McCall's 6404: black leggings

This pattern suggests double knits; I used a black ponte from JoAnn, pet hair was my own addition though.

Ah yes, by the time I get around to sewing, and reviewing, a pattern...it's discontinued. Typical.

These are McCall's 6404 and I like them a lot, mostly because the sweet seaming details on the legs. I'd like them even more if I could get the smaller size envelope, but I can't. Because it's OOP.

Really, McCall's? Is it that hard to just put all five sizes of leggings in the same envelope? You can put five dress sizes in one envelope for crap's sake!

Ignore the "I could never be a ~real~ blogger" face-- picture in B&W with added contrast to try to show you the leg seams.

Anyway, I purchased the larger sizeway, measuring for the largest size (XL). I sewed the next size down based on reviews and finished garment measurements and still had to take them in. Ideally, I would go down to a medium, if I had that size. Since I don't, I'll make do with slicing some off my pattern. Which I guess works, since the stomach fits relatively well, so I can grade in at my narrow hips but leave the bigger waist measurement. (Lazy girl's full tummy adjustment ftw!)

Too big - too short (I only added 3 inches) - baggy crotch lines (need full tummy adjustment or crotch curve change? Not actually something I care too much to fix next time, we'll see.)

All that said, I like this pattern despite some other fitting issues (see the picture) and my biggest concern for the next pair is having the legs more narrow and tighter, which is what most of the other reviewers said as well.

I go into a little more detail in the video review:

How to mend jeans tutorial

My jeans mending skillz have come a long way since I fixed the knee in this pair of jeans...which ended up ripping again soon after I fixed them.

Hold up-- I just realized the jeans I used in this week's video is that pair of jeans. Totally unplanned.

You see, when the knee in those jeans gave out yet after fixing it twice, I decided to just cut the jeans into shorts. But then my new shorts decided to get a hole in the butt (er, butt hole?) anway. Does the Gap outlet sell poor quality jeans, or what?

But this time around, I was ready. Since that knee ripped two years ago, I've fixed numerous holes and have devised what I think is the best way for fixing jeans. If you'd like to know the method, you can watch my How to Repair Jeans video.

Otherwise, I'll just tell you that I fixed FIVE pairs of jeans last week, putting a serious dent in mending pile, and getting some serious jeanage back into rotation. They weren't all small holes, either! There was a lot of chub-rub damage to be fixed, which of course tends to cover a sizeable area of denim real estate.

The bad news is I still have four of my husband's jeans to repair. I guess I'll be fixing those at some point, but probs not anytime soon! Mending is on hold while I tend to some holiday projects!

Kermit the Frog quilt

I made a quilt for my first son's 1st birthday, so I couldn't not make my second son one too...even though neither of them will remember said first birthdays!

The difference is that this quilt was made almost entirely from stash materials, I only had to buy a little bit of  navy and green leaf-print fleece, maybe a yard and a half or so, to cover the entire back.

Everything else I already had; Kermit quilting cotton from the thrift store, a jelly roll by a brand called Stripz purchased on clearance from WalMart, and Kermit fleece I only bought because because my dream Muppet fleece was out of stock.

This Muppet quilt ended up long and narrow, just like my string-bean shaped baby-- kind of in-between toddler and twin sized.

I still hate how much static electricity fleece generates, but I'm starting to warm to it because I find it so darn easy to work with.

The top is just a random, er, "design" I came up with (I just sewed strips and slashed here and there until it resembled a rectangle). There is no batting, but I decided this will be my last quilt that I do that.

For the quilting I did double random lines, my first time trying random line quilting. Also my first time using spray basting and I am a total convert! In fact, I'm thinking of going back and re-doing my two other most recent quilts to eliminate puckering...

 

DIY Catwoman Mask

Happy late Halloween!

I love sharing my random Halloween creations with you, even though it's usually after Halloween.

This year for the first time ever, my kids ended up with totally storebought costumes, which I had mixed feelings about. I prefer DIYing at least part of their costumes (cheaper, more sentimental, can use it more than once, no one else will have it, etc), but at least Halloween costumes today are cooler than the plastic tunic-and-mask combos from when I was a kid.

