The Secret Life of Me

my sewing room has been a crowded mess for a while. there were two pieces of essentially useless furniture taking up space in the small room and i have moved them so that they take up space in another, less used, room. i also pulled out all of my scraps and stash and went through everything in an attempt to not be the person who saves every last piece of fabric because who knows when you might need it.
before:


after:

i forgot to get a snap of the tall shelves in the corner which now hold my fabric stash (revised and organized). the tall shelves and the one sitting on the end of the cutting table are both gems from the ikea children’s furniture collection minus the plastic doors/drawers. they are perfect for my sewing things!

last week i worked on shiny green pretty and i am really pleased/proud of how it turned out. i wore it to the wedding rehearsal dinner last friday and received many compliments. i started with the same pattern as the orange flowers tunic and made some major alterations. the most structural of the changes was that i removed the pleats from the front of the bodice.

to do this i took the original orange flowers bodice front and folded out the pleats until the top line matched the front yoke piece. i wound up with the tiniest amount of ease in the front bodice, but this is a stretch silk charmuese so it wasn’t a big deal.

the second major change i made was to draft a facing piece for the back (the original pattern calls for an invisible zip and in the orange flowers i just hemmed the opening for an over-sized keyhole back). this fabric wouldn’t have looked right with a visible seam around the keyhole so i drafted the facing and lined it with the proper weight interfacing (no shirt tailoring interfacing this time).

the third change i made was to make it sleeveless for summer time. this required a self bias binding all the way around the arm scye instead of just the bottom half. no problem, but this one i hand sewed to hide the stiching, ugh.

last but not least, the most visual element, i added a sash at the natural waist. it’s a two piece long sash inserted at the side seams that wraps around front and ties in back. if i make this pattern again, i will make a separate obi-style sash possibly in a contrasting fabric.
here is the finished product. thanks to dylan for the good picture.

last weekend mark and meriel got married! it was a beautiful wedding at the portland classical chinese garden, the only downside being that mark and meriel will soon be moving to germany and i will miss them very much.

ok, so the emerald green pretty is in production. i started with the pattern for the orange flower tunic, and made some fairly major alterations. this is my first time taking an existing pattern and doing something with it, and so far i am pleased with the outcome. tomorrow i will post pictures as long as my gallery remote doesn’t decide to be mysteriously gone again.

i spent some time cleaning my sewing room this afternoon and it gave me a chance to inventory my summer sewing project list.

on the far left is the fabric i am working with right now. the color in the photo is no good, but it is an emerald green silk and i am working on turning it into something pretty. my next project is going to be the red on the far right, it’s already cut out for a shirt and just needs to be put together. the solid red in the middle is going to be a rain jacket and the dark green to the right of it a motorcycle jacket lined with the bright blue silk habotai. the rest is still a question mark and i don’t know if i will get to those things this summer.

the school year is over (finally) and i am left to reflect on the happenings of the year. the last month has been filled with 50 hour weeks and involuntary naps after work. i moved into my science lab today and my new teaching partner gave me a tour of our supplies (we have a laser! is it too much to ask, Scott, for frickin’ sharks with frickin’ lasers on their heads?). we are planning a shake-up of how things have been done for nearly a decade and i really appreciate my teaching partner, L, because he is really interested in taking my ideas despite my lack of experience.
so far on the docket are things like building a wind tunnel to test student made airplane wings and paper airplanes. mythbusters videos to teach the scientific method, including student-created mythbusters episodes. we aren’t planning to re-invent the wheel, but maybe a wheel that isn’t made of wood.
i’m not exactly ready to give up my summer to start curriculum planning, but i am excited about next year. for now i am enjoying a couple days of doing nothing, and then i will get started on my summer projects (pics and details later).

so the story of this shirt is that it is my first Burda World of Fashion (BWOF) pattern. it was simple, although a beginner would be stymied by the brief instructions, and has a great line for a tunic. so after i sewed the hem of the sleeve inside out yesterday, i decided to finish it today. not an hour after i had finished it, a bird pooped on my shoulder while i was triumphantly wearing it. awwww. thank goodness it is cheap poly-rayon-super-washable fabric. with a little soap and a toothbrush and a run through the wash, it’s as good as new. the photos below are after the poop, and you can’t even tell it was ever sullied in such a way.

blurry shot of tunic on:

neck detail. i used the interfacing that i had in my stash, but it was a little stiff for this fabric. the next time i make this i will buy lightweight interfacing.

i hate zippers so i made a keyhole back.

i found pretty glass buttons for the back.

i am planning to make this again, but with pretty emerald green silk charmeuse. i also have a plan for embellishment around the neck line which would be pretty plain with a solid color. just have to wait for my favorite online fabric store to have a sale.

so, i know this isn’t that interesting without pictures, but dylan has my camera. i am working on a shirt, and it was going really well, until i sewed the sleeve inside out. all i have to do is finish the sleeves, but i am giving up for the day. maybe tomorrow i will have the attention span to not screw it up. maybe i will post pictures then too.

my birthday wish was to do absolutely nothing (or at least my version of nothing) for the day. and what’s even better, dylan did nothing with me. a perfect, low-key, relaxing, happy birthday.
there will be festivities tomorrow, including a no-whiners game of capture the flag, complete with bbq and friends. it is going to be awesome and fun and everything else you could want in a birthday that doesn’t involve spending the day with your favorite person on the planet (which i already got to do).

all ladies know of the leprechaun-pot-of-gold that is the well fitting pair of jeans. they are impossible to find, but once found are worn until, like my favorite pair most recently did, they fall to pieces. i tried to replace them when i happened upon a store that is known for it’s denim, i’ll call them kneevi’s, and it was a disaster. i found a pair that fit well enough, but the color was horrible, and to my surprise the fabric was really low quality. but they only cost 30 dollars, so in a pinch i bought them. as suspected, they turned out to be horrible. i have officially dubbed them “the middle-aged jeans”. they look exactly like they belong on a middle-aged sort of washed-up suburban house wife who only wears them with a ratty sweatshirt and house slippers. it didn’t matter what i put with them.
fast forward to today: i finally gave up on the “middle-aged jeans” and decided to search anew. and at my favorite place for denim, a store named after my nemesis, i found them. the perfect fit, perfect length, perfect color definitely not “middle-aged jeans” jeans. so i bought two pairs. you know how some people store cans of beans and jugs of water in their basement in case of tsunami/apocalypse/judgment day/whatever? well, i don’t have a basement, but if i did it would be full of these jeans.
i have also decided that to overcome the jeans dilemma all together, i should find a decent pattern and make my own. the problem is that most jeans patterns don’t end up looking like RTW (ready to wear) clothes. you can almost always tell that they are homemade. at least i thought that until yesterday, when one of my regular sewing bloggers announced that she had found a great jeans pattern that actually looks like RTW jeans, and posted pictures of her final product for proof. of course, i have ordered said pattern and now all i have to do is find the right denim to make them from. all projects for my rapidly filling up summer.

48 hours and an awesome, helpful family later:
before

after

before

after

three rooms in two days. it is awesome. too tired for correct grammar.