Sewing Pattern Updates

Happy Me Made May, sewists! I simultaneously love this month and feel completely overwhelmed by it. I personally don’t hold myself to any concrete goals since I wear me-made garments most days anyway, but I do try to document and share more. I think my favorite part of the month is seeing folks share who don’t usually. It never fails to remind me just how vast and cool this online sewing community is! I thought I’d update you on the three patterns I’m working on since a lot has been happening, but still no release dates in sight.

Spaghetti Western FPP Alphabet

This one is torturously close to release! My testers sewed the entire alphabet and gave feedback, which I’ve already implemented into the pattern. I’ve sewn a variety of samples and most letters myself as well. I’m just waiting on the last package with sample letters to arrive, which was mailed over two weeks ago and should have already arrived. They are somewhere in the USPS ether, hopefully arriving any day now. I’ve started to re-sew them just in case. On Friday, I recorded a long-form FPP tutorial, but I am really struggling with planning and executing videos with multiple shots. I just felt incredibly stupid and self-conscious the whole time I was recording and wanted to crawl back into the earth rather than continue to talk at the camera alone with a silly little fuzzy clip-on mic. I ordered some new equipment and hope to have time this week to set it up so I can re-record some footage and then edit it all together. I am feeling very bratty and whiny about the whole thing. I don’t want to take the time to learn how to do the technical/logistical side of video recording, but I know once I push through it’ll be fun and I’ll find my own style and method for producing this new kind of media. This is kind of a trial run to see if it’s something I can manage for my other patterns. If I think about that too much, I’ll cry, so I’m just focusing on getting a somewhat decent FPP tutorial out there because I genuinely love FPP and want more people to give it a try!

Baseball Top & Dress

This one has also made some great strides in the last couple of weeks! I sent the pattern off to be graded, and it came back. While that was off, I started working on drawing the images for the pattern tutorial and expanding the written instructions from chicken scratch bullet points for myself to fully cooked sentences. I just finished a passable version of the instructions today and sent the draft pattern files and instructions to my fit testers. I’m still not 100% confident with the neckline facing, and it’s weighing on my mind. I won’t bore you with all the details of how I’m working on that, but the number of close-up vintage baseball Tee screenshots on my phone is alarming. While my fit testers are knocking out quick muslins, I’m going to do another muslin and draft the facing by hand to compare to the one I drafted digitally. My pen & paper drafting intuition is still much stronger than my digital one, and I think it’ll actually be a fun learning experience to see how the two facings are similar or differ and how it impacts fit. Hopefully, they are similar, and all of this turmoil is for naught, but if I need to tweak or redraft, so be it!

I’ve also started to do more concentrated research on lettering options for the jersey. I’d like to include some tips and tricks in the pattern, and I’m leaning towards wool felted lettering. I’ve had several people message me excited about combining the FPP font patterns with this pattern, which is a very fun idea, too. I haven’t fully formed my opinions on how best to construct that yet and will need to spend more time chewing that over.

If no major edits need to be made after fit testing, I anticipate having an open test call in late May/early June, which would mean pattern release late June/early July. I try not to plan out timelines too much with patterns because it adds a faux urgency that doesn’t benefit the pattern, but it is helpful to have a rough estimate.

Echo FPP Alphabet

I think this is the first time I’m sharing the name of my second FPP font! I had so much fun doing the research for this font, and it holds a lot of meaning, even if it is a technically simpler font and pattern design. I’ll share a whole post on the inspiration and influences behind it, but it’s called Echo because it’s inspired by the generations of folks who have used textile lettering and quilt graphics in protest art. The Freedom Quilt and Bay Area/Berkeley counterculture in the 1960s are two of the biggest inspirations. I’m working with just one tester this time, who is geographically close to try to avoid any precious letters being lost in the mail again. Last Friday, I chose the fabrics for the alphabet and am proud of myself for branching off from the classic colorway I always go for. This pattern could potentially be ready for release sooner than the Baseball pattern; we’ll see. I can’t wait to get these released so I can spend more time actually sewing all the lettered quilts I am itching to!