Tailored Jacket Update

Before I started on my pattern alterations for this jacket, my plans were almost over before they began.

I don't often use commercial patterns anymore, and so when working out how much fabric I need when sewing fabric from my stash, I usually pick the fabric I'm going to sew first, and use gut feel and hope for the best when I've finished making the pattern. This time, I checked the back of the pattern envelope, and the requirement for my jacket was 2.4 m of 150 cm wide fabric. Now, I know commercial patterns have a tendency to overstate how much fabric you require, but I only have 2 metres of fabric (150 cm wide), and my plans for the pattern included making it bigger, hence using more fabric, not less.

The Fabric

As it turns out, the situation wasn't as bad as I thought. I tried my old jacket on again, and the fit isn't really that bad. Maybe if I was wearing a jumper underneath it, but, let's face it, it doesn't really get that cold in Sydney. I also decided to make my new jacket shorter, so there's about 20 cm saved already!

Stash Busting plans: A New Coat for Winter

I have been busy making a dress for a client, and haven't really felt like thinking about what I was going to sew next. I finished off the dress I was making last week, so now it's time to move on to the next project. (Check out my photos on my Facebook page if you're interested).

I've been wanting to make myself a new winter coat for a few years. I have an old woolen winter coat that I made quite a few years ago now, out of (my favourite colour) blue wool. It did the job while I was working a 9 - 5 desk job, and I even had to replace the lining after it wore out, but I'll be the first to admit that it's pretty boring.

I've been keeping the odd picture of long jackets and coats that I like, hoping that inspiration will strike and I'll come up with an idea of what I want to make. I want to do the whole works, make the pattern and sew the coat, complete with all the tailoring techniques I can throw at it. Well, inspiration hasn't struck yet, but I did get inspired to use up some of my fabric stash, and leave the new woolen coat for another year. Since I'm leaving the inspiration for another jacket, I also decided that rather than make a pattern from scratch, I would alter a pattern that I already have. I made a jacket a while ago from McCall's 9012 (from 1997, which I believe classes that as a vintage pattern!), and I thought that would make a good starting point.

The Pattern

My Mystery Pastry Lemon Tartlets

I've been longing for lemon tarts recently, and have been looking for an opportunity to get into the kitchen without any interruptions to make some lemon curd and some little pastry cases.

Such an opportunity arose this afternoon. I had vaguely remembered seeing some leftover pastry from something lurking in the freezer. Don't ask me what it was from. I don't remember putting it there. My dear husband denies any knowledge of it either. Whatever it was from, I was pretty sure that I could make it work as a dainty pastry shell for my little lemon tarts.

Pastry circles all rolled out ready to go...

While the pastry was defrosting I quickly made my lemon curd. I used this recipe from Taste.com.au. Now, onto the pastry! As I was rolling it out I had a bit of a taste test. I'm pretty sure that it has yeast in it. It was quite springy, and a bit sweet. Blind baking was a must to stop this yeasty, springy pastry from puffing up too much. I baked the cases in a mini muffin tray that I "borrowed" from my mother in law (I don't think I've told her that I have it yet). About 15 minutes in a 200 degree oven seemed about right for cooking time, although those cases that were rolled a bit thinner do seem just a little browner than the rest.

Blogger Photo Limits: Who Knew?

So, I was reading through some blogs the other day, and one that I was reading suddenly stopped in December last year. I read the last post, only to find out that she had stopped blogging because her photo limit had been reached! Photo limit? Who knew? Well, this is what happens when you don't do any research before you start a blog.

Worried about the status of my own photo storage, I did some research (mostly reading other blogs that have also come across this problem) and found out that I should have a 1GB photo storage limit for my photos, in a Picasa web album. And to top it all off, this is shared with other Google applications that I use. I found a post with a link that I could click to find out how much of my limit I was using.

I was astonished to find out that I was currently using over 48% of my limit, and, more interesting still, my limit was, not 1 GB, but 5GB! That means I've used more than 2.4GB. Where had all that space gone? Do I need to resize all the photos that are currently on my blog (in 20 posts, I wouldn't have thought that they would take up too much space, even when I made no effort at all to compress them!) Or maybe find another photo host and change the way I insert images into my blog?

