Photo Dump

We are back from our vacation and I thought I would take a moment from writing the last of six horribly written last-minute assignments to write a blog post.  My brain feels pretty melty-melty right now, so this post will consist of a few older projects that I’ve completed and managed to get bad quality cell-phone pictures of. 

 

Before we left, I altered all of my bathing suit tops and bras to fit me.  It was quite an undertaking and I was on a huge time limit, but once I got going things went fairly smoothly.    You can’t really see any details of the stitching here (thank goodness), but I basically removed the hook and eye pieces on each side, ripped the seams on the top part of each elastic band up to the side boning, and cut away excess fabric, grading the elastic down to a more narrow band so that I could place the hook and eye pieces further up each band and reduce a few inches off the back.  The straps in most suits and bras came out with the stitching and had to be repositioned on the band as well.  I didn’t do any measuring here, just eyeballed it, but you can see below that the band is slightly narrower than what it really needed to be, that or I could have taken the hook piece in a centimetre more.  NBD.

Had no idea if I was supposed to stretch the elastic (if so, slightly, tonnes, no idea) as I was sewing.  I tend to think now that I should have, as the finish on some was kind of wobbly, instead of firm and tight.

 

I also started to throw together Vogue 2237 in some leftover cheap-o lining so that I could see how it fit and decide what kind of fabric I wanted to do it in.  This is the dress foundation and I was super pleased with the fit and completely intrigued with the construction.  It was fun to try a new design that was a wee challenging.  And by challenging I mean it had a weird dart that takes four seconds to figure out.  I recommend this pattern to beginners who really want to try a slammin’ dress.  I might take my sloppy muslin below and just cover it with fashion fabric and turn it into my actual dress…

 

For my birthday I copied this French Connection dress that I saw on a girl in Newfoundland and *needed*.  It is my favourite dress so far, in a heavy satiny slight stretch cotton with hints of grey and purple all mushed into one. 

I have no pictures of me wearing the dress that I can post, except for a few on my beaten-up body form.  You can’t see the curves of the dress and it’s all wrinkly because I wore it oodles, but trust me, it’s gorge.

That’s my sewing helper, Kitty.

I am dress obsessed, and really wanted an opportunity to wear a large pouffy gown.  So for halloween, I decided to go as Cinderella and really went for it.  My goal was to do the basic steps of constructing a dress and just get-it-done, however sloppy!  I really wanted to make a chapel train petticoat for this dress, and after literally DAYS of overthinking it, I went for it.  It turned out okay in a really rough nobody-is-ever-going-to-see-it and it’s-just-a-halloween-costume kind of way, and really looked how I wanted.  I had no budget for actual support for the petticoat and I knew the dress would collapse without it, so I used some industrial sized plastic ties from the hardware store and inserted them into casings at the bottom.  It was a rush job and really did collapse by the end of the night (I wore it to a crowded bar and someone stepped on the dress and ripped it to shreds at the end of the night– I walked home with an exposed bum!), but it met my expectations and I feel I know how to make it work should I need to do this neatly in the future.

I basically used a heavily altered pattern for the corset top (which is the best pattern ever) and draped the remainder of my halloween fabric to it.  I didn’t have enough fabric left to do what I really wanted, but that’s life.  The corset would make an excellent foundation for lots of dress designs and I can’t wait to try draping fabric onto it in the future.

Not pictured here are puffy white sleeves, and matching white ribbon for the tie up back. 

Anyways, that was a neat little thing I do called, “make a bunch of junk, photograph it poorly, and talk vaguely about it on my blog a year later”.  On to more important stuff, stuff I love MORE than sewing… my (scary) ANIMALS!

 

This is Lucy, she has nothing to do with sewing, but she is super cute, and she is pictured here, plotting my DEATH.  She is her daddy’s little angel but she loves some momma time, too.  Get used to her, she will be making a regular appearence on this blog.

Watch out… ZOMBIE KITTY.

Finally, do you ever have the strange feeling that someone, or something… is watching you?

 

Nacho can be found, usually, sitting at the end of a long hallway, staring deep into your soul and contronlling your mind (from a safe distance).  He’s lovely.