And then there were 12 . . .

The reason for my totally non-sewing weekend: Vladimir Putintat. Big V has made an appearance or two on this blog before, but never before has he made an appearance in my house. Well, that's not exactly true. He's been brought in a few times, but never successfully. He went out one time through my roommate, another time by tearing the screen out of the window. This time he seems content to stay put, but that may be because he's under the weather.

It all started Saturday. I was in the kitchen making soup when the doorbell rang. One of my neighbors was outside. He said that Vlad, who is called Chester on Locust Street (and Butch on 46th Street, and Old Head at the hardware store on Walnut) was on his porch and bleeding badly from an injured front paw. I called around to my vet - who was closed - and several others - also closed. A friend who is a vet tech said she could visit him on Sunday if I could get him inside. So off we went to collect the cat.

Who had vanished, leaving what looked like a pool of red paint on their porch, and little sticky red paw prints down the sidewalk. I looked for that cat for hours. I got in around 4:00 p.m., chilled to the bone, and finished the soup. Mario came in around 5:00 and when I told him what had happened, he suggested one more walk around before it got too dark - it was starting to sleet, so it would be even worse for him to be out then. And of course the cat was right back on the porch where he'd been earlier. So I brought him home and stuffed him full of food to keep him happy until he could get his visit the next day.

Yesterday my friend Jean came and looked him over. He wasn't precisely injured - the index claw (I guess you'd call it that) on each front paw had curled and grown into the pad and became infected. So she knocked him out, cut the claws, extracted them from his pads, soaked his little hands in disinfectant, cleaned his ears, put drops in his eyes, looked at his teeth - and informed me that he has two small, inoperable tumors in his mouth. They were easy to see because he only has about 6 teeth.

The original plan had been to let him back out once his paws healed. He's about 12 years old and a confirmed tomcat. I'm not the only person who has tried to bring him in unsuccessfully. I think he really likes it outside - he was an indoor/outdoor cat in his kittenhood but his people left him behind when they moved away more than 10 years ago.

But if he's got something that's going to carry him off sooner rather than later, then I'm keeping him in. Vlad's been a part of my life since I bought my house in 2000. He's produced way too many kittens over the years, 4 of which live with me and about 12 of which have been farmed out to my friends.

The least I can do for the big guy is give him a peaceful end. Until that time, there will be much love, plenty of ear scritches - and cans and cans of his favorite cat food.

My First Patrones

While I loved almost everything in issue 253, February, 2007, I decided to make this really cute dress, no. 45, for my first project. I chose it because, aside from liking it a lot and thinking it was a good simple style to start out with, it told me it wanted to be made up from some brown and white Italian cotton that I bought from Metro Textiles last summer. It's been waiting all this time, and it's almost been made into several different things, but each time I stopped because I thought the pattern was too big, or the color wasn't right, or something. Well, now the color's right, the pattern's a good size to be spread over a longer dress, and I have enough white batiste left to line the whole thing. I think the instructions say just to bind the neckline and armholes, but I'm not that neat and my fabric's a little light, so a lining was the way to go.

I cut out the pattern in a size 40. I'm generally a 38 in BWOF patterns, and that's more or less the equivalent of a Patrones 40. I cut extra-wide seam allowances, just in case. First I cut out the bodice in the lining fabric - muslin as lining, or lining as muslin, however you prefer it. I basted the pieces together and the fit seemed good, so I used my muslin to cut out the fashion fabric. I didn't want any topstitching on the bodice, so I attempted my first closed lining and sewed the lining to the fabric at the neckline and armholes and turned it right side out, then sewed the shoulder seams of the fashion fabric on the machine and then hand-stitched the lining closed. I've seen this technique before but always thought it seemed like too much trouble. Except when it was exactly the finish I wanted, and then it wasn't any trouble at all. Go figure. It's all in what you want to do.

Although this dress looks very simple, it's very nicely designed. The skirt, both front and back, is a center piece and two side pieces, and the seams line up with the front and back darts. This was something I only noticed when I was puzzling out the instructions; since the photographed dress was all white I really couldn't see the details that well. Besides, I was too befuddled by the ball fringe they used for trim to look closely at anything other than the lines of the dress.

The fronts and backs are sewn separately - top, waistband, skirt, and then sewn together. This gave me plenty of opportunity to work on fit before putting in the invisible zipper and closing up the seams.

I had issues with the waistband. In the same fabric, it just looked busy. I had some solid brown cotton on hand, but it wasn't quite the right brown to use for contrast, so what I ended up doing was edging the waistband with the brown. I also doubled the length of the front waistband and gathered it back to the original length before putting on the edging. I thought that added a little interest and also cut the size of the big flowers around my waist.

Now's where the fun starts. I got the fit pretty much where I wanted it and opened the zipper drawer. No long white zippers. Only thing I had was an 8" white zipper, which I really didn't think would do the job. Pinned in a 22" brown invisible zip - long enough, but it showed through the fabric, so no. Pinned in the too-short white zipper and wiggled into the dress. It worked, though a longer zip would better. But the instant gratification sewist was at the machine, so short zipper it was.

I got the zipper in in record time, and thankfully the invisible zipper foot for my poor disabled Singer fit the Juki machine, so no problems there. Then I closed the seams around the zipper and sewed the lining seams. No problems, right? Then I tried the dress on. Or should I say, I attempted to try the dress on. It wouldn't go over my head. I got stuck. I pulled it off, tried it again, got stuck again. (Did I mention it was after midnight?) Pulled the dress off again, sat down to try to figure what went wrong. It became obvious in a minute and I wanted to smack myself in the forehead with a sleeve board. I'd sewed the seams of the dress closed around the zipper, but I'd sewn the entire lining seam shut. So I had a zipper opening, but no corresponding opening on the inside of the dress. I think that's carrying a closed lining a little too far!

This morning I picked out the stitches in the lining and tried on the dress again. It fit, and the short zipper would be okay, except. it. broke. Dammit. So then I had to pick out all the zipper stitches, and then I picked out enough stitches so that when I go back to work on Monday, and walk down to the store, I can buy a new LONG zipper and do it the right way. And hopefully the sewing gods will stop snickering at me. I know they enjoyed this one.

I was really excited about working on this dress. With a 3 day weekend to work, I'd planned on finishing it up and wearing it to work on Monday. Oh, well, instead I'm finishing off my denim shorts and attempting to find out what's wrong with my Singer machine. All I know is that the feed dogs are down and they won't come back up, no matter how much I curse, coax or cajole. I think I'll be taking a half a personal day next week to take Mr. Singer to the doctor. It's my backup machine and my favorite for buttonholes, and last time I checked, almost everything needs buttonholes. And if the machine doesn't have the capacity to move the fabric, buttonholes are going to be a little hard to come by. Dammit again.

On to something else, like finishing the flooring in the room that will become my closet. At least if I do that, maybe I'll sweat out some of the crankiness.

I leave you with a July 4th photo of Vladimir Putintat, the stray tomcat who lives on my front porch, celebrating his freedom to do whatever he pleases, whenever he pleases. So what if I have to step over him.