Polyester!

So, in my last post I alluded to the fact that I'd decided to sew myself a dress, sort of my way of protesting against the dreariness of winter (and that inevitable moment that comes in mid-January when you look in your closet and realize you are sick to death of dark colors and heavy sweaters). And that's exactly what I did. I made myself a dress and I'm wearing it today for the first time. This was the third time I've used an actual vintage pattern (not a repro) and I think it worked out pretty well.

This is the pattern I used:
Copyright 1975. I got it in an enormous lot of vintage patterns I found last summer at a church sale and paid $2 for. I listed quite a few of them on Etsy, but there were a lot of patterns that were not only my size but my style as well. I can't say what it is exactly about this pattern that I liked so much - probably the topstitching. For the fabric, I had a length of vintage polyester doubleknit that I got at a different church sale for next to nothing (I think I paid $2 for a great big garbage bag full of assorted fabrics) in an interesting kelly green with white dots. I hardly ever wear green, I always think I don't look good in it, but this shade seems really nice. And I knew it would be perfect for a winter dress because that polyester doubleknit is hot.

So, here's the finished dress:
I used some vintage buttons from my stash (on the cuffs - you can't see in the picture) and I already had a pack of ballpoint needles from yet another church sale - the only thing I ended up needing to buy for this project was some polyester thread. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The topstitching at the neck is a little wonky (probably because there's so much bulk there) and I added pockets, so the hips don't lie as smooth as they should (but it's worth it to have a place to stash my chapstick, a winter necessity). The pattern pieces actually aren't as much of an A-line as the illustration suggests... I had to take in the waist by about an inch, and if I make this pattern again (which I would like to, in contrasting prints, something like this) I will redraft the skirt to flare out a little more. But still, this project was the perfect cure for the winter blahs. I even have the perfect brown wedge-heel shoes to wear with it (a steal from Old Navy's clearance rack) although with all the snow today, I paired it with my Goodwill brown boots.

I've actually been on a big creative kick lately. I've started posting a new story, and I've been cranking out scrapbook layouts almost as fast as I can get the photos printed. I've been having a lot of fun with my new Slice (it's this digital cutter thing - yes, I held out on the die cutting machines for years and years, but I've finally given in) and trying to dig my way through my colossal stash of paper rather than going out and buying more. Here are some of the fruits of my labors:

It's a good thing I've gotten a lot done, crafty-wise, in the last couple of weeks because I'm sure I won't get anything else accomplished until the Olympics are over!

WCMD '09

Okay, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn't get any cardmaking done yesterday, which was World Cardmaking Day. I was just way too busy. But, I'd sort of anticipated that that would happen, so I got these done a little earlier in the week:

Yeah, I'm still having lots of fun with that Early Bird paper pack. Maybe at some point I'll actually use it for a scrapbook page?!

There's a chill in the air...

It was actually in the mid-sixties yesterday, but the gale force winds made it feel a lot cooler. The calendar and I agree: it is definitely fall. Now, I largely view summer as something to be gotten through in order to achieve the reward of cooler days (I mean, I like the 4th of July and the State Fair and everything, but I hate to sweat) so I'm happy when I can open the windows to let the breezes in and haul my sweaters out of storage.

There are lots of fun things about fall. Like the season premieres of all my favorite TV shows. I actually somehow spaced out on the first episode of The Office (don't worry, I caught it online) and Chuck, another favorite of mine, won't be around until winter (curse you, Jay Leno, for messing up the NBC schedule!) but the first episode of Season 7 of NCIS was AMAZING. Now, it's no secret how I feel about that show, but WOW. Can't wait for the second episode tonight.

Speaking of NCIS, here's a birthday card that I made for a friend who is also a fan of the show:
The sentiment on the front is a reference to how DiNozzo likes his pizza, and on the inside I wrote (actually stamped, and I still have red ink all over my fingers, which would be so cool if it was Halloween) "May you enjoy all of the things you love on your birthday." And I love the crisp autumnal colors and vintage stylin' of those papers (Cosmo Cricket's Early Bird line). I made a whopping $10 off of our fall neighborhood garage sale, and promptly blew it all on scrapbook supplies.

And speaking of cards, October 3 is World Card-Making Day. (There are just all kinds of craft-related holidays! For example, September is National Sewing Month. I think my previous post shows how I feel about that.) That's also the first day of General Conference, so I think I'll set up the broadcast on the baby monitor and go down in the basement, so I can listen to the prophet and apostles and play around with paper & stickers at the same time. Since it's conference, I'll also need to make some cinnamon rolls.

