February 2015 Garment Sewing Plans

Little Towa is modeling her cute winter look....  

.....as mine seems to be so...... uninspiring.  *sigh*

As part of the Make a Garment a Month challenge, we are to post our monthly plans adhering to the suggested monthly theme.... or not.  Our monthly theme for February was 'Franken Pattern'.  It's a terrific theme idea..... to use different composites of different patterns to fashion a unique garment, but there's been no time (or energy?!) to 'franken' anything; so, my February challenge will simply be to 'Finish' the two things I've got started.

Here's where I'm at today.  Another NEWLOOK 6735 top cut out awaiting sleeves and Alabama Chanin stitching around the neckline and sleeve hems along with the Vogue 1247 cream corduroy skirt stitched to this point. 

Everything was zooming along with the skirt until I realized what I thought was a creaseline in the corduroy, seems to be more like a flaw.  It is difficult to photograph the cream corduroy, but you can just barely see the dark vertical line in the photo below.  There's also one in the back.  Bummer.  And then, as in only a few days ago..... did it occur to me to check the nap.  Ya' know.... corduroy has a directional nap that needs to be taken into account when CUTTING out the pieces of one's oh-so-cute skirt.  Mine is all over the place on this skirt!  Gee whiz!  Soooooo, after shelving the skirt for a few weeks, I'm wanting to finish it as a muslin so one day I can make a wearable oh-so-cute Rachel Comey Vogue 1247 little skirt. 

Happy Sewing Everyone!
UPDATE:  I forgot to include a photo of the patterns.  Oops!

Kitchen Bar Mop Dish Towels - Make your Own

Remember the old phrase 'tea towel'?  Now kitchen towels seem to be called 'bar mops' and we needed fresh new ones around the size of an ordinary washcloth.  You know, the perfect size to clean-up those little countertop and stovetop spills.  Loving white decor accents, I've been wanting white kitchen bar mops, but did not want to confuse them with our white bathroom washcloths.  It's good to keep those kind of things separate, right?!  So, channeling Alabama Chanin, I customized my own.

Simple white washcloths were purchased from our local Sam's Club for @$4.00 for a pack of 2.  They measure 12 1/2" x 12 1/2".  These had ribbing stitching the perfect width apart to practice the herringbone embroidery stitch using 3-strands of ordinary embroidery thread in a soft blue.....

..... that stitches nice straight stitches on the back.  At first I thought I'd leave the 'tails' of the knots.... but then decided to hide them in the seams.  

A mere 30 minutes later a new kitchen bar mop was completed.  The washcloth is nicely absorbent and my only problem is.... it's almost too pretty to use!

I'm interested to see how well these will wash as I like to run these types of things through the washer with a little bleach.  I'll do that before I make more.