Long, Lazy Day Off

I woke up late, played around with Lucky, got some laundry going and cleaned up around the sewing machine. It isn’t bright enough to work where I have the sewing table, so I set up shop in the kitchen. It took about 5 hours, start to finish — 8 with the breaks I took.

It was a lovely, sunny day and the light coming through the skylight made the work seem easier. Lucky and I went outside three or four times, to enjoy the sun and check out the yard.

I didn’t take pics of the whole process (insert huge sigh of relief), but I took a few, and Tom took a couple when he got home of me wearing the finished project.

Read on, if you are interested…

It began with the new cutting mat (not shown) and took about 45 minutes to cut all four pattern pieces out of both pieces of fabric. Note: Long years of experience have taught me to pre-wash and pre-shrink most fabrics before cutting and sewing. That way, things that might otherwise become unwearable with a mistaken toss into washer or dryer are “good to go.” In this case, it almost caused me to need more fabric for the lilac fabric. I had about 6″ left over, where I had purchased 14″ extra!

I used Simplicity Pattern # 1725 as a replacement for the pattern I had changed (#3542) but couldn’t find where I normally keep patterns. It worked really well.

Mother and I picked two lovely fabrics, a lilac on a navy background and a pink and blue “posies” pattern on black. They look reasonably good together, but of course they won’t generally be seen at the same time. Because as usual I decided to make the vest reversible.

I took the small pocket that was supposed to go on the inside and used it to make a little pocket slightly offset from the larger patch pockets.

Here are a couple mid-process shots:

Vest pockets, lilac fabric…

floral fabric ready to pin and sew to lilac fabric…

and ready to turn right side out!

It is designed to have a full liner, which simplifies things a lot. The armscye is generous (something I needed to fix with the other pattern anyway). It is slightly shorter than my other vest, but still comes down past the widest point of my hip.

Side “A” —

and Side “B” —

I’ll use the little pockets to hold bandaids and “positive behavior” cards. And the big pockets will hold the whiteboard markers, pens, etc. I tend to look like I am wearing panniers by the end of the day!

It’s so much easier for me to teach when I have the most important things at hand. Making a simple vest not only allows me to be more efficient as a teacher (and move freely around the room as needed), it demonstrates to the students that I know how to make things which is valuable in the communities I teach in.

And now.. to make supper, pack my materials to take to school tomorrow and crawl into bed. It’s a short day for the students, but an hour and a half of meetings afterward. And a short week, though in my experience shorter weeks are exponentially more challenging for behavior management.