Folded Christmas tree

Wisdom gained: My mom used to say 'If it is worth doing, it is worth doing well', and I  keep relearning that that means do it slowly, take your time... 

And what was the hurry?! I recently saw, on Pattern review, an adorable pattern. A contributor had made a few tops, and a bag with a folding Christmas tree decoration. It was a free pattern, and so I procured it, and decided to give it a go. Yesterday (or Sunday). With no planning.

The pattern is from Misusu, folded Christmas tree, and is designed to be worked into their sweatshirts. Because of the design, one needs to cut up the base piece, and sew parts of the tree into the seams. The instructions are detailed. One should look at them first...

For the tree, I decided to use a scrap from the Marta dress (washed linen), and had to piece some together to get it long enough. It is a snaky piece, that gets folded in two, and kind of looks like the outline of a house afterwards, before sewing it on. I was a bit careless with the cutting... the instructions suggest tracing the pattern in order to get exact cuts. I did not look at the instructions before cutting, and tried to use my rotary cutter, and, well, did a half-assed job. 😒 I used old denim (from kiddy jeans, in my scrappy drawer.). Again, instead of stopping and following the instructions carefully, I decided to just wing it. Well that meant that my base pieces were not nicely cut, and in fact were not quite the right size. More piecing, which ended up looking plain sloppy.

So after I 'finished' I knew I would not be able to make a respectable looking square bag... so I decided to turn it into a bottle gift bag; it kind of hides the sloppiness. A bit.

I will make another one, but the problem is that it takes a long piece of fabric, and I don't want to use fresh fabric for this....

So it's wait and see on this one!

In other news, a couple of weeks ago I was looking at merino wool long johns at the store. SO pricy! As I looked at them I recalled that Fabrications had merino wool jersey in stock, and in the back of my mind thought I might make my own. So today when I went to Fabrications looking for... shirting(? ) I bought a leggings pattern and merino wool as well as some cotton jersey to make a (hopefully wearable) muslin before cutting into the expensive stuff. I will be doing my homework on this one, though! Today (Sunday) I read the instructions, I watched a video, and I will follow some of the fitting advice that Katherine at Fabrications gave me. Hopefully they work out! I also posted a question in Pattern review, asking for advice about what stitch to use for stretch knits. I mentioned that my sewing machine manual was in German (since I purchased the machine there), and my German was not quite strong enough to understand many aspects of the manual. 

WELL - a reader noted my sewing machine on my profile and found a version of the manual in ENGLISH! How sweet is that? Oh the places I can go, now, armed with all of those new stitches!

 And the race is also on for a few Christmas sewing projects, not to mention the piles I have saved up for myself for the Christmas break. I should remember - it is two weeks, not two months!