My three-year-old orchestrated everyone's costumes this year. He chose Spider-man for himself, Incredible Hulk for his baby bro, Catwoman for me, and Ironman for my husband. (Shhh, I won't tell him Catwoman is the wrong "franchise" if you won't. Yes, are people in my FB feed who care about this kind of thing.)

It was the first time in years that I got to dress up, and even though I didn't get to make my kid's costumes, I did do somewhat of a DIY Catwoman costume for myself.

Catwoman is a very easy Halloween costume, and there is a lot of inspiration to choose from-- 60s TV show Catwoman, 90s Tim Burton Catwoman, comic book Catwoman, Halle Berry or Anne Hathaway Catwomen. I was leaning toward the 60s one but really, I just threw a bunch of stuff together.

I'd planned on making black leggings but ended up wearing black skinny jeans, black boots, a black long-sleeved tee, and a storebought cat-eye shaped mask that I found at Spirit. The DIY Catwoman Ears were the only thing I ended up making...

• I used black felt from Jo-Ann and bought enough I could experiment with it.
• This is my inspiration and this is the tutorial I vaguely followed for the hat part, minus all the steaming and felting.
• I cut three pieces for the hat part; a long strip and two vaguely half-circle shaped pieces, which I cut freehand.
• Stitch together using this tutorial.
• To get that widow's peak look, I just put my hat on and drew the outline I wanted, or the shape of the hat I wanted, with fabric pencil.
• I trimmed along the outline (while the hat was folded in half so that it ended up symmetrical).
• Since I had just cut away some of the stitching, I sewed a seam around the hat, about 1/8" of an inch from the edge, to keep it from coming apart.
• For the ears, which did end up looking more Batman than Catwoman, I cut out four triangles, sewed them right-sides together down the top two sides, and turned them.
• I stitched the ears to the hat along the third side of the triangle that previously had no stitching, but I did have to do a small bar tack at the base of each ear on the opposite side of the sewing to get them to stand up.

There you have it! A vaguely DIY Catwoman hat which actually looks more Batgirl because of the ears, but I think it gets the point across! Now we're in full-on holiday mode around here.

City Gym Shorts + mending boys pants

 
I've completed the other two pairs of City Gym Shorts I cut out. Remember when you're looking at these pictures, they're pajama shorts (a.k.a. stash fabric-eaters) and I don't intend to wear these jazzy little numbers outside.

The fabric, thread, and bias tape came from the stash. I did purchase some elastic, though.

I'll be writing up and vlogging a proper review of Purl Bee's City Gym Shorts pattern sometime this week.

I also got some mending done! My mending pile is out of control at this point, and the only reason I tackled the kid's stuff first (as opposed to the numerous pairs of my own jeans) is because I didn't want them to outgrow these clothes before I fixed them!

Is that not the wonkiest truck that ever wonked? Better than that hole it's covering though. For these two applique patches I just freehand cut the shapes out of a t-shirt then used a basting glue stick (didn't want to waste any precious Steam-a-Seam for a proper applique, ha!) to stick the patches on. Then I zig-zagged around the edges with my ballpoint needle. (A pair of my husband's jeans also got patched this week, not pictured.)

Basic sewing machine maintenance

When's the last time you cleaned and oiled your machine? Or took it in to have serviced?

If the answer is "never", then now's the time to do it! I made a sewing tutorial video if you've never done it before... and if you have done it before, hopefully this post will serve as a little reminder to do it right now!

City Gym Shorts muslin

The have: old lady Mary Engelbreit (-ish?) fabric (sorry, Engelbreit fans), and a new FREE pattern I'm itching to try. The need: new pajama shorts for summer.

The end result:

I decided to do a little stash busting while fulfilling a need. I inherited this not-quite-my-jam Mary Engelbreit quilting fabric from my beloved Grandma. I briefly considered donating it to the thrift store before deciding that it's cute enough that I can live with it, and that I could use it for a lining or muslin or something. When this free pattern was released, I knew it was destined to become something that wouldn't be worn out of the house: PJ shorts.


