It's always good to try something new! Miss V's birthday is in May, so I wanted to make her something that she'd like, but something I hadn't tried before--voila, a raincoat.
I'd seen Amy Butler's raincoat patterns previously, so wanted to use the kids' one to make a raincoat. They're sized in 3, 5, 7, and then in straight numbers, so I chose a 7 to give a bit of growing room.
I found a good deal on laminated cottons at
www. fabric.com, and it came on this large roll--bet the person delivering it wondered what I had ordered. As you can see, the fabric is a bright cotton, girly print that was then laminated. I also bought a teflon foot for my machine, which was a necessity, for sure. The lining, which shows only at the neckline here, was a white cotton background with very small multi-colored dots that pretty much matched the colors of the laminated fabric.
Since I hadn't worked with this stuff before, I actually signed up for a class. Truth be told, I'd missed one offered earlier offered by one of my American Sewing Guild friends, so I begged her to offer another one so I could do this before V's big day. She did and another sewing buddy signed up and made a size 3.
Laminated cotton is an interesting fabric to sew as there isn't much (if any) give as you're putting pieces together. You can't pin into it (so you use hair clippies), you have to use a longer stitch length (for fewer penetrations into the stuff), and you're best off to have a machine where you can use both a teflon foot and the walking foot or built in walking foot motion. Even with all that, it still is sticky sometimes. The hardest part was making the belt loops and button loops because they were so narrow. I have some really light tearaway stabilizer from my embroidery projects, and had to use it to help those little pieces feed through.
One other thing I did before it all got put together was to embroider Miss V's name inside on the lining. I wanted to make sure if she left it somewhere they could tell who it belonged to. When she outgrows it and K or E wear it, it still has their last name.
All in all, it was a really fun project!
After my last post, I decided I wanted to do something a bit different than work on placemats and napkins, so I cut out a pair of shorts for Miss V. The fabric is a lightweight stretch denim with lots of fruits and flowers. I have enough of this in my stash for many, many more pairs of shorts or Capris--not sure what I was thinking when I bought it, but it does look cute in biking shorts. I used Pattern Master Child's Play v5 to draft the pattern to her measurements I took last weekend. Can't wait to see her next week to see how they work out. 
Yesterday I pieced and did the binding on ten of these placemats, and also put binding on the ones my sister pieced from an earlier post. Today I cut and did rolled hems on 14 placemats: four blue print, six white print and four double-sided frog ones. The frog mats are actually a project I started many years ago and never finished. I had the double sided mats completed, but had never finished the napkins. It is so nice to say that I actually have a project finished!
I hadn't done any rolled hems in years, but I have to say that my serger created all the ones I did today beautifully! To make the napkins I first cut an 18" square (or two squares if double sided napkins are to be made). Next I iron them and use a light weight sizing so they have a bit of body. I then lay them out on my gridded table and use a salad plate upside down to round the corners. I place the edge of the plate 4" from the corner I'm cutting away in both directions, then use my rotary cutter to cut the corner away. This makes it much easier to serge a continuous edge around the napkin.
