I'm baaaaack!

First of all, thanks for the lovely well-wishes for the wedding and honeymoon! The wedding day was great, I wasn't stressed out at all. And we had a very fun, relaxing time on our honeymoon, which we just arrived home from late last night.

Sadly, there can be no finished project post for my Pavlova cardi after all. It was the one casualty of the trip--I didn't get any pics with it on because it was so warm in Jamaica, even at night, that I never wore it except for both airplane flights. I figured I'd get one at home when it was sunny and I wasn't in grungy travel clothes. But then I was trying to get caught up on some laundry today, and threw it in the washer. I'm used to front-loaders. The one at my new house is a top-loader. Not only did all of my careful rolled hems get entirely ripped out, the neck facing pulled away entirely, leaving a gaping, ragged hole that renders the entire thing unsalvageable.

I was going to give you a picture of a TARDIS on a beach instead. But my desktop refuses to turn on, and my laptop keeps flipping the picture upside down. Meh.

So, sewing, right? I'd been planning on jumping in on this particular sewalong anyway, since I've been out of the social sewing loop for months now. I learned recently that the hummingbird is the national bird of Jamaica, so it's quite appropriate to do a sewalong for this pattern, too! So here goes...

That's right, I'm in the pink house. My Hummingbird will not be pink, though....and seeing as how it's 9 pm here, and I have to go back to work tomorrow, I'd better get started!

Of personal palettes and mini-wardrobes

I'm sure that many of you have seen Gillian's Me-Made-May posts in which she aimed to wear clothes that fit into her own personal color palette that she's created. Which led to a discussion on Twitter in which she generously created palettes for a few other bloggers, myself included, based on the colors she found a lot of in our own me-made creations. So this is what she came up with for me:

















Figures that mine is loaded with blue and green, right? Even the wall behind me in this picture fits! The coral caused some discussion--it's not that I don't have any coral in my closet, because I do, and with all of these cool, oceany colors, I need some warmth in there! But when I first clicked on it, my computer monitor was reading this as a pinkish mauvish rusty color, which did not look pretty at all.

I've also been plotting out and packing my honeymoon wardrobe, as you know. So, just for fun, I figured I'd show what I'm taking and see how closely it matches with this! Prepare for a rather picture-heavy post...(with really crappy photos. Sorry. I had to have my bed model for sake of time, and I promise I'll try to start doing better with the photos after the wedding!)

1. Given that I'm going to a tropical island, I based it all around the swimwear, of course. I did not make either of these swimsuits, I bought them at the end of last summer specifically for this purpose. (Which is why this is the skimpiest swimsuit I have ever owned in my life--I went with two of my cousins and my sis-in-law, and they wouldn't let me leave the shop without a bikini! I'm usually more of a tankini girl, tbh.) The 1-piece was purchased because we were originally talking about going to a resort with this giant waterslide park, and I didn't want any wardrobe malfunctions! We're not staying at that resort, but we are going to one where you can take an outing to swim with dolphins, so avoiding wardrobe malfunctions sounds like a good idea there, too. Anyway, I'm basing the colors for the wardrobe as a whole around this bikini top, just because I can. And I did make the cover-up and the beach bag. The latter has seen better days because I made this years ago, possibly back in late high school/college years, when I was able to get access to my grandmother's embroidery machine and painstakingly programmed that design into the computer based on the lining fabric. But aside from re-stitching a bit of the lining to the zipper area, no holes yet, so I think I can keep using it for at least one more adventure.

2. The convertible dress, which looks way better on me than on my bed, because it's perfect for the airport--and easy to adjust for air conditioning vs. outside heat and humidity. 















 3. I tried to go a little mix-and-matchy here. So I have my reconstructed jeans skirt, a purchased turquoise tank top, the "Make It Work" Sadie tank, and a long white skirt that I purchased at the beach one time (because if you can't wear a skirt with real seashells sewn to it on a tropical island, where can you?) I also threw in the green tank that I re-embellished a couple of years ago, and some jeans cutoffs. (Nothing exciting, just some thrifted jeans I've been wearing to work that are obnoxiously slightly too short for my legs. I haven't even hemmed them yet, so I'll probably just roll them to whatever length I want.) Depending on what I choose to wear with what and how often, I potentially have 6 outfits here!


4. A thrifted strapless red dress, specifically at my fiance's request. I wore this one back around Christmas with a sweater over top, and he really liked it! And some of the restaurants within the resort area that we have access to are listed as "resort evening" dress codes, so I figure this can be my fancy dinner dress. (I checked, the resort has ironing boards in the room, so I can just give this a quick press and be good to go.)











5. A second-hand maxi dress that I added straps to somewhere around 2 summers ago, because this is another comfortable dress for summer heat. I thought I'd blogged this one somewhere, but I guess not...I just wasn't comfortable with the ability of shirred fabric to stay where it was supposed to without help! But this can be another fancier resort dress, I think.














6. In case I want to cover up some, either from sun or because I will be the one person who can get cold on a tropical island, some thrifted cropped jeans and the latest addition to my me-made wardrobe, the Pavlova cardigan. (Which is still going to get its own dedicated post later.)













7. Accessories--the turquoise shoes are for the beach because my feet hate flip flops and get nasty blisters between my toes whenever I try to wear them, the silver sandals for a dressier look and the flat black ones for everyday. Also, a big, dorky, floppy sunhat, because my heritage is "all the European people who sunburn the easiest", and I have rosacea to boot, so my face needs this! I did try to buy the least dorky one I could, but I just don't seem to have the gift of being able to wear hats and still look cool. Which is sad. There will most likely be some earrings in here somewhere too, but I haven't gotten that far yet.


So--no teal this time, and I have red instead of coral, but I seem to have hit pretty close to Gillian's palette! It'll be interesting to see how close I stick with this as I use up my stash and acquire new fabrics. And I'm strongly tempted to come up with my own new palette for my cold-weather wardrobe, since that's when I get the most bored with my closet and crave more color!

So how did I do with my island getaway wardrobe? And one week to go, eeeee! I guess that means this is probably my last post until after the wedding. So congrats to all of you who successfully made it through another Me-Made-May, happy sewing/crafting, and I'll see you on the other side. :)

Something old, something new...

One last wedding-related craft post! It's probably no secret by now that I'm somewhat of a geek. I definitely lean more towards fantasy than sci-fi, for the most part, and am a little sad that I haven't found a way to incorporate something Lord of the Rings-ish into my wedding. (Though my fiance did comment when we were picking out wedding bands that the one he picked out looked kind of dwarven to him...he was a much bigger fan of the Hobbit movie than LotR.) However, I do very much enjoy Doctor Who on the sci-fi end of things, and am super-excited that Tempest is hosting a Whovian sew-along for the 50th anniversary later this year! But I'm getting a little bit of a head-start...

Two out of my three bridesmaids, as well as my mom, are also fans. I quite successfully managed to get my fiance interested.  And after this scene from a couple of seasons ago, how could I not include something Who in the wedding?

(Not the best quality vid, but it was the only one I could find that would actually play for me and wasn't a fan-made music video. Sorry.)

I was originally just planning on having a little fun with my tiny TARDIS and phone camera at the reception, since it seemed appropriate.(My maid of honor and I have been having fun over the last few months with taking Instagram photos of a little plastic TARDIS in random places, so you bet that's going to be going with me on my upcoming trip!) But when my mom noticed that I'd pinned some painted TARDIS shoes onto my "Crafty Geekery" Pinterest board, she suggested that we get some shoes and paint them for the reception! She originally said for myself, my sis-in-law and her, but I pointed out that my maid of honor would want them, too. So with a little help from Sis and a lot of help from Mom, we ended up painting 4 pairs of these!

(Wow, my carpet looks awful--in my defense, I've been busy packing and planning a wedding!)

This is basically the gist of them--SIL's look a little different because when we told her we were doing this, she really wanted shoes without laces, so she has some slip-on canvas ones. We couldn't find them in any other sizes (especially not mine), so the other 3 pairs are the standard lace-up Keds. The fun shoelaces were our addition, and my mom, my maid of honor, and I all now have different pairs of laces to go with.

As for my non-Whovian bridesmaid...I didn't want her to feel left out. Like I said, she doesn't really watch Doctor Who, but she's been a huge  Star Wars fan for as long as I've known her, which is since we were kids. Her favorite character is Yoda, but I wasn't really sure how to translate that to shoes (I always sucked the most at faces and figures in art class), and we wanted to do something where I could use the same paint we already bought for the TARDIS shoes.

So she gets R2-D2! Hmm... I wonder how it would look if I used my seam-ripper to get those Keds tags off of the tongues?

late night musings

I'm in the process of going through my clothes. The plan is to try to figure out all of my outfits for the days leading up to the wedding (and the honeymoon, of course!) within the next couple of days so I can just pack up and move the rest of my wardrobe and be done with it. One of the things I have going on within the next 2 1/2 weeks is another wedding, since we have some friends from church who are getting married a week before us. I'd been planning on wearing my Dahlia dress, but I may have to rethink that, because....
...look what I found on the back when I pulled it out from the under-the-bed storage! I have no idea what this random brown line is, how it got there, or how long it's been there. All I know is that my initial attempt to scrub it out with soap and water failed.

This led me to examine the dress further. Which was probably a mistake, because the more I look at the top of this in particular, the less happy I am with several aspects of the finishing on this thing. The lining wants to curl to the outside of the bodice, the width of the top of the bodice is wider than the lower edge of the strap, the lining is all puckered because I think I was struggling with learning how to deal with the thread tension on my serger--I'd only had it for a few months at this point. Plus the top of the zipper is a hot mess. In short, there's several things about it that just look very homemade in the bad way. (I will not call it a certain phrase that Project Runway popularized, because on behalf of all other Beckys in the world that sew, I hereby proclaim that this particular phrase needs to be tossed back into the fiery chasm from whence it came!)

