It's hot now, and I need some tank tops for tennis! The two Aura tanks I made out of Nike fabric are super comfortable, and I love wearing them. So I decided rather than hunt in a crap shoot online for the right fabric, I'd head on over to Salvation Army and find some XL shirts with fabric I could see and feel. 

I found a lot of shirts that would work and got five. That's probably got way more than I needed, but, what can I say? I thought it would be such a simple thing to sew these into tank tops, and I guess I got carried away. Too bad it didn't turn out to be so easy.  ​

Putting the shirts together went so quickly at first...cutting out the front and back and sewing up the shell; then, it went downhill fast. It was tedious and time consuming. It took me about 4 days to finish all of these once the front and back were sewn together! Here are the steps.

• Hunt for enough fabric in the scraps for the neckline binding and the two armhole bindings and cut the strips. (I found enough for all tanks except for the teal. For that, I considered a number of fabrics in my stash, from a thicker black labeled "performance," to black and white cotton rib knit. In the end, I used some scraps of blue Nike fabric because it was soft, and I know how it wears. The color doesn't really match, but none of the other options looked much better, so I went with assured comfort.)
• Sew the strips together to get enough length for each binding. (I generally used the fabric from the XL arms, cut 1.5-inch-width strips, and sewed 2 strips together for each armhole binding and anywhere from 3 to 5 for the neckband.)
• Pin the bindings onto the neck and armhole openings
• Baste the bindings on
• Serge the bindings on
• Press all the bindings (twice; once as sewn and twice with the binding turned right side up)
• Coverstitch all the bindings
• Press all the coverstitching

These days, I baste stuff together before going to the serger; it's too easy to fuck up on a serger with the tiniest wrong movement, and it's too much to serge and hold a seam together, especially where bindings, narrow seams, and armholes and necks are involved. So I like to have the seam secured first so there is only one thing to do on the serger—follow the basted line and sew.

Why did it seem so endless and tedious? Well, with 5 shirts, that's 5 neckbands and 10 armholes for a total of 15 bindings, which equals 100 percent Crazy Town.

Here's a close up of the bands. 

Theme: sucky fit and excessive ease in big-company commercial patterns.

I wanted to make a robe for a friend and I figured I'd use the same pattern I'd used to make my robe. Since I was making a different size and she is short, I decided to make a muslin. Before I made it, I chopped 4 inches off the length of the front/back and the sleeves (because on mine the sleeves are way too long). 

When she tried on the muslin, the sleeves were still an inch too long. The front hiked up above the horizontal line I'd drawn for fitting, indicating the need for a full-bust adjustment. I mean, it's just a robe, but an XL with no dart? They go to the trouble of making you cut and sew a two-part sleeve, but the fit of the overall robe is terrible. What surprised me was how voluminous the sleeves were. It was insane. plus, they are very low, and I worried it would restrict arm movement, especially when I narrowed the sleeves.

So I cut another inch off the sleeve length and narrowed the top of the sleeves 2 inches and the underside another 1.5 inches. I also added a dart and did an FBA of 1 inch. Unfortunately, I was too lazy to raise the armhole after all that. 

Then I sewed it up in a flannel print she'd purchased, added some satiny lining fabric for trim, and voila, fits pretty nice, looks pretty cute.

Damn, maybe the sleeves are still too fricking long.
​

Here is my robe. I don't think I ever put it in the blog. I wear it, but the sleeves are annoying.

Here's a better view of how long the sleeves are!

Maybe I made too big a size or something. I never noticed wearing it that it was oversized, other than the sleeves.

Descended into lunacy yet again. My community orchestra is doing movie tunes and the management announced that we could dress up. So of course I thought I would make an outfit.  Ironically, I just want to make it. I don't even want to wear a costume to play an orchestra concert!

I planned a very simple outfit. It took me hours and hours and hours to make it. From getting the (cheap) fabric I wanted in the right color to making pattern adustments and mockups to cutting and sewing polyester charmeuse and polyester chiffon (OMG), it took longer than I anticipated. 

Also, in addition to forgetting to put on my necklace for this photo shoot, I put the lace overlay on backwards. HAHAHAHA.

I saw a photo of the front view, and I thought, "crap! how do the necklines not match?" Well! At least it's better than discovering I sewed it wrong!

The picture below has the dress on the right way. 

So I am not buying shoes to go with this but I have some I thought would work pretty well. Eh, not so much. But still, they'll have to do.