Maybe.

I cut a wedge at each underarm last night and sewed them back up.

It isn't perfect but oh, man, what an improvement! The sleeves "feel" better and there's a lot less bulk. I may have cut just a wee bit more than ideal, but this is all totally off the cuff and, given that, I'm thrilled.

I wore t-shirts a lot back in the day (these days, not so much), and ALWAYS with a cuffed sleeve.

Those original gigantic sleeves were a challenge, but the new version works great!

I also felled/embellished the seam. I chose Laced Double Straight Stitch in two colors from Natalie Chanin's The Geometry of Hand-Sewing – it reminded me of "sound waves," and that was just about perfect for this project. If I were to do this again, I'd consider switching the colors (LEARNING THINGS)!

And now I want to add SIDE POCKETS! It's practically screaming for them, don't you think?

It's not skyrocketing, but I'm feeling a bit more "with it" and energetic!

I spent a few hours on both Saturday & Sunday mornings in the upstairs apartment, mainly here:

I took a "before" photo, too, but you'd have to look real hard to see the difference. I asked myself why I would pay someone to clean my arguably less icky bathroom/house but tackle this myself and the best answer I could come up with is that I didn't have to move stuff in order to do it. It was "cleaned out" even if it wasn't exactly hitting the "clean" standard I'd have liked. Anyway, it's fine and coming along, and I do take great satisfaction in doing a good job. (Thanks, Mom!)

Had I not made a thousand trips in/out the back door and up/down the outside stairs, I might not have noticed the extraordinary number of "bees" flying around. I don't know exactly what variety of flying things they are, but having discovered that they're flying in and out of MY HOUSE — they gotta go! Meanwhile, apparently more aware, I found another spot with a ton of activity and… NO THANK YOU! The guy at the hardware store told me that I could totally take care of that myself and gave me some stuff. As I was reading the label/directions last night, it was all about fleas & ticks… not a single mention of anything "bee-like." Um. No. I took that as my sign to call a pro!

Ali brought the baby over after the market. I haven't had her all to myself in a while!

We took a recliner nap together.

A little while later, we were playing on the floor and I thought I'd roll her over for a bit of tummy time… and she zonked out! It was only for a few minutes, but long enough to do a row or two on my mystery shawl. (I'm more than half-way on the final border section, then it'll be fancy bind-off time.)

When Ali came to get Malina, she had Junah along.

We went out for burgers & fries, walking over to the video store afterward, where he found these awesome Groot sunglasses (also a mouthful of gumball).

In the mode (and also, clean begets clean), I spent a little time on Sunday cleaning up & organizing my workroom, and then I sat down to tackle a little project that's been on my mind for a month.

I'd spotted a perfect-for-the-venue dress at a local outdoor music event, and Kinneared a photo:

I eventually spoke with her — I couldn't let her get away without asking about that dress! No, she said, she didn't make it… bought it in Texas or someplace. Well, I knew that someone sure as heck made that dress — and I was sure gonna try!

I had already pawed through the stash and found a couple of likely suspects for such a garment, then ordered same size/brand coordinating t-shirts; they arrived on Saturday and I threw it all into the washer so it would all be ready when I was.

My original thought was to sew together my Frankendress by machine, but then I realized what I was doing! I bought this shirt last November when I was in Florence, AL, with Kym for the Alabama Chanin 3-Day Workshop! One of my favorite "extras" on that trip was Judy Hood's Swampette Tour of Muscle Shoals music venues, and I bought the shirt at FAME Studios. It seemed sacrilegious to put it under the presser foot — it had to be sewn by hand!

I've since pressed that seam and it looks much better. I will eventually fell & embellish it; I found the perfect stitch in The Geometry of Hand-Sewing. AND I will cut/re-size those sleeves. Holy moly. Mine's a little more oversized than the model, but I love the super-relaxed fit, otherwise!

I hope you had a great weekend!

…or What I Did Over The Weekend!

First of all, it was 100°F or darn close to it all three days, so I didn’t spend a lot of time outside.

