OK, so none of my clothes fit any longer. Time to see how we can address this problem…

1) Revamp existing pants.
I followed the tutorial here and cut the top off a pair of jeans. I used black swimsuit fabric (90% nylon, 10% lycra) and made a doubled-over, wide waistband.

Front

Back

Side

2) Make new pants.
This photographed horribly. What you can’t see is a belly band made of stretch velvet (polyester/lycra, 90/10). Also, you can’t see that there’s a bit of excess fabric in the crotch area.

I followed KwikSew 3156 and used acetate/lycra (92/8) “slinky” knit fabric from here. I abandoned the pattern waist and tied a drawstring around where I wanted the stretchy belly band to lie, drew a chalk line, cut the excess fabric, and attached the stretch fabric.

This material was horrible to work with, but I suspect that was attributable mostly to user inexperience. The fabric crawled all over the damn place while I was cutting it (despite keeping everything flat and using a rotary cutter). It is remarkably fluid fabric, and the first few attempts to draw the waist line were exercises in frustration (the fabric would slide down no matter how tightly the string was tied, resulting in lopsided lines and triangular sections). I seriously considered taping it to my body to keep it in place while we established the new waistline.

Although the pattern’s crotch curve and I don’t quite match (I later read that this is a common problem in Kwik Sew patterns), the fabric is drapey enough that these pants look acceptable in person. Also, black hides numerous errors. It’s good enough to wear to work!

3) Attempt to draft my own pattern.
Now this is where things get interesting. I used the book Sew What! Skirts after it was recommended so highly by Earthchick. I bought some cheap fabric (embroidered cotton twill) and dutifully followed the directions, making mods to add a stretchy belly panel as I went along.

I planned an A-line skirt, fitted waist with facing, stretch panel in the front (polyester/lycra stretch velvet), below-the-knee length. I measured myself and laid out the basic pattern.

Front piece

The front is bigger than the back from the waist to the hip to account for expanding girth.

I cut the front piece to make a yoke and added seam allowances.

I cut the the back and lower front pieces in half vertically and added seam allowances to make a 4-gore skirt. I basted it together, and it was too big. I trimmed 1″ from each side seam (altogether, decreased circumference by 4″), sewed the seams, and contemplated the skirt. I’d made a classic beginner mistake – picked incompatible fabric for the pattern (or vice versa). The fabric was waaay too heavy for a A-line skirt because the hem stood away from me as if I were wearing a hoop underneath. (I should have taken a picture – it would have made you laugh or cringe.) I recut the sides to make a straight skirt and added walking vents on each side. I followed Sandra Betzina’s instructions on making a mitered slit with walking ease as she describes in Power Sewing.

The walking ease means that the edges of the slit overlap when the wearer stands still and just barely open when moving about – I won’t be flashing anyone with a view of my upper thighs!

The back has 2 darts from the waist to match the shape of my backside, and the inside back has a curved facing made of fashion fabric. The front has a facing made of stretch fabric (the same black swimsuit fabric that I used to alter the jeans) and a 1″ elastic band sewn into the seam allowance and zigzagged to the facing to prevent the facing from sliding to the public side. It’s not particularly elegant, but it works.

You can probably see the edge of the elastic and the edge of the facing through the yoke fabric on the front view above. However, I’ll be wearing tops that end below that area, so odd lines and bumps will be hidden and therefore forgiven. :)

4. Stop the pants from falling down.
I don’t have an hourglass figure. If anything, I have a totem-pole shape with more front-to-back variation than side-to-side. Just like socks without calf shaping sag around the ankles, my pants were falling down in a most uncomfortable and embarrassing way. I figured I wasn’t the only person to have this problem, and a brief bit of googling led me to an interesting (but spendy!) product called Belly Ups. Essentially, these “maternity suspenders” are clips that you hook to the edge of your bra and the edge of your pants and have elastic between them.

