Yoking Around

I finally gave up fiddling with the shirt pattern because other people in MPB Men's Shirt Sew-Along over on Peter's blog have already got their muslin finished. So I pinned some of the pattern pieces to an old sheet I bought from a charity store to use as a muslin. I've only cut out the two yoke pieces, the two front pieces and the back. I'll do the rest later. I might not even do the collar until my son has a chance to try the muslin on so I can see if the neck opening is the right size and at the correct height.

I started by pinning (the green pin) and then basting the pleats on the back piece. Then I put the back piece between the two (wrong sides out) yoke pieces and sewed through the three layers. I read somewhere that you should press all of your seams on both sides before moving on to the next step, so that is what I'm going to do.

Next was ironing to turn the seam allowance towards the yoke. I turned the whole thing over and ironed the other side the same way. After that I put both yoke pieces wrong sides together and ironed them from the outside. I decided to do the top-stitching on the yoke now because there wasn't as much material to move around. As this is the muslin I did the row of top-stitching and didn't bother to look where it should be. I just went and checked four of my son's store-bought shirts and the top-stitching on them is right at the edge and I did it 7 mm away! Oh well.

There is a way of finishing the shirt yoke called the burrito. I tried to look at it from people's blogs because I wasn't getting it. The pattern I'm using doesn't have a separate piece for the button 'placket' (is it then a placket?) so I didn't have to worry about that. The way I did it was to have the wrong sides of the front and back pieces facing and pin them together. Opening up the two yoke pieces I laid the wrong sides of the yokes down on the table.

Then I took the back piece and rolled it up and laid it on the yoke piece that was already pinned. I did the same to the front piece so that the pins were laying on the table.

I brought the unpinned yoke edge up and over the rolled pieces to meet with the pinned edges and pinned it to them. I sewed the seam, ironed it and repeated the steps with the other front piece.

Everything was turned right side out, ironed and I'll top-stitched close to the edge when there's daylight again!

Oops. I just read on Peter's blog that you should start by stay-stitching the neckline. I've done it now.

Inchies and Zentangles

I recently heard of inches and zentangles. Inchies are small pieces of art. As their name indicates they are only an inch by an inch. Zentangles are drawings with repetitive patterns but I thought that they were suppose to repeat the way I had done above. I liked the idea of both inchies and zentangles and thought I'd try combining them. As I'm not creative, the smaller the piece of drawing I have to do, the better!

Done and Over With

The sleeves turned out well even though they were 1 cm longer than we thought would be necessary. It was nice seeing long enough sleeves on my son! I made a mistake with narrowing the sides and didn't narrow them enough. Fortunately! I thought that the shirt was too tight in one place and I don't know if he would have been able to wear it if I had narrowed it as much as planned.

Now that the shirt sleeves were long enough my son noticed that the suit jacket sleeves could be longer. But that will keep until he needs the suit again. Hopefully that won't be for years. And the shoulders are too wide, and the ....

Suit Shirt

My son is tall and has long arms so most shirt sleeves are too short for him. He's attending a funeral next weekend and when he was home last weekend he tried on the only plain white shirt he has. The sleeves were quite short and he would have liked them showing out of the suit sleeve. So I suggested that I just add some material on to each sleeve. He wouldn't be taking his suit jacket off and no one would know.


I remembered that I had cut a sleeve off of another white shirt to make it into a short-sleeved shirt. I never finished it but I thought that I could use the sleeve material for the extension piece. Unfortunately the sleeves are different widths so I had to cut the suit shirt just above the sleeve placket to get the same width. Then came the problem of how to attach the lower edge to the new piece because they were different widths too. I decided to try the upper edge first to see if it worked before figuring out the lower one. I put the cuff piece inside the sleeve so I could sew the wrong sides together as I wanted to make a flat-felled seam. Then I pulled the cuff piece out so I could iron the new seam to have it easier to trim one of the edges before turning the other one over it.

I was trimming away when it hit me. Duh! Why not just use the the other cuff piece as the cuff piece for the suit shirt and I wouldn't have to fuss with getting the lower edges to match. I'll have to wait to see what my son says but other than switching the buttons if he wants, I don't see that it will matter. (Ok the shirt is flat-felled seamed and the cuff piece serged but who's going to peek in his jacket sleeve?) The sleeve is now 9 cm longer.

Next is trying to narrow the shirt. Sigh.

Shirtmaking

For a few years I've been saying to my son that I should make him a shirt as his arms are too long for store-bought ones and he's so thin. I tend to put off sewing because of my machine, but I need to get started. I've wanted my own pattern, so I'd have the directions and photo too and I finally found one in a Suuri Käsityö Kerho magazine from the recycling center. It's from 1982 though, so I hope it will do.

I started by finding the pieces on the pattern page and writing the numbers on the edge so that they would be easier to find again. I've traced all of the pieces out. I couldn't remember what langansuunta was in English so I just put a T (for thread) everywhere it was written and waited until I had the computer on to look what it was. Grainline of course! Tomorrow's task is to take my son's measurements and compare them to the pattern pieces to see what needs to be changed. I don't know if I'll be able to change them very well but I hope so.

I just sent off my request to Peter at Male Pattern Boldness for an invite to the MPB Men's Shirt Sew-Along. So hopefully seeing all of the other shirts will inspire me.

Today's Question: Do you have any shirt making tips?

Eatting Carrots

I've been eating too much wheat products lately and I was craving something fresh. Not interested in a salad I thought I'd try making a dip out of my veggies. I took a fat carrot and sliced it thinly on the diagonal for my "chips". I wasn't sure how I wanted the dip spiced so I decided to make it first, see how it tasted and then add spices. I liked it so much how it was that I didn't add anything else.

