These two classes I just took we re A LOT of work. time consuming, many things to remember 101 overview type classes. I shouldn’t have taken them at the same time! Anyway, there was not way I was going to be able to know everything. No one could I think since half the class rose up in revolt after the final test. I swear I spent 10 hours or more on the take home portion of the test… I can’t spend 10 hours on the test and then study for the in-class portion. Doesn’t that seem excessive? Maybe not, I don’t know! I didn’t manage to study much for the in-class part and surely the teacher will chuckle at the absurdity of my totally made up answers. I mixed up spider mites and thrips. oh noes!

My attitude is that at least I have been exposed to all this info and i have resources now to figure things out if i need to. Anyway, I’m not too fussed and am glad it’s over! Well, not quite over, I still have to work on my final projects to turn in and present next week. I don’t have the weekend to work on it because of BB.

I can’t have next year be as crazy as this year.

I think I am going to put jack in longer and different childcare.

Next semester I am taking 3 classes but two are short month long or weekend classes and one is a 3 hour weekly class.

I want to volunteer in some community gardens.

I want to work on my own gardens! and get chickens!

What should I do about craft fair and conference organizing?

right when those two short classes kick in it will be time for me to get ready for maker fair( i would like to vend but need time to make shit to sell!), do BB forms and stuff for CCE.

What should I do about crafting? I haven’t had time to sew or craft jack shit for like 6 months. Should I resurrect my crafty business aspirations? If i do I need to make it more planned out and have goals.

I still need to learn my ukulele.

Jack is extra fun to take places now for many reasons. He can talk and control his body like a little kid now and not so much a toddler. He’s getting into asking why in an interesting way and not an annoying 2 year old kind of way. I want to take him places this spring! I want this spring to be lots of fun weekend field trips with Vim to all the awesome bay area places i love and to look for new ones.

That’s a lot of stuff! Too much! I’m not doing myself or anyone else an favors by being too busy. I need to force myself to slow down and that means some things will have to go. BUT WHAT?!

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In 2006 I found this cute Sailor Jerry swimdress at Macy’s:

But now, four years (and 20 pounds) later it got all stretched out and the elastic is all old and creaky. The fabric, though tired, is still great and I may have to work it into a new dress.

Board shorts are good but can chafe and ride up ones ass. So,make one I must. Kwik sew had two patterns that looked good. I went with the one that was just a swimdress without a suit attached (kwik sew 3416) to it because it looked easier.

I’m so pissed I waited too long to buy the rainbow fabric and it sold out! duh, because it was AWESOME! So I ended up with leopard print, pink stars, and cherries. All 6 oz (the cherries may have been 8 oz), 4 way stretch nylon spandex.

I was planning on taking pictures of the process but it went so fast that I didn’t bother.

I used my sewing machine and my serger. For the serger I used 3 spools of wooly nylon with a narrow 3 thread overlock stitch. on the regular sewing machine I used wooly nylon in the bobbin and regular thread as the upper thread. I couldn’t figure out how to get the serger spool of wooly nylon to work with my regular machine. There must be some attachment that makes the spool fit, but I don’t have it.

I used the cherry fabric for the first dress and I made it in a large size. I (almost) always trace my patterns on to new pattern paper or tracing paper and then I cut into the traced pattern since too often I have cut into a pattern only to realize later that I needed a different size.

see overlap here:

no over lap here:

I swear, According to my measurements the large should have fit, but no. I thought it was great until I tested it in the hot tub and it was clear the it was not fitting in the bust area.

I traced out the medium size and used it with the stars fabric. I found an old Paul Frank bikini bottom with the cute skull on it and used it for one side of the top, it was a string bikini so I just left the string attached and then cut off the other string and used it for the other side and made this dress a halter. I also overlapped the two top pieces which seems crucial but is not the way the pattern works.

I used a rolled hem on the bottom of both.

I think I’ll go ahead and make the leopard print one this week and I’ll use an old red bikini top to add some accents.

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I am going to use this kwik sew pattern:

Here are some fabric choices. I’m seriously leaning towards the rainbows. If you want to check out some highly amusing other possibilities go here.

I have too many projects right now. I need to get sewing for Bazaar Bizarre (I got the vendor gallery up today! Go check out all our awesome vendors for maker faire this year!). The CCE conference site needs tons more work. sewing, sewing, sewing. I’m serging a dress right now with some weird old 70′s fabric with trees all over that I got at white elephant or goodwill or somewhere. Maui in May, Vim’s birthday, Jack’s birthday. OMG MY BIRTHDAY. Okay, mine isn’t until July. But I’ll be 36!?! gasp!

