On Vacation

I am currently on Vacation in my home town of Ashland , Oregon. No sewing here, but lots of hanging out with friends, eating good food, and I seem to have taken up golf. If you knew me, you would know that is really weird. I have however, bought a very nice piece of fabric.

This little beauty:



is hopefully going to become Collete Patterns Parfait. What a super cute vintage style summer dress. Their pattern are for sale starting today, and my daughter and I just love them

I also got a little piece of trim just because.



Back home tomorrow!

T-Shirt Substitute and a Few Notes on Style

Hi. I'm back in the land of the living. That cold just knocked me out. And, I've watched so much Law and Order: Criminal Intent that I keep telling my husband that if he ever wants to separate he should just break up with me instead of poisoning me. He just looks at me and goes back to his Lincoln book. He draws the line at tasting the cough medicine before I take it. (He is a very patient man.)

I have been sewing in the past week: Simplicity 3887. I have made this pattern a zillion times before, and I will probably make it a zillion times more. This shirt is what I like to wear instead of a T-Shirt. The traditional T-Shirt shape looks really bad on me, and usually I want something casual, but a step up. I do have to iron these, but I'm willing to do it if it makes me feel better about how I look.

Hawaiian print:



Dino Camo:



Yeah, I am aware that dinosaur camo is not really appropriate for a 41 year old, which leads me to a little note on style and why I sew. I have been sewing since I was a kid, and while I have not amassed a large arsenal of professional skills, I can figure out most patterns. I'm working on learning harder skills, but I don't sew to mimic ready-to-wear and most of the things I like aren't really that complicated. I have never really enjoyed wearing what was in at the moment. In the 80's I wore reworked 70's clothes and vintage, in the 90's I added jeans and mens work shirts and in the 00's I wore crap. (I gained some weight and got too busy to care. I am currently trying to rectify this situation.) I love looking at clothes and I looooooove reading sewing blogs to learn new things and see what everyone else is making. However, I usually don't want to wear any of those things. I like skirts and simple tops. I like to wear rolled up jeans and my T-Shirt substitutes. I like older styles and will soon start working on my first vintage dress:



The dress is from 1949 and I think it would look lovely in navy with white dots. (I'm going to do the scalloped version.) My goals are always to make more complicated garments, but in the end I just end up making what I want to wear. I have some challenging things that I have cut out, but I never get to them because I usually want to fill a hole in my wardrobe.

Ack

I have a horrible cold. There is no sewing here. On the plus side, I watched 8 episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent today. (Netflix Instant Watch + Roku = sick person heaven.) My husband brought me favorite Korean beverages today: grape Sac Sac and aloe vera drink. I am in green drink happy place.

Skirt Mania

I found some stretch bottom-weight fabrics in my stash and thought they would be perfect skirts for my daughter. Some stats:

Her name is Io.
She is 18.
I think she's cute.

She really likes Vogue 8425 so I whipped out a couple for her this week. I needed to shorten the skirt length quite a bit and I took out about an inch and a half out of the waist length. I'll get some action shots when she comes home from college for Easter. (You may notice that the pictures look better than usual. The sun is shining, and I figured out how to adjust my camera to focus differently (or at all) on fabric. Turns out, that part was hidden.)

This one is made out of some kind of polyester stretchy stuff. I think. I don't know. This and the navy skirt are made out of some fabric from a Fashion Fabric Club mystery box.



Navy skirt



I do still need to do fittings on her when I make this skirt, but I have got the pattern pretty much in shape so that it is just a very quick side seam adjustment. These are high-waisted skirts, but she is petite so the adjustments cause the skirt to hit her right below the ribcage where it is most comfortable for her.

As a bonus, I present an in-focus shot of the embroidery on the red skirt that I recently made for myself: