Monday, December 20, 2010

Bacon tastefully done!!

Once the bacon was all painted, I mounted the individual strips on Steam a Seam, then cut them out and played with placement.  In the end I decided that they looked most like bacon when they are placed side by side as you would find them in their packaging or in a cast iron pan. 

My niece is my personal project runway challenge, so I hope she likes them. 

They looked a bit dark to me, so I've decided to punch it up with a drawstring with some more red rickrack.... or a white sheeting drawstring.... I really need to get these in the mail, so off I go.

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Drawstring inserted, went with white satin which was much easier to thread through the casing, and makes it just a little more feminine.

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Sunday, December 19, 2010

Making bacon...

I've started the bacon portion of the flannel pj bottoms.  I've painted the bacon fat on a red cotton quilting fabric... and so far so good.  It takes me 20 minutes per piece, at least it's therapeutic and non-fattening :) Once the 18 pieces are painted they'll be cut out and sewn to the black flannel ground.

Holiday sewing flannel & bacon

Last Thanksgiving my niece and I made her first sewing project, a pair of frog pajama bottoms for Christmas.  When I asked her if she still had them, she said yes and then in a very quiet voice asked if the fabric shrinks.  Of course her father was on the extension and told her that she'd been working out so much that maybe that was the reason, so I assured her it was the fabric.  The fabric was a flannel from Fabric.com, it had been washed and dried twice before we cut into it, and it still shrunk enough to be unwearable.... so when we were together for Thanksgiving, we picked a fabric pattern (because it's no good second guessing a teenager), she wanted a print of bacon slices with a black background... like this one from Spoonflower.  My finances don't allow it this year so I'm making my own interpretation, that I hope she will like.

Using vogue 7837
 Vogue pattern 7837 sleepwear 

I made the first mock up from a pair of pajama bottoms that were a wadder from that same Thanksgiving day.  I used the pattern above, with the following modifications.

1) Instead of following the curve of the side seam, I redrew the side seam line so that it dropped straight from the waist instead of tapering in.  This gives me a very wide leg, my niece requested that they be "huge".  She likes baggy flannels (I guess she's trying to avoid the shrinkage issue in 2011)

2) I inserted solid side panels to make up the width of the legs, they are very wide, for the large the pant leg opening is 27".

3) I had to attach a separate casing for the waist, as there wasn't enough fabric to give it the proper length.
(the original pattern has a fold over at the waist band to enclose the elastic)

2 & 3 - were modifications made because I was reusing the wadder, but I like the solid panels on the side, wasn't it Mae West, who wore black side panel dresses to look thinner?

So I now have my pattern, but I'm still working out how to render the bacon (no pun intended yuk yuk).
And of course now I have these great flannel scraps to use for polishing silver, and featherweights!!