This is Purl Bee's City Gym Shorts pattern. I don't have a whole lot to say about the pattern, especially considering that it's a free pattern that Purl Bee generously provided to the sewing blogosphere. I have a couple of other pairs I cut out at the same time, which aren't yet finished, and I'll type up a full pattern review when I post those.


I really tend to overdo it on the free patterns, don't I? Especially considering I spend so much money on NOT free patterns!

DIY Superhero Cape from an Upcycled T-shirt

In this week's YouTube video, I show you how to make a superhero cape out of an old T-shirt. This is a super easy and fast project with satisfying results. All you really need is an adult-sized t-shirt and some scissors-- everything else is optional!

Two weeks in a row with projects for son. I'm about to lose my "Selfish Seamstress" cred!

Vintage sheet quilt

I finally finished a vintage sheet quilt I've been working on for ages!

Not a whole lot to say about it. It was my first *major* machine quilting project and likely my last until/unless I get a different a different machine. I've been quilting a long time, but up until now, I've mostly been hand-tying. There's some puckers and some other problems, but it's not a gift, so I'm cool with it.

Now, my base model Singer did pretty well the quilting on this Queen-sized quilt, but I just kind of feel like I was *abusing* her with this job. Plus, I like hand-tying just fine. (Speaking of abusing my machine, I need to do some maintenance on her.)

So, I like it, but I'm done with sewing vintage sheets for a while. I like 100% cotton for quilts.

Did you notice the YouTube video at the top of this post? My last post had one too. Clearly, I have a problem blogging often, and I thank you for following me despite that. Videos, on the other hand...I used to be a TV reporter. I'm used to tight deadlines, and can turn around several videos in a single day, if I want to.

The name of my channel is Spool School, and I'll be posting sewing and quilting videos, craft tutorials, quality DIYs (as in, making stuff that has a purpose, not useless crap), some home DIYs and maybe even furniture makeovers and home improvement projects. I'm looking for some other YouTube crafters to follow, so let me know if you're on there too! And I mean real crafters. All I'm seeing so far are young girls making junk just to make "DIY videos", which seems to be one of the more popular genres, just behind make-up and beauty. We're talking bedazzled flip-flops here, folks. Yikes.

DIY crossbody tote: Sew Sweetness Kennedy Bag in vintage tea towels

Here's my rendition of the Kennedy Bag, a new pattern from Sara of Sew Sweetness. The pattern is free!


I made it up in vintage tea towels, you can see what they used to look like on my flickr. One was a calendar tea towel from the bicentennial, the other a souvenir tea towel from Massachusetts.


This bag marks my first serious foray into both online sewing contests and bag making, save random totes (one of my first three sewing projects as a little girl was a tote) and one "purse" I hand sewed about 15 years ago from fake cow print fur, nylon straps, and dice print flannel lining. I got lots of compliments on that monstrosity, but I think it was more like those kinda compliments you get when someone doesn't know what else to say.


I pinned this pattern as soon as it was released, as I prefer messenger bag style purses that I can wear cross-body, but hadn't really planned on sewing it up for quite a while. It took the announcement of the Sew Sweetness Bag Contest to really push me into trying it out! I thought it would be fun to start joining some online sew-alongs and competitions next year, so now seemed as good a time as any.


I knew from the get go that I wanted to use some of my vintage tea towels to make the bag and settled on two with a similar feel and color scheme, and also chose some quilting cotton for the accents and lining.


I really enjoyed sewing my first bag and would make this again if a family member asked for one, and possibly one more time for myself with leather accents. The changes I made include:

• Accent fabric on the bottom instead of using a tea towel
• No flap accents; the main reason being that I didn't want them covering up "Precious Moments Betsy Ross" as I've come to call her. Also, I wanted to get the bag done on time to enter the contest and have tons of other Christmas projects, so I left them out to save time. And all that hardware was getting a little cost-prohibitive and making the bag heavy. I may include them on any future renditions made up in a more plain "main fabric" as I do think they add something to the bag.
• I left the hardware off the side accents as well, for the same reasons as above. I didn't stitch the accents down so I can clip pens to them and to keep it from looking pieced together.
• I left out the interior zipper pocket; I never use those.

