Pikacho Hoodie part-3 . The End.

Hello everyone,

Yesterday I left you with the many drafts of ears. Today I will show you the finished article.

The hood is simply two sides attached down the middle top and back.

I simply made an identical cut on both hood pieces and sewed the ears in, (making sure they curved in opposite directions) before sewing the hood together and onto the body of the piece.

Here is a back view showing the curve of the ears.

And here is the front view, looks a tad boring at the mo, like any other yellow fleece.

My daughter drew her choice of face for Pikacho and today I hand sewed it onto the hood.

 And here it is. I am so glad to say she really likes it. She wanted it big, baggy and comfortable. Almost like a child in clothes too big. 

Happy Days everyone, Sew Vala. x

Pikacho Hoodie - part 2, ears how hard can they be?

Well I was certainly fooled into thinking 'yeah I can draft ears, no problem.'

It all started out so simply, ears drafted to the length my daughter wanted. adding seam allowances to width and length so the black tips were still in proportion.

And then it all went downhill.

Ok, so first I cut the black tip as a triangle and sewed it on. Do not know how this happened, it went terribly wonky. The ear does curve and so does the tip, but it is not supposed to curve that much.

 Unpick and start again. This time I sewed the yellow ear to a square in the hope of cutting out the tip shape after.

This was better but I had miscalculated the size of the square and the angle. So unpicked and tried again.

Yeah success with the first ear. And as I had already done it so many times I forgot the other side of the ear curves in the other direction. So yep, got the wrong angle again. Back to unpicking.

Finally, I had a set of ears. I did each pair separatly so I that I did not sew two front or backs together. I cut out the tip shape and trimmed the excess black fabric to create a neat seam. Kwik sew patterns have a 6mm seam allowance, tiny compared to the other pattern manufactures. But I found this ok, when I make my handbags some times there is only a 2mm seam allowance it can be any bigger otherwise the fabric will be too big to fit in the frame.

I digress, back to ears.

 I cut out the interfacing larger than I needed then I sewed around the edge. Again this is I trick I have learnt from bag making and it works very well.

A set of ears sewn together inside out the medium interfacing on both sides gives them a nice puffy look.

It took way longer than I expected, and many more mistakes than I would have liked (over and over).
But I got there in the end. A pair of Pikacho ears. Now wheres the beer.

Happy sewing Sew Vala. x

Pikacho Hoodie - part 1

Last year my eldest daughter asked for a Pikacho Hoodie. I went off and bought loads of yellow fleece fabric. And waited until I could find the right pattern to adapt. In the meantime I started collecting images and asked her to send me some as well.

This week I finally got around to starting, I choose this pattern as my basic draft.

Kwik Sew 3250.

This is the first time I had used a kwik sew pattern, and I must say I did like it.
I liked the fact it is paper, this worked great with the fleece. Another first for me, using fleece.

 The fabric all cut out and waiting.

Interfacing the front and back neck facings and the front pocket. Now I did not know weather to use the interfacing with the fleece as that pattern calls for the hoodie to made out of cotton, cotton/linen blends. In the end I decided to use a sew-in medium weight interfacing. And I am glad I did.

Next time I will share the drafting of the ears,

Thank you for viewing friends. Sew Vala. x 

I want to live here,

A few weeks go my daughter wanted to visit a friend of hers' in London. So I took the opertunity to travel with her and visist a shop I have always wanted to go. S.H said to me it is not very big, you may be disapointed. WOW was he wrong I thought the place is hugh.

And I loved it. The wooden panelling and the carved animals. This place is worth a visit for the architecture alone. I wanted to take so many pictures of the inside but was not sure if I would be allowed to and was not brave enough to ask. I am sure they may not have minded, but I would have felt stupid.

Any way I did what we went there to do, fabric spending frenzy. These are my goodies.

 I see this in a floaty summer number, maybe a 1930's style.

For this I plan a full circle 50's style dress.

My choice for a Downton Abby tea dress. This is actually teal my phone camera makes it look blue.

A sparkly to adorn the above fabric.

I do not know what I am going to do with this, It is just so shiney.

And when I  got home there was more fabric. My order from Fancy Moon had arrived.

These are for more loud shirts, this time instead of an all over pattern they are to be mixed with a plain colour.

My daughter had a fab time with her friend (although she has decided she does not like London) myself and S.H. also had a fab time and ate in a cafe on carnaby street. Which  I must say is not that brill the shops there are the same you can find anywhere apart from a shoe shop that had the most amazing shoes. Yep I did purchase a pair and I will share those at a later date.

Hope you are all having a cool weekend. Sew Vala. x

Loud shirt no 6

Hello friends,

It has taken me some time but I am finally back. I have had some problems logging into blogger, but between myself and the help from my son, we figured it out. Now I will be able to read what everyone has been up to.

So before I travel around blog land I want to share what I have been doing, but only one thing at a time, muti-tasker I am not.

Onto Loud shirt no 6

This is a close up of the fabric I used, it is very 'busy' which i the following pictures makes it hard to see. I t really does looks better in the 'flesh' so to speak.

I used the same pattern as I have previously done for all other Loud shirts.

McCalls 2149

For my next few shirts I have chosen some different patterns in a similar style.

Back to the sci-fi horror B-movie shirt.
Again no changes to the pattern,

I still have not got the understanding of pattern matching, but the front images are level.

As for the back, like the batman shirt I at least was able to centralise the pattern.

And I made my usual mistake when creating buttonholes,

 While feeding the fabric through I accidently touch the buttonhole arm and so it stopped half way. Luckly this is the top buttonhole, so it will not be used. I did not unpick all the stitches because I thought it would leave too many small holes. I guess by now this should be a trade mark because I do it all the time.

S.H has not seen this shirt all all or the finished Batman one. Hopefuuly next week he will be over, see them and like them.

I now off to read what you have all been making. Now I can log in again I can show you what else I have been up to in the next few days, although really I should be doing my tax returns form.

Happy weekend to you all. Sew Vala. xx

Thinking of the next Film and Comic Con...

Tickets have been ordered tonight for our next convention. It takes place early next month.
So that does not leave me with much time prepare outs for myself and S.H.

While there the two main things I want to achieve are getting autographs from a couple of my favorite actors/actresses, from some of my favourite shows.

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Ben Bowder as John Circhton in Farscape

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Ben Bowder as Lt. Col Cameron Mitchell in Stargate S.G.1

And

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Jewel Staite as Dr Jennifer Keller in Stargate Atlantis.

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Jewel Staite as Kaylee Frye in Firefly (T.V. series) Serenity (Movie)

So what could I possibly 'whip up' in under 3 weeks for two people?

If I do run out of time I do have a couple of Star Trek uniforms hanging in the wardrobe one female sixties dress and a male T.N.G. top, that have not had an outing yet.

Sew Vala x