Image from Belly Ups

Hm, sez I – these look an awful lot like mitten clips that kids put on their coat sleeves to prevent mittens from getting lost. And I know mitten clips are less than $16/pair (the price of maternity suspenders). Then I learned that Dritz sells the clips alone; with a little elastic, we’d have homemade suspenders. I scurried off to JoAnn’s again and look what was there:

Gee, and look what it cost!

They work like a freaking miracle. No more worrying about my pants falling down while I’m walking!

We’re in the midst of another snowstorm (Minnesota in December, go figure), and I thought I’d share recipes for soup and bread – it makes a tasty meal that is simple to put together when you’re spending the day at home, snowed in or not.

Italian wedding soup

My recipe is based on the one found here.

Meatballs
4 oz beef chuck
2 oz pork
1 egg
2 slices of stale bread
2 T freshly grated Parmesan
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 t dried oregano
1 t dried parsley
sprinkle of sweet paprika
sprinkle of cayenne pepper
1/4 t salt
lots of freshly cracked black pepper

With a food processor, mince the beef and pork until it is “ground” (alternatively, you could purchase ground meat). Add the egg, tear up the bread, and pulse until combined. If it seems a little too wet, add another slice of bread. Add remaining ingredients, mix until homogenized. Form into very small meatballs (~1 cm diameter) and refrigerate until the rest of the soup is ready.

Soup
1 cup orzo
2 T unsalted butter
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1/2 t salt
lots of freshly cracked black pepper
6 c low-sodium chicken broth
1 small can whole tomatoes, diced (save juice)
4 cups kale, shredded

Cook orzo separately, drain when al dente. Toss with a little olive oil and set aside.

In a large soup pot, saute garlic, onion, and carrot in butter until transulcent. Add salt, pepper, broth, and tomatoes (plus juice) and keep on medium heat. When soup boils, add meatballs and stir gently. Cover pot and simmer for 15 minutes or until meatballs are cooked through. Stir in kale (this wilts rapidly). Adjust seasoning if necessary. Add orzo to individual bowls immediately before serving (store orzo separately from soup if you have leftovers).

I loved the flavor of this soup. I think it was the butter that did it! :) Matt was “eh” about it. I don’t think he liked the kale. The broth may have been a little too rich for his taste, too.

Tender potato bread

This was the Daring Baker recipe for November – I first read about it here.

Recipe and very complete directions are in the above links. Taking a cue from Dan, I added ground flax seed to the bread dough. I’m not a daring baker – so I cheated and used a mixer to knead the bread. I used the minimum amount of flour called for in the recipe and found myself with a near-batter bread dough. So I cheated some more and used the Dutch oven trick from the no-knead bread recipe to bake the bread.

I think the minimum amount of flour is too low. The crust was crispy for about 10 minutes but softened rapidly because of the moisture in the loaf. The loaf also got stuck to the pot and had to be pried out. The no-knead recipe v2.0 (by Cook’s Illustrated) mentions using a sheet of parchment paper to transport the loaf to the pot, so I will give that a try the next time. Flavor-wise, I liked this recipe, and so did Matt.

A few days ago, James voluntarily hopped on my lap. He rarely does this (he loves Matt’s lap much. more.), so I had Matt rush for the camera to capture the moment.

–

My knitting time has been cut drastically in the past few months, as you may have guessed from the dearth of knitting-related posts. Previously, I did quite a bit of knitting while riding home on the commuter bus (I usually did work-related stuff on the way in because I am a morning type), but lately, all I can do is sleep. Actually, I pass out just about as soon as I’ve plugged my head into the mp3 player, I don’t even notice when the bus rolls out of the parking spot.

But on the occasional day or night when I was sufficiently rested, I pulled out the inevitable porta-knitting project, and row by row, it crept closer to completion. I was near enough to the end of the current project last night that I sat in the comfy chair, got out some “To the Best of Our Knowledge” podcasts, and finished the second of a pair of socks.