After some looking in my Picasa account, I discovered that the majority of my photos are actually backups from my phone. I didn't realise that when I turned on the instant upload option on my new phone last year that it was going to back up every photo I have ever taken on my phone since I first bought a smart phone (2 and a half years ago now!) Or that they would be stored in Picasa. Or anything really. (Do you see a theme forming here - I don't do enough research on technologically related things). Photos up to 2048 x 2048 pixels (when using Google+) apparently do not count toward this limit. Although I have read that instant upload photos are automatically resized to be under this size limit, I did not seem to have happened with my photos.

I did find out why my limit is 5GB though. Apparently at some stage I signed up for Google Drive, (not that I even know what this is), and that gives you 5GB of storage space. How fortunate! Otherwise I would have run out of space a long time ago, definitely before I even started this blog.

Just before I hit the "Publish" button though, I thought I might try and get to the bottom of the instant upload issue. It turns out that you have to go into the setting of Google+ on your phone, and check the option to resize your uploads to 2048 pixels. I was looking for this so I could turn instant uploads off, but now that I have found the culprit, I might as well leave it there, and just upload the smaller photos. At least that way if something happened to my phone I would have a record of the photos that I have taken.

Problem solved. At least I no longer have to find an alternate method of storing blog photos. Now to just find a way (and time and the inclination) to tackle that enormous amount of full size photos stored in Picasa.

Time to get back to work?

You may have noticed that things have been a little quiet around here lately. I hinted in my last post that I was about to go on holidays, somewhere a little cold. Well, I've actually been back for more than 2 weeks now, and am still trying to get back in the swing of things.

I had a month away from home with my family, mostly in Europe, spending some time there with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law (also holidaying), and most of it with my parents-in-law, who since buying a house in Switzerland a few years ago have been progressively spending more time there than here.

Once I got away, it didn't take me long to lose the urge to be sewing something, or thinking about sewing something, or planning on sewing something. After arriving home it took me 3 days to put fabric to a machine, and I only did that because I'd had an order while away that I had promised to deliver directly after Easter. That didn't stop me from taking happy snaps of every fabric shop and sewing machine shop that I saw while I was away. I didn't actually venture into many of them. Fabrics in Switzerland tend to be quite expensive, and the one time that I thought I'd try and have a conversation with a shop owner, she didn't speak any English, so that didn't work. Paris however, had a multitude of shops, all in the same area, with very reasonably priced fabrics. It would have helped if I was actually looking for something specific, because as I didn't have anything in mind that I needed, I found it hard to find anything I wanted to buy.

February Stash Busting: A dress made with love

As I am about to embark on a month off, I haven't had much of a chance to put too much thought into making new garments. I've been finishing off some work for other people, and doing a few quotes. I did however want to try to do something for the February stashbusting challenge: To make something for someone else from stash fabric.

I had just the thing in mind - a dress for my daughter that has been in the works for almost a year. My sketch for this dress was dated 30 March 2012, and I made the pattern for it late last year. When I went to cut it out this week, I almost decided to start again, wondering if I should make a larger pattern so the dress will get another summer out of it.

Fabric Stash: Stretch Fabrics, Blends, Synthetics, and Miscellaneous

If you've been keeping up with my blog, you'll know that one of my goals for the year was to document my fabric stash. Then I found a stash busting sewalong that I joined. One of the tasks that was suggested was to share your fabric stash on your blog. I have been doing this in parts as I get around to sorting out my fabric, working out what everything is, and measuring it so I know what I have. I am going to all this trouble so that I can actually see what I have, get some inspiration to make something out of them, and actually use up some of it.

This is the third and final installment of my fabric stash walk through. Hopefully you'll see some of these fabrics coming up in future posts!

I have been surprised at some of the fabric that I have been hanging on to. It isn't uncommon to find fabric that I've had for more than 10 years!

Some of it is a lot newer than that to my stash, such as this assortment of stretch fabrics:

Stretch Fabrics
The Fabric Store had a sale last year on stretch fabrics. They had a large assortment of fabrics going for $8 per metre, with some for $4 per metre. At the time I really needed some new tops for summer, and so I bought 6 different knits, walking away with more than 6m of fabric for $44. Despite having used some of each of these fabrics and made 6 tops, most only used between 60 and 70cm of fabric, so with that bit extra that you often get when buying fabrics, and a couple that were the end of the roll, there's enough left of all of them to make another one. If not for me, I'm sure I could get shirts for one of my kids!

I also have some stretch fabrics that I specifically bought for my daughter to make the tops of dresses, and some fabric leftover from the dress that I made her, and the jumper that I made myself.