Saturday, January 25, 2014

Simon's long johns

Simon works outside and he needs some help keeping warm. I'm not always around to keep his feet warm,  you know! During our Stretch fabrics class at Club Tissus we made yoga pants. Simon was supposed to make stretchy pants for himself but we never got around to it, with all our pending projects. We had purchased Peach Skin fabric from Stretch Text on St-Laurent.

Our sewing instructor was having a fashio show and all her students were invited to show off their creations. Simon really wanted to have another item from the "tissus extensibles" class, so he made the 2 items in 1 day! 

Simon used 2 patterns to create his long johns: Jalie's 2327 and 2918


















He extended the boxers to make his legs, accounting for the width of his thighs, knees and ankles. His shirt he made a -5 to make it tighter and he made a mock turtleneck.The length is a bit longer so that when he moves around the shirt does not lift past the pants. I think he will be nice and warm in these. Coupled with the sweater he made from the same pattern and the winter jacket he made, he is good to -40 Celsius!











Jalie 2108 - My winter ski jacket completed!

Simon finished my jacket! This was a very difficult project, one that challenged us. I am SO proud of the work we Simon did! I must give him his credit. I did the interior and he did my exterior. This was such a hard project first because we needed to make modifications due to our measuring. I needed a little more room for my hips and the arms were not long enough.

The interior was done with nylon lining and 200g Earthwrap.The exterior is downtex. We used pattern Jalie 2108 and made MANY modifications. The jacket has a detachable hood, an internal drawstring, sleeve cuffs, princess sleeves and fancy-pancy topstitching. The jacket is guaranteed to be warm up to -35 Celsius, and let me tell you it is! We have had extreme cold weather and I am not the least bit cold in this jacket. Rather, if I am in a store or my car I AM HOT!


 

 The back pattern piece was easy enough. I chose to use some decorative topstitching.

My machine has many interesting patterns that we can use. We had fun testing out the stitches.


















We ended up using 2 different styles of topstitching and we embroidered my name in the back. This pattern of stitches takes A LOT of thread, and it takes FOREVER! Just be patient and buy a lot of thread!



The fun part came in the assembly of the interior and the exterior pieces. We made princess seams and we put the pockets in the princess seams. The second jacket we make will go much smoother now that we (Simon) understands how to do the pockets in the princess seams. The topstitching of the pockets is where we all went a little fuzzy on. I think Simon is one of the only ones that got it, and he does not even have them on his jacket.



 The sleeves were not long enough and we needed to add some length. The best way to do this so that it would not show is to have a cuff. This way we can turn the material over and hide the seams.
 Inside you will see the cuffs. With this the snow and wind have no chance of going up your jacket!

 Here you can see the internal drawstring.





And now that it is all done and we can finally sleep, we are taking the snow pants course. We will need the pants so that we can play in the snow!