Even if I can't get this stain out, I think I can salvage this, because guess what--I still have an entire yard of this fabric left! I'd been tossing around the idea of a Sorbetto, but I could quite happily go for using it to remake the top of this dress and see if I can get it better the second time around. I still like the style, but surely with 5 more years of sewing experience, I can improve on those details, right? Or I could just try to get the stain mostly out and at least add a hook and eye to the back to see if that improves the zipper...

I still need to figure out what to wear to that wedding. Maybe my Lonsdale from last summer?

Sans accessories and required garden center work clothes that I've already worn this week and therefore need to be washed, I do have outfits picked out for 10 of the next 17 days. Including the rehearsal dinner--another previous me-made, in case you want to know--and the bachelorette party, and a button-down reserved for wearing over my wedding dress while my hair and makeup gets done. (I tested it before, and I didn't extend the zipper enough to pull it on over my hips. Drat.) Not bad for a night's work. Now I just need to get half the contents of my closet off of my bed so I can, you know, attempt to sleep tonight.

Another batch of wedding crafts

What I've been up to lately:
#1: That tie I've mentioned a couple of times. I'm going to be honest and say that I'm not 100% happy with the way it turned out--the poly satin didn't press well at all, and the interfacing made it just too stiff overall. If I was going to go back and do it over again with this fabric, I'd just leave the interfacing out entirely! I also had trouble getting the much lighter lining fabric to lie flat in the tie. But after all of that drama involved in finding solid emerald green fabric in the first place, I didn't have too many options. I'm fully expecting he'll never wear it again after the wedding day, but I guess I can chalk this up to a learning experience.

Incidentally, this is also a sneak peek of the shirt I recently finished--I just haven't had a chance to take a decent outfit photo of it yet, but since I'm planning on taking it on the honeymoon, I'll see if I can get a shot or two of it there!

#2: This one's been a few months in the making. These are the table numbers for the reception, with some cheery paper sunflowers glued to one corner of each side. I can't take full credit for this, as I had help from my mom, my maid of honor, and even my fiance! The punches were ridiculously hard to push through the paper, so he punched every single petal of these out for me. I definitely found a keeper!

I zoomed in and lightened it up so you could see a little more detail on these. I was amazed at how realistic they look! And it was a lot of work, but these are so much lighter than silk flowers, so I think the effect is well worth it.

To give credit where it's due, I got the idea from the punch manufacturer--found these while searching for sunflower wedding picture ideas early in the process. I have several of these leftover, and they'll be used to decorate various baskets for bubbles and our guest "book". (Which is actually quilt squares that my mom is going to sew together for us.)

#3: The centerpieces are finally done! My incredibly awesome maid of honor gets serious props for helping me with both steps of this--we painted all of the flowerpots, and she helped me assemble them this past Saturday while we and my fiance watched the season finale for Doctor Who.  We ended up painting several more pots than we needed to, because I didn't know until after we did it that some of the tables at the reception place could seat up to 12--I'd been under the impression that all of the tables would seat up to 8 people, and was planning for about 18 centerpieces. My math must have been off somewhere, though, because if I'd had to make that many, I wouldn't have had enough sunflowers!






Here's a better view of the pots--we decided partway through that it reminds us of the 1-up mushrooms from all of the Mario Nintendo games, so I can't help thinking of that now! I'm going to recycle a good bit of this after the wedding--I plan to make a wreath for the kitchen with the flowers (also doing sunflowers in there), and I have some herbs to plant in the pots. I just need to figure out what to do with a bunch of white candles!


This isn't the last of it, I still have a few more crafts to do, and less than 3 weeks to finish them in! So I guess I'd better get back to work!

Playing along

I think that the thing I missed the most while working on The One Dress was the more social aspect of sewing blogging--namely, the sewalongs and challenges. So now that it's over, even though things are a bit crazy right now, I'm happy to be able to do what I can to get back into that!

I recently learned about this through Kat and Tempest, and the timing is actually quite perfect for me! I'm not so much "spring cleaning" as packing, organizing, and setting up in the first place, but my fiance and I have made quite a bit of progress on the room lately, including several hours yesterday afternoon spent working on it. (He really deserves much of the credit, since he's way better at organizing than I am and did quite a bit of the work of folding my fabrics and putting things away for me while I haven't been there!) Anyway, I'm excited to follow along with this one and get some more ideas--hopefully it will be all set up and ready to go when I come back from the honeymoon.


Secondly, while I'm not doing Me-Made-May '13 (and have already stated my reasons--I had a few very supportive responses to that, so thank you!), I have found that I'm reaching for my me-mades more often than not anyway. So I guess I'm following along in spirit. With that thought, I did try something new with an old dress today, so I do have one outfit photo to show.

