Scenic Route

Winter demands a wardrobe of Happy Pants.  For years that's what our family has called around-the-house pants that are soft and have some sort of elastic waist.   Now to date, my husband has been very happy to see his gym clothes do double duty.  Then one day he pulled out a particularly obnoxious pair of black & red flannel Happy Pants from his suitcase.  And asked me to hem them up.  If I'm going to hem ugly Happy Pants I might as well make them, you know? So, I brought this fun flannel back from the States and intended on using Vogue 7079 that I've had for a very long time.   However, the pattern was a one-piece job and looked like a wagon sheet.  Lots of potential fitting issues.  For Happy Pants--really??  Since I've had great fit with Burda Style pants for myself, I checked out  Burda Style's Men's Pajama Set 12/2010 #145  .  It got good reviews on PR.  When made up,  they indeed had the crotch s...

Well, yes, it has been awhile.  No need to go into details other than all the distractions have been good ones.  :) Yesterday I went along with some 20 fellow members of the  International Women's Assn. of Mongolia to a behind-the-scenes tour  of Gobi Cashmere!! Yikes I love, love cashmere.  Soft, light, warm, timeless.  Gorgeous and practical.  What's not to love? But after 10+ years of "collecting" ;) Gobi cashmere, I had never been to that building.  Where it's actually made.  Until yesterday. The tour was CRAZY COOL . The place was massive and busy as a beehive. My silly pictures don't do it justice.  ...and speaking of pictures...If I had any doubt that phone pics are NOT as good as my old Sony point & shoot camera, I doubt no more.  (OK, I have a iPhone 4S and we were a group of 20 being herded along pretty fast)  Still, I'm so glad I replaced my camera on the way back to Mongolia.  However, I for...

This summer has involved a lot more fitting and learning about  fitting than actual sewing.  Well, I have cranked out some T-shirts and a few Magic Pencil Skirts that I didn't blog about.   Anyway, before cutting into any of the gorgeous linen I brought back from Hong Kong, I want to give myself the best chance for a successful garment as possible.  Of course, the patterns that I was itching to use were all on the other side of the world. So, I defaulted to my short stack of Burda Style magazines I have here in UB and downloaded a few patterns, too.  I have to say, the Burda Style pants I started with fit pretty darn good with the first muslin!  So, I made them up in the light gray bottom weight linen. Very soft. And!  I learned how to make a flat seat adjustment!  About time.  This opens up a whole new world of pant options.  This in addition to my existing plan of simply covering my behind with longer shirts.  While on ...

There has been a lot of dialog going on for a long time in the blogging world regarding PDF patterns vs. paper patterns.  The most memorable one (I think) being on  A Fashionable Stitch  a few years ago.  Sunni really nailed it!  That post obviously hit a chord with sewers as she got 139 comments --equally entertaining.  Some fer, some agin PDFs.  So, I'm not going to go on a rant as its all been said before. That said, when in Mongolia, I do PDFs.  I prefer paper patterns, but I can only cram so many into my luggage when boots, toiletries, vitamins, blah, blah, blah need to be packed--stuff I can't get here.  Then creativity hits and the perfect pattern is on the other side of the world. I did haul over a year's worth of Burda Magazines last year and even though I whined through the tracing process, I have to say, everything I've made from them have FIT with little more than some of my basic adjustments.   So I've recently...

The  muumuu  or  mu ʻ umu ʻ u   / ˈ m uː m uː /  is a loose dress of  Hawaiian  origin [1]  that hangs from the shoulder   Wikipedia Before the big Hong Kong trip, I managed to make a muumuu for those weekend evenings when loose and comfortable is mandatory.  I used this great rayon knit I forgot I had here in UB.  Exotic, no?  Very godess-ish I think ;)   Especially since I was so busy getting the neckline & yoke placed just so that I didn't think about the "wings" placed in a rather odd spot.   I used my TNT Simplicity 2852 , just making it longer like I did for my muumuu stateside,  seen here. I had enough left over to make yet another  Kirsten Kimono Tee, a free download you can find here.  (Note:  all her patterns are great--very well drafted)    In fact, Kirsten Kimono Tees and Magic Pencil Skirts (find here)   have become my uniform this s...

On our recent trip to Hong Kong, I bought fabric.  I went planning to buy fabric.  Linen to be exact as I'm just crazy about the stuff these days.  I had a certain dollar amount in mind, even.  Well, let's just say things got a little out of control. Meet Rowena.  Excellent English.  Extremely knowledgeable.  Very on top of her inventory.  The little vixen.    I spent a ridiculous amount of money.  Trust me.   Ridiculous .   Fast forward to lunch and I am filled with remorse and contemplating putting a chop stick in my eye.  What was I thinking??? You know what this 1-in-a-million husband of mine says?  "let it go.  You'll get 2 years of enjoyment out of this stack:  petting it, pouring through patterns and blogs, planning, actual sewing.  Then you get to wear it.  And blog about it."   He's a keeper. Here's my haul: Linen, of course :) Bottom weight & light ...

I have been away from the blog for a long time, mainly due to travel.  Lots of travel; much of it quick trips within the US seeing family.  Still, getting ready for a trip, being on the trip, recovering from the trip and then regrouping and planning for the next one is very consuming!  It is for me, anyway. ...but hey, I'm back and have a recent trip to share! Due to recent Major Drama at my husband's company here in Mongolia, he was in real need of a vacation.  Mongolia has a week-long summer festival (we checked this off our life list long ago ;), so we took advantage of the extra days off and decided on another trip to Hong Kong as it's a mere 4-hour direct  flight AND it's in the same time zone! Hong Kong was hot and steamy and we left to return to UB with Typhoon Rammasun hammering southern China and the Philippines and causing  crazy winds and rain in Hong Kong.  Still, we had a great  time. Warning:  this is a picture-heavy ...