Different than an apple

I needed some teacher gifts asap. I hate gifting blindly, as in not knowing much about the recipient. As I moped around the craft store, dissappointed in settling on two matching generic gift, I remembered that I did know that his main teacher likes to cook and incorporates that into her lessons often. Then, I wondered around the store some more trying to think of how to use this remembered knowledge. Stumbling upon this double quilted chili fabric made it click - potholders. They are teflon fabric lined.

I added the handle covers since I have been needing to make some for my own kitchen. Also teflon fabric lined.

I purchased 1/2 a yard of the cotton and 1/3 yard of the teflon.
I then cut out four 9" squares and four 9"x4.5" rectangles from the cotton. Next I cut out four 9" square from the teflon. I finished the edge of the rectangles with 7/8" ribbon used as a binding. Then I sandwiched the front, hanging tag, pocket flap, and teflon. Stitched, turned, and top stitched. FIN.
For the handle covers, I improvised a pattern from my cast iron pan handle, cut out fronts and backs and matching teflon linings.

Easy and hopefully well liked.

I am here.

SO, I do really stitch stuff.

I am a bad blogger though. If I get it together enough to blog, I usually hit my knit blog first. Then, I am blogged out. Or, I just have not set up current picture of my stitching.

Today, I am a little excited by some design ideas and by renewing play on a favorite website, COLOURLOVERS. This made today the day to start treating this blog with some more respect than an entry once every millenium. I will come back to why I mentioned Colourlovers later, after I have taken the next step in my play with thier tools.

Right now, I want to fill you in on my current sewing obsession. I love to make my new husband custom shirts in wacky cottons. He loves it, too. It is really all he wears (partly because that is what fits, too). We have a good time picking out fabrics together and we also have a good time seeing people's reactions to his crazy collection. I am also obsessed with these items because they are really the fruition of all the skills I have learned through many years of sewing and tons of love poured in to achieve high quality and durablity. Sometimes, the timing of the shirts coming to his side of the closet is a slow dribble because they take a lot of hours with the flat fell bound seaming (it is like sewing a garment 3 times). However, on our honeymoon, I finished 3 and just finished 3 more for his recent bday. This more than doubled his rotation, which have made him an equal mix of famous and notorious at the high school at which he instructs. For Xmas, he is getting a few more (I hope).

This leads me to rant that stupid Simplicity pattern Company has discontinued two very fine Mens' patterns: 4287 and 9469. They have a pathetic set of patterns to fill this measly section as it were and now they have diminished it greatly by putting those two out of print. Unfortunately, I have the nasty habit of not taking great care of my patterns since I quickly tire of dress patterns and they are so cheap. These shirt patterns are classic though, so I am going to have to order the out of print copies and reinforce 'em and treat them like gold. The best result yet though has been from combining components from 3 different patterns, so I am likely to tranfer those components onto better pattern paper and keep those like something far more precious than gold.

Below is a fashion slide show of all the complete shirts that I could get my hands on (one is nearly absent as it is being worn to work currently). The shirts appear in chronological order. All I have to say is that I coulod have rocked the recent menswear challenge on Project Runway; as I have not only made these many shirts, but pants, zoot suits, vests, ties etc.