FO: Southern Lady Plantain

It seems I have a Labor Day tradition of sewing t-shirts. Last year I used labor day to make my first ever knit tops, so I thought this year would be fun to keep that going. Plus, who am I kidding? Like I really need an excuse to make a t-shirt. 

I've had a stack of thrifted shirts sitting around waiting for new life to be stitched into them, and I thought that I would just whip them all up that day. That didn't happen, lol, but I did cut into almost all of them before I got bored and changed my project of the day. At least I finished this one first!

This spent the first who-knows-how-many-years of its existence looking like this:

Ugh, sorry for the terrible photos.

It's not too sad, really. I didn't like the neckline (or the huge facing inside - say no to knit neckline facings!), and the shoulders were a little wide, but I didn't mind the shirt other than those two things. I LOVE the print. I'm a big fan of paisley, and this shirt is a nice soft interlock (fast becoming my favorite fabric for cute t-shirts), and I even contemplated keeping the longer sleeves or at least keeping them elbow length. One of the best aspects of this shirt is the tag from the design company that made it: it's called Southern Lady! I thought it was so swanky that I just had to keep that name alive, thus the title of this shirt, lol.

I wanted to make my beloved Plantain out of this as much as was possible. The shirt wasn't wide enough to cut and sew again, so I kept it together at the sides, just tapering in a bit at the bust. I carefully cut the lined the shirt up at the side seams and traced the neckline on first. I made the neckline the highest I could make work with the button placket that was already there (which is the photo you see above), so it's higher than the pattern calls for but perfect for me. Then I cut a new armscye, cutting the sleeves off carefully at the seam line. I had hoped to keep elbow length sleeves and add elbow patches, but I was stuck with where to get the fabric for the new neckband. I couldn't use the facing I cut off because it was heavily interfaced and wouldn't stretch, and the hem was already the perfect length (with an oh so fancy blind hem to boot). In the end the only place I could harvest the fabric was from the sleeves, so I went with short sleeves and pieced the neckband out of two pieces from across the sleeves.

The one down side of this project was my thread choice. I wanted to make this that day, but the only thread I had in an appropriate color was actually button thread. Button thread is much thicker than regular thread, but I hoped that it wouldn't make much difference. Ho boy, I was wrong there. This is the only thing I've ever made where I can feel the thread while wearing it, and sadly it's a little scratchy - particularly at the arms. It's a more relaxed fit though overall, so it's not a deal breaker. I've worn the heck out of this shirt since Labor Day (including on that day as soon as I finished it). I did taper the sides in a little to meet up with the new armscyes, but left the body as it came everywhere else.

Details of course! Whenever I have to piece a neckband together, I make sure that the seams are near the shoulders so I avoid any visible seam lines. It ended up just a few inches in front of the shoulder seam here and with this busy fabric you can't see it at all. For some odd reason I decided to do the sleeve hems just single row like a normal hem. They are loose enough, so it's not an issue not having the extra stretch of the twin needle, plus I had no desire to wind a bobbin of that thick thread. And I just had to show off the fancy hem. Southern Lady indeed!

I seriously love this shirt and I love that it's sort of fall colored so I can feel seasonably appropriate for the rest of the world while staying cool in the still ridiculous Florida heat (though it is finally cooling down - yay!) I'm pretty proud of the fact that this shirt is so transformed and now I can wear it without feeling like a granny. And I just had to show my extra special touch ...

I sewed the original tag onto the seam allowance at the side seam! Now I can be a Southern Lady forever :) (the photo on the left is the tag attached to the original facing).

Summary:
Fabric: Southern Lady cotton interlock long sleeve shirt - thrifted, $1.00
Pattern: Plantain by Deer + Doe - Free
Notions: button thread - from stash
Hours: 2
Total Cost: $1.00

WIP Wednesday: Penelope-ing and Cat Sewing

I've been sailing right along with my knitting this past week. I had kind of an off week overall and was feeling really down for no good reason. Meaning I could barely force myself to do anything at all once I got home from work. Thankfully, knitting came to my rescue :) I didn't feel like do anything but knitting, so even though nothing got done around my house for a week I do have some crazy sweater progress to show for my time!

I finished the entire body of the sweater this past Sunday! I just started this sweater on October 1st to go with the knit along, and this is the most progress I've ever made on a sweater in that period of time. I think part of that speed is due to the incredibly simple nature of this sweater - it's all stockinette! I decided to just follow the size large this time and I'm really happy with the fit in the body. I did make the sweater about 4 inches longer than the pattern calls for, but I have a long torso so this still makes it hit me at the hip. 

