Handmade Valentines

I finished the shirt from the sew-along and I'm happy with it.  Towards the end of construction I asked Alan to model it for me for the sew-along flickr group and not only did it fit him well, he really, really liked it.


Since we have a tradition of handmade-only Valentine Day gifts in this house, it became his Valentines gift.
The Valentines Alan makes for me are always made of wood.  This year I dropped a hint back around Christmas time, when I was setting up my vintage miniature Christmas.
I've always wanted a miniature (1/12th scale) dress form, but would never tolerate a modern, cheezily manufactured one. So he carved me one out of wood.

It is 5 inches high and has sweet little cabriole-shape legs just like full-size ones in my shop.  Perfect!

(The collage behind it is the Valentine Card I made for Alan. I didn't realize when I chose the central image that the man in the etching was holding a knife- oops--)

I joined a Sew-Along!

My true passion is to hunt down, repair, and revive old clothing, but every once in a while I like to make a garment from scratch. For camraderie, inspiration, and disipline's sake, I joined this group at the wonderful Male Pattern Boldness blog. (click on pic to take you to the sew-along page)

Through the magic of the internet a whole bunch of sewing enthusiasts get together online and construct a casual man's shirt together. (Or did I mean a man's casual shirt?)
Anyway, here's my pattern and fabric:

It's going to be a lightweight short-sleeved shirt, made from a pair of x-tra large linen gaucho pants I picked up in a thrift. Yummy mixed stripes.
In the interest of not boring my blog readers (all both of you) I'll be posting all the fascinating details of my journey on my flickr page, where the Male Pattern Boldness Group page is. Should be fun.

I've already said "phooey" to the construction of a muslin practice piece (mistakes, ME?), and started cutting out my pattern today.