Doctor T Designs

As part of my year-long goals, I thought it might be good to try adding a monthly round-up post in order to keep my posting a bit more regular, and also help document progress even when I don’t have a finished item to post.

Sewing Progress

As far as sewing goes, January was a bit sporadic. I would say that I had a big flurry of last-minute sewing heading towards the end of December, which resulted in a mostly completed jumpsuit that ended up not getting worn for the New Year’s party that never happened. I ended up having stomach pains on New Year’s Eve anyway, so it was probably just as well that I wasn’t wearing a jumpsuit that night. I ended up finishing the project the first week of January, but it’s taken me the whole month to photograph and document the project. Hopefully there will be a finished object post and pattern review coming soon.

I did spend a few days helping my sister with her next sewing projects. She was away for the holidays, with delayed travel so we did something of a “blitz build” on a new dress for her. She had already made the dress once as a wearable mock-up, so the pattern was already pretty well adjusted. I helped to jump start things by cutting and marking the fabric, and using the serger for seam finishing just to try and expedite the process a bit. During construction, she did all of the sewing and I did all of the pressing (because apparently my iron is scary, or something). She also did all of the finishing and hand-sewing on her own, with some help from our mom with the hemming. Since she is still fairly new, I helped a lot with interpreting the instructions during construction, but she did all of the sewing herself, including bias binding on the armholes. I may have helped demonstrate the invisible zip insertion a bit, but otherwise I did very little to help with the actual construction. Even though it wasn’t really my project, it did occupy a lot of my cutting table space though, so I’m still including it in the monthly review.

In other sewing news, I also cut out a knit dress that I hope to finish work on as January comes to a close. I was so pleased by the fit (and also suddenly in need of another black dress) that’s I’ve cut out a second version already. Maybe (hopefully) this means multiple new pattern reviews coming soon to the blog.

Sewing Delays

I have been spending a lot of time in January doing things for my other non-sewing hobbies and completing continuing education requirements during wee hours of the morning, so there were a few weeks where the energy and time for sewing really didn’t happen. I sort of knew this was going to be the case this month, so I’m actually really happy with the progress on the few things I have managed to work on over the past few weeks.

Finished Projects

I finished my New Year’s jumpsuit, and I helped my sister with a Vogue dress that she finished. Depending on how things go, I may also finish the McCall’s knit dresses before the month technically comes to a close. Documenting said finished garments is another matter entirely, especially with the early sunsets this time of year, but hopefully pictures will be taken and those posts will be up soon.

WIPs & Upcoming Plans

With any luck I’m going to finish my McCall’s knit dress very soon, and that’s my only “real” WIP at the moment (by “real” I mean that it’s somewhere beyond the planning and pattern tracing stages. I have a few other patterns that have been traced, but aren’t really anywhere near involving fabric and being “in progress” any time soon). Thus far it’s been a pretty quick sew now that everything is cut out, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to wear this soon.

I’ve also got a few super secret upcoming “crafty” type projects I’m almost ready to work on. I’m excited because these will include some embroidery, which is something I’ve been wanting to play with more this year. I’ve already done some planning and prep work, so it’s basically time to thread up the machine. I expect that these projects will both be more work and less work than I’m expecting. They are fairly small, so the actual sewing shouldn’t take too long, but they also have a lot of involved steps, so maybe the project will take longer than I’m planning. I need to digitize a few things for part 2 of the project, so I may not finish all of this project next month, but I hope to at least get a good start on things and maybe finish at least the first part of this project.

I also have an event to attend in March which most likely will require formal or semi-formal attire, of which I currently have none that fits. So, maybe next month will also be the start of sewing formal event clothes. I’ve already started “planning” though really I think I have too many inspirations and too many ideas. I’m not even sure how far to go on the level of formality, so I’m having difficulty narrowing things down. If you have a favorite style you can always drop the number in the comments…

Oh, and also probably starting to help my sister make a bridesmaid dress for spring, which I suppose also falls under “event clothes.” Next month is already shaping up to be quite busy in the sewing room!