Back to Garment Sewing

for a little while anyway. Yesterday and today I worked on the summer nightgowns for the girls. They are all finished except for a bit of topstitching. I busted 4.5 yards of garment fabric making these. That makes a total of 6.25 yards out of the almost 400 yards in my stash. I think my next project will be a shell-type blouse for myself. I have lots of printed rayon for practicing until I get the fit just right. That should take care of several yards right there.

This is the pattern I used, view 2 for both. The copyright date is 1983 but the style is still a good one. It was originally purchased at Beverly Fabrics in San Jose, but not by me. In 1983 my daughters were well past sizes 7-10 and I don’t think I ever visited that particular fabric store anyway. I must have bought it at a yard sale or a thrift shop sometime after my granddaughters were born. Don’t we wish patterns still were priced like this one?

I’m still knitting on the 2009 Anniversary Shawl. I’m on the Clue 5 which is the final clue and have only about 12 rows to go. Of course each row has over 500 stitches which means I can only do a couple of rows in an evening. That’s if what we are watching on TV isn’t overly exciting, causing me to make a mistake which involves counting, ripping back, or, worst of all, frogging to the lifeline. That’s the white line several rows from the bottom – actually it’s unwaxed dental floss. The little green things are 1/4” lengths of drinking straws being used as stitch markers. We really believe in recycling/reusing around here. I use different colors for marking different sections of the pattern.

There is no border on this shawl, and no grafting to be done. So when the final stitch is in, I can block it and it’s finished! Not to count my chickens before the eggs hatch, but this will be the first lace shawl I’ve ever completed. Then I can start finishing up the other three lace wips.