she's ready for her spa day

Well, today should be the last of the freakishly hot fall weather. It was in the 80s today but should be only 40s-50s by the weekend. Huzzah! I'm looking forward to it, but be forewarned...I'll be here complaining about the cold soon enough. Bah!

I stitched through the sweat today to produce the second of four garments I've got cut out for Daughter (but didn't get a photo of it yet). The weekend wasn't as productive as I'd hoped due to a combination of heat/humidity, headcold, and general outside work to prep the house and yard for the coming seasons, so I only got one thing sewn up:


Daughter now has a bathrobe! This is a very old Simplicity pattern that I got from Karen, who is so amazingly awesome at finding vintage stuff I swear I am going to make her my personal shopper. (What do you think, Karen? You keep me supplied with amazing sewing/knitting stuff, and I will keep you in handmade socks. Deal?)

I ordered this double-sided minky fabric last month from Fabric.com, and people, I am asking you right now to please, please strike me down if I ever so much as suggest that I will make another garment using this stuff. It is brutal to work with. I am used to nice, smooth wovens and I think I will stick with them in the future. The minky makes a lovely finished garment, but I would be extremely embarrassed if anyone actually overheard all the swears I muttered while working with it. Perhaps if it wasn't double-sided it would have been easier.

Anyway, the collar came out kind of funky - it is supposed to lay flat - and the bulkiness of the minky was very challenging. But overall I am pleased, and Daughter is over the moon. She now has a robe to wear after her "nice, warm tubby" just like Mommy. In fact, it's 80 degrees and she won't take the silly thing off!

I have one tip for working with this stuff. I had to make 3 buttonholes and was stymied by that. How do you mark on double-sided minky?!? Well, I mostly winged it on the sleeve darts, but I needed the buttonholes to be correct. So I drew them correctly spaced on some tissue stabilizer stuff I have (no label so I don't know exactly what it is), then pinned the stabilizer to the robe placket. I was able to stitch the buttonholes through the tissue and then tear it away and voila! Perfect buttonholes. I repeated that with the 3 buttons and stitched them down by machine too. That was the easiest part of the project by far!

So that's done, and there's a dress to show when I get around to taking a photo of it. Actually, it's in the "needs hand-finishing" pile awaiting a hook & eye closure and it needs the facings tacked down, so hopefully I'll get to that soon. Then it's on to the wool dress coat with velvet ribbon trim...ooh la la! Can't wait!