I learned a lot about bag making from this pattern. Mostly, interface the crap out of your bags and they turn out much nicer!

I only made one mistake when sewing up the pattern, a record for me: the part about sewing the side accents didn't really mention a seam allowance, so I went ahead and used the .5" called for in the rest of the pattern. I knew it was wrong as soon as I sewed up the first seam, but did the next three anyway. I finally gave up when I couldn't turn them, and cut new side accent pieces rather than bothering to unpick them. I used the quarter-inch SA mentioned a few steps back, that time they looked like the picture and I could actually turn them! Also, the pattern said to sew the divider line between the two interior pockets at 6" in, but the halfway point is actually 7.5", so either I was doing something wrong there, or it's a typo.

So that's it, wish me luck in my first online sewing contest, and good luck if you've entered one too!

Contest Update: Thanks for your kind comments! I didn't even make the top 15. :(

Baby viking hat, and a DIY Sheriff Rango costume

We're well into November, but I'm just getting around to doing a Halloween follow-up now! Such is life when you have a newborn.

Really, I wanted an excuse to make said newborn a viking hat after seeing a very cute, but very expensive (something like $30 for a fleece baby hat!) at a toy store in Mendocino, CA. What better excuse than Halloween? I starting Googling baby viking hat patterns when we got home from our trip, and mostly found ones for knitting. I just didn't want to commit that much time.

Then I found this awesome and adorable hat pattern from Fleece is Fun. We all know how I feel about fleece, but my inspiration hat was made from fleece, so this Halloween Hat Pack pattern is perfect. Also, fleece projects are so easy and fast, I may have been won over. We'll see.

Lemme start by saying, my first kid has a giant head. My second kid ended up with a tiny head? According to the delivery doctor anyway. And compared with his older brother, I guessed she was right. It was the first thing the doc said when he was crowning (#TMIalert): "he has a really small head!" He was born September 20th, so by Halloween he still had small head status. But when I chose the smallest size baby hat from this pack and used the suggested .5" seam allowance, my husband made me start to worry that the hat was turning out too small. I tried it on the baby and it fit, but barely. A word of advice about this pattern: a supposedly small-headed 1-and-a-half month old came close to not fitting into the smallest size!

I moved the horns higher on the head than in the pattern, but they were hard for him to balance, so I recommend leaving them as-is in the pattern. I added a silver band at the bottom to make it look a little more viking and a little less buffalo.

Other than that, I love this free little pattern and highly recommend it. There are now two other hat packs on the site and they fit all the way up to adult size. They'd make adorable Christmas gifts!

Meanwhile, with a new baby, I just didn't have the energy to sew an entire costume for my older son. He loves the Johnny Depp movie Rango, so we DIYed a Sheriff Rango costume. We had the suede cowboy vest and hat, I bought him a red and white Hawaiian shirt from the thrift store, and he already had a green dino hoodie to wear under it. The only thing I had to make was the green tail, and I decided to make the mask last minute on Halloween since I had so much of that green felt lying around in my stash anyway (you may recognize it from my last year's Kermit the Frog Fascinator I made for Halloween).

Good thing I didn't make the 2.5 year old a costume from scratch--he refused to wear it anyway since he doesn't "get" Halloween yet!

DIY pillowcases; pretty and vintage inspired

Welp, it's no secret that I love mismatched, vintage-style bedding so I decided to make myself some pretty pillowcases.

It feels a little silly to take apart actual vintage pillowcases for fabric, then turn around here and make vintage-inspired pillowcases from new fabric-- and I guess I don't really have a good explanation for it, haha. Other than, I've really been wanting a vintage sheet quilt and bought the pillowcases in my previous post just for that purpose. I did think twice before taking those other pillowcases apart, though.

