Sewing: Adjustable Unisex Apron

My husband is now modeling something that I made for him. This apron was for his recent birthday, and I thought that it was lucky that I came upon the pattern for it just in the nick of time. It's another FREE pattern (yay!), this time from The Purl Bee. I didn't have access to the super-nice fabric they used, but I thought that the striped outdoor home-dec canvas fabric that I got at Jo-Ann's on clearance was pretty great. For the pocket, I got a lovely chenille, also on clearance.

My process notes:

• The pattern is easy and quick to make. The only edit I did was to topstitch an unnecessary line to connect the diagonal stitches, just for looks, since I used a light-colored thread that made all the stitches prominent. I kind of like the visible stitching, actually; I want to try something like that for another project later on.
• I tried a heavier cotton webbing (like the kind you'd use for a cloth belt) to make the strap, but the only color available to me was a bright white, and that just looked bad with the other colors. The ecru cotton twill I ended up with isn't as sturdy but it will do. It's easily replaceable if necessary.
• I'm glad I remembered to switch to a heavier needle (16/100). The fabrics were a little more difficult to press/iron than the quilt-weight woven fabrics that I usually work with, but sewing the heavier fabrics was quite easy as they stayed put better.
• The pattern is supposed to fit shorter folks (according to the pattern maker), but at 5'1" I definitely couldn't wear this apron without looking stupid, and also have it function properly. It is WAY too big on me, and the pockets are around my thighs or something. Uh-uh.... This pattern could be edited down pretty easily, BUT it's perfect for my 5'11" hubby as is! Just an FYI. :-)

xo, Gladys

Garden + Recipe: Marinara Sauce from Scratch

This is probably the last large harvest of the season. Picking tomatoes is back-breaking work! Props to all the tomato (and other vegetable/fruit) pickers out there.

I would say 80% of the tomatoes on this harvest were perfect-skinned, meaning no splits, holes, or any other blemishes. Perhaps all of the caterpillars and other bugs that were eating them before have transformed (into moths or butterflies) or died off.

I used up all of the tomatoes from the last huge harvest to make spaghetti meat sauce (with ground beef and sliced hot dogs, yummy...), so it's time for another batch of marinara sauce. I might then use the sauce to make stuffed bell peppers with meatloaf or burrito meat, and also skillet chicken parmesan. Other possibilities for the tomatoes: chocolate chili, salsa, and/or a simple BLT salad.

For the eggplant, I'm planning to make a Filipino eggplant torta -- I'll post pictures and explain the recipe if I get around to it. (Ahhhh, so hungry now!) In the meantime, here's the marinara recipe that I use.

Marinara Sauce
Makes about 1 quart

(from Lidia Bastianich's Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen cookbook)

Ingredients

• 1/4 C extra-virgin olive oil
• 8 cloves garlic, peeled
• 3 lbs ripe fresh tomatoes, peeled and seeded*
  OR one 35-oz can peeled Italian plum tomatoes, seeded and lightly crushed, with their liquid
• Salt
• Crushed hot red pepper
• 10 fresh basil leaves, torn into small pieces

Method

Heat the oil in a 2- to 3-quart nonreactive saucepan (like stainless steel) over medium heat. Whack the garlic with the flat side of a knife, add it to the oil, and cook until lightly browned, about 2 minutes.

Carefully slide the tomatoes and their liquid into the oil. Bring to a boil and season lightly with salt and crushed red pepper. Lower the heat so the sauce is at a lively simmer and cook, breaking up the tomatoes with a whisk or spoon, until the sauce is chunky and thick, about 20 minutes. Stir in the basil about 5 minutes before the sauce is finished. Taste the sauce and season with salt and red pepper if necessary.

GLADYS'S NOTES: I actually purée the sauce in my blender once it's done because my guys don't like chunky tomatoes. :-) Also, don't be scared how much salt you end up putting in; just taste it every so often while it's cooking. One last thing is you can use dried Italian herbs if you don't have fresh basil on hand.

* If you want instructions on how to peel and seed fresh tomatoes, here they are:

Peeling and Seeding Tomatoes

1. Put a big pot of water to boil. In the meantime, prepare the tomatoes by cleaning them, coring them (like strawberries), and slicing a shallow X on the bottoms.
2. Also prepare a big bowl of ice water -- with lots of ice.
3. Once the water is boiling, carefully put the tomatoes in there and boil for 1-2 minutes. Then fish them out with a slotted spoon and drop them the bowl of ice water.
4. After a few minutes in the ice water, the tomatoes should be easy to peel.
5. Once peeled, slice or even tear them in half, and gently squeeze out the seeds over a strainer that is set in a big bowl. This will ensure that you keep the liquid as well.

Once peeled and seeded, the tomatoes are now ready for the marinara recipe. Enjoy!

xo, Gladys

Sewing: Basic Newborn Pants

Now that we don't have swim lessons at my house anymore, I've been able to ignore housecleaning in favor of sewing. :-D My sewing run continues with Made by Rae's basic newborn pants, which I mentioned in the tutorial roundup yesterday. There are a couple of newborns in my world right now and at least three more coming in the next few months, so this is a good pattern to have in my repertoire. I used this FREE pattern (woohoo!) with tutorial and "pimped" them *snort* with completely unnecessary but cute pockets and cuffs using her tutorial here.

Pants #1 in woven cotton. It looks like my husband is holding doll clothes. Love it!

Pants #2 in cotton knit. No pockets on this one. I just wanted to share that I love the modeler of this one, too. What a good sport, still in his jammies no less. :-) Also, I was able to rock the zigzag stitch on this pair of pants, especially to attach the cuffs.