I'm not sure if I ever blogged this dress, because it predates the blog. I made this to wear to my college graduation. (Here's a scary thought--this May marks a decade since I finished my undergrad degree!) And while this dress has held up well over the years, I'm thinking that it's time to retire this one--the fabric is starting to fade unattractively in places, particularly the line that's forming over where I hand-stitched the hem, and I do need to downsize my wardrobe where I can. So even though it's hard to let go of things that I've made, I'd like to think that maybe another teenage or college girl will find it in a local thrift shop and it will be the perfect thing to wear to kick off a new stage of life for her. Or just have some fun this summer. For the record, the pattern is Simplicity 7072, and I recall it fitting very well out of the envelope, so I may have to revisit this someday.






Now here's how I wore it today for church (complete with German Shepherd puppy photobomb!) My original plan was to wear my "Christmas in July" dress with the thrifted green jacket that I replaced the buttons on. (Incidentally, I wore that same jacket yesterday, along with my me-made jeans and a favorite tee. Must make more jeans.) But when I put the dress on this morning, I discovered that the straps have gotten stretched out, and this dress is basically unwearable until I shorten them again. So into the mending pile it goes, and back to the closet I went. It was a bit chilly this morning, so I opted to do the dress-as-skirt look, with this 3/4-sleeved top I got for free from one of my friends who likes to pass her unwanted clothes on to me to do whatever I want with. I think the concept is good, though the outfit would be a little more successful if this dress had a lower neckline. But, as I said, this is pretty much the send-off for this dress anyway. 

That's pretty much all I have to report for now. I did finish Doug's tie, though I have yet to take pics of it. And I did make some more progress on a top I'm sewing for the honeymoon wardrobe. and am one decent sewing session away from finishing. Then I need to make the headbands for the bridesmaids. And finish the table numbers. And the reception centerpieces. And packing to move. And all that other stuff. 34 days to go. Ooh boy.

First finished post-dress project!

Yes, that's right, I actually sewed something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unrelated to the wedding! I say almost, because there's a pretty good chance that this will end up being part of the honeymoon wardrobe. Given the way this spring has been here in the mid-Atlantic--meaning ridiculously cold and I haven't even migrated to the 3/4-sleeve portion of my wardrobe yet for the most part--I don't think I'll get much use out of it before then, sadly! Though I was able to wear it yesterday, with the help of some layers, before it got all cold again today.

Anyway, after the intensity and huge investment of time that was the wedding dress, I obviously wanted something that would be super-quick and easy to sew. I thought very hard about a Renfrew top, but in the end, I decided to revisit another knit pattern that I've been meaning to come back to for some time: the BurdaStyle Sadie top, from back in the glorious days when it wasn't the magazine site and you could get patterns for free. This also qualifies as the first piece of fabric for the Stashbusting Sewalong! I'm bending the rules a little and choosing pieces as I go. And I know the theme was "vivid colors" this month, and this is probably a little too dark to be vivid, but I had it and it works with the plans I'm making in my head for that honeymoon wardrobe. Anyway, this is a piece of cotton/poly interlock knit that I picked up as a potential trim match for the fabric I used in my "Angels and Angles" top, back when I was intending to make it into another Butterick 5206, before I figured out that the fabric just wouldn't work for it. (Another pattern I'd love to revisit!)

The top was, as I wished, super-fast. I had cut it out in advance, so I basically got it entirely sewed together in the duration of the latest episode of Doctor Who plus part of a movie that my fiance brought over. (My Cousin Vinnie, if you're curious.) I didn't quite get the entire piece of fabric used up, I think I have about half a yard left, so this piece isn't entirely stashbusted. But it's well on the way. I guess I should probably do a little bit of tweaking with this pattern, since it looks like I could use a swayback adjustment on here. And that extra gather at the top?
This was my "make it work" moment. After I'd finished sewing the tank together and tried it on, I discovered that while the neckline was laying very well in the front, undoubtedly partially thanks to a wonderful knit edging tutorial from Steph, the back was quite noticeably gapping away from my neck. Now, I know I don't always have the best posture, but I think that this was mostly just due to the thickness of the knit--there's not a lot of give in it, and therefore not a lot of recovery. But since everything else fit fine, rather than undo that neck binding and try to ditch some of the fabric, I turned it into a little pleat detail with some thread loops and a random single button that I found in my stash. Thankfully, I hadn't moved all of the buttons like I'd thought. If anyone asks, this was a completely intentional design detail, right?

It felt really good to be able to just whip something out, even with a few minor imperfections! I do have a little bit of wedding-related sewing left to do--I need to just stop procrastinating have enough time at home to press the tie, and then that's done,  but it looks like I'm going to need to make a couple of simple headbands out of the leftovers for my bridesmaids. I'd kind of like to make myself a little simple bag for the day of as well, and I also have one more piece of clothing that I'd like to make before the honeymoon. And a few other crafty things. I think my wish for a Tiramisu to bring with me is just going to have to go on the shelf, sadly, since there's only 40 days to go now! Really, basically 39. And there are the small matters of, you know, packing and moving the majority of my stuff, and planning the rest of the wedding. So we'll see how this goes--but at least I do know I will have some time this week in which I can sew!

