Eeep!

I started tracing the pattern pieces for my next big project tonight, and I'm afraid! It's this Vogue dress, view A, and it's complicated. Plus I'm planning to make it sleeveless, so I have to kind of make that part up. And it's in satin-y fabric, which I've never really worked with. And I'm not at all certain the bodice is going to fit me without some alterations.

All in all, I'm suspecting there are going to be some phone calls to my mom before this thing is complete.

On the plus side, I have plenty of time before the wedding I want to wear it to, so if it doesn't work out, I can always go shopping. And my fabric is pretty. :)

I'm going to start on a muslin of it (or the bodice part, at any rate) tomorrow - wish me luck!

Well, that's better....

Okay, I tried again over the weekend to make the pin tucked skirt, and this one actually fits me - hooray! I totally forgot to take a picture of it, though. Oops! This time I used pink thread (although I kinda think I like the lime green from the first one better; oh well), and I did it the right size. Although I feel a little better about my mistake the first time, because I realized the actual waist of the first skirt fits; it's just that the rest of it doesn't! I guess I should pay attention to both sets of measurements....

Bad Karma. Or something.

I don't know what I've done, but apparently I've angered the sewing gods somehow. Or maybe I'm just picking the wrong projects! The last few things I've tried to make really haven't been very successful. I haven't been doing a huge amount since I cleaned up my craft area, but the projects I've tried just haven't worked out.

I was working on the wrap top that I mentioned in my last post. I actually put it together without any major problems, but it was kind of funny looking. Partly I think the knit I used was too thick for the way they wrote the pattern, and partly I think I just don't like the pattern so much on my body. So, I tried to alter the pattern a bit. I put that one together, and it still looks funny. I think it can be rescued, but it needs some serious thought put into it. I just wasn't up for that last night (when I realized how much thought it needed), so I thought I'd do a quick skirt from my Stitch magazine.


Isn't it cute? Unfortunately, I must've measured wrong or something, because it's extremely (extremely, unattractively) tight. Argh! On the plus side, I think I have enough fabric to make it again, and I'm sure I'll do a better job with the pin tucks on a second attempt. (The horizontal ones are kinda crooked.) I just hope that my next big project (which I plan to wear to a wedding) is more successful!

Nice and neat

The past few days, I've been working on neatening up my sewing area. I worked very hard on my fabric stash, sorting, folding and organizing it all. Plus I rearranged my cutting table, with my new mat (yay!) and my recovered iron (yay!) to make it all a little cleaner. I also had plans to buy a little sewing caddy for my scissors and pencils etc, but I couldn't find anything I liked. So, instead, I made a couple of fabric boxes. So far I have one for my currently planned patterns and another for all the random stuff. I think I might make one more for the scissors so that they fit slightly better, but it's nice to have it all arranged. It's much more pleasant to sew when it's a little less chaotic. So here's a picture of it before I mess it up again!
I also spent time this weekend spending some money. ;) I visited Joann's, Hancock's, and my favorite local quilt shop, Intown Quilters. I used up all of my gift card money (and then some), and I have all kinds of interesting new projects to work on. In addition to all the old projects, of course! I picked up some of the fabrics from this line by Timeless Treasures - I have the birds in brown and yellow for shorts for the girls this summer, and a fat quarter of the Paris one for something for me. I haven't quite worked out what yet, but it was too cute to resist. I think my next project, though, is this wrap top by Vogue in a charcoal gray color. We'll see how that goes...

Crafty mixed bag

Wow, that title sounds like I made some kind of cool bag. Except I mean it in the other sense - my post-Christmas crafting has been sort of erratic. Well, I haven't been doing a huge amount, because I wanted a break after all the pre-Christmas work. But I've made a couple of things. One was successful, and one was not at all.

The first success was that I (finally) finished the jacket for my friend Mary. This time it fits well, and she's very happy with it. So that was a good thing. And I decided that I thought the first one I made her (that was the wrong size) actually does fit me well enough to wear it, so I've been feeling fairly fashionable. I'll have to get a picture at some point.

The shirt I tried to make, on the other hand, was quite a failure! I cut it out ages ago, and I had this vision of what it should be. This was not it:

The design on the sleeves isn't quite what I had in mind, but it's okay. But the sleeves! I don't know what in the world happened there. I cut it out so long ago, I don't remember what I was thinking. My guess on the width is that I cut it with a different seam allowance than I sewed (entirely possible, since it was from a commercial pattern - I thought I'd adjusted it, but I may not have). But the length! What's up with that?? And since the design is so low on the sleeves, I can't even just chop them off and fix them. If I want to recover this shirt, I'm going to have to do some serious taking apart. That kind of depressed me when I realized it, so I just set it aside for now. I do think I have a plan - since the short sleeve part clearly needs shortening, too, I think I have a way to attach the longer sleeve on there - but still, I don't want to deal with it for now. This shirt and I clearly need a little break from one another. ;)

I'm ending 2008 on an easy successful project, though. My ironing board cover was no longer functional - every time I ironed anything, the metal pattern showed up on the fabric! So, I just whipped up a fun new ironing board cover with my beloved Kokka flowers:

Now I get to see them every day! :)

Happy New Year to everyone! I got a bunch of sewing magazines and Joann/Hancock gift certificates for Christmas, so I have many plans and inspiration for sewing and crafting in 2009!

Whew.... (And Merry Christmas!)

Since Christmas has passed, and the gifts have been opened, I can finally share the Christmas craft I've been working so hard on lately. This year was a particularly crazy Christmas craft! I made t-shirts and then freezer paper stenciled designs on them. I was busy with it right until Christmas Eve, although that's partly because I ended up having to remake one of them, because when I looked at it, I realized the pattern I'd used was clearly cracked and definitely would not fit! So, here they all are:


I only have action shots of the ones I gave to Iestyn's family, because we did Christmas with them earlier in the month. But everyone seemed to like their shirts yesterday, and hopefully they all fit. I really like the way they came out, and in that sense it was a good Christmas craft, but I think next year it might be wise to do something slightly less labor intensive. Not because it was really that bad, but because I ran out of time to make anything else! I had plans for other homemade gifts, and it just didn't happen. Oh well!

And now it's time to move on to some other projects. Like my now very late jacket. And the purse I wanted to make. And, well, any of a hundred other projects in my head, lol!

(Oh, and um, D, if you're reading this, pretend the Christmas craft is a surprise.... Actually, nothing in these pictures is for you, so in *some* sense it'll be a surprise! :) )

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen....

But do you recall, the most famous reindeer of all?

Between Christmas crafting and a little weekend vacation (with sick children, unfortunately), I haven't done much lately that I can post about. I did take a little time to stencil some Christmas reindeer shirts for the girls and I.


Ignore the not so great picture - that was the best one of quite a series taken. A's reindeer has a smiley face, M's is singing, and mine is the grown up version. ;) It's hard to tell, but the noses are a little sparkly, too.

And the kids' reindeer bring back fond memories, because they're part of a stencil my mom used years and years ago. (They were the O in a stencil of the word Joy, but the whole thing wouldn't fit on their shirts.)

The Christmas crafting continues as well, but that won't be revealed until later!