Me Made March: Day One- My Favorite Handmade Pants

Zoe over at So, Zo, What do You Know? does a really lovely little thing called

I've kind of falling off the back of the Sewing Blog Bus
and the Fun A Day really helped me get going so I thought
"Let's GO with Zo!"

I only pledged one item per day, 

because lately I feel stretched a teeny bit thin sometimes

and I wanted to pick a commitment I could stick to, 

because I like to win when I play these silly games with myself!

I plan to post to Flickr what I'm wearing everyday 

and doing a weekly wrap up here.

If I make something new, I brag it up ahead of time!

Soooo...Here's a garment I made and I've been wearing and not blogging about...

My Japanese wide leg cropped pants from My Favorite Handmade Style.

(A great looking book, I wish I could read it!)

  I made these pants about 6 months ago and I wear them all the time. 

Sometimes things jump full fledged, off of your sewing machine, and into your wardrobe. 

This was one of those items.

I had some fun making facings and pocket linings from contrasting fabric...

 top-stitching and grommets... 

as you can see they are quite well broken in!

 

I may end up making all the lengths and even adding the drawstrings at the bottom!

The pictures in these books are irresistible! 

Sew There!

Made It Myself Monday: Japanese Linen Shirt Redux

Once upon a time there was a semi savvy seamstress who thought she was clever enough to do just about any old thing. She bought fancy linen fabric. She bought an exotic Japanese craft book.



She was baffled that the patterns weren't in the craft book but since she reads and speaks no Japanese what-so-ever, it takes several days for her to realize it does include instructions to draw up the pattern yourself. The blouse in the picture was lovely.




There were diagrams. The fancy pleating looked straight forward enough. She thought she could handle it. She cut right into the fancy linen.

The blouse was a disaster. There were no photos.



Her confidence blown, she shelved the whole mess for 4 long months.

A New Year came... and with it, the Annual Cleaning of the Closet. The Unfortunate Blouse came out of the closet and on to "The Pile That Must Be Finished". The crafty woman, using a technique both simple and forgiving, finally completed the project.

(you know the drill: click on photo to enlarge)

Not too bad.



Clever, once again.

(thanks to KnitSonya for the photos in the park!)