Pattern: Socks for Veronik, by Mona Schmidt
Source: Interweave Knits Holiday 2007 issue
Modifications: Shortened the cuff a little (can’t pull nonshaped cuffs over the daikon ashi, alas), did a different toe (decreased on the left and right edges of the front and back)

I know that the stitch pattern is near invisible in the picture above, so click here to see what the pattern looks like in a lighter color. (I wanted black socks for work – sometimes, I feel a little weird having clown-colored socks peeping out from under a black pants suit.) Black yarn is damn near impossible to knit on a somewhat bumpy bus with a shaky, dim overhead light – and god forbid if you drop a stitch! Thankfully, the stitch pattern is easy to memorize and lends itself well to blind knitting.

The toe, as written, ends up very, very pointy. I did the first toe as instructed, and when I finished, the first thought that occurred to me was, “Who the heck has such pointy feet?” Even when I tried it on, it looked strange, so I ripped it back. I decreased 4 stitches, every other round, until the toe was about 1″ wide and grafted the remaining stitches together. The other part of the instructions that I thought was odd was the number of stitches that were supposed to be on each needle. The pattern calls for a p3tog, and if you arrange the stitches as instructed, you have 2 of the 3 st on 1 needle and 1 on a second needle. I set up the stitches such that no pattern repeats were split onto separate needles.

Oh, and maybe this falls into the category of TMI, but I discovered that if I intend to wear black socks, I have to have really well-moisturized legs. Yeek.

I mentioned previously that I was planning (hoping?) to use cloth diapers for this up-and-coming kid. (Btw, I’m feeling fine [read: still exhausted, still a little nauseated], thanks for asking, now in week 17, have gained ~5 lbs.) I know quite a debate exists over whether cloth or disposable is harder on the environment, but we’re going to start out with cloth and see how we like it.

After reading about and pricing the various types of cloth diapers, I decided to make my own. On discussion boards and review sites, a particular diaper pattern kept coming up over and over with high praise, so I followed like a good lemming and bought the master plan for Chloe Toes diapers. This pattern comes in multiple sizes (from preemie/doll to, er, hefty), has many pages of step-by-step instructions and photos, and made me feel like even a sewing newbie could put together functional diapers. It has options for all-in-ones (no separate parts, functionally identical to disposables except they are washed and reused), pocket stuffers, sew- or snap-in soakers, etc.

Matt and I decided to start with the all-in-one style of diaper. I know they take a little longer to dry after washing (tell me this isn’t my best excuse EVAH to buy a Spin-X), but I could tell Matt wasn’t keen on the idea of separate covers or stuffing and unstuffing pockets. Frankly, I’m not sure I want to deal with that, either. Next decision – what to put inside the diaper? Having no idea how much liquid output a baby actually has in a given hour or 2 (I read that an average newborn has 12-15 diaper changes per day!?!), I was a little lost on how much soaker material to use. I consulted diaper discussion boards, read newsletters, etc, and finally settled on this:

One layer flannel, 1 layer terry cloth, and 2 sewn-in terry cloth soakers, all 100% cotton

If that isn’t absorbent enough, we’ll lay additional soakers inside the diaper. The terry cloth parts were cut from really old towels that Matt brought from his parents’ home when we first shared an apartment back in 1997. Those towels were at least a few years old then, and we’ve faithfully used them this entire time. I was glad to find a way to recycle them.

On the skin side is a layer of Alova suedecloth (recommended in the pattern instructions as a wicking fabric), and the outside is a layer of waterproof polyurethane-laminated knit fabric. The whole thing is sandwiched in an outline of 1″ foldover elastic, and a gazillion snaps are applied to make the diaper adjustable in fit.