Speaking of baking (Man, I am just on fire today with these awesome segues!), fall is also the time I really want to start baking again. Actually, I'd start making Christmas cookies right now if I thought I could get away with it (have I made it clear on this blog how I feel about Christmas?) but that would be weird, so I'll hold off until at least November 1. But I got some baking apples to make a pie, and I just found a recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies that I'd like to try (did you know that a can of pumpkin has like a zillion percent of your RDA for Vitamin A? See, they're not a dessert, they're health food) and oh yeah! The cookie press that Matt gave me last Christmas has a pumpkin shaped plate so I'll have to get that out too.

Another thing that fall brings is the Primary music program for church. Now, at first it seemed like a bum deal that I got called as Primary chorister less than two months before the program, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it's not so bad. See, the kids already know the songs; I don't have to worry so much about teaching them, just reviewing. And the calling is really starting to grow on me. (Much like seminary did two years ago.) The first two Sundays, I thought I was going to die, sweat was just pouring off me and I was certain that the kids could all see through me. BUT once I convinced myself that I could do it (and really, how judgemental can these kids be? They're all eleven and under) then I started to have fun. I mean, I like kids (apparently), I like music so what's not to love?

Oh! And I am so looking forward to Halloween, even though I am nowhere near ready for it. Matt's parents are actually coming out to visit the last weekend in October, and the kids are way psyched that Grandma and Grandpa get to see them in their costumes. Porter is going to be Buzz Lightyear again, Amy is going as the ubiquitous zebra, but Betsy actually gets a new costume this year. She told me in June, or maybe it was April, that she wanted to be "the good witch from the Wizard of Oz" this year. Yikes - lucky thing I have a serger, for all that ravelly fabric! Anyway, lucky me, this was the year that Simplicity put out an actual licensed Wizard of Oz pattern (they actually did several versions, including baby, dog, and ho) so I won't have to improvise. It did take me a really long time to find the exact right color for Glinda's dress - it's not a pink pink, it's more of a peachy pink - but I finally tracked it down at Hancock's (clearance, yay!) and got everything cut out last night. So, we'll certainly be an eclectic bunch for Halloween (someday I'll make matching themed costumes for the three of them, but not this year) but as long as there's candy, it's all good!

Craftaholics Anonymous

So, I've been pretty much crafting non-stop for the last couple of weeks. (What else did you think I was going to do with my free afternoons? Laundry?!) And since I haven't updated the ol' blog for a while, I thought I should share some of the fruits of my labors.

Needless to say, I've been scrapbooking. (Don't know what's up with these scans; I promise the real thing isn't so blurry!)


And, while I had the trimmer and the stamps and all of THAT mess out, I made some cards too. Just for fun and a way to use up the scraps.




So, I decided to go ahead and get started on Christmas. Betsy's getting a lot of doll clothes for her Bitty Baby, mostly made out of the scraps of other projects. If you look closely, you'll probably see something you recognize:





Anyway, I had so much fun with that, I decided to haul out my old Molly doll from 1991 and see if I could sew some dresses for the 18" dolls. (Betsy will be getting one next year so I guess I am REALLY working ahead for Christmas 2010!) I could seriously get addicted to sewing doll clothes... they only take about half a yard or so and I can whip one up in an afternoon while Amy sleeps. Kind of the sewing equivalent of making cards from my scrapbook supplies.



Anyway, now it's time to stop messing around. Tutoring started this week, I got a new calling (Primary chorister), and Halloween is just around the corner. (Actually, if the aisles at Hobby Lobby are anything to go by, Christmas is just around the corner.) Betsy is getting a homemade costume this year, so I guess I'd better get cracking!

Hitting the road + Cards!

We're heading out tomorrow morning for Washington, D.C. Very early in the hopes of arriving before 8 p.m. so that I can get to Celeste's bridal shower. It's actually about the same distance from here to McLean, VA (where we'll be staying) as it is from here to Rochester, so it's a pretty manageable drive. Well, as long as we have the DVD player for the kids.

Here's the NCIS cards that I mentioned before; I finally finished them over the weekend. Why NCIS cards? Well, because of NCIS FanFest. (Yes, there's a convention for NCIS. If there's one thing I've learned since subscribing to Netflix, it's that there's a convention for just about everything.) Now, mind you, I'm not actually going to FanFest - even if I had the time, I sure as heck can't afford the plane tickets - but a lot of people that I "know" from the fan community are, and I ended up making these for the Tony booth. It was really fun coming up with quotes from the show either about or by Tony, who is my favorite character on the show (no offense to all you Mark Harmon fans out there). I used the BasicGrey 'Lime Rickey' 6x6 paper pad - it was really hard to find a patterned paper line that was appropriately masculine but still bright and colorful, but I think this fit the bill. I used some American Crafts letter stickers in a font that really reminds me of the show (and the whole huge booklet of them was $2.00 at Tuesday Morning, so that's a huge plus) and raided my stash of computer fonts to round it out.

