(Hey, don't forget that you've still got a couple days to enter to win one of the books we're giving away to celebrate our 800th post! Go on and leave a comment over here if you haven't entered yet!) It took a few late nights (and several dinners of leftovers!), but I'm happy to report that today, I'm wearing a T-shirt that I made myself. So exciting! It started with the T-shirt pattern drafting class that Lisa and I took at The Workroom last weekend. The teacher was Cal Patch, an acquaintance of mine from Squam Art Workshops and an all-around superstar when it comes to sewing clothes. She wrote this book: Design-it-Yourself Clothes: Patternmaking Simplified. It's a great book, and I own it, but I always found it was a little bit intimidating. So many things to measure! I'm glad we took the class. Everything seemed so straightforward with Cal leading the way. It turns out that the measurements you take for a T-shirt pattern aren't really that different than the ones you take when you're sizing yourself for a knitted sweater. (You can just call me Master of the Obvious, if you like. ;^) Once you've taken your measurements, it's just a matter of plotting them on a piece of paper and connecting the dots. Grading the curves was alternately frustrating and satisfying, but I got there eventually. Cal shared lots of great tricks about choosing the right fabric, which stitches to use (hint: check your manual!) and what order to put things together in, and then she sent us off into the wild. And it worked! It really worked. Check it out: Hee! I'm pretty pleased. I mean, it's not perfect (I definitely need to practice sewing neckbands) but it's close, and it fits better than anything I've ever bought from a store. At this point my goal of being able (at least in theory) to clothe myself in handmade clothes from head to toe is pretty well complete. Now I just need to find a class about pants, I guess! Have a great weekend – hope it includes some crafting time just for you.