Oh also? I got my serger finally! I’m taking a class in a couple of weeks and until thenI’m flailing around on it having fun.

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I used some tracing paper from a roll and grid paper from a big pad of paper from an office supply store. It was a useful exercise and I’m glad I went through it.

The dress is very silly… Let this be a lesson to me about using cute quilting type fabrics for clothes. Or maybe I’ll be able to pull it off… I don’t know!

Speaking of professional… I get so stressed out about filling out forms where theyask for an Occupation. WTF is my occupation?

“Professional stayer in pajamas all day while a tiny human clings to me”
“Professional eye roller at whiny child at the park”
“Professional ditherer”
“Professional butt wiper”!

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I bought an assload of this bird chiffon when I saw it. So cute! Finally, FINALLY I have finished my slip using the 1940′s pattern (that I tweaked a fair amount).

I learned a fair amount about what a giant bitch working with chiffon is. Next time it will be easier. I do love that about making mistakes. I have LEARNED!

Like, for instance, do not let a cute little projectlike this kick around your craft studio for a year. Why? Well, when you do finally finish it you will be kicking yourself for not finishing sooner. Also, super ravel y (or, more appropriately UNRAVELY) material will get all jacked up and unravel in very unhappy ways if you mistreat it. So don’t!

I think a serger would really have made this project so much easier as trying to fake serge the edges of this was a huge bitch. If I had had a finer needle for my machine and maybe one of those plates with a smaller throat plate…

La! I’m so happy I finished!

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I’m looking a bit angry in this photo. Pay it no mind.

So the pattern calls for lt.wt crepe, lt wt pique, or lt wt linen.
I found a gorgeous purple silk chiffon that I want to use instead. can I use it and then use linen for the lining? Or will I regret going against the pattern instructions?

The skirt is bias cut and it’s not like chiffon has no drape… but sewing chiffon is still tricky for me and I have no idea about pairing something super drapey with something less so like linen.

I checked my closet and I have one dress in see through polyester chiffon that has a silky sort of lining. So the dress has no form at all. and I have one dress that has the same collar shape as this one with and it is made out of stretch cotton and it works fine.

So, in conclusion, I believe I will just try it out. I shall wake up Jack and go to the fabric store. I have a whole four day weekend coming up in which to sew this. And work on all my other commitments.

I think I have too much going on. When am I going to find time to make spats for upcoming holiday shows. I keep having horrid flashes of no one buying my spats. So far that hasn’t happened but it’s still nightmare fuel. I have some cute new designs I am going to do once I get around to getting the sewing done.

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Now I need a house so that I can wallpaper it and then like 2 years later wonder what the fuck I was thinking.

When my mom was here recently she gave me endless shit (hi mom!) about how I do not look my age, i.e. all I wear are ratty old jeans and threadless t-shirts and it makes me, along with the acne and pink hair, look 20. THEN, earlier this week I went to see my dermatologist who I have only seen once before and at one point she causally says “so I imagine kids aren’t in your immediate future” and I say ” yeah well, one is enough”. and she does a double take and asks me how old I am and I say 35 and she says “you are SHITTING me, I thought you were 19.?!” and then I was all embarrassed.

I feel like I have been all through this before. I ask you, what else does one wear when all one does is grub around all day with a 2 year old? It’s not like I am meeting the girls for tennis and cocktails at the country club ffs. When I had a desk job I dressed slightly more nicely… although actually it went in phases.

All of this makes me have hives. On the one hand I do not give a rats ass what people think I look like. On the other hand, I like to be cute to the best of my ability. However, I am NOT going to put in a huge amount of effort see point A, not caring what you think. I think shows like ‘What not to wear” are horrendous. They take a perfectly normal looking person, tell them they are dumb, ugly and horrible and then buy them some generic outfits from the GAP or -insert other mall store here- and then tell them they are okay only if they spend a lot of money on clothes and waste tons of time, effort and mental energy making sure they look like other assholes on TV.

On the other hand, I love to go shopping and certainly don’t turn my nose up at mall stores. I like GAP jeans AND I like generic looking sweater sets from the Limited. So there you have it. I’m humped.

Also, I want these hilarious black and white boots. I would totally buy them if they didn;t have those crappy too high wedge heels. I’ll have to make myself some spats instead.

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My birthday was Sunday! Everyone on Facebook magically knew it and I had to ask Sparkle to show me how that was. Now I too will magically know your birthday if we are friends on facebook. woo! Vim made me cupcakes and popovers and I bought myself some t-shirts and a pair of adorable yellow fluevogs. I’m all for a person just buying themselves their own birthday presents. It’s so civilized and then you don’t have to feel all depressed that someone bought you some crappy thing that is so WRONG you wonder if they even understand you at all.

