Holiday Sewing

For my trip to the USA, I needed to organise a few extra layers as the temperatures where going to be around 6 degree Celsius, little did we know that we were going to be snowed on 🙂

First up was to change the neckline on 2 purchased thermal tops that I have for skiing (I still have a couple crew necks left).


With the assistance of my sewing buddies, I put on the thermal and then this top that I was going to take away and they then drew around the neckline with a chalk pen. I also checked that this neckline would work with my cross over top as well.


When I took the thermal off, I rounded off the chalk neckline and cut out the excess fabric, and then used fold over elastic to finish of the necklines. I also took the sleeves up as the original length was far too long for my tops.


The thermals worked a treat as they were worn just about every day we were away.

The next item was another Simplicity 2603 cardi and top with long sleeves.

This time I made the set up in a chocolate brown Merino Wool from The Fabric Store and cut the cardi front drape halfway between the short and long versions.

This length enabled me to take one of the fronts and tuck in into the back waistband of either my jeans or skirt

and then flick the other front side up over my shoulder.

giving me an extra layer across my upper body when the temperatures were very low.

Here is the top by itself and Roscoe being directed to stay out of the picture 🙂


The cardi went with all my tops and was worn every day. The merino wool washed and dried very well

Now to continue with my winter sewing.

What an adventure!

I am home from the USA and it was a fantastic trip, I hope not to bore you with the details.

Our flight to LA on the Qantas A380 was uneventful thankfully and landed us in a very cool Los Angeles for the day. We then flew to Portland on Saturday and hired a car and this is where the fun started.

Sunday saw Janis, who had contacted me via Stitcher’s Guild offering us a natives tour of Portland, meet us at our hotel for a fabulous tour of her home town.

First stop was Fabric Depot, then to Mill End Store the goodies we found soon had us using our second bag.

Monday we headed to Joann’s under our own steam and then on Tuesday we headed to Rose City Textiles on our way to Puyallup for the Sewing and Stitchery Expo.

For the next four days we attend the Expo attending the classes we had booked into and meeting up with Patti B, BeeBee, karent, Karen Roth, CarloynB and Janis (again) who are all from Stitchers Guild and managed to bump into a number of the Australian Sewing Guild Group who were there as well.

From there Alison and I flew to Utah where it put on a great snow show for us. This is what the car looked like after 1 hour and thankfully we had a helper to sweep the snow off the car before we headed 1 hour back down the freeway to our hotel.

After Utah we headed back to Oakland and drove back to Los Angeles for our flight home.

Now for the goodies:

Fabric

Top Row: green/black knit, brown geometric knit, brown/red/coffee knit, purple mauve geometric knit and brown/coffee swirly linen. The two small pieces of black and green are wick-away fabric for a cycling shirt for DH.

2nd Row: 3 ply gortex, orange self patterned linen, aubergine Camel Hair for a coat and next to it is quilted fabric that I would like to use for the zip out lining that was in Threads No 152, and the next piece is a patterned fine cord for a jacket.

3rd Row: cream wick-away Lycra, aubergine knit with wool, orange wick-away and camel boiled wool.

4th Row: brown self patterned knit, camel waffle weave knit from M&L Fabrics; Missoni type knit, Rust knit, brown floral, cream stripe, cream/pale blue knit and open weave knit all from Marcy Tilton.

5th Row: multi coloured stripe and pale green waffle weave from M&L Fabrics, coffee/grey/cream knit from Joann’s; aubergine/grey/blue silk and brown/pale pink silk from Vogue Fabrics.

Notions

Wonderful rhinestone zippers, buckles, brown and coffee sharpies, sewing machine and coverstitch needles, snap source goodies, Palmer Pletsch Interfacing packs, scissors and more.

Other goodies

2 Ottobre magazines, Sandra Betzina Power Sewing Books 1 and 2, Merino wool and pattern, beads and of course 2 rolls of Press “N” Seal, 2 Cross Stitch Fob kits.

We were entitled to 2 suitcases on our trip and luckily we didn’t have any excess baggage costs and didn’t have to post anything home.

I will be back soon to let you know about the Sewing and Stitchery Expo and the classes I attended.