Sewing and Stitching So Far in January

 There's been a sewing related chore on my to-do list for a while.  One that I am perfectly capable of doing, but ran into an issue on: took a while to find the right supplies. Once I found what I needed (I thought--more on that in a minute), then I needed to find the time. And the motivation.

What was the chore?

Replacing the zipper in DH's winter coat.  It died late last winter.  It zips, but then separates from the bottom up.  Not a huge deal, or so I thought, as I've replaced zippers in coats before.  However, a zipper for this particular coat was harder to find than I thought it would be.  Seems to be a not very widely available length of zipper.  And when I did manage to find a place or two that carried the right length, I couldn't find any in navy blue, just black or brown or white.  Since the coat is blue, none of those colors really would look right, as if the coat had always had that zipper.  

So it took several months of off and on searching, including searching online, before I found a blue zipper in the correct length.  I had been trying to find a zipper with metal teeth, as the original zipper had, but finally had to give it up and buy one with plastic teeth.  Not my favorite for outerwear, but oh well. That coat needed to get fixed.

Ordered the blue zipper online, and when it finally arrived, I was over my head busy with life (work, household chores, emergency grandkid care, holidays and holiday prep and more holidays). Which meant I didn't actually sit down to work on the removing of the old zipper and installation of the new zipper until after the first of the year.

Replacing zippers isn't hard, but it's tedious.  Especially in a winter coat. There's layers to unstitch, and keep straight, and restitch without bunching, and make sure nothing is too close or too far from the teeth of the zipper but don't hit the teeth with the needle  (great way to break a needle,and possibly a tooth on the zipper), all hopefully without having noticeably wavy stitching lines on the outside of the coat for everyone to see.  Honestly, I tried to talk DH into just buying a new (and slightly larger) winter coat, but that was a no go.

But, I managed to get the task accomplished.  And it doesn't look too bad.  If you don't look too closely at it (which nobody should be that close when it's being worn), you can't tell that I didn't get all the layers quite aligned the whole length of the zipper on one side.  But I'm pretty satisfied.

At least, I was until DH went to wear it and informed me that I put the zipper on the wrong way.  I insisted that I didn't, because the zipper pull is facing out, like it's supposed to, and if I turned the zipper the other way you wouldn't be able to grip the zipper pull because it would be facing to the inside.

Apparently, the replacement zipper is a women's zipper: it seats and zips on the opposite side of all DH's other coats and jackets.  Which is too dang bad, because nowhere in my vast searching for this length and color of zipper did any descriptions give a gender or note which 'hand' this zipper is.  So he's just going to have to learn to zip his coat 'backwards' like a girl!

On a happier note, I've started working on a baby quilt I'd intended to have made and delivered before the baby was due.  The baby came early, so that didn't happen.  But the recipient --and his mama, a cousin on DH's side who is quite close to DD1--has no idea there's a quilt intended for them, so not a huge deal to be later than I'd hoped.

I just started working on the paper pieced blocks over the weekend.  I'm making crossed canoes blocks in blue and green batiks (the fabric makes me think of water) and going to alternate them with solid blocks in a sandy or light brown fabric.  There's a little bit of symbolism in this design, as the baby's mama was basically raised by her grandpa, who was quite the canoer and passed that on to several members of the family, and that grandpa passed away suddenly last year.  The baby was given that grandpa's name as his middle name.  Therefore, a water and canoe themed quilt.