Fresh Dip

2 dl unsalted mixed nuts (I used raw)
½ red pepper, cut in chunks
1 avocado, cut in chunks
1 large mushroom, cut in chunks
1 tomato, cut in chunks
1 tsp lemon juice, or to taste
salt and pepper, to taste

Process nuts in a food processor until small bits. Add rest of ingredients and process until the consistency is to your liking. Serve with carrot chips.


I've been tempted to make carrot squares for a while now as I haven't made them in many years. I seldom frost things unless it is a birthday cake. I thought I'd make the cream cheese frosting to go with it as I've never made it. I licked the beater and didn't like it at all. But I frosted the carrot squares with it and hoped for the best. I was really surprised that once the frosting was on the squares it didn't taste cheesy at all.

Cheese and Crackers

I would like to find a versatile nut cheese recipe. Though this Simple Almond Cheese tasted good and was otherwise easy to make, it wasn't worth the hour it took to peel 2½ dl of soaked almonds. The recipe says to pop off the peels but only about 5 of mine slipped off. The rest I had to scratch off. Good thing for podcasts! I used dried dill instead of garlic. I think I'll try them again but either use unpeeled almonds or buy them peeled.

Spicy Sesame Crackers
2 dl flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ dl oat flour (I made it from rolled oats)
1/4 dl sesame seeds
1 ½ tsp pizza spice
black pepper, to taste
chili powder, to taste
dash salt
50 g margarine
3/4 dl milk

Preheat oven to 200C. Sift flour and baking powder together. Add oat flour, sesame seeds and spices. Cut in margarine until well mixed with dry ingredients. Add milk and stir to blend together. Flour board and roll out dough until thickness desired. (I try to roll it out as thin as possible, but that is just me.) Can use cookie cutter to cut shapes or just cut into squares or other shapes. Prick each cracker twice with fork. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or longer if thick, but check after 8 minutes to see how they are doing.

Starting Off the Year

Last year my son's grandmother gave me 18 balls of some old goldy coloured wool she had and I've set a goal this of trying to knit two rows a day on this Cable and Lace Baby Blanket (Ravelry link) with it. I want to work on something else too but I haven't picked anything. Maybe some sewing? My son hasn't decided what symbols he wants on the extra cross stitch pieces. He feels that the love and happiness signs that came in the same magazine are too common.

My son and his girlfriend went back home today because he has an exam tomorrow. His girlfriend's mother decided to drive them back and so one of the grandmothers and I went along too. It's so quiet here knowing that he won't be coming in the door for a while. We went out for pizza before we left them and I was surprised that I was the only one who couldn't finish theirs. But it's waiting in the fridge for breakfast. Nothing like cold pizzeria pizza for breakfast and I haven't had some for years.

We were told that the water would be off on Tuesday, which meant that the radiators would be cold too. Fortunately for some reason we still got cold water but no heat. As it was around -14°C outside I was expecting the apartment to cool down fast but I was wrong and we didn't have to wear outdoor clothes inside! It was nice being able to wash our hands without fiddling with water containers. In the evening we let the air out of the radiator and got some heat.

Today's question: Do you keep a list of what projects you want to do?

Last Day of the Year

I have a few blogs. I started them, wrote in them for a while and then abandoned them. I've always planned to bring them all together into one blog but I haven't got around to it. I don't know why I have a blog and seldom write in it. I have thought of just deleting it but somehow I don't want to! Though I don't comment often or for many I never do, I read a lot of blogs. And I want one of my own.

So a new goal for next year is to do my best to write here once a week. I also need to go through this blog and add the tags I often forget to write at the end of posts. Let's see how I do.

I only made a few Christmas presents. I forgot to take a picture of the cookies and crackers I gave as a present.

This Fancy Crocheted Cross Bookmark was for my sister.

My son's partner likes turquoise, so when I noticed that this turquoise was no longer in the new colour palatte, I bought a ball so I'd have it if she wanted anything knitted or crocheted from me. When I asked what she'd like for Christmas, she suggested handwarmers and she found the Emerald Green Handwarmer pattern, so I made them. I liked how they turned out. I made a few changes. One being to knit them in the round. It's so much easier than having to fuss with a seam.

I was at a flea market and came across a few CrossStitcher magazines. Issue 190/September 2007 had this free kit with it and I thought that my son might like it. Though the pattern said that it would take 12 hours, it took forever! I didn't even get it done in time for Christmas. I showed him the suggestions in the magazine of how to frame it. One of them was to cross stitch two smaller pieces with Chinese characters on them to place on each side of this piece. That's the one he chose so I'll have to find some matching aida cloth and get them done too.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Babysat Again

I had another fun time with my friend's grandson. We made pizza again though this time we had tinned mushrooms instead of fresh and I think he would have eaten them all straight from the tin if I had let him.

This time we also made cupcakes because he wanted to make something else too. I used this Easy Mix Cocoa Cupcakes recipe because it had oil it and I thought it would be easier for him to handle. I had almost all of the ingredients in their own containers so he could mix them together himself. He also wanted to try everything. I warned him that cocoa powder doesn't taste good but he was willing to try it. He didn't like the oil and buttermilk mix either. He wondered at having to sift the ingredients together (recipes here don't usually call for it.) As I was using a sieve I only sifted them once. When it was time to add the boiling water it was my turn to do the stirring. They turned out well and we enjoyed them.