Sewing Surprise!

It's reveal day for the Sewing Surprises swap that Nova is hosting!

I received a package from the lovely Kerrilee, from Sew Exhausted. (The sewcialist that I sent to was actually her co-writer, Laurie!) My package got a bit lost in transit for awhile, but arrived just in time for reveal day, on Friday. Which was great, because the end of the week was pretty stressful and it was the perfect fun surprise to cheer me up! So here's what was inside:
The package came all tied up neatly with a pretty ribbon. It was much neater than this, but then I repackaged it when I realized that I needed to take pictures--I was too excited and had torn into it right away!






There was a card with the cutest little cat sticker to seal it up.













There were two packages of wedding-related scrapbook stickers. Which is perfect, because of course I'm already plotting to make a scrapbook so I can hoard all of the candids that my friends and family make, as well as professional shots that we can't necessarily fit into the album that comes with our package!




The latest addition to my stash of sewcialist-given chocolate. I'm still working on the first of the two bars I got from New Zealand for the stash swap (eating them verrrrry sloooooooowly so there won't be any last minute dress-fitting panic issues!), but sea salt and dark chocolate is completely yummy, so I'll be looking forward to this for sure.


And finally, there were two coordinating pieces of super-lightweight jersey, and a pattern to make them into! I'll have to see if I can squeeze this in before the wedding, because wouldn't this be great for a tropical getaway?

I had a lot of fun putting together my package for Laurie, and it was very exciting to see what I got in return! Thanks again, Kerrilee!

branching out

Both literally and in terms of knitting technique, as that was the name of this pattern.

These are the "Branching Out" mitts from the Coastal Knits book, which I got for Christmas in 2011. This was also my first foray into colorwork other than stripes, and I think that I handled it pretty well overall! They could probably use a good blocking to even the stitches out, but as usual, I'm impatient and wanted to show off my finished project! Also, I may want to wear these tonight, since despite the fact that we're finally scraping into the 60s, my hands are still perpetually cold.

Aside from the colorwork, this was also my first attempt at a thumb gusset instead of just a hole! I think it went pretty decently. And they fit really well, too-- I know they look very long, but I don't mind most of my fingers being covered. Aside from playing the flute, I should still be able to mostly use my hands fine.

It was a little bit of a challenge to come up with yarn that would work, since I can't do the wool thing, but I ended up using the Milky Whey yarn that I got last summer at the beach yarn shop. It's half-soy, half-milk (!), and absolutely lovely to work with and to wear--it's so soft! Once again, I seriously overestimated how much yarn I needed, and have at least 2/3 of a skein of the tan and maybe around 1 1/4 of the blue left over, so I think a matching slouchy hat will be in order. If I can find that full ball of yarn, that is--somehow, between last night and the previous time I'd worked on it, the entire unused skein of the blue disappeared from my knitting bag! I hope it turns up as I'm packing!

Also in knitting news, I was recently gifted the Craftsy class of my choice by Gwen, as an early wedding present! It was a tough call, because there's a lot of tempting sewing classes that I haven't signed up for yet. But in the end, I decided to sign up for the Knit Lab class, because I've realized that there's some finishing details, like sewing up seams and especially weaving in ends, that I could really use some extra work on to take my knitting to the next level. I probably won't get to it before the wedding, but hopefully I have some yarn in the stash that will be good to use for the class project.

Guess what? I also have a sewing project to show! But not in this post, as I still need to take pictures.

I've been a bad, bad girl

The latest additions to the stash.

The one on the left is my new plan for the Darling Ranges dress, in place of that more-muted-than-expected paisley. The one on the right is for the Reglisse dress--the stripes are small and a bit hand-drawn/crooked-looking, so I figure I can get all the visual fun of stripes without the hassle of trying to match things, because it will be impossible to do so.

Both are rayon challis (challises? Challi?) from Fabric.com. The already on sale price + 15% off total order made me do it. I'll probably need to line the white, at least, so I'll have to see if I have enough lining in stash.

No, I haven't forgotten that I'm stashbusting, but since the one was to finish my dare, and I literally had nothing in the stash that was a good yardage for the Reglisse, that's how I'm justifying it. So consider that altered pledge as starting now. And I think that I will be much happier with the result of the Darling Ranges with this painterly print--plus, think of the layering possibilities with all of those colors! I can wear cobalt! And plum! And--dare I try it--mustard? A mustard-colored cardi would go amazingly well with both dresses, but I'll have to consider that, since yellows have traditionally not been the kindest to my complexion.

As for the paisley, I'm strongly leaning towards an autumnal Cambie dress. Or maybe some kind of longer tunic that I can wear with my skinny jeans. But we shall see. First step is to actually find time to sew again, since I'm quite sadly having a repeat of last year's almost no-sew spring, it seems. But I am planning on working on the tie tonight, so that's something, at least.