Sunday night I realized that I had no idea what buttons I would use for this sweater, and the time for buttons is fast approaching so I scoured my stash and came up with nothing whatsoever that would even remotely work. Thankfully Hancock Fabrics had a big Columbus day sale and Monday was the last day. They had all their buttons 50% off, so I went a bit crazy and picked up 4 possibilities.

The bad part of my button excursion - they didn't have enough of the ones I like best. The blue iridescent ones on the top are far and away my favorites (they look like they were made to go with the blue yarn, don't they?!), and they only had 8 buttons in the store when I need 11. I bought them anyway in hopes that I can find another card of them. Just in case I can't get more, I bought the other sets as back ups. I think my next favorite set is the pink and yellow speckled ones, then the clear-ish iridescent ones. I swear my button stash grows by leaps and bounds with each finished sweater. Anyone else have this problem?

In sewing news, I did manage to get a project to almost completion before my funk fully kicked in. I made my first ever circle skirt (which has absolutely no hanger appeal whatsoever, lol) with this Gertie design cat fabric for the Put A Cat On It Sew Along. This was a big drafting experiment, and it mostly worked out except that my lining fabric stretched majorly and now the fit is distorted at the waist :/ I've concocted a few plans to fix the issue, but I haven't been home much to try them out yet. Hopefully I'll figure it out this week. After that I just need to hem this and it's finished :) I'm also hoping to muster up the courage to tackle my Halloween costume alterations. Ugh.

That's it for me this week! Head over to Gracey's Goodies to see what others have in the works :)

Book Review: Germinal by Émile Zola

I've tried to write a review of this book a few times since reading it, but it's been very difficult to get my thoughts together on it. Hopefully this makes sense.

Germinal is the story of a coal mining town in the north of France in the 1860s. The story follows Etienne, a young newcomer to the town who is looking for work. He is hired in the mines and exposed to the horrible conditions the other workers face. The mine is run on a system that keeps the poor down, never rising above the poverty level, while the middle and upper class owners get more and more wealthy. The miners have little to no morals, they just work day to day to earn the money to feed their large families. Sex is the main way to pass the time, and it seems everyone has something going on in that way, including the children since they see everyone else doing it so much. Their living conditions are filthy and sub par. When the miner owners announce a pay cut, Etienne manages to unionize the workers and being a strike to demand their old wages back. Neither side will relent and the strike goes on for months. The miners eventually form a mob and storm the mines, ruining the equipment to show the owners they mean business. The miners finally can take the starvation no more, deciding little by little to go back to work after they've watched their children die. This decision comes too late though as they have already wrecked the mines beyond use, causing a massive and tragic flooding disaster.

This is undoubtedly the most bleak and depressing book I've ever read. Being a student of the French language my whole school career, I always heard about what a great author Zola was, so when I read that this is reputed to be his best book I decided it would be a good place to start. Zola wrote this as just one part of a larger series of books depicting the horrible living conditions of the poor in the 1860s. I may sound naive in this review, but I just don't see how it was possible for the conditions to be quite what Zola describes. Yes the people are ignorant and uneducated, leading to a lot of mob mentality and missteps which we know can happen with such a background. The part that causes me to question is the absolute lack of any moral fiber whatsoever. The people have zero dignity and don't seem to care. They live their lives like slaves, never desiring things to be any better until Etienne comes along and shows them that they can fight back. I found it hard to get behind the "heroism" of the story because everyone involved is wrong in some way. The people shout that the middle class has caused them to live like slaves and they don't deserve to earn a living by the hands of others, but the mine would not exist had the middle class to invested the money to build it so how can they not deserve some type of compensation? Perhaps I'm just too inherently American to get behind socialism of any kind. I don't deny that the mine conditions in France were awful at the time, but this book didn't motivate me in any way which is usually what you want in a book designed to be an exposé to the masses. The story is definitely well written, and every other review I've read gives this book flying colors, but I just cannot lie and say I enjoyed it in any way. Reading the other reviews made me question if everyone is just saying they enjoyed it because everyone else says they did and so on. I'm sure I will be looked at as closed minded by admitting this, but I just cannot help the way this book struck me. It was an awful reading experience and I couldn't wait for it to be over. I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.