Mudville 9

Alan wants to be a superhero, so I'm making him a costume. It's for Mighty Casey from the poem Casey at the Bat, so I guess it fits in with my Fantasy Baseball Jerseys series. If I make more than one, it's a series - right?

I have no pattern for this, but Alan has several jerseys and we picked the one with the most old-fashioned cut. I did a tracing to create a pattern, just like I did with Jo's Wonderland Hearts jersey. Jo's Tennessee jersey is new and synthetic so it behaved very well for the tracing. Alan's jersey is old, stretched out and baggy in places, and a more complicated pattern. It did not behave very well, but I finally got a pattern.

Off to the fabric store to search for just the right old-fashioned baseball jersey fabric. No pinstripe fabric to be found? No problem. I can sew in some pinstripes and they look very cool and old. Alan saw me sewing these without marking the lines first and thought I was magic - for just a few minutes. Then he saw the nifty quilting bar that let me make nice straight lines.














Next step - stitching on the Mudville and the 9 on the back. Lovely! No skipped stitches. I'm having a great day and everything is looking good.



















Finally - putting the thing together. The sleeve construction is weird and something I've never done before, but it seems to work. Things don't exactly line up under the arms and the front ends up 1/2 inch shorter than the back, but I get Alan to try it on at every step in the construction and my fixes all seem to work. I can't believe it's working!














Spoken too soon. The facing doesn't fit. The last @%#! step and the facing doesn't fit. I'm sure all the tiny adjustments I had to make while sewing have accumulated to make the back too wide. I'm very frustrated. I'm snapping at Jo and Alan keeps asking gently if there's anything he can do. I decide I've had enough for the day and quit.

So now it's Sunday - a new day and I think I know how I'm going to (try to) fix this. And if I do get it fixed I get to do buttonholes. I love, love, love my machine but it does NOT handle buttonholes well. We'll see how today goes.