The circle is complete

First off, regarding Me-Made-May '13: I've decided to sit this one out this time, due to a trifecta of cons: The only new me-made things added to my wardrobe since last year are two dresses, a tank top, and a pair of jeans (and, you know, a wedding dress that took up 9 months of my life) so I'd basically be wearing exactly the same things as last year. I can't wear me-mades for the retail job that tends to suck up 6 days a week this time of year, and have been getting out too late and too rushed to have time to take photos when I change to teach my music lessons. (Or, on Saturdays, to go lie on the couch and watch tv when I'm dead tired from 10-hour shifts on my feet.) And since it's the last month before the wedding, adding daily photos to the mix is probably not an additional stress factor that I should put on myself. Honestly, I'd rather focus what free time I can squeeze in on actually sewing! So hopefully I can jump in again next year, after I've had some time to make fresh new items and make things more interesting for all involved.
So, today's story: yesterday after work, and before and after some teaching, I decided to cut some things out so I can actually start sewing new things again! So I cut out the lining and interfacing for my fiance's wedding tie, and pinned the pattern on the main fabric. (I did not cut that, because my videographer brother wants to get some footage of tie-making too, so I figured that would be the part he'd want to do.) I cut out a tank top from a piece of solid colored knit that had been in my stash for awhile. Unless I can figure out the embellishment I'm seeing in my head, I'm afraid this one will be rather boring. But I can probably sew it together in an evening, 2 at most, and after The One Dress, that's what I need.

The third and final thing I wanted to cut out was from a piece of this white crinkle gauzy stuff that I think is probably cotton. I'm not 100% sure, because it falls into the category of "fabric I got for free because people who don't know sewing and were decluttering gave it to my mom to make quilts". After seeing Steph's crinkle woven linen version of the Pavlova top, I'd thought to try out something like that, so I can use it as a lightweight jacket/sun protection layer for my honeymoon. (We're going to Jamaica. I'm of Irish/Scottish/English/German decent and a quasi-natural redhead. That's right, I can burn in 15 minutes!) So I laid the fabric out...and discovered that I was really short on fabric. Like, the entire wrap tie short. Guess I should have seen it coming, since my fabric was only about 45" wide, but of course I didn't check that now!

So, I tweeted about my conundrum, since I'd already had my laptop out so I could watch the first two episodes of The Great British Sewing Bee while I worked, and went back to the drawing board. I didn't think to check my Burda magazines, honestly, but I already had my box with shirt patterns down, so I rummaged through to see what I could find.

Candidate #1: New Look 6922, which I bought several years ago but haven't actually used yet. I thought the short-sleeved cardigan was potentially cute, so I started pulling the pieces out to see what I could do. And I realized that the shawl collar on such sheer fabric was going to look terrible, and it looked like I didn't have quite enough fabric to really do that, either. So I put it back and kept looking. (Incidentally, I think I will have to revisit this, because I still think that short-sleeved cardigan looks very potentially cute!)









So I put that away, and pulled out New Look 6405. Which I did make once, years ago, but that particular top is no longer in my wardrobe because both the body and the long sleeves were too short for my comfort. (I still think the style is cute, though, so this one may also need revisiting. Maybe using my Renfrew as a fit check of sorts.) My thought was that I could take that crossover piece on the red shirt, double it, and then draft a wrap tie to make something similar to the Pavlova. I even went so far as to draw out the piece, though I realized partway through it that the crinkles would be running the opposite direction on the ties than on the front and back of the shirt. It was the only way it would fit.

Somewhere close to the end of this, I got a tweet back from Steph herself, suggesting that I just leave the ties off and draft it as a drapey-front cardi. (This is high on the list of why I'm becoming a total indie pattern snob--the ability to communicate directly with the designer!) So I put away the third pattern and went back to my original pattern. And it looked like I had just enough fabric for it to work! I did end up retracing the pieces, and made a few changes--I lengthened the front side seam to match up with the "muffin cover" on the back, added some length to the front diagonal bit, and traced the sleeve out to be the length of the short-sleeved size 45 rather than the size 35 that I was otherwise tracing. (I would have gone with the longer sleeve, but the fabric wasn't wide enough.) I'm not sure how this will work out once it's all together, but hopefully it'll look cute, and if nothing else, it will be long enough in the front that I might be able to do a midriff tie or something if the mood strikes me. Because if you can't get away with that on a tropical island, where can you?

Now I just need to find some time to sew, which will be tough since I have a date with the friend who's doing my hair for the wedding tomorrow evening to do a dry run, an open-to-close shift at work on Saturday (boo), and church and a music rehearsal on Sunday. And absolutely no idea what the majority of my work schedule is after that, since it will only come out tomorrow at the earliest. Wish me luck!

Pledge alterations!

So, now that I can actually sew other things again, and after the Swap Your Stash and moving the majority of my stash to my future sewing room at my fiance's house, I've been re-evaluating the stashbusting pledge that I made back in January. And I've realized that I may have defined things too narrowly, or put too many restrictions on myself to make this realistic. Especially after realizing things like I can't use the majority of my dress patterns with my current stash, because the yardages I have are literally not enough!