All right, time for my usual process notes (a.k.a. sometimes rants):

This is a great easy pattern, and the pockets were also easy (I'm getting better at edgestitching), but can I just say that I hated very much disliked adding the leg cuffs (i.e. binding)? The thing is, if I had simply hemmed the legs, I would have run into the same problem: attempting NOT to accidentally sew all the layers together due to the narrow hems. They're so narrow that they don't fit around the arm of my sewing machine (even after I take the "free arm" part off). -- I'm half-dreaming now of getting a cylinder arm machine but *ugh* so expensive. -- I've had this problem on several other projects already but the previous times didn't seem as bad as putting the binding on the striped pants (Pants #1). It took multiple tries with different stitches (zigzag, narrow zigzag, edgestitch) and A LOT of frustration. The straight stitch was beyond me for a while, which is not a good feeling.

So: before working on the second pair of pants, I searched for and found a trick to making this task a bit easier (thanks, Internets!). It's the difference between this:

...and this:

Not sure why I didn't think of that on my own. You'd think after the 5th or 6th attempt sweating over the cuffs on the striped pants, with the seam ripper basically attached to my mouth while I sewed (Oh, you don't hold your pins and seam ripper between your teeth? Just me?), I'd have had the motivation to figure it out!

I worked with knit for the second pair of pants -- AND I decided to add cuffs to finish the legs even though I could have left them unhemmed since it's knit -- because I am a masochist like that. (Or a nicer way to put it is that I like challenges.) But also, I thought the print was super cute and wanted to see how well the pattern and embellishments would work on knit. They did work nicely in the end, BUT ... again the leg cuffs were a bit difficult for me: it takes so much fussing just to pin the binding in place. But maybe it's just me. Maybe you don't have the same problem? If not, you're a rockstar, and could you please give me some advice?

Anyway, one thing I found helpful after managing to pin the cuff in place was to sew the ends together first with a bunch of zigzag stitches (I did several passes forward- and backstitching). This wasn't in Rae's "pimping" tutorial but I think it's important to prevent the cuff from separating in the wash or something; after all, they're originally secured to each other at only one point. My method is not super pretty but it actually doesn't look that bad. (And you could always use one of the fancy decorative stitches on your machine if you have them.) Added bonus: you won't have to worry as much about keeping the cuff in place when you sew the rest of it. Win!

Final notes, just in case you didn't know:

• When sewing with knit, using a narrow, longer zigzag stitch works better than a straight stitch. I set the width to 0.5 or 1.0 and the length to 3.0 (thanks to the Sewing for Boys book for this tip).
• When using the zigzag stitch, remember to loosen the tension of your upper thread a bit (I set mine to -1 on my Singer Stylist and it worked fine). I had never done this before when using the zigzag stitch, but then I saw and read the appropriate page on my Singer instruction manual just as I was working on Pants #2. Oops. All's well that ends well, I guess!

xo, Gladys

Sewing Tutorials Roundup

If you're on Pinterest, you might have exponentially increased your to-do list like I have. Over the past couple of months, I've accumulated links to some awesome sewing tutorials that I want to try by the end of summer. Thought I'd share some of them here, in case you're in need of inspiration and encouragement during these "dog days." Just click on the photos to go to the tutorials.

I want to make these adorable newborn pants for my brother's twin boys who are due to be born in late September.

Here's another project I want to do for my twin nephews. I think I'll have to make two!

I love the idea of these fruit stripe skirts, and I'm thinking the watermelon skirt will be the first one I try.

Although I don't like the idea of cutting into perfectly good pillowcases, this tote bag made from a pillowcase would be great if I could find a pillowcase pattern that I really loved.

I'd like to try out this hemming/finishing method, called a lettuce hem, on a quick skirt using my sewing machine (no serger here).

This is a cute and free pattern + tutorial for a shirt or dress for a 12-18 month toddler (girl). I don't know any kids that age currently, but I'm going to make this anyway! I think I'll use two different fabrics for the circle neck and the body.

And finally, here are a couple of links to sewing roundups:

1) 10 easy skirt tutorials [for adults]

2) free patterns from Oliver + S!

Happy sewing!

xo, Gladys

Sewing: Oliver + S Reversible Bucket Hat

This adorable baby says Happy August! (Can you believe it's August already? Summer is almost over. *tear*)

Anyway, here's one of my latest sewing projects, a reversible bucket hat made from an Oliver + S pattern. I may have written this on the blog before, but I love Oliver + S. And lucky for you, this is a FREE pattern! It's actually in the Little Things to Sew book that I own, but I liked printing it out from the PDF then simply cutting out the size I needed. Saved me from having to trace out the pattern and then having to cut THAT out.

I used two quilt-weight fabrics, but the hat felt almost like canvas once it was put together. And there's only one layer of interfacing in between the two brims. Amazing.

I started this pattern the night before I planned to give it as a gift to adorable baby N, so I did have to pull an all-nighter to finish it. (This is definitely my M.O. -- I was a master of the last-minute essay in college and grad school.) However, again I had a pretty good time constructing from the pattern. I also saved some time by following the instructions from this no-hand-stitching hack developed by Jessica of A Little Gray. The hardest part was probably deciding on which fabrics to use.

The pattern calls for sewing on a curve, which was the most difficult part for me. It requires clipping into seam allowances. If this method is new to you as well, I would suggest 1) being careful and even when clipping into the seam allowance (at least three clips per quadrant and almost all the way to the seam allowance) and 2) pinning closely together.

I think this hat is super fun and will likely make another one soon. Lots of babies and kids in my life right now!

xo, Gladys