I knocked out a quick sewing pattern this week: a new Arkie shirt in some Liberty Tana Lawn I bought in Tokyo back in June. (This is the same pattern I used for the AWS Shirt last December.) I made the biggest size, but it’s fairly roomy and I think I could easily go down a size and still be fine. I think I did a decent job setting in the sleeves, even if I did use a million pins. 😂 I left off the front patch pockets, mostly because I didn’t think they’d add anything and you wouldn’t even see them with the busy print. For buttons, I just used four small pearlescent ones from my stash.

The thing I’m proudest of though is that for once I remembered to sew in a label! I’ve had these for ages and never used them before.

I also realised in the course of sewing the shirt that I had never changed the needles in my overlocker. I dug out the manual, started flipping through it, and realised that I’d never actually serviced the thing ever… in nine years. Yikes. After a quick trip to Spotlight for a new bottle of oil and a packet of needles, I got to work. I unthreaded the machine, removed the old needles, cleaned out all the dust and lint, oiled her up, and then rethreaded. I discovered that using all 4 threads is probably overkill for most of my sewing, so I cut it back to 3 and just a single needle. Once I had everything put back together, she was purring like a kitten! I also cleaned out the lint on my sewing machine. I’ll have to put in a recurring task to do this more often. 😬