Here, I saw this purple floral quilting cotton at JoAnn and fell in lurve with it. I put off buying it forever, until it ended up in the clearance section. I eventually bought the rest of the bolt, a little more than 2 yards, for less than two bucks a yard! The JoAnn branch in my city was relocating, so they had all of their fabric on sale on top of the regular deals and sales-- I pretty much got this stuff on triple-sale. I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it, but was kinda thinking pillowcases all along.

The mint was a remnant in my stash, and I purchased clearance rick rack for 97 cents. My first successful rick-rack application, I think. I just love it when other people use rick rack and I'm often inspired to try it whenever I see a cute project that includes it, but somehow every time I touch the stuff it turns into this corny Becky-Home-Eccy looking project. I think one reason it works here is because it's so subtle. The trim barely peeks out from the cuff, adding some vintage detail.

These are super easy if you're inspired to make your own! I know, you're thinking, well duh, how hard is a pillowcase going to be? I think a pillowcase is one of the first things I ever sewed, after all. They're made using a method that creates no exposed seams. You can find a tutorial by doing an Internet search for the burrito method, sausage pillowcases, or turn-tube or tube pillowcases. Various names for a method that accomplishes the same thing. Mine came together in well under an hour, not including pressing and cutting. I know there are more in my future!

Sewing project: bandanna pillows

These pillows have a zipper opening at the bottom, unlike my previous bandanna pillow (pictured below), which had a split opening on the back. I think next time I'll return to the split opening. I also just stitched around the edged as opposed to the bias tape edge on the previous one. One thing I did again was interface the bandannas first; they're just too flimsy not to!

The smaller brown one is not a bandanna, in case you haven't guessed. I quilted it to tie the color scheme in the other two pillows together.

Sewing project: fat quarter grocery bags

These bags were made from fat quarters that were in my Granmma's stash. She had cut a bunch herself that I believe she might have intended on selling online-- she was always extremely entrepreneurial. I would've loved to've turned these into a cool farm themed quilt, but they were the most appropriate fabric in my stash for a gift for my mom, considering she lives on a ranch.

I found tons of great fat quarter grocery bag tutorials online, of course. I'd love to try this one and this one. But they were all for patterns that went the opposite direction, so I ended up winging it and came up with a lined wider grocery bag.

They're fully lined, which basically made them turn out reversible. That was a bonus. That's why it looks like there are four in these pics-- there's only two. I intended for the striped hen print to be the outside of one and the cows to be the outside of the other, but mom can use them however she wants.

I gave them those square bottom corners, what are they called? This gal refers to them as "milk carton corners," haha.


My biggest disappointment was the handles, I wanted them extra sturdy but they came out kinda stretchy. That's because I mis-measured when I cut and made them too narrow to make a conventional strap, where you press the edges to the center then fold in half. I ended up sewing them into tubes, which didn't give them the heft I was hoping for. Next time, I'd just buy some nylon webbing, but the point of this exercise was to stash bust.

Sewing project: appliqued monogram towels

I am so behind on posts! I made these last month the day before Christmas Eve. Talk about a last-minute DIY gift idea!

My brother is getting married this year, so I kind of wanted to do something "coupley" for his and his fiance's gift. It was no surprise that when I searched "Christmas gift ideas for bride to be" and variations thereof, monogrammed anything was a popular suggestion.

I don't have an embroidery machine, so a typical monogram wasn't going to cut it. But I had plenty of "Steam A Seam" leftover from the Christmas stockings, so I decided to give appliqueing a shot for the second time ever.

To make this project, I just picked a basic font, sans serif to make the appliqueing easier. I typed out the letters I needed in Word and printed them out to use as stencils  From there, it was just a basic appliqueing process, adhering the Steam A Seam to the back of the fabric, cutting out the letters, ironing them to the towels, then stitching them in place with a very tight zig-zag stitch.

These pictures are so horrible! I came up with this project the day before Christmas Eve, bought the towels, then did it all in one afternoon, then quickly snapped pics before wrapping them. The pictures were taken at night near my sewing nook, so the only lighting is the yellow-ish CFL bulbs from our ceiling fan. I promise the colors look better in person.

