Emotional Support Chicken

I just couldn't resist the allure of the Emotional Support Chicken any longer. Meet Scrappy Henrietta! 😍

This pattern arrived on the knitting scene sometime in 2023 or 2024 (I believe), and the internet practically EXPLODED with excitement.

I added the pattern to my Ravelry favorites for safe-keeping but decided to wait before making one. I noticed, however, as the months went by the way the emotional support chicken consistently remained on the first page of Ravelry's "hot right now" designs, suggesting that the internet's adoration for the ESCs had yet to abate. It was on FIRE.

Eventually, I just couldn't resist the pull of the ESC any more.  

I think the thing that put me over the edge was when I discovered that The Knitting Tree LA had made a companion video for the pattern. Checking out the video was my undoing. 😂

Tail part 1

I grabbed a long old scrap of Hobby Lobby's I Love This Yarn in the Jazzy Stripe colorway (left over from an Infinite Granny Square afghan project) and cast on to follow along with the video, which starts at the tail.

Tail part 2

For part 2 of the tail and the main part of the body, I used a couple of long scraps of Red Heart With Love in the Pewter Gray colorway that were left over from when I made my Autumn Mists vest with no pattern.

Tail and main body

I don't know which yarn I used for the neck and head, but it was one long scrap of an ombre-ish yarn with purple, dark pink, and raspberry colors that is probably something by Red Heart, but I didn't have a label for it anymore.

Neck and head added

I used up the remainder of the raspberry ombre scrap for the top end of the undersection piece, and more of the gray yarn to finish the undersection.

Henrietta got a bit wonky as I was sewing her up, where the two ends of her neck stripes don't line up at the front, but hey. She is still adorable, and I wuv her!! She has 15 mm blue safety eyes from a pack that I bought off Etsy years ago from a seller named 6060, who is no longer active on the site. Whenever I'm installing safety eyes, I always use this tool to help set the backs, because it makes it a lot easier for my arthritic hands to handle the task of snapping them on securely.

You might be able to knit a whole ESC by only watching the video, but I think the video really makes a better accompaniment if you also own the written pattern, so before I reached the end of the first tail section, I bought the pattern: And the emotional support chicken claimed yet another willing (happy) victim. 😂

Dawn Apron by Lydia Naomi

When my husband went through his old denim work shirts a few years ago to throw away the ones that were the most worn out, I grabbed the ones he was going to toss into the trash and stuffed them into a bag for safekeeping.

"They might be worn out to you, but there is a lot of good fabric there," I said.

He just rolled his eyes, but he didn't object. 😂

Ever since that day, I have been planning to use these old shirts to sew an apron for myself.

However ... it took me a lot of years to finally get around to making it. Obviously. Ha!!

The Dawn Apron, pattern by Lydia Naomi

After we were able to spend time last year getting my craft room mostly set up, this year seemed like the right time for me to start diving into doing some projects that I had been putting off, like this apron.

I already had the fabric on hand, so the next step was to find a pattern to follow.

I've had a snap-front cobbler's-style apron for a long time that I like and would probably be an easy design to replicate. My mother-in-law was a big fan of this style of apron.

Examples of snap-front, cobbler-style aprons

But I also like the look of the Japanese-style cross-back aprons, so I decided that that was the type of pattern I wanted to make. 

I spent a lot of time digging around online for Japanese cross-back apron patterns. There's a surprising amount of variety to be found among patterns based on this basic shape. Then I came across this video by Canadian fashion designer Lydia Naomi for how to sew her Dawn Apron pattern.

Lydia's pattern had all the features I wanted in my Japanese cross-back apron: full length coverage in front, at least two pockets, and good coverage in the rear. Links to purchase her pattern are listed below the video on its YouTube page, or you can find them on her website, lydianaomi.com.

This was my first venture into the brave new world of 21st-century patterns being delivered electronically by PDF. Mind. Blown. (!!!) I did read some comments online where people were having trouble figuring out how to assemble all the pattern pieces after printing them out, but I didn't have any trouble. If you need some extra help, Lydia also has a video tutorial for how to work with the PDFs. Lydia's pattern pieces are numbered, and if you trim off all the page corners (as directed) and tape them together in numerical order, everything comes together very well.

Lots of trimmed-off corners and pattern pieces taped together in order

Pattern pieces all taped together and separated into cohesive parts

My next challenge was to deconstruct the old shirts to start piecing together the scraps to make new pieces large enough to cut out. I started by using one of the shirt fronts, with its button placket and chest pocket, as the top-front part of my apron.

