I think I’ve gotten over my rut–over the weekend I started a pencil skirt:
And last night I finished the second sleeve of the sweater:
Also, the Hamburglar coat took first in the state fair, as reported by my brother.The collar baffled the fair ladies in charge of display, as I thought it might–but a ribbon’s a ribbon, right?
sewing
Tuesday Project Roundup: No Boots Before Labor Day
Boots after Labor Day are just fine, though–because now it’s fall, right? I didn’t do much with the long weekend but I did finally finish that orange dress:
For something that’s pretty much a sack, it seemed to take a long time. On the other hand, there are a lot of nice details (topstitching, pockets) that made the sack a little fancier, albeit time-consuming. But overall, I’m happy with it.
Tuesday Project Roundup: Color Of The Week
Does it surprise anyone that both projects I’m working on right now are orange?
The orange sweater has 1.375 sleeves now:
And look, I’m finally sewing again–this is the front piece of a dress in orange sateen:
Can you make out the pocket detailing in all the orange? So far I’m happy with how this is turning out, if just for the color alone. Such is the power of orange!
Tuesday Project Roundup: Tablecloth Dress
Is it me, or does this dress really remind you of summer picnic tablecloths? I may just be reacting to the fabric, which is a madras from IKEA that I’m pretty sure was intended for summer picnic tablecloths–but it was soft and cheap and helped me test out the pattern.
The pattern sewed up well but I thought I would like it more when it was finished. There’s nothing wrong with it and there are no fit issues, but I tried it on and just thought, “I expected more from you, shirtdress.” So I’m blaming the fabric.
Tuesday Project Roundup: Baby Aloha!
A few weeks ago, I scored a bunch of fabric from a sewing friend. In the haul, there was one yard of flamingo print. Now that there’s a baby to sew for, I knew exactly what to do with that yard of fabric. I give you the Tiny Flamingo Aloha Shirt:
I only dropped it off last night so I don’t have a picture of the nephew modeling it yet. But if he rocks it the way he rocks this cowboy outfit, it’s going to be mind-blowingly, face-meltingly cute.
Tuesday Project Roundup: Goes Well With Friendship Bracelets
If you couldn’t tell, I’ve been into tunics lately (blame my inner hippy). After the last two dresses, I thought, “I should make one to wear as a shirt, too!” So I did.
I didn’t use the dress pattern this time; I actually had an out-of-print Simplicity pattern I bought when I first got into sewing again six years ago. The fabric is from the spring Lisette line at JoAnn stores.
Now I just need an outdoor concert to wear this to. I resisted the Sam Bush band last week–I can’t let the inner hippy get away with too much.
Tuesday Project Roundup: Party Dress
Over the weekend I finally had a big housewarming party. It was a lot of work, but to be fair, I decided to further add to the workload by making a new dress for it:
This is essentially the same pattern as the other tunic dress I made in May, just with a higher neckline, a shorter hem, and elbow sleeves (I was copying the style below, from EmersonMade–just not in boring black, of course).
The fabric I used is Amy Butler home decor-weight twill, so it’s very, um, structured. But I like it. And I pulled it off. Because I can sew dresses AND throw parties.
Tuesday Project Roundup: Hamburglar Chic All Year Long
I’m so happy that it’s finally warm out, but a few weeks ago I realized I missed wearing my striped coat everywhere. The lack of hamburger-stealing stripes made a definite hole in my wardrobe–so I fixed that.
I got more of the same IKEA canvas when I was down buying my TV stand (I love IKEA so much) and used a pattern from the Burda site. Other than forgetting to add seam allowances to the pattern download (oops! I fudged on the side seams), this went together easily, in about a day.
Now I can burgle burgers in the summer heat!
Tuesday Project Roundup: Mixed Success
This week’s projects had about a 50% success rate. Let’s start with the one that worked out:
I finally got the shower curtain for the guest bath done. (As I didn’t have any guests clamoring to use the shower, there wasn’t a lot of motivation.) It’s just a rectangle with some buttonholes at the top, so it went pretty quickly.
Above, you can see the tiger painting ended up in the guest bath…
…but can you spot the tiger descendant in this picture?
The not-so-successful project was some DIY art I tried to paint for the living room. I was inspired by this artist’s watercolor chevrons:
But since I don’t like prints of paintings and I thought the chevrons could be even MORE colorful, I decided to try my own. I was being cocky and thought, “I’m so good with color, I don’t even need to plan out the order of my stripes–I’ll just see what inspires me.”
Well, as the boy I was desperately in love with years ago said to me after we watched Wuthering Heights, “Let this be a lesson to us all.” I don’t think I could have made this uglier if I tried:
I mean….wow. Not a success. Looking at it, I can see how re-arranging the color order would fix it, but I think I have learned that painting is not for me. I’ll stick with fabric.
Tuesday Project Rounup: Meh-ow
Open any womens magazine and it will tell you that a classic wrap-style knit dress* magically flatters everyone. Since I’ve never been able to keep wrap dresses wrapped, I thought I could make a faux-wrap style and still be magically flattered.
I had a leopard print knit to use (since I can’t get enough leopard lately) and I was picturing a sassy little number. However, it’s not “meow!” so much as “meh.”
As it turns out, wrap–or even faux wrap–dresses work better on people with more normally-proportioned figures. (You gotta have something to wrap things AROUND, is what I’m saying). On me, I think the whole thing just kind of hangs and flaps from my bony shoulders–and this is after I tweaked the fit about four times to get it somewhat wearable.
It’s just not the style for me. Next time I’ll ignore the womens magazines and stick with my Twiggy dresses from the 60s.
*A true wrap dress is like a bathrobe: put it on, cross the fronts, tie the belt, and hope for the best. A faux wrap also has fabric crossed over the front, but it’s sewn down on the sides.