All in all, I think applique monogram towels are one of those perfect DIY gifts that fuses store-bought with a  homemade touch. They're quick, but still have that personal touch that you get with an entirely homemade gift. Also-- they're practical. I'm sold!

Sewing project: quilted potholders

If you're looking for DIY gift ideas, potholders are a great option!

To mkae this Christmas gift, I Googled "potholder tutorial" and found absolutely tons of them. So many that I became somewhat overwhelmed and decided to just kind of wing it. So I'm not going to link a particular tutorial, but believe me, they're out there.

But to be honest, you don't really need a tutorial if you've ever made a quilt. I had the basic idea of how to make a potholder, I just needed to know how much batting to put in the middle. I also liked looking at all the tutorials (especially if you Google it as an image search) just for inspiration.

So, all I needed to buy for this project was 100% cotton batting. Polyester will melt. I used three layers of the cotton. Some people use some kind of batting (I forget the name) with a metal content for the middle layer, but I wanted mine to remain microwaveable.

This was my first time trying the "stacked blocks/bricks/books/bolts" block. I totally recommend making potholders for experimenting with different quilt blocks! It's also a simple way for some scrap busting.

I cut all three layers of batting, my backs or bottoms, and my two quilt blocks to be slightly larger than 8" by 8". I don't remember how long I cut the handle/hook thingy.

To construct these two potholders, I basically made an inside-out quilt sandwich and stitched around the edge. Then turned it right side out, then stitched around the edge again, then did some different quilting in rainbow thread. It worked OK, but I think next time I make potholders, I'll use bias-bound edges instead.

So, super-quick and easy, and a great last-minute DIY gift idea. I'm even planning on making some for my own kitchen.

Project: quilted Christmas stockings

I wanted our family Christmas stockings to be similar without being "matchy-matchy", so I decided to quilt them in different color schemes and using different techniques.
Haha, my stocking (in the middle) looks like it belongs on the foot of some wonky-footed giant. Guess I need to get in there and poke those seams out a little better.

It was also a fun chance to try some quilt blocks I'd never done: my husband's is just scrappy quilting, mine is wonky log cabin, and my son's is my first applique with his name spelled in a quilt block. (Yeah, my obsession with personalizing things isn't going away any time soon.)

 
The Thrasher Magazine t-shirt in the center goes back to the first year my husband and I were together. He asked me to order him a Thrasher watch (we were so young he didn't have a credit or ATM card yet!) from their website. When I was placing the order, I saw this men's t-shirt on clearance for something like $3 or $4! I can't resist a deal, so I bought it for myself.

Well, when the order arrived, my then-boyfriend claimed the shirt for himself, wore it long enough to get a couple of holes in the belly-button area, and guess what... that's when I got it back. I've since been wearing it for years as a pajama top (our baby loved staring at it when he was just a few months old), and decided a few months ago it was high time I stuck this raggedy thing in the upcycle pile.

When I decided to make my husband a red Christmas stocking, it was the perfect time to upcycle the t-shirt. The rest of the fabric on his is just random stuff from the scrap drawer.


My stocking is just random scraps from the scrap drawer. It was my first go at wonky log cabin blocks, which is currently my favorite block! I was trying to make mine predominantly pink.


Argh, this picture is the only one I took of my son's solo, and it's out of focus. I chose to make his mostly blue, and didn't have a lot of blue in the scrap drawer, so I reluctantly bought some blue fat quarters from JoAnn. I also bought a puppy-themed bundle I happened to see, as I'd already decided to make his stocking dog themed.

I free-hand drew the dog applique pieces on the applique interfacing I'd purchased, and, although you can tell on the stocking that it's my first applique attempt, I'm happy with how it turned out and will try appliqueing some more in the future.

Final thoughts: I used this Design Sponge pattern for the shape but made up my own directions. Each stocking is lined with the same quilting cotton (a silly bird-print tropical fabric). I stitch all three stockings and their linings around the edges, then stitched the linings to their stockings around the upper edge, leaving a hole to turn. Once they were turned, I topstitched around the edges.