Starting to reclaim denim from the old shirts, including one old shirtfront

This project gave me my first opportunity to use the overlocking stitch function of my Bernette B38, which is a standard sewing machine, not a serger. Because this apron is made out of denim, I wanted to avoid the heaviness of double-folded hems. Using the overlocking function, I could finish the raw edges of the fabric in a way that made folding it under unnecessary, similar to the way a serger does. 

Every time I needed to patch two pieces together, I would seam them using the overlocking stitch, then press the seam allowance to one side, and then topstitch the seam allowance to secure it to the panel. I think the extra, random topstitching looks cute with the denim material.

But then, as I was patching pieces together, suddenly I realized that I had accidentally sewed two pieces together with one right-side up and the other wrong-side up. Ooops!! Making a mistake like that means I'm tired, and it's time to close up shop for the day to go rest.

Right-side up on the left; wrong-side up on the right

The next time I got back to working on the apron, I ripped out the seam where the pieces were facing different ways, sewed them together the correct way, and then carried on.

Front panel pieces assembled and ready to cut out

 

Front panel folded and cut out, shown wrong-side up

Pockets cut out and edges overlocked

After that one mistake where I sewed the pieces together facing the wrong way, the rest of the project proceeded pretty smoothly.

I used parts of a total of three old shirts to patch together the pieces I needed for the apron. I even ended up with some "novelty" pockets on the back by using those parts of two other shirt fronts. 😊 I'm really pleased with how the apron turned out.

A little wrinkly after going through the laundry

A little wrinkly after going through the laundry

Memory pillow

When my father-in-law died in 2019, one of his daughters, my sister-in-law Linda, saved one of his heavy plaid flannel Wrangler shirts with the idea of making it into a memory pillow, and I was honored when Linda asked me if I would be willing to make the pillow for her.

With a quick Google search for "memory pillow" or "how to make memory pillow," you will easily find many examples and tutorials for how to make one like this.

I was fairly sure how to go about it, but I watched this video tutorial by Lesley Chandler on YouTube to have the steps clear in my mind before starting.

To make one of these, you need to know the basic skills for working with a sewing machine. You're basically cutting two squares out of the shirt and then sewing them together to make a cover that will fit a square pillow form. If you're using a button-front shirt like I did, you don't even need to leave a gap in the sewing for turning the pieces right-side out, because the shirt's button front can serve that purpose. And, in the future, you can also open the buttons to remove the pillow form any time you want to launder the pillow cover, so it's a win-win.

Begin by laying the shirt out flat, with all the buttons buttoned, on a large tabletop. Iron the shirt to help the fabric lie evenly if it has any wrinkles. I measured the distance across the front between the sleeve seams to get an idea of what the largest size pillow cover that the shirt would make. It was about 18 inches between the sleeve seams across the front. 

I had an extra 18-inch square Ikea feather pillow form on hand that I wanted to use for this project. Knowing that the finished pillow cover will be less than the full dimensions of the cut fabric (because of the amount taken up by the seam allowances), I figured that my finished pillow cover would juuuust barely be large enough to work with that pillow form. But square pillow forms come in different sizes, so you should be able to find one that will fit your particular pillow cover.

You can make the cutting easier by first cutting a piece of newspaper into the shape/dimensions to act as the pattern. Since the distance between the sleeve seams was 18 inches, I decided to cut an 18-inch square to be my pattern. 

I laid the shirt out flat on a cutting mat on my work table and positioned the pattern on top. I adjusted the position of the pattern until I had it where I wanted it, using the placement of the shirt pockets as a guide to where the pattern should be placed. When I was happy with the placement, I pinned the pattern in place and used my fabric scissors to carefully cut around the pattern. You could use a rotary cutter and ruler if you're comfortable with those. I have those tools but didn't want to risk making a bad cut on this precious shirt.

After the pieces are cut, set aside the pattern and excess fabric. Turn the pillow cover squares so the right sides are facing each other and pin them together. Then sew them together using an appropriate seam allowance, carefully easing the machine through the bulkier areas across the button placket. I used about a 1/4-inch seam allowance for this.

 

After sewing all the way around, trim the excess fabric at the corners. Then unbutton the shirt's buttons and turn the pillow cover right-side out, using a blunt tool to help poke out the corners. Rebutton the buttons and press the sewn pillow cover again to smooth the seams.

The final step is to open the buttons again and place the pillow form inside. Button the buttons, and you now have a wonderful memory pillow of your loved one's shirt that you can hug whenever you want to.

In her video tutorial, Lesley Chandler shared that there are sellers on Etsy who make custom iron-on patches with a lovely little verse that can be added to a memory pillow project. She suggested this one and placed it on a bottom-front corner of her pillow. I think the patch would also work on a bottom corner of the back side of the pillow. 