I’m 35 and I am still wondering when it is that I will become a grown up. If not now than I’m probably doomed to never feel like I have achieved grownupness. In some ways I’m fine with that, preserving my youthful outlook and all that. But on the other hand, some of those qualities that I associate with grownupness I would really like to feel like I have. Confidence, direction, purpose…

Can we all just take a collective moment to sigh over how lovely Drew Barrymore is here? I do so love her. She’s a year or two younger than me…. I wish I had this outfit.

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I finished my dress except for a few odd threads that need to be trimmed oh and I really should stitch down the back of the collar.

I finished it last night and suddenly had a very let down feeling, like, THIS IS IT?! BAH HUMBUG. hand making shit is for CHUMPS. But then I put it on today and had a sort of happy feeling and I felt pleased with myself and it made me cheerful and I wore it around the house all afternoon with some cute Fluevogs. I took some pictures… have you ever tried taking self timed pictures with a toddler around? yeah, it doesn’t work so well.

This is the first picture I took. you can see the skirt of the dress peeking out in the right of the picture. I’m surprised that you don’t see a giant grubby baby hand coming right for the lens.

Here, I figured out that I needed to wisk him into the picture with me to keep him from mauling the camera. He’s so sweet. We are sharing a cold right now.

I probably won’t make this pattern again,like I said in a previous post, the collar construction was needlessly complicated and I am sure I can find a shirt dress that has less collar pieces. So I learned that my sewing teacher was right when she said to always take the pattern instruction out and read them BEFORE you buy a pattern.

I did end up using snaps and I like it very much although next time I will make sure to place a snap right at the nipple line and I will take more time hemming.

I’m excited to move on to a new project. BUT WHAT WILL IT BE? I purchased 47 buttloads of this cute chiffon with birds all over it. it was WAY on sale and I knew that I would want to make many things with it AND I am taking a ‘how to sew with slippery filmy fabrics’ class. But will 10 yards be enough, she wonders?

I think I will make a simple skirt using this cute black and red corduroy I have had in my stash for about forever.

RECAP of dress posts – Making McCall’s 4769 Dress Pattern

beginning the dress – part one
working on my dress – part two
my dress an update – part three
is working on her dress – part four

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The piece I have left to sew is the next collar point piece. I think that the front facing and collar on this dress were needlessly complicated AND the worst part is that when I was ironing on the fusible interfacing I kept messing it up and finally I was like, “fuck this noise, I’m moving on.” And now I am paying the price because the facing pieces are sort of rumply and the interfacing is coming off. The second I wash this dress that shit is going to fall right off. SONOFABITCH!

I keep day dreaming about the NEXT thing that I am going to sew and how rad it will be. hahahaha. I have to stop myself from abandoning this dress.

I’m thinking of ways I could salvage the facing problem, I could rip it all off or I could quilt it. man, I have no clue. I decided to use white pearly snaps applied with my fancy new industrial snap putter oner. I’ll try to finish it tonight or tomorrow.

Look at all the cute dresses on this site: http://www.angelfire.com/planet/getgoretro/dresses.html!

crappy blurry picture of my dress in progress:

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Months ago I had a huge tearful saga about the sleeves. Who knew sleeves were such little bitches? I had made a pattern adjustment ot the sleeves but when it came time to sew them in they seemed HUGE. So I at first assumed that I had fucked up the adjustment and I went through this absurd range of emotions. Mostly about how I was DOOMED TO FAIL. Recriminations about my idiocy and incompetence were flung at my head, there were tears involved and a certainty that I would never succeed at anything EVER in my entire life. Sometimes I wonder how I have made it this far in life…

But as it turns out the adjustments were correct and I am NOT DOOMED. Cap sleeves are apparently a bitch and take practice (shocker) and there is a crapload of ironing involved.

The sleeves are done and came out pretty well with only a little bit of accidental pleating. Now, I am on the collar and front facing.

I have another sinking feeling that it isn’t going to fit very well also that it is too busy with the bird fabric. DAMMIT. I feel sad.

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The difference here is that I know what I am doing more and am going to actually finish this dress and I am confidant that it will come out decently.I made all my adjustements and cut all my fabric except for the skirt of last Tuesdays class. I brought the skirt pieces in to double check that the adujstments I made were correct. They were not. I fixed it and cut out the rest of the fabric pieces, and the interfacing except for the collar -(I ran out of interfacing somehow…). I have sewn the darts intp the bodice pieces and then sewed them together.

