My Halloween Horror

My post today is appropriate for Halloween in part about costumes. To read about the history and origins of this holiday you can see some of the facts here.

My horror as a quilter, is clothing alterations and this week I had two such tasks! JW's best friend for over two decades is a hockey player, goalie I believe-but what do I know about ice hockey, I played field hockey. He said that his uniform shirts were too narrow in the sleeves for all the padding the goalies wear so he asked me to enlarge the sleeves.

Any one of you who has worked with clothing construction will understand immediately my dilemma in enlarging the sleeves and not the body part of the garment so I had been procrastinating only partly because I couldn't find any of that "holey" sports fabric. I finally located some on the far side of town at Sally's fabrics and proceeded to make the necessary adjustments adding a 5" strip of fabric to each of the sleeves at the underarms from the wrist to the side seam and grumbling all the time to myself!

Hours later [more like an entire day later] they were done, then onto the next request this one from oldest DS.

He has been a "Trekkie" since his youth [he will be 43 in December] and a couple of years ago his wife bought him this very realistic-looking Darth Vader costume.

Looks like the real thing doesn't he? His friend, a photographer did the special effects in this photo. The costume is a thick, padded, channel-stitched, leather-like material and very hot to wear so DS undid the side seams under the arms for some fresh air and asked me to insert " zippers or something". Now there's another horror, sewing zippers into an already constructed garment, so I chose the "or something" and sewed velcro into the seams.

Every time I am tasked with a non-quilting sewing project I mutter to myself "never again", this time I really mean it! Why is it just because I have a sewing machine-or two or three or more- is it expected that I am an expert in all things sewn!

With a huge sigh of relief I returned to what I know best, quilting, specifically the Shakespeare quilt.

I had a lot of seams to match in this step and the job is made simpler using these little "fork" pins.

They fit nicely either side of the seams so the fabric cannot shift as you sew.........

and they are very fine pins so you can sew....slowly and carefully....... over them.

See how perfectly the seams match? Love these pins, I swear by them for piecing accuracy on multiple intersections but they are rather hard to find and a bit on the pricey side. I got mine from Connecting Threads, but your local quilt shop may stock them .

Although I am still a couple of weeks behind, last night I did complete the third week's assignment-so now I am only, what, three weeks behind?! Yikes!