Welcome to Tornado Season !

Current Mood : Satisfied and de-wired. 

Finally, the last tornado warning has expired ! We had some sightings and other areas in the state were damaged by a documented one, but it’s over, for now at least. We luckily didn’t lose power, or even wireless internet, and I hope it’s that way for everyone today.

I’m continuing the ‘craft your way out of the slumps’ project / experiment, even though I can’t really spare the time most days for really involved projects. You know, the stuff I really wanna do ! So I’ve been poking around my patterns, looking for something I want to make, that won’t take long. Should get bored of MH sewing about mid-week. Or next month, honestly I’m amazed I haven’t gotten bored of it already !

I saw this one pattern for Barbie that I snagged off Pinterest – as is usual with those, there’s no directions, no image of the finished item, and there’s no telling if you have the whole thing or not. But, hey, they’re free ! I probably have dozens. The one I was looking at today was for a collarless tuxedo jacket – interesting. I liked the curved edges, so I’d snagged it with the intent of sewing it for MH, ‘cause I loved Sweet 1600 Clawdeen’s tux-inspired outfit. Why not today ?

First off, I cleaned it up, arranged it so it fit on a single sheet of regular copy paper, and ran a printout. Looked to be about right for Barbie, so I reduced it 72% to fit MH. I once read someone else’s comment that taking Babs patterns down to 72% often works – if you go by the classic ‘what you want divided by what you have’ computation, it’d be 91% of a Barbie pattern, and I can tell ya, that doesn’t work at all. So I went with 72% this time. Also the crappy green fabric and yawnfest white thread. While the sleeves printed out, I skipped ‘em, since it was just a test. While I do need practice in sleeves, it really wouldn’t matter if the jacket wasn’t in any way gonna fit. I mostly wanted to see how that curvy side would fit with the back anyway.

Turned out OK, although I had to rip the side seams – the hems were all OK at ¼” standard, but I had to go to about 1/8” for the seams, or it was much too small. Might go with 75% next time, so it’ll close. As-is, though, it’s a cute long vest and I like how the neckline works. Again, a lot I can do with it, now that I know how it looks !

And it kept me off the message boards and such for over an hour !