Happy NewYear

to everyone. I hope your new year started off as well as mine did.

We kept it pretty quiet last night, just dinner at home and then some TV until midnight, at which point Mario dropped off to sleep on the couch and I sent him to bed. Maybe under other circumstances I would have been annoyed that he crashed so early, but not last night - I had other plans in the sewing room.

My first project of 2011 (reviewed here) is a belated Christmas present for my boss, a man who's very hard to shop for. He spends a lot of time on his boat in the summer, and this was a little something for him to wear while sitting in the sun, drinking cocktails with the ladies. Because this was an XL, I miscalculated a little on the fabric and had to cut the inside yoke out of solid black. I jazzed it up by adding an appliqued wine bottle cut from the shreds of leftover fabric.

It's also a salute to just how much of his wine gets liberated from the wine cabinet in his office when he's a bad lawyer.

This is a change from my standard man's shirt, which is KwikSew 3422. This one is KwikSew 2935, more of a camp/Hawaiian style shirt, and just what I wanted for this project. It was way less complicated than a standard shirt with two piece collar, and between eliminating the collar, cuffs and sleeve plackets, I got this done in a day.

Now back to sewing for me. The jacket is almost complete, just need to hem the sleeves, but I haven't worked on the dress in a few days. Here's a shot of the jacket, which Mario saw and commented, "It's prettier on the inside than outside." With all that seam binding made from leftover dress fabric, he's probably right!