This 'n' that

In the past couple of years my contributions to Pattern Review have tailed off but this year I decided I will faithfully post every sewing project I complete.  I played a bit of catch up and in  the last week, I posted reviews of the coat I just finished and the volcano-inspired dress I made from a sari last fall.

And what do you know, PR made me the Member in Focus on their blog!  I have been a member since 2004 and I've posted 177 pattern reviews.  That seems like an awful lot!

I'm at work on project #178 - my Lekala jacket.  I made some final adjustments to the pattern to further reduce the size of the collar and fine tune the fit.  Thanks to the commenters who made suggestions!  I confirmed that I have enough fabric to make a skirt to match, so it'll be another Sewing Lawyer suit.  I traced off a pencil skirt from the September, 2012 issue of BurdaStyle Magazine.  Specifically, the one from this interesting vintage suit.  I wanted something sleek and this skirt is - it's nicely pegged and with some reshaping at the hip and lengthening of certain darts, I think I have a good fit.

Extreme closeup - Prada wool with
wool double crepe and light wool challis

As a reminder, I'll make the jacket and skirt from a length of Prada novelty weave wool.  At left it's posing with some light blue wool/lycra that is destined for dress #1.  At right you can see the detail of the weave (although the light blue in the weave is kind of washed out) and how good it looks with the dark grey wool double crepe I purchased at the same time (dress #2).

I also discovered a long piece of extraordinarily lightweight wool challis deep in my stash.  It's so old that I can no longer remember where I got it, but I am pretty sure that I got it at a thrift shop or other source of old stock.  It's only 34" wide! I believe it is within the class of fabric known as "nun's veiling".

It's a very light grey and I think it might make a really nice top of some kind.  Pattern TBD.

In other news, I got out my bulky knitting machine (it's a Singer LK-100) to see if I could coax it into cooperating in the production of some colour-work - specifically, stranded knitting and intarsia. I didn't want to commit to a really big (adult-sized) project and settled on a vintage Mary Maxim pattern for a little boy's jacket, "Soldier Boy".  I'm making size 4 in the hopes that it will fit the grandson of a friend.

And I made a sleeve. It's not perfect but it's not bad for a first attempt.  AND IT'S SO CUTE!