Currently: July

It feels like only yesterday I was done with school for the summer and impatiently awaiting the arrival of warmer weather.  Today I am trying to ignore how close August is, which means September and the start of school.  Not that it's a terrible thing; I am going to England AND graduating this year.  It just means the busy time is up next and I feel like I haven't quite exhausted the glories of summer.

I have been sewing a little.  Played with my stash of "fancy scraps" and came up with a little dress.  I have no idea what I'm going to wear it for but that is okay.  Something pretty for the closet costume stash.

Nathen has been wanting to take up Warhammer again, and I have been introduced into the world of assembling and painting miniature figurines, or minifigs as some say.  They are very, very tiny.  

There have been long, lazy evenings spent at my parent's house, sometimes with these rascals, sometimes just my folks.  Realising the upstairs has been too quiet for too long lead me to seek them out.  Naturally they were on the roof, inhaling the sweet scents of the evening and marveling at the sunset.  I love their appetite for being young and experiencing all life has to offer.  

Internship is going nicely, working on both of the Wooden O shows; Henry V and The Tempest, makes for one tired intern at the end of a hot day.  However the delight of air conditioning made the sewing much more lovely.

I got to visit my darling Jocelyn while she was house sitting for friends.  We played with the pup (whom we were NOT drumming on, I just caught her mid-gesture), pitied the cat, and sipped iced tea on the porch.  Delish.

Oh, yes.  The hair is, once again, happily in the land of purple.  It has faded quite a bit this time, into the fuchsia range, and I am letting it be for now.  I'm not a fan of pinks, but this one is on the raspberry side, so I am letting it be for now.

More posts coming, just had to squeeze in a little update.

xoxo,

Anna

Frock Update

I've been busy stitching (and photographing) but not blogging about all the wonderful yumminess that is coming out of my sewing machine.

First project was The Anchor Dress

Revamped from a beloved bathrobe that starred in a play many moons ago, this languished in my closet until I decided to turn it into a dress.  It's really hard not to wear it almost every day!

Sonya calls this stitch the "chicken foot" because it's like a bird foot.  Makes me smile.

The Cornflower Dress

Yet another length of material that has been patiently awaiting my summer break.  This was just itching to be stitched up into some soft summer sweetness.  It's been hemmed and is awaiting the zipper to be stitched in.  I really must do that.  The rain has dampened my desire to sew summer frocks...

AT LAST!!!  The Elephant Dress!!!
Yesterday I purchased the zipper and fussed it in last night!  Fits like a dream and despite hesitation about elephants giddily rampaging all over my body, I am extremely pleased with how this has turned out.

What's next?  Oh the possibilities are simply endless!  I've got some black and white stripe, cute almost 60's floral, green bamboo with golden dragonflies, pinky-mauve in a Art Nouveau style...the list goes on.

I also have a pile of vintage upholstery fabric that I got from school (Thanks Carl!).  Once washed, it has softened considerably from it's former stiff shiny state.  Some of it is going to become clothing for me, and what I do not use will be given to friends and put up on my Etsy.

Wishes

I have many wishes at present.  I wish school were done for the year.  I wish it were warmer.  I wish I had a flying monkey to help with work.  Some wishes can't come true right-this-minute-now, but others, like these will blossom once the 2nd week of May is upon us.

During my President's Day sale steal, I happened upon this darling pattern,

Of course, I was eyeing the cutie-pie dress on the bottom (I'm much more of a knee length girl) that it wasn't until I got it home and was slowly looking it over that I realised there was an option for a tie back version! (View D)  So many dresses were in my head!

I have a bunch of cute prints that I've been hoarding as I go thrifting for when school is over and I can sit and cut them out, and stitch them into lovely things to wear!  There was a class field trip that I tagged along to this morning.  We did the local fabric run, Pacific Fabric in Northgate, Display and Costume, and finally to Nancy's Sewing Basket in Queen Anne.  If you have never gone, you mustmustmust visit!  The staff is so friendly, the selection is absolutely lovely, and they have a ribbon room...full of ribbon to make your head spin!  At Nancy's I found many yummy fabrics, but this one in particular made me swoon and giggle.

Little pea green elves running about with their Persian Elephants and balloons!!  I'm a little giddy.  This is probably going to be a tie-back dress (view D above) for summer.  Or I'm going to use a button on the back and cut an interesting shape for the open back piece.  Either way I cannot WAIT to make and wear the hell out of this lovelyness.  See what I mean about the wishing?  I wish this dress was done and waiting in my closet...soon my lovely, soon!

Longing...

I am being quite naughty, but since I am falling asleep in rehearsal it is the lesser of evils.  So I am longing for time so sew.  I am longing for time to fuss up my version of this magnificent gown.  

I happened upon a black and white striped sheet at the Goodwill bins.  I am a sucker for stripes and remembered this later from my Tumblr feed.  

Vaguely piratical with a touch of Mrs. Lovett singing by the sea.  I have a shorter, steampunk version in mind and can't wait for Winter Break when I will have some time to sew!  Sew!  Sew!  Until then, I sit and imagine the lovelyness that will tumble out of my sewing machine.

The Chevron Dress - Part 1

 I'm sure you all remember me talking about making new dresses, right?  Okay, good.  This is the Chevron dress, not quite the right name for it yet, but I'm working on that.  It came about from the delighted discovery of two curtains (I do love curtains) at Goodwill for around $3 each.They were reds, purple, and yellows in bold cavalier stripes and it was love at first sight.  Initially I envisioned them as a steampunk ensemble, however I am madly in love with what they are becoming.  I used the same pattern for this, Vogue 8286 (circa 1992), as I have been playing with lately with my other dresses.  None of which are done yet!  Ugh.