So now what? The seams have a 5/8 allowance but now I need to finish them. I decided against a french seam and will use my double overlock faker stitch but I am suddenly worried about it. I guess I need to cut the seam allowance off and then do the overlock? I’m waiting for class tomorrow just in case.

Once I am sure about my seam finishing the rest of the dress should go pretty quickly. I haven’t picked out buttons yet and the dress calls for a purchased belt.

I think I will go to the mustly old fabulous button shop in el cerrito and buy jet buttons. I LOVE jet buttons. Women in books are always wearing kid gloves with 9 jet buttons or whatever and I want that too. Jet has a great feel to it -  cold and heavy.

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I bought 3 yards of this cute Sevenberry Japanese fabric for it:

In class we first learned about fabrics and some basics for picking out a pattern. I had that fancy vintage vogue pattern all ready to go but I reconsidered and bought the above McCall’s pattern as it is simpler and something that I would wear everyday. I like the waitress-y style and it has pockets.

I’ve never looked in the back of a pattern book before. Have you? The back of the book has some more detailed measurements charts than the pattern packets do. My instructor says that the chest above the bust is often the hardest part to fit so she had us pick out a pattern based on our chest measurement. Now, I may have messed that part up when I picked my pattern but shhhhhhh. Don’t tell my teacher. We’ll just see how it turns out…

We moved on to how to adjust a pattern to fit.
My dress has darts so I measured my shoulder to nipple length and found that I need an extra .5 inch.
The finished garment waist is 30 inches but my waist is 32 inches. The waist needs 2 inches of ease. So I added .5 inch to both bodice and skirt pieces.
My arms never fit sleeves right. No matter how skinny I am my arms are always bigger than the standard and I’m not exactly in a skinny phase. I  decided that I wanted about 1 1/4 inches of ease in the arms.

*****

How to determine pattern ease and make the proper adjustments to your pattern:
Pattern envelope and individual pattern pieces list the finished garment width.

The Bust
Finished garment bust width is 42.5
Bust pattern size is 38
Subtract that and you get 4.5 inches of ease allowance.
My bust measurement is 38, add 4.5 of ease and you get 42.5.
So that means I do not need to make any bust measurement adjustments.

Shoulder to Nipple
Center of shoulder seam to dart point on pattern is 10 inches
My measurement is 10.5
Need to cut pattern above nipple line and add .5 inch, redraw from top should pivot point.
NOT adding .5 inches to length, redraw side line – armpit to bottom – armpit pivot point.

The Waist
Finished garment waist: 32.5
minus pattern size: 30
ease allowance 2.5
My measurement: 32
add ease: 2.5
Total: 34.5
An adjustment is needed.
I need to add .5 to each cut edge for skirt and bodice pieces.

The Sleeve
Finished sleeve width is 14.25 inches.
My measurement is 13.5 inches.
I decided on a 1.25 inch ease allowance with final measurement being 14.75
Added .25 inch to each side of sleeve and cuff pattern piece

The Skirt
Skirt needs .5 added to each cut edge.
Needs WAY to be shortened but I am not entirely sure how much to shorten it by. do I shorten it with the natural waist to knee measurement? But does the natural waist have anything to do with it since the style of the dress doesn’t necessarily stop at my natural waist?
Here is how I _think_ it should be done -
measure pattern piece from shoulder seam to bottom seam then hold up tape measure to my body to see where it lands (not quite at my natural waist). THEN from that point measure how long the skirt should be… Man I have short legs. Anyway, that makes sense right?!

*****

I’m kind of shocked at how hard I am finding all these adjustments. I woke up in a cold sweat last night with the realization that when I lengthened the shoulder to nipple I also lengthened the waist by the same amount *FAIL*. I had to go in and redo that this morning. Then I realized that I had miscalculated the waist adjustment AND the sleeve adjustment. *FAIL AGAIN* So It’s a good thing that I went back and looked at all my calculations. Of course now I am worried that I effed it up by over thinking it or making it more complicated than it had to be.

But fuck it. I’m cutting my fabric tonight and I refuse to be a wuss about it. If I go to class tomorrow and it’s wrong I will just go buy more fabric.

****
Sleeve ease adjustment recap in pictures:
1. cut out pattern piece,
2. determine ease adjustment numbers
3. trace original piece onto pattern paper

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4. from bottom of piece measure out .25 inch
5. pivot pattern piece from seam guideline

6. redraw curve

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7. cut out new piece.

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****

P.S.
I do hereby promise to press my garment every step of the way

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