I wasn't sure if Linda would want a patch like that on her pillow, however, so I sent her a link to it so she could see what it was and read about it, and then decide if she wanted it. She could always opt to add a patch to her pillow cover later, because the only equipment needed to add it is an iron.

After completing the memory pillow, I looked at the fabric scraps left over and decided there was plenty of fabric left to make a small memento for each of my father-in-law's four children, including Linda, my husband, and their other two sisters. I figured a keychain wristlet would be lovely and useful, and I already had the clasp hardware on hand.

I like this tutorial by Devi Therkildsen on YouTube for making "seamless" fabric wristlets that work with the type of clasp hardware I have on hand. Each wristlet requires a piece of fabric that's 12 inches long by 4 inches wide, and also a piece of lightweight interfacing of the same size if your fabric is lightweight. (I didn't use interfacing on these flannel wristlets because the fabric itself was already heavy enough to be durable.) You can see the four finished wristlets next to the finished memory pillow in the lead photo of this post.

Hoodie gusset

My favorite alumni hoodie sweatshirt was just a tad too tight to be comfortable, so I did a lot of looking online for ideas on how to make it fit with more positive ease.

After watching many, many sewing video tutorials about adding a gusset, I felt confident enough to attempt it on my hoodie. The risk was that this line of hoodies was a one-time purchase done by my alumni association, so if I messed this one up, I wouldn't be able to buy another one just like it again. So that was scary, because I like my hoodie.

Once I had the process set in my mind, the next step was to find the right fabric. From the beginning, I knew that I wanted a nice windowpane plaid flannel fabric that incorporated the green from my hoodie with some blue and gold and white. I found a fabric I liked on eBay and bought 1/2 yard, which would give me just enough to add a wide strip of gusset to each side of the hoodie.

I started deconstructing the hoodie by carefully picking out the stitches holding the cuffs to the ends of the sleeves, so I could reattach the cuffs after adding the gussets. I envisioned the gussets tapering gradually from the underarm area to the wrist, where there would be very little gusset width left showing, because I didn't need to add much width to the sleeves. Also, that way, I could reattach the cuffs without having changed the width of the ends of the sleeves by much.

After removing the cuffs, the next step was cutting open the sides. (((Yikes)))

Because my hoodie had no side seams originally, the scariest part of this entire project was the actual cutting of the sides.

To make my side cuts as straight as possible, I laid the hoodie out flat on my worktable and smoothed it out until it was very even and straight. Using my sewing clips, I clipped along the fold to help hold it in place so it wouldn't shift as I was marking my line. Then I took my tailors chalk and slowly and carefully started to sketch a cutting line down each side from the point of the underarm where the sleeve's inner seam ended, bit by bit moving down the side along the fold in between the clips. After each side had a good chalk line drawn, I removed the clips and picked up my fabric scissors and took a couple of DEEP breaths.

Then I slowly and carefully cut open each side, all the way down to the end of the sleeve (cutting open the sleeves was easier, because the sleeves had seams to follow to guide my cuts).

Cutting the hoodie was REALLY scary, as I've already said. But it worked!

The next step was to prepare my flannel fabric for cutting. I measured how long each gusset piece would need to be to extend from the end of the sleeve, up the arm, and down the side to beyond the hem, leaving enough excess fabric to turn under as a hem. (I didn't remove the cuff from around the waist of the hoodie before cutting the sides; I cut through each side of that cuff along with each side.)

I wanted a 3.5-4-inch wide gusset showing on each side after sewing the pieces together. I also wanted to use flat-felled seams where I added the gussets, so the finish would be clean on both the right side and the wrong side of the hoodie, so before cutting, I had to include a sufficient amount of seam allowance to accommodate those.

I had never sewn flat-felled seams before, so I had to watch a few video tutorials for how to do that. (And then I watched them again before starting each seam - once for each of the four seams!) I found this video tutorial by Notches Sewing to be the most helpful.

Having gussets that taper down to almost nothing at the wrists made executing the flat-felled seams more difficult, but I just went slowly, and it worked out.

It took several days to finish all the sewing of the side seams, because I spent a LOT of time carefully pinning and watching the video over and over to make extra sure that I was setting myself up to do it right, and then being extra careful during the actual sewing.

Once the sides were sewn together, it was fairly straightforward to pin the cuffs back onto the ends of the sleeves and then sew them on.

And then, just like that, it was done!

I'm really pleased with how well this project turned out. My husband said it looks like the hoodie was made this way by the manufacturer, which was high praise. It turned out so well, in fact, that I think now I should buy a few more yards of the same plaid fabric and make a pair of lounge pants to coordinate with my super-cool hoodie. (I would follow this video tutorial by Sachi's Studio for making the pants!)