Anyway, I fussed with this one for a long time in my head.  At first it was a vertically striped ensemble with a gathered skirt (I do love some fluff!) and then, in a stroke of epiphany, I came up with chevrons! Just for the bodice, perhaps?  Skirt?  Both?  The possibilities were boggling.  I just went at it, 'never mind the maneuvers' as was said of Lord Nelson.  Sometimes you must needs dive in with guns blazing in order to put aside your fears of something new, of mistakes.  I was so afraid of making a mistake with this fabric that it was holding me up from actually playing with it.  I believe this is a common fear among stitchers for we treasure our fabric so.

What came together amidst a flurry of newspaper patterns and straight pins was a mind boggling confection.  And I must say, I am terribly pleased with it so far.

Quite by accident, the skirt "Vees" away from the body and towards the bodice, creating an "x" at the waistline.

Delicate purple pocket lining!

Jaunty yellow zipper!

And, voila!  The (almost) finished product.  It is languishing with the demands of school-work and reading for Theatre History, but I have since fixed my dress form and popped the Chevron confection on Ophelia to tempt me while I read.  The last thing I am fussing with are sleeves.  I would very much like short, set in sleeves with black turned-up accent along the hem.  So far I have made eight versions of sleeves and gained no insight.  I took the pile in to my Costume Design professor and asked his advice.  Apparently the hole for your arm (the armseye) must be as close to the actual joint as possible in order to achieve the greatest range of motion for the limb.  Rather counter-intuitive for me, but once I played with pattern pieces, made more sense.  A closer sleeve will pull less of the bodice fabric away from the center back seam (one of my problems) and allow the armseye seam/sleeve to do most of the moving.  Huzzah!  

Right now this dear little dress has a muslin sleeve waiting patiently for me to fix it.  Then hem it up, pop some yummy black lace along the bottom for added interest and wear until dead! Heehee.

Patterns for later...

At Sonya's wise encouragement, I picked up these sweet patterns during one of my many scourings.

These are some of my favourites.  So darling!

I love the little rompers/ bubble suits!  Pad those out with adorably ungainly little diapers, so cute.

Stitching up a Storm

I've been busy!  Not only stagemanaging two different shows (whew!) but sewing many new goodies.  First up is a dress.

This dress, to be precise.  Found at Value Village for the astonishingly low price of 69 cents!  I was in love.  Top it off with a yummy flannel sheet for $2.99 and I was set.  A dress for $3.69?  Can't beat that. It was several sizes too small in the bust as most everything is these days.  I'm still not quite at terms with that.  When did I end up with such a large bust?  I know when, I'm just not okay with it.  Going from a 36" to 41" is not okay in my book.  *sigh*  Anyway.  This pattern is cut out at a size 10, (36" bust) so I knocked out a muslin just to see how woefully smaller it was than me, and it really wasn't that bad.  An inch or two here and there and I was back on track.  

First off I played around with tracing the original pattern onto newspaper and adding a couple inches here and there when I realised it looked exactly like my Sloper project from Spring Semester.  A sloper is a basic body fitting garment that you draft from your measurements and can alter easily to suit other projects.  Out came Slopey and into the trash went the molested pattern.  A little tweaking and it was ready to go!

I cut out all my new pieces (revamped the skirt a bit too) and blithely proceeded to stitch it all together.  The skirt went like a docile sheep, pockets included, but the bodice was rather a troublesome creature.  Had I bothered to pause in my onslaught and use a ruler to measure things out, it would have been perfect the first time.  I am headstrong and don't do that sort of thing often enough.  It came out too big even after fussing the front darts into perfect place.  I'll dart it again, I thought, along the underarm.  After pinning that into place it didn't look right at all.  I let the concoction sit a few days until Sonya could come over.  She took one look at it and said, "Oh honey, you just need to take in the side seams."

I glanced at my dress form and mentally smacked my palm to my forehead.  That was exactly what I needed, and precisely one of the many reasons I adore working with Sonya.  

Miraculously, the waist and the lower edge of the bodice matched up without any major fussing.  That was another thing I forgot to measure.  A crucial place for fabric to be the same size!  

I also cut out a neck facing (a little bit of fabric to finish off the neckline and make it lie flat and nice) basted that down, and then hand stitched it into place.  It turned out quite nicely.  I haven't decided how to finish the arms yet.  If I want to bias bind them or fuss up a sleeve. 

So for now, it is sitting happily, and I have a new dress pattern that fits me.   It's also yummy flannel, did I mention that?  Soooo soft!

Up next is a shirt dress, because I don't have one and I enjoy how they look.  And a couple of blouses because I have oodles of tee shirts, but not any everyday blouses.

Yesterday I found this lovely.  I squealed and did a happy dance complete with clapping.  Why?  It's a lovely pattern and all, but why?  Because, my dears, it's not only in my size (AHHHHH!!!!!) but it's UNCUT.  That's right.  You heard me.  UNCUT.  I'm still kind of pinching myself.  Even though that's not the best part.  Guess how much it cost?

Yep.  $0.69 cents.

It retails at JoAnn's for something on the order of $16-$20.

Also, I need to do a post on the children's clothing patterns I am collecting.  No babies on the horizon for a while, but I can snap up cute patterns for them in the mean time.  Also, whoever Lily is, she had an awesome Grandma.  There were scores of patterns marked "Lily" from little girl up to a prom dress.  I'm sorry that Grandma probably passed away, but happy that Lily got to be so loved.

Sorry for the picture heavy post (well, not really) but I've been lacking in maintaining bloggy posting lately.  More on stitching later.  I've got a muslin to fuss over!

Love, Anna