It’s been a busy week and I don’t have any finished projects to share, but I did want to share what I’ve got in the works, and a recent pattern game-changer for me.

Organizing my patterns in Trello

The pattern game-changer came from watching a recent video on the Penguin and Pear YouTube channel. Claire did an awesome video on how to setup a pattern storage system in Asana.  I’ve been a Trello user for many years and, judging from her video, it looked like Asana worked in a very similar way.

I used Trello (also free) to setup two new boards: My Pattern Stash and Patterns I Want. Here’s a sneak peek:

I did a few cards a day for about two weeks to load in all the patterns. I didn’t realize it at first, but you can right-click and copy a photo of the pattern from a website, then open the card and simply Ctrl+V and it will paste the photo into the card. There’s no need to download photos to your computer and then go through the process of attaching them.

I absolutely love how I can just flip through my pattern stash now and see samples of everything. For patterns that could be a skirt or a dress, I added it to the Skirt column and the Dress column, with a photo of each version. Digital patterns are in here, as well as paper pattern envelopes and patterns in books and magazines (e.g. Fibre Mood). Amazing to have them all in one place!

My husband, Eric, pointed out that Trello gives you one free “Power Up” with your account. He showed me the Custom Fields power-up and I used it to add a “Times Made” metric to the front of each card.

I will continue to store all my PDF files in Dropbox, and you can link to those files in Trello and with one click open the Dropbox location. Claire suggested also attaching the files to the cards in the board as a backup, which I plan to do at a later date.

McCall’s men’s pajamas

The biggest project in the works is a set of PJs I’m making for my husband. I had ordered 4 yards of a cotton plaid from Joann Fabrics and, when it arrived, it turned out to be a fairly heavy flannel. Eric said he didn’t care and still wanted a pair of pajamas out of it. I found this McCall’s MP616 on eBay.

As long as it is short-sleeved on top and shorts on the bottom, he insisted he could wear them all spring and through to the fall.  Views A and D fit the bill.  I had started on the bottoms and then put them on hold until my waistband elastic ordered arrived from Girl Charlee — which it did today and I promptly threaded that in.

Of course, I had to throw in 4 super-cute bargain fabrics with my Girl Charlee order!

(I already have plans for all of these which I will share very soon.)

Boy’s bathrobe for my nephew

Every Tuesday, we’ve been playing Farkle over Zoom with my brother and sister-in-law and their delightful son, Lex. His 10th birthday is in July and I asked what he might want me to make for him. He said without hesitation he wanted a striped bathrobe, preferably green. He also made a point that it should be “very fluffy”.

Well, of course, I started looking around for fabrics. It had to be toweling to be fluffy enough. And it had to have green stripes. I found this gem — 3 and 1/3 yards of towelling — in the Etsy shop Nostaligic by Liliya. (She has lots of other pretty things I will come back for very soon.) The fabric arrived surprisingly quickly from Vancouver, B.C. with a lovely note and it has all the required fluff and loads of cool to boot.

Now whether or not my Singer can sew through this remains to be seen. It will need to be a very peaceful day when the sewing gods are smiling broadly on me.

I’ve already purchased a pattern for the Relaxation Robe by Rebecca Page. It goes up to age 12 so I think it should work perfectly.

Fitting the Pattern Scout Hana Tank

Like every other sewist, I’ve always got an eye out for patterns that could help me do some scrapbusting. I really liked the Hana Tank by Pattern Scout and made one up in some scrap fabric. It kind of fit, but I think it could fit much better, so I’m going to do one more in a smaller size with a Full Bust Adjustment and compare the two.

I’ve got the second one cut out. Stay tuned for a full post on these two tanks and my first experience with Pattern Scout (hint: it was very good).

Mask-making for co-workers

It was fun to see a co-worker wearing a mask I made for him on a Zoom call today! I took a quick pic with my phone:

I recently made 6 masks and brought them in when I went to pick up some equipment. The guys in my department were pretty happy to have them! My work had provided masks but they were IMHO not this stylish.

So, a full week of sewing and more of the same this week. Starting this Saturday, I have FIVE DAYS OFF, so I’m sure to get all these UFOs stitched up and out the door. -rp