My children are getting terribly neglected, aren’t they?

Well, Anya won’t wear some of the many things that she has in her closet, so I ask you…why should I make more?  Kai on the other hand doesn’t much care what he wears, and rarely matches.  He’s happy with athletic shorts and t-shirts, so that is what he wears most of the time.

I even BOUGHT him clothes this Spring.  I know!  Amazing!

That means more sewing time for ME!

I picked up this nice piece of linen blend and have just been waiting for inspiration to hit me.  I like those easy, breezy linen pants I have been seeing around, so I thought I would give it a go.  I didn’t want a drawstring, so I decided on an elastic waist.  I took a pair of jeans that I can pretty much just pull off zipped and buttoned, added a little ease, and used that as the template for these pants.  I figured out how high I wanted the rise to go, and figured in my 3″ knit-covered elastic waistband.  I like long pants, but I figured these would be sandal pants for summer.  I made sure to make an extra wide hem just in case I changed my mind and wanted them longer.

Now, this is the reason you should make a muslin out of a lesser-loved fabric before going whole hog on your nice stuff.

It didn’t fit right.  It was too baggy, as I added too much ease.  *sob*

Trying again…much better fit.  Too bad they are just out of some striped ticking and I’m not sure if I will wear them much at all. We shall see, I guess.

I also wanted to make a lace shirt, as they seem to be very much in fashion this summer.  They are nice, as you can wear different colors underneath it to change up the look.  I got this piece of knit lace in the one-off run bin at my fabric store, and there was only a yard of it.  I wanted a much looser shirt, but it didn’t have the width to do that.  This was as much width as I could get out of it.  I still added a bit of  extra width than normal and a mullet hem.  The arms and neck needed to be stabilized, so I used a small width cream bias binding on it.  I didn’t want to use a knit on the hems as this is really apt to stretch out.  The bias tape worked great and gave it a nice stable look.

This weekend I hope to get some time to sew with Anya.  She said she wanted to learn to sew, so we shall see how our collective patience handles that!