The elastic is a PITA to apply. Hopefully, it will get easier (and faster) with time, but I have difficulty making sure that the fabric is snug up to the center of the elastic when it has to be stretched around a curved area. (It has to be stretched around the leg openings to gather the fabric. I read here that if it’s not centered, “stuff” may escape a leg opening). Here’s how I do it – with the needle down, I fold the elastic around the edge and pull the front and back edges horizontally first (gently), then stretch the elastic vertically (fairly firmly), then I pull the front edge horizontally again (firmly) and hope that the feed dogs will keep the back edge in place. I can only sew 1/2 to 1 inch at a time because of the curving fabric edge; stretch any more, and the elastic follows a straight path. Does anyone have a better way?

Nascent diaper stash.

I admittedly had a minor freak out when I finished the first diaper. It was so tiny. I stared at it for a long time, and I said to myself, “Holy crap! I’m having a baby!”

I spotted this calendar at a bookstore last night and had an unexpected giggle at the cover image:

Thanks very much to the kind folks who gave such great advice in the comments of the previous entry. I’ve learned an easier way to find the grain of knit fabric – it’s not as precise as pinning a column of stitches on the fold, but I’m told that it works well (provided that the fabric is already laundered several times before cutting).

Fold the fabric lengthwise and smooth with your hand. If the fold is way off grain, it’ll look like this:

But if it’s more-or-less on the grain, it’ll look like this:

–

OK, here are the highlights of putting my “simple” shirt together.

I used stay tape to stabilize the curved necklines:

The back was sewn first, in case I screwed something up. The tape was attached to the neckline using a straight stitch and regular presser foot. The neckline stretched as I sewed it – d’oh! (Fabric shows from under the pattern piece when shoulders are aligned.)

I switched to a walking foot for stabilizing the front neckline. Much better (no fabric peeking out)!

Here’s how I eased the extra bust fabric (remember that I added 0.5″ of length and curved the edge around the insert). The fabric was ease-stitched and is laying flat in the pic – note the edge curve and the pin at the 5″ mark:

I drew up the bobbin threads until the distance between the edge and the pin was 4.5″ and pressed over a tailor’s ham. (I’ve never used a ham before – please tell me if I’m doing this wrong?!) I found a portion of the ham where the curve circumference seemed appropriate and slowly steamed and pressed until all the ruffles went away:

Afterward, the fabric no longer curved at the edge and had lost 0.5″ in length (now it matched the back piece):

I did a similar trick to ease the extra sleeve fabric into the armscye. Actually, I did something entirely dumb when I put in the sleeves. Arms are not symmetric, and neither are sleeves. This is something that most of us knitters are not accustomed to considering because knit fabric is so stretchy and forgiving, but it can really make a difference in woven fabric. See here for a great explanation of why sleeve caps are shaped asymmetrically.

Anyway, I totally forgot to notice which way the sleeve pattern was facing (I made sure only to keep the same side of the fabric public), and I eased the sleeve cap, basted it into the bodice, sewed the seam, and repeated for the other sleeve in blithe ignorance.

Mirror shot of me checking the fit of the sleeve into the shoulder:

I didn’t realize the oversight until days after the shirt was completed. I think I was lucky and accidentally put in both sleeves facing correctly… Or the forgiving stretch of knits saved me.

The rest of the assembly was straightforward. I used the walking foot throughout and sewed with a baby zigzag stitch for everything except the hems (twin needle) and neck bindings (straight stitch). I stabilized the shoulders with more stay tape and a mock flat fell seam. I used contrast color double-fold bias tape to bind the neck and similar color thread to finish the hems:

I mastered the self-portrait with timer to take photos of the final shirt. Gotta move fast!

Additional notes:
1) Sleeve cap looks good!
2) The diagonal drag lines from the bust to the side and the tent-like front vanish if I pad the belly area with a pillow, so I imagine the shirt will fit better as I get larger.
3) I will never use Dritz stay tape ever again – sooo scratchy! I cut away everything that extended beyond a seam or covered it with the neck binding tape.
4) I put the shirt through the regular laundry and was pleased as heck when it came out of the drier intact.

Stick a fork in it, it’s done!