Fun! Have you made stockings? I'd love to see them!

Kwik Sew 3799: Western flannel top

I almost titled this post "Western pajama top" but I didn't want you to think it was a pajama top for realsies, because who wants to look at other people's PJ's? Don't answer that.

But this shirt does look like a pajama top... probs because I used pajama fabric from Gramma's stash. Lesson learned.

This is my test run of Kwik Sew 3799, which explains my less-than-stellar fabric choice. I have already pre-washed an amazing plaid flannel, also from Gramma's stash, to make my real version of this shirt. I had a feeling it was going to become a "tried-n-true" pattern before I even made it based on the only review (at the time) on Pattern Review.


I scoured the web high and low for a sweet little blouse with a Western yolk. I initially wanted a vintage 1940s or 1950s one, but realized that the Western shirt has remained largely unchanged for decades and decades. The 50s version had a more cinched-in-waist, the 70s one had wider lapels, and the 90s ones were made up in bright pink and teal Southwestern prints. But the differences were minor when compared to the similarities; save the puffed sleeves, the sweet little blue gingham Western blouse I had as a little girl in the 80s looked remarkably similar to the one my in-laws bought for my son last year.

So, I figured, why pay the vintage price when I could get a more recent pattern for a cheaper price? (Not to mention my non-vintage pattern friendly big measurements). I actually found Simplicity still selling two Western shirt patterns in their men's section. But I didn't want to get those and have to deal with adding darts. Similarly, Etsy had several 90s models that were labeled "unisex", which I'd also have to do some shaping on to avoid looking even more chunk. Also, I really love this unisex one from from Folkwear!

I ended up going with Kwik Sew after my Google search turned up a message board posting that stated "Kwik Sew has a women's Western pattern". I had to search through their patterns before I guessed it was this one. You see, their line drawing doesn't actually show the Western yolk.

Can I just take a second to point out the irony of having to go with a Swedish pattern company for such a distinctly American shirt? And not even just American, a very specific region of America. Get with it, Simplicity, and re-issue a women's Western shirt. (And yes, I do realize Kwik Sew is under the McCall's umbrella now, but still.)

I like to call this expression "the smug mugshot."

Mine is not nearly as slim fitting as I would like; you can see that billowy-ness action going on in the right side of the picture here. I sewed the largest size (my bust measurement is 45") and should've sized down one. I mulled taking it in on the sides, but as it's my test run, I didn't bother to mess with it. My husband gave it the stamp of approval, so I guess it's OK, but the next one will be more slim-fitting.

And there will be a next one, I really enjoyed this pattern. I did have some issues with the cutting layout, you can read more about that on my Pattern Review. (I clearly have a lot to say about this pattern). But I have plans for one in plaid, as mentioned above, and hopefully chambray as well.


Also, I should add here that my bro said "that looks like what [his fiance] would wear for pajamas," so, I'm not the only one who thinks it looks like a pajama top. That won't stop me from wearing it out of the house, it's just soooo soft. Probably because it's made from pajama fabric.


Final thoughts: I love Kwik Sew 3799 and will make it again (and again), which is what I was hoping when I purchased this pattern. It was my first Kwik Sew and, although the smaller, quarter-inch seam allowances took some getting used to, I thought the directions were easy to follow. I liked that they have you finish all the seams with a zig-zag stitch.

Also, I mentioned this pattern was too wide-- it was also too short for my 5'11" frame. Next time, I have to lengthen both the bodice and the sleeves. Although, I'll admit the sleeves actually look long enough in some of these pics, which is not the case. This time, I hemmed with bias tape to both add length and deal more easily with the curved hem.

Finally, I used some cheapie "pearl" snaps from WalMart and I love the look, but next time I may just use buttons. I smooshed at least one snap while hammering it on, and it won't close. Luckily, it's on a pocket. Some cracked as well on the plastic part. Do you have any snap-hammering tips? I wanted my husband to bust out the rubber mallet, but he brought me a standard hammer instead.