.

 I also tapered both the inseam and side seams  3/8” because of the  stretchability of the fabric.

 My measuring assistants were my maid and my Beloved. Somehow I made the pants the perfect length, BEFORE hemming so I made a false hem using Purple bias tape.

 I top stitched the tape in place using a decorative stitch and Purple thread. As it turns out,
 The fabric was so stiff and stretchy, this is probably the best hem finish.

 I am very happy with these pants.
Here I am on the balcony of our room in the morning,:

 The top is Vogue 8323. I uses the faux wrap top view and added long sleeves.

 The fabric is a stretch faux panther print. I thought it was velvet, but on closer examination it is  some other artificial fiber.

 Over all it is a wonderful outfit for the holidays. I will have to wet the pants and dry them to  get the  fabric to tighten up.

 I am completely sold on Sure-Fit Designs(SFD), and I am looking forward to returning home and sewing for the SWAP contest on Artisan’s Square, and entering Pattern Review contests, using my SFD patterns.

Glenda’s online videos, and the DVDs  that accompany the kits are wonderful. She is accessible and helpful.

 Merry Christmas, Happy  Chanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa and I hope to see you soon on line.
 My favorite Christmas ornament, an Italian glass figure skater, back in the Old Country I loved to ice skate!