This indecision's buggin' me

I would like to report to you all that I have made substantial coat progress, but in fact I've made none whatsoever. In fact, I have been in a glump, and have neither sewn nor knitted anything in over a week while I waited out my glumpishness. 

Really, the problem was that I just couldn't decide whether I really WANTED the coat I would be making with the Ottobre pattern I chose, or if I would just find it to be wardrobe deadweight. This was not helped by my recent wardrobe spring cleaning efforts, when I hit upon a method to clean my old raincoat. It came up beautifully and doesn't therefore need to be replaced, and, as is well established, I am not generally in favour of making things I don't need. Moreover, there's a large part of me that thinks that fabric would make a much better trenchcoat type coat, rather than a casual coat. However, I really don't feel like I want to sew a trenchcoat right now.

Yesterday, though, I decided life is WAY too short for all this wibbling, and since I am mostly just not feeling the coat project at all in any way, I folded everything up and put it away again. That fabric will get made up into something eventually, I am sure, but today is not that day.

In order to kickstart myself back into actually doing something, I decided to spend my sewing time yesterday and today on a couple of little easy projects, plus some fabric re-organization. I spent some time hemming some too-long linen trousers I bought a few weeks ago. This isn't a particularly fun job but the trousers were unwearably long without this alteration and it actually doesn't take too long once I get started. So dull though, ugh, so I gave myself a couple of hours to re-organize my fabric as a reward. I am definitely someone who enjoys petting the fabric stash and seeing if I can find interesting matches between fabrics I own for future outfits. I came up with a couple of new ideas while I was folding and sorting my fabric tubs this time, plus everything is now tidy again after the recent influx of fabrics that I bought that probably I shouldn't have bought (do not even think about asking about my fabric fast!)

Obnoxiously floral PJ shorts (Ottobre 05-2011-02)

Finally, in the interests of actually making something, I cut out and sewed some PJ shorts for the summer. I used a fake Liberty print in rather nice pima cotton. I have to admit I wouldn't be seen dead in anything this flowery and bright in public, but I kind of love using it for PJs. I accidentally (well, "accidentally" -- due to stupidity more like) bought only 1m of this fabric towards the end of 2014, having originally intended to buy 2m for long PJ trousers, and it's been lurking in stash waiting for warm weather ever since. The pattern is Ottobre 05-2011-02, a simple elasticated waist PJ short pattern that I have used several times before. It should really only take an hour to make at this point, but I've discovered that I really like my PJs sewn with French seams for both neatness and longevity, which basically doubles the time it takes to make them.

Morris Blazer by Grainline

At the risk of jinxing myself, I think I have dragged myself out of my glump, and I am now contemplating with some considerable interest (a) my existing summer sewing plans; and also (b) the new Morris blazer pattern from Grainline, which I bought when it came out yesterday.  Generally speaking, the Grainline aesthetic and I are not the best match -- so many boxy unfitted things! -- although I have a couple of the patterns and made the Linden sweatshirt twice already. The Morris blazer though really grabbed me -- mainly because I really like the collar -- and I have been looking for a while for a really interesting pattern to make with a particular piece of ponte knit. I'd sort of settled on a Kwik Sew pattern, but this Grainline pattern is a great deal more interesting to me. If I can summon up the enthusiasm to put together the PDF pattern, I might try making a muslin of this quite soon!