Yak Shaving

Somewhere in the middle of last month, I pulled out the cream colored interlock knit I bought ages ago with intentions of making something for me. I located and prepped all the pattern pieces I needed to make view D of McCall's M6513. Ian helped with the tissue fitting.

And then I discovered the interlock was about an eighth of a yard short.

If this were a true case of yak shaving, the story would continue like this:

So, I gathered my things to head off to the fabric store. But I discovered a flat tire on our one car. In order to change the tire, we had to push the car out of the garage since it's super tiny, which could only happen after we located our neighbor to the rear - he has an impromptu car repair business and he had a confluence of vehicles in the alley that day, all of which needed to be moved so that we could maneuver our car into a space large enough to jack it up and change the tire. Since we couldn't make the jack in the back of the car work, we borrowed one from the car-repairing neighbor and ended up giving garden advice to his wife while he took over the tire-changing process. By the time the car was ready to go, I needed to go change my pants, since the gardening conversation had turned into a gardening demonstration and I'd acquired muddy jeans in the process. Since all my other pants were still drying on the line in the sunroom, I needed a non-pants option. But I've been a bit over-zealous in thinning the closet in preparation for this wardrobe improvement project, so it was wait for pants to dry or sew up a quick skirt. I started this whole thing trying to get some sewing for me done, and this is how I ended up with a skirt instead of a shirt.

Except none of that happened. I sensibly went to the fabric store on another day when I already running errands, bought more fabric than I should have (but some of it is for Caitlyn and KCW is coming up!)

Before the errands, I tried changing the approach a bit. If I was short on fabric for the McCall's top, I needed to figure out what I was going to make with the fabric. Which is how I ended up on Sewaholic's website, purchasing the Renfrew, the Hollyburn and the Cordova.

While I was waiting on the shipping, I put the white interlock away and laid out the gray knit. It's technically a ribbing and the guy that cut it for me at the store last fall thought it was only to be used for cuffs and neckbands on sweatshirts, but Caitlyn and I both have RTW shirts with a ribbed texture, so I'm ignoring the sales guy. The plan is to use my self-drafted shirt pattern and see what happens. But that pattern is stored rolled up since I used kind of heavy paper and the combination of heavy paper and ribbed knit meant that pinning was out of the question.

So the same day I bought replacement fabric, I stopped by the local Home Depot and bought a box of 3/4 inch washers. Those sat on my sewing table for a couple of weeks while a major case of spring cleaning got underway. That project deserves it's own post, maybe when it's done or maybe as I go - just so I can remind myself of what happened to my March/April.

But late last week, enough things came off the sewing table and were put back in their regular homes that I could get out the glue gun. Here's my result:

I now have pattern weights! I used this tutorial, found thanks to Cation Designs. Since I used ribbons out of my box of miscellaneous ribbons and trims, this counts as stashbusting. Sadly, this project is the most use anything out of that box has seen, ever. Some of the ribbons were rescued from other people's stash-purging, some came attached to various gift-wrapping; they've all be saved with the notion that maybe I'd find a use for them; some of them were just too nice to throw away. But I should make a lot more doll clothes than I do to make a sizeable dent in this stash. I think many of the ribbons are actually too short to use on regular-sized people clothes.

So, there you have it: one project delayed due to shortage of fabric, resulting in potentially 6 new projects and a dozen ribbon-covered washers.

Does this kind of yak shaving ever happen to you?