Fatal Wound for Self-Healing Mat

A self-healing mat is designed to recover from endless cutting on its surface, but it does not recover from improper storage I learned. I was keeping it under my bed on top of some sweater boxes which were not completely flat on top. I hadn't used the mat for a few months. When I pulled it out I found that it was no longer flat. The bumpiness makes cutting on it difficult and its ruler grids have become worthless. I keep it out on the floor now. I left it covered with heavy books for a week and that did nothing. Maybe I'll try a warm iron.

Crooky loves to sit on it. Dogs are so predictable this way. Anything at all that differentiates one section of floor from the rest of it becomes a target for them. They simply cannot resist sitting on it, whether it's a piece of cardboard, a towel, a sweater, or an oil painting.

Simplicity #4109

I heartily recommend this pattern. This is the reason I keep returning to Built by Wendy (Wendy Mullin for Simplicity) patterns. Some of them work really well. The sleeves are supposed to be set-in sleeves, but there was too much fabric for me to ease, so I just accepted that my version would have slightly gathered sleeve caps, and actually I needed this detail to balance the more masculine fabric and buttons. In my second version I will shorten the coat two inches so it doesn’t hit me at the widest part of my butt. This is unflattering, and the nice diagonal stripes of light won’t usually be there to break up that horizontal line. It took quite a while to get all those buttons & button holes (12) made, but the lack of a lining made the rest of the sewing pretty quick.

V-neck T-shirt

I finished one more wearable t-shirt. I’m still struggling with the v-neck. It’s hard to make the "V" because it gets stretched out or off center easily. I may give up and stick to boat neck. I tried a new approach with the hem this time. I used stitch-witchery which is an iron-on tape that holds the hem up. I think it’s meant to be left alone at that point, but I sewed over it anyway to make it last longer. The hem looks pretty good, but it doesn’t stretch at all. That’s one of the big problems with hemming knits – you want the hem to be stretchable, but not to stretch at all during the sewing.

Conquering the T-shirt

If you’ve been reading along from the beginning, you know I have a bad history with knit tops. I’ll admit now that there were additional terrible tops made that I didn’t even post. This long-sleeved lavender top has a terrible shape. It’s Butterick pattern #3344. If a neckline is that low, the shirt should be tight. I’m not a good candidate for low cut things in general, but I do love the way a very low v-neck looks with a layer underneath. That was the idea with the gray tank. This really should have had sleeves, but after making two pairs that I didn’t like, I decided to bind the armholes instead.

I love these T-shirts. I made both patterns myself, combining features I liked from my favorite old shirts. I also started finishing the neck hole and sleeves with separate strips of fabric, just like bias tape, only they’re cut perpendicular to the grain rather than at a 45 degree angle. It looks good and gives me the option of adding contrasting color or textural detail. I got these shirts done just before the last two days of warm weather, so I got to wear them each once.