Patterns in my sewing queue

Hi! Sorry I’ve been absent for many months — life, a new job, the pandemic, sheltering in place, adjusting to working full-time at home. All of these things definitely affected my sewjo. But occasionally, I’d go through my patterns and revise my sewing queue. It changes for a variety of reasons: when I see a new pattern, reassess my fabric or pattern stash, buy fabric, and so on.

In the Bay Area we started sheltering in place on March 16 and I didn’t buy any fabric or patterns. Then towards the end of June, I made my first sewing purchases I made since the pandemic began: two patterns and some cotton and linen fabric. I was inspired after a Bay Area Sewists meetup with Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics.

That meetup was a Q&A I did with Catherine Nolan, buyer and social media manager for this Berkeley-based institution. Stonemountain had closed the brick-and-mortar store to the public and put more of its stock online. I miss being able to shop for fabric in person (!) or just meeting other sewists face to face but this is our reality for now.

I’m the organizer for the meetup group so after cancelling our March and April meetups at Britex Fabrics and Hello Stitch, respectively, due to the pandemic, I began holding virtual sewing meetups. For our May event I hosted a Show & Tell meetup on Zoom and for June. I wanted to have a conversation with Catherine about the impact of Covid on the store, what were some of their most popular patterns as well as her favorite fabrics and notions.

All attendees to that meetup got 20 percent off merchandise on that meetup day. So I splurged and added more patterns to my sewing queue.

Additions to my sewing queue

I got two of the patterns Catherine mentioned during the meetup. The first was The V-Neck Jumpsuit by Swedish pattern company The Assembly Line. I made The Assembly Line’s Elastic Tie Sweater twice (my first one blogged here) and their Three Pleat Skirt (unblogged). Plus I’ve been meaning to make a jumpsuit so I bought the pattern.

Here’s the line drawing so you can see the design details of the jumpsuit.

The other pattern I got was the Free-Range Slacks by Sew House Seven.

I’ve made Sew House Seven’s Toaster Sweater, a reversible version 1 and a few of version 2 (tunic length and color blocked). I like Peggy’s designs and wanted some comfy, casual pants so this was another easy purchase.

Fabric for the patterns

At that meetup, Catherine mentioned that the store got some solid cotton fabrics with a lovely weight, calling it “favorite cotton.” So I splurged and bought some of this favorite cotton in a deep navy blue for the V-Neck Jumpsuit (on the left in photo below). I don’t see any of the favorite cottons on Stonemountain’s website anymore so it must have sold out.

For the Free-Range Slacks, I decided to go for a colorful linen. So I got some coral linen for the Free-Range Slacks in an attempt to add more color to my wardrobe but I think the color is a little too bright for pants —maybe I’ll make a skirt with it because it’s a bottom weight.

The last two pairs of pants I made were black – the Friday Pattern Company’s Joan Trousers in a ponte and the Flint Pants by Megan Nielson in a linen (both unblogged but I was wearing my Flint Pants during Me Made May and took this photo below). I’ve worn the Joan Trousers a lot and the cheap poly ponte (from Fabric.com) has been pilling. I’ll be blogging about that soon. When I took this photo it was just starting to sprinkle — thus my hands were out.

What are you sewing?

Are you doing more or less sewing during the pandemic? What’s in your sewing queue? What are you making? I’d love to hear what you’re doing. Please share your thoughts in the comments!