So, with that in mind, I'm going to alter my pledge. Technically, I haven't been able to start it yet, so I still can! I'm still going to keep the goal of using up at least 6 pieces of fabric. If I do more, great, go me! But I'm going to add the caveat that I will be allowed to purchase fabrics that are necessary to finish projects--linings in particular, since that is something I'm not likely to have on hand. In addition, I'm going to give myself the allowance that, if I so choose, I will be allowed to purchase one new piece of fabric for every 3 pieces that I use up--I'll still have more fabric out than in that way, and that way I can have some fun with stash patterns that I wouldn't be able to use otherwise. Plus, you know how it is--sometimes a girl just needs something new to keep the inspiration flowing! (To keep it fair, I'm using this allowance for garment sewing fabrics only, not things like the curtains that I already have fabric for!)

I'm also in the process of re-counting my current yardage count--I do have some leftovers from more recent projects, like the One Dress, that need to get put in, as well as the things I traded in the Swap Your Stash. So I'll be back soon(ish) with the new and improved stashbusting tracker. My ultimate goal is still to try and get my stash down to a manageable level, which would be somewhere around 75-100 yards. I'm probably somewhere around 250 right now, so I still have quite a ways to go!

So what's next?

Now that the One Dress To Rule Them All is finished (yay!) and awaiting the big reveal in June, and it turns out I do have a little bit of time left before the wedding, it's time to figure out what to do with whatever sewing time I have left between now and then! Well, I've been thinking about this quite a bit, especially recently as I've been back at my retail job and have had more mental time to kill. I'm trying not to be overly ambitious because, you know, 2 months to W-day and that might take up some time. But here's what I'm thinking...

• Doug's tie, of course. Which will be much easier and quicker to finish, because I can totally sew that while he's around.
• Honeymoon clothes! I've been plotting my wardrobe for that out in my head, and I'm sure that will get a post at some point. But I do have a few holes that need filling. Particularly, I'd like to make one or two pairs of shorts, and for the sake of time, I'm going to do a total cheater refashion and cut off/hem a couple of pairs of jeans. They're thrifted jeans that I've pretty much only been wearing to the garden shop--one is a little too short for my legs anyway, and the other was a victim of the dryer ink disaster last fall. The obvious damage looks like it's mostly lower down on the leg than I would need anyway. I do need to cut them long enough that I can also wear them to work in the summer, which means no shorter than mid-thigh, but I think I'd be more comfortable with that length anyway. And both of these pairs fit pretty decently at my waist, so it should do. I still totally want to test out my Thurlows on another pair of shorts, but that can wait until after the wedding.
• Also for the honeymoon, I'd love to do a trial run of the Tiramisu dress! I don't have too much in the stash that would have the necessary yardage, but I do have some plain navy blue jersey bedsheets that I inherited when my brother got married. They're too big for my bed, so I've been hoarding them for the last few years purely for muslin purposes, and navy blue should fit wonderfully into the color scheme that's shaping up in my head. I'd also like to knock out a quick tank top as a palate-cleanser, and I have a potential idea for a layering piece. Because you know I will be the one who will get cold on a tropical island!
• One little secret I've been keeping--I did buy three patterns off of Etsy around Christmas, for some lingerie. (Which is strange for me to type, knowing that my mom might be reading this...) But if I have time, I'd like to test out at least one of them. (My fiance would probably say that I should make this first priority, but I don't know how badly my friends will try to embarrass me what I'm getting for the bridal shower yet. I'll find out on Saturday.)

There, that doesn't seem terribly unreasonable, does it? I have a few things lined up in my head for after the wedding as well, including a whole lot of Thurlow work so I can try to have some actual pants that fit before the fall rolls around, and a couple of self-challenges that I'm setting for myself. One will be an ongoing project, one will have a deadline, but more on that later. The one thing I will reveal is that I'd asked Gillian for a sewing dare that actually involved, you know, sewing.   The dare she gave me:

@sew_and_so OK, #sewingdare: Treat yourself to a cute new pattern and lovely fabric to make it! You deserve a treat!
— Gillian(@GillianCrafts) March 26, 2013

I polled the quite biased sewcialists on Twitter, and the consensus was that rewarding oneself for accomplishing a huge and very time-consuming couture sewing project trumped stashbusting pledges. (But I promise that this will be my only cheat, since technically, the lime green silk was bought with the wedding in mind, and therefore falls under the parameters that I'd set!)

I'd considered buying something for the Pavlova, since I did already treat myself to this new pattern, I'm just not sure I have things in the stash to make both pieces.  I'd also thought that I could use it as part of the honeymoon wardrobe. But hours of scouring my favorite fabric websites turned up nothing that's jumping out at me for it at this point. And, as Gillian put it in a later tweet, "go big or go home. right?"

