bodner066

(Sung to Howdy Doody tune ... and even I'm not THAT old!) It was too dark in the house to take pics but I did it anyway and the result is less than stellar. But I promised pics of this dress and since I actually wore it to work today, here's my promise fulfilled. On top of bad light, etc., the print/pattern is really wreaking havoc with the autofocus, like wearing stripes on TV. All in all, a less than great photographic result (see blog title above) , but better than nothing I suppose. I do like the dress shape (except for Bustle Butt) and will consider this my wearable (cough:cough) muslin. I can see me making this again at some point, but maybe without all the mistakes? ;-) Not sure why there's a white stripe across my butt, maybe a flash phantom? And I thought Bustle Butt was bad enough! To cover the Bustle Butt, I threw on the coral cardi. I think I'm channeling Halloween now. Even though the fabric was a bee-yotch to cut and sew, it's very comfortable to wea...

I don't have $14-18 to shell out for patterns at the moment but I was kind of interested in Colette Patterns' newest, Myrtle . So I had a look through the sale pattern catalogs at Hancock's last weekend, thinking I could find something close, since Myrtle is a pretty basic style. And, voila! Plus sleeves (which, unfortunately, are missing from the Colette version). Pretty close match, eh? Just goes to show there's really nothing new under the sun. This one's not done yet. I still have to hem the sleeves and since it's a crappy thin rayon knit, I need to let it sit/stretch on Zillie for a couple of days before I hem the bottom. Hopefully, I'll get back to the dress mid-week and have some pics before next weekend, both of the dress on me and how I used my Otto TNT tee to make sure the KS would fit.

The dress is done, so there's that. But bad fabric cutting and extra fullness (mine and the dress') killed it. I will show it on me at some point but Sundays here are not the days I want to model for the camera. Trust me, you don't want that either. So, before I come clean with the ugliness, let's explore some other points. The morph of the two patterns (S2281 and S4122) worked out well and I may even revisit it in the future. After the pain has left my memory. The part I don't like isn't from the morph, but from S2281 alone, but more on that in a bit. I like the open, wide-yoked neckline much better than the original S2281 design. High necklines and me don't get along. I didn't want to lose the pleated raglan sleeves from S2281 but I also wasn't willing to put even more time into re/creating them for this morph. Maybe another time. This is the inside view. I ditched the waistband "facing" cuz ... well ... fiddly poly fabric and unmotivat...

So, I recently went to Joann's to pick up some thread with a 50% off thread coupon. Or so I thought. Joann's is NOT a short trip for me anymore, having moved out of the 'burbs and into Tampa proper. Upon my arrival, I headed straight to the thread racks with my empty spools in tow so I could replace by color code. I just toss my empties into a Ziplock so I don't have to keep track of make a list. After about 15 minutes, when I was done choosing my threads (about 12 spools) , I wandered over to the pattern area and was happy to see a big "$2.99" sale sticker on the Simplicity drawers. I proceeded to spend another 30-40 minutes browsing the catalog and drawers and narrowing my choices down to just two Simplicity patterns. I'm broke these days so even this felt like a splurge. Giving myself a $30 limit in the store to include my pattern and thread and whatever else, I next browsed the fabrics and found some for the dress pattern I had in hand. Plus two other...

Above is how I wore the outfit to the office this week. It's way too cold in A/C to go without a second layer. Plus, farmer's tan. ;-) Here's the before (right) and after (left) . It's not hugely dramatic but there's enough difference to see less sack and more shape. I left the pleats at the center front of the skirt but it's hard to see them in the pic. Whatevs. They're there. And my tummy thanks me for that. This shows the back, with the new empire seam, already serged, and the new sideseam sewn pre-serging.Yes, I was lazy and sewed it all the way down through the finished hem. And, of course, this would be the week that Carolyn posts about slow sewing and nice interiors. Hah. This ain't no couture dress. Never was. Never will be. But it's being worn, and no one but us is going to see the inside anyway, so I count that as a win. There will be slower sewing this weekend because I think I'm going to be fitting a new dress pattern, for a woven. G...