New Fabrics = New Clothes

Aloha!  How's your weekend been?  Mine has been fairly productive.  I recently had a couple of new fabrics arrive in the mail, and I just had to get at them after working with several fabrics from my stash. The first is an off-white knit lace from Hart's Fabrics.  On the website it was described as a "high quality nylon lace white", and I would agree it is high quality with a medium weight and beautiful drape.  Alas, I don't think it is still available, since I cannot find it on the website anymore.  I used Jalie 2805 to make a simple long sleeve t-shirt to show off the print.

Here is a close-up of the t-shirt.  I've used this pattern before, so I already had the size "s" cut out, traced off, and ready to go with my adjustments.  I used my serger for all of my construction except hemming the sleeves and body.  There I used my coverstitch machine to hem with a double row of stitching.  Since this fabric has a very open weave, I applied a 5/8" wide strip of Pro-Sheer Elegance fusible interfacing to the wrong side of the fabric before turning it up and hemming.  This gave me a finish I am really happy with.

The second piece of fabric came from Emma One Sock, and it is a beautiful, robin's egg blue, striped, medium weight linen.  You probably know I love capris, and The Sewing Workshop has a pattern that I really like and have made three times now.  To prepare my linen, I washed on warm and tumble dried, before making my garment.  From now on I will simply wash the linen capris and hang to dry.  Since discovering this advice on Marcy Tilton's website, I do this for every piece of linen I make into a garment, and have not been disappointed.  I do not have very many clothes that are dry clean only, and I definitely don't want any of my linen to have to be cleaned that way.  Therefore, you will notice that my garments always have that recognizable wrinkled texture that washed linen is famous for.

Here are a couple of details shots of the capris before I show you the whole ensemble.  They have an elastic waistband that is flat in the front.  For this pair I added a pocket to one side.  That is the only drawback to this pattern, no pockets.  I just winged a design and slapped it on.  LOL

Here is the completed outfit.  The knit top will also be a versatile basic to mix with other pants and skirts.  Although there is fairly good stretch in the knit top, I didn't want to make it too tight since the weave is so open, and I don't want any holes developing at the seams.

Oh, by the way, here is a little update on our dog Freckles.  I've been spending even more time with her since hiring a dog trainer to help us stabilize her behavior.  Once she became comfortable in our home, she became very aggressive to strangers, which the trainer felt was due to fear.  Since she was adopted from the Humane Society, we really don't know what kind of past she has had to cause her to act this way.  On the one hand I am glad she is protective of me and the boys, but on-the-other hand, she needs to know when to back down.  The good news is, she is responding beautifully to training.  I really love her, so I am extremely happy about this.  I also feel very blessed to have been able to hire a trainer to help.  It is an investment.  It would have broken my heart to take her back.  Here she is demonstrating the command "Place" before one of our runs together.  Did I mention how much I love having a girl in the house?  Too bad I can't sew dresses for her :)

Have an awesome week everyone!