To quickly recap the weekend: Ali & her family came over on Saturday night for a send-off barbecue for Maddy, who left for her summer camp job on Sunday morning. I’m not sure when we’ll see Maddy next — maybe July 4th-ish? And probably briefly before she heads to Oregon in late summer/early fall. Thankfully, she’s found housing out there for the vintage season, so that’s settled.

And she did a great job repainting the back porch — ceiling, pillars, railing, window trim, and floor — before she left!

Kate was away with friends for the weekend, returning Sunday evening. We moved the last load from the apartment into the storage unit that she’s sharing with Maddy. And we bade her farewell on Monday morning as she began the drive to NYC/Brooklyn to install her curated show CONVEYOR for Greenpoint Open Studios this weekend; I’ll meet up with her there on Thursday. She’s still heading to the UK when she returns, but there have been and continue to be Changes and unchanges and rechanges… and stay tuned (because it’s un-/re-/changing almost daily at this point!)

Kate’s plants have come to live with us for a while!! It’s like a jungle in there. 

_ _ _ _ _

OK. My main event of the weekend turned out to be finishing the Alabama Chanin Swing Skirt that I started last week!

I’ve been wearing the original more and more, and had been wanting to make another one for quite a while. My original thought was to try using one (or more) of the souvenir t-shirts I’ve picked up in the last year or so — House of Blues (St. Louis), Country Music Hall of Fame (Nashville), FAME (Muscle Shoals) are vaguely what I had in mind. What caught my eye was a shirt from La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona! I’d never thought of it in terms of a skirt before, but it was obviously dying to be one.

Naturally, I didn’t take a “before” photo, but that’s basically the front of the shirt on one of the skirt’s front panels, and the back became the other front panel. I always buy the largest size that I can, but this one wasn’t very big and it was an off-center design, so I made the most of it — you can see that I left the hem intact. For embellishment, I’ve only embroidered around the outline of the cathedral’s towers using black thread.

I found a gray men’s 2X long-sleeve t-shirt in the stash (yes! there’s a t-shirt stash) to use for the bottom layer (that Barcelona shirt being slightly lighter in weight than I prefer and, also, I’m just a bit more comfortable with two layers). I cut the front skirt panels from the front of the shirt and the sleeves were shaped almost perfectly but just a tad too short (due to armhole shaping) to be the other two panels… it was oh so close! I decided to do some piecing and make it work!

I basically made a yoke using remaining fabric from the front & back. Another black t-shirt from the stash was cut for the top layer and I suppose I could have left that piece intact, but decided to stitch & cut to expose my Frankenstein work!

Then I had the bright idea to add side seam pockets! I love pockets, don’t you? I used the pair of pants I was wearing to get the placement right.

I got a little tripped up because of “felling” the pocket seams, and ended up felling an entire side seam to the front of the skirt because of the way the pocket was inserted (ideally, seams should be felled to the back). I wasn’t gonna let that bother me.

After the pockets & seams were sewn and felled, it was time for waistband elastic! I really love Alabama Chanin’s fold-over elastic, which I attached with a nice stretchy herringbone stitch. I used the same method on my first Swing Skirt.

Voila! It’s a skirt!

On Monday morning, I realized (again, for the n^th time in almost 60 years) that as much as I really do love a nice side-seam pocket, it definitely does not love me/my figure in a garment such as this.

So I took them out! It was not as painful as it sounds — one nice thing about hand stitching is that the stitches are BIG, and I didn’t even have to rip the entire seam. Once the seams were re-sewn and properly felled (to the back!), I was much happier with the fit.

And I’m wearing it today!!

Oh yeah, I gave myself a pedi yesterday for the first time in forever!

A favorite detail is this patch that was stitched to the front of the original t-shirt — with all the threads hanging out, just like that — and I just had to keep it! I love this skirt and will certainly be making more.

_ _ _ _ _

You can learn to make your own Swing Skirt on Craftsy from Natalie Chanin herself on Craftsy, or choose from any of her other classes on the platform. She’s a fabulous teacher!