So, for my sewing dare, I treated myself to the Darling Ranges dress by Megan Nielsen, and some fabric from Gorgeous Fabrics. I haven't tried a Megan Nielsen pattern yet, but I've heard good things about them. It was a tough call between this one and the Reglisse dress from Deer & Doe, because that one is just too cute and it reminds me of something that Jane Bennet would have worn in the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. But in the end, the Darling Ranges won out, because...

1. I've been wanting a more autumn-friendly dress for awhile now--most of my dresses have no sleeves and are in summery colors.
2. I have two weddings to attend this fall, and will need something to wear. I'm a bridesmaid in one of them, so that's covered, but I still will probably need something cute to wear for rehearsal dinners and such, right?
3. Even though it's a longer-sleeved dress, it doesn't look frumpy. Those are hard to find. 
4. As it turns out, it's a good thing the Darling Ranges won out, because apparently I just won the Reglisse pattern from a giveaway at Paunnet! Thanks, Anna! 

But.... I'm sorry to say that I think I've failed this dare.  I bought this fabric for it:

I tried to be smart about the fabric choice, and choose a print that--guess what--already went with a bunch of things in my wardrobe! So I was thinking that I could layer this with my  brown jacket, or my brown hoodie cardigan sweater, or the thrifted tan jacket that I picked up recently,  or throw a coordinating knit top over it and wear it as a skirt, and so on. (My other choice was this adorable dragonfly print, but I realized that would require a lot more effort to work as a layering piece. I also managed to resist the temptation to further break the pledge and buy both pieces.) Also, as far as fabric choice goes, I do have a serious weakness for paisley!

But--and I am not blaming Gorgeous Fabrics for this, because I know the problem had to be my color perception--now that I'm seeing the fabric in person, I'm not so convinced that this is a good match for this pattern. The blue looked way more teal instead of this colonial blue, and the fabric looked brighter in general on my computer monitor. If I were to be perfectly honest, if I saw what I got in a brick-and-mortar store, I wouldn't have bought it. And my gut tells me that if I make this dress out of this fabric, I'm going to think it looks totally granny (and not in the chic way) and I'm going to hate it. So that leaves me with two questions--what can I do with 3 yards of dull-colored paisley fabric, and do I have anything in my stash that I can actually use to make this pattern? A serious question, given that most, if not all, of my fabrics are more separates-length yardages...

Maybe this would work better as the Reglisse. What do you think?

The end is....

here!!! It took me hand-stitching straight up to midnight, because I was so easily distracted while sewing, but the dress is officially DONE!

I'm going to wait to do the big final reveal pictures until after the wedding, because then I'll have the best pictures with my hair all done up nice and out of the way. But I do have two last detail shots from the lining, courtesy of my phone, since I've been working on this in the evenings over the last 2 days while it's been too dark to use the nice camera.

I did a narrow machine hem all around the lining--partially to speed up the process, and partially to practice the technique. I have another friend getting married this year, she already has her dress, and it fits perfectly other than it being too long, so I told her I'd hem it for her. She's practically my honorary bridesmaid, so I don't mind.

I also have a bustle, sort of--I discovered after pinning in and partially sewing the lining that the center back was hanging past the hem of the dress! At this point, I've stopped caring about perfection and just wanted to finish, so rather than rip out and redo that portion of the hem, I figured no one will see it but me, so I just tacked that up and secured it under the zipper.

I did have one tiny little mishap last night, where I was trimming a thread sticking out next to the zipper, and accidentally nicked the skirt with my scissors! I'm rather proud of myself for staying calm--it was small and hardly noticeable thanks to the zipper seam allowance underneath, so I just stuck some fray check on it this morning and left it at that. Trying to mend it would have made it more noticeable, and I don't think anyone will know except for me (and now all of you who read this.)

So, aside from the final reveal, that's it! Thanks to all of you who have followed along on this massive project and left encouraging words. And you bet my next couple of projects are going to be much less complicated!

in the spotlight

It was definitely a surprise to me to hop on Feedly this morning while practicing some scales (I know, bad musician), and see my own wedding dress pop up! Jessica from Needle & Cloth kindly decided to feature me in her Daily Spotlight series that she just started-- we've virtually gotten to know each other a bit over the last several months, as she's also in the process of making her own wedding dress. And I'm quite honored to be featured there, as my little blog is one that generally keeps to itself!

An update about yesterday's sewing machine fiasco: Should the worst case scenario happen and my trusty Bernadette (aka Bernina 1280) has to go off to that great sewing machine repair shop in the sky, my mom has kindly offered to let me keep the machine that she's lent me for dress-finishing purposes. So I won't be machineless. Which is good, because I've gotten all spoiled on nice machines and my eyes may have been popping out of my head a little to look online and see what it would cost to get even the most basic of my brand new! I'm planning to take Bernadette to the shop on Friday and see if I can get an idea of if she's fixable/if it's too expensive to bother. I did some price comparisons to see what it would cost to get the same model machine on eBay so I have a better idea.