Cascade Cardi

 

Finished Cascade Cardi

     I made this jacket for myself.  I bought the pattern at the ASG Conference in NYC this past summer.  I also bought some beautiful wool knit fabric at the conference.  When I went to cut out the pattern, I found that I had been shorted fabric.  I was so mad!  It was expensive and now it was useless.  I did find a tweed knit in my stash that I wound up using.

Pattern

     While I was making the jacket, I tried on the piece before sewing on the sleeves as suggested in the pattern.  I did trim off about 1/4-1/2" from the shoulder.  The construction of the garment went well.  I really like Pamela's Patterns as the instructions are easy to follow.

Shoulder adjustment 

     The pattern called for shoulder pads, just small ones that gave the jacket a little more structure.  I had some that I had bought and I covered with the fabric.  They were very flat so I used the iron and a ham pressing tool to shape them.

Shoulder pad

Shaping the shoulder pad

Shaped pad in front, flat pad in the back

     I do like how the cardi turned out but I am still disappointed that I wasn't able to use the original fabric as it was a blue color that would have gone well with jeans.  

Fabric details

Envelope Pillow

 

Envelope Pillow 

     I started this envelope pillow a while ago but I just couldn't get it correct.  I finally just sewed it up but didn't really liked how it looked.

All wonky

     The flap was all loose and wonky.  While I was writing up the blog this morning I pulled out the book again to get the title.  I looked up the instructions again and finally realized what I had done wrong. I ripped out the side seams and redid it. Voila, it looked right!  Sometimes you just need to step away from something a few times :-)

Correct side seam

     The book I used was Pillow Talk by Pam Damour & Katie Bartz.  Now that I have this figured out, I may make more like this.  I could see different shapes for the flap.

Embroidery detail

Hemming Blackout Panels

 

Using my new ruler

     A client brought me some ready made blackout panels that needed to be shortened.  I laid them out on the floor and marked the finished length on both sides with pins.  Then I used my new ruler from JSH Designs.  I placed it under the pins and drew the line eight inches from the finished length.  So handy to be able to mark a double four inch hem quickly.

Old hem

     At the ironing board, I used my 8 inch wooden ruler from Workroom Tech to press up the eight inches and then get my four inch double hem.  As the original panel had a regular machine stitched hem, I did the same thing but did make one improvement.

New hem

      

     Instead of machine stitching the side part of the hem closed, I chose to hand stitch it to eliminate those extra stitches showing.

Hidden stitching

     I did sew slowly to prevent the needle from heating up and transferring the blackout material to the outside of the panel.  Tried to press out the creases from being in the package as best as I could and then hung the panels on a hanger to prevent more creases.

Hawaii Pillowcases

 

     When we went to Hawaii to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our first date, I talked my husband into going to a couple of quilt shops.  At the first shop in Kapaa, I bought a kit for a large stars quilt.

     At the second shop in Lihue, I bought a layer cake (10" squares) and two pillowcase kits.  A pair of pillowcases we currently have on the bed are starting to shred so I thought this was a fun way to bring some Hawaii home.  As soon as we got home, I sewed them up using the hotdog method that I have done on so many other pillowcases.  It was nice to not even have to cut the fabric to get started.