It was really fun making these, and a good challenge for my card-making skills. (Speaking of cards, I'm having another one published! I just mailed it to Utah on Thursday. Woo hoo!)

Blast from the past

Way back when I was in college, I had this brilliant idea that I should draw a set of paper dolls for my younger sisters. (I'm pretty sure it was 1999 because I remember working on them while reclining on Jean's pappasan couch.) We always had a thing for paper dolls when we were kids and I thought it would make a nifty - not to mention cheap - Christmas gift for Emily and Catherine. I ordered one of the Patterns from the Past catalogs off the internet (yes, the internet existed in 1999) and faithfully sketched as many of the historical dresses as I could, then copied them onto cardstock and colored them. I worked as a phone operator for Butler then so it was a good way to kill downtime in between calls. And while I can't draw to save my life, I can copy decently, so I was pretty pleased with how they turned out.

I always intended to keep the original drawings so that I could maybe make up another set for any future daughters I might have (and Betsy was born only three years later so that was oddly prescient) but somehow, in the five times I've moved in the last ten years, they got lost. I was pretty bummed about that because there is no way I'm investing that kind of time and energy all over again. Lucky for me, my sister Catherine decided to come for a visit, and even luckier, she brought the paper dolls with her! I figured they'd been long ago destroyed but every dress I remembered drawing was there.

I remember working particularly hard on this Civil War-era ballgown: all that ruching was crazy-difficult, not to mention all the roses. I think it turned out pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Notice that what I'm not showing you is any of Cath's work. See, she's an art major and next to hers, my stuff looks like it was drawn by a blind monkey, or perhaps a drunk toddler. So, let's keep my ego intact and move on to the next subject.

Something I'm actually pretty skilled at is making dresses, which Cath thought would be a lark to do when she came out here. So I let her paw through my stash of vintage patterns and she found this beauty:

Which is one of the ones I swiped from my mom in the first place, so it's kind of funny that it will end up back in Rochester eventually. Anyway, after checking to make sure that all the pieces were present (they were), we headed out to JoAnn's to score some fabric. Now, JoAnn's is much maligned by serious sewers, but I've always found lots of neat-o fabric, within my price range, and the employees are for the most part helpful (the older ladies at the cutting counter love to chat about dresses). Anyway, I had a couple of coupons and Catherine couldn't decide between two different fabrics (both of which were around $3/yard). Because I am evil, I convinced her to go ahead and get both, and make up the dress in both views.

We used my awesome new rhymes-with-merger to overcast the edges of each piece, to prevent ravelling, and then stitched it up on the conventional sewing machine. I helped with some things and gave as many pointers as I could from my vast three years of sewing experience. Like, it's important to press the seams. And understitch facings. I still had her do as most of the work, though, because they're her dresses (also I am lazy). I didn't even touch the zippers. Mom will have to help with that when Cath gets back to Rochester!

Anyway, speaking of sewing, here's what I've been up to:

The pattern was yet another freebie-by-way-of Mom; the fabric is actually a vintage sheet (really!) that I picked up for $3 at a church sale (the tag - which I kept - says 'Inger McCabe Elliot for Martex', 1976. Does that ring any bells for anyone?); and the buttons came in a huge bag of vintage goodies that I got for like two bucks at the Goodwill. So the whole dress cost me almost nothing. Which is good, because I'm not totally enamored of how it came out.

I shortened the sleeves quite a bit, because elbow-length sleeves drive me batty. I should have lengthened the bodice; that high-waisted sixties look actually doesn’t work so great on a five-foot-seven gal like me. Also, I had a really hard time matching the print because it wasn’t actually a straight horizontal stripe; the bands of pattern undulate up and down like waves of grain or a field of flowers. Still, the colors make me happy (and the buttons match so perfectly I can only assume the universe intended it that way) and for a really cheap dress, it’s not so bad. I love that the sheet it was made from is that no-iron percale (basically a poly-cotton blend) so I can wear it right straight out of the laundry, which is a huge bonus for a lazy pants like myself. I wore it the other day with a white cardigan sweater ($3 at Goodwill and it’s J. Crew) and I think that helped the style a lot, so maybe I will just save it for cooler weather.

Cath and I have been having a fine time. In addition to sewing not one but two dresses, we've been to the art museum (one never realizes just how much nudity there is in art until one pays attention); traumatized my children with the movie Spirited Away; been thrift-store-shopping (Cath didn't find anything but I scored some sweet red peep-toe pumps); saw Easy Virtue (swoon); visited Mike and Mandy's new place (Miles is a fine little host); and made our contribution to the unfortunately neglected literary sub-genre of overwrought Victorian melodrama. Fun times.

I've also been papercrafting:

Next project (after Catherine goes home, which mercifully isn't for a few days yet): a set of NCIS-themed notecards. Should be interesting!