the dress that made me almost miss my flight...

after seeing how cute faye looked in her southport dress, i endeavored to make my own.  (ok, i lie: i was always going to make one for me too.  hence why i got an adult one and shrank it down to fit her.)  also, her bday is the day after mine, so clearly i had to make us twinsies.  this weekend, i visited shirley, who now resides in florida.  we had a sewathon on saturday, from 9am to 3am.  it felt like i was a star on project runway.  she encouraged me to make my own bias binding from the same fabric (my least fav task ever), so i made a ton:

(yes, i need a haircut.  oct 8, oct 8!)  i burned my fingers SO many times.  the inside of the dress looked so nice though!!!  i can't say i've ever finished any garment this nicely.  i'm the lazy one who will just serge edges and stitch them down, although this doesn't work so nicely for neck and arm holes.

it's not really pink dress weather anymore (and school is FREEZING!), so i wintered up the dress with short boots and a wool cardigan.

the dress hits just above my knee but because my friend madeline took it for me (and she is quite a bit taller), it looks like the dress hits lower than my knee.  fear not, it's not really this frumpy looking in real life!  i did the double button on top and evenly scattered buttons below again, as eric designed on faye's dress.  i figured i should stay true to the style of her dress if we were gonna be twinsies.

funny story about the twill tape drawstring:  i brought some to florida, but it was too short.  so, right before my flight, shirley took me to a joann's by an airport.  the private jet airport.  oops.  we thought airport=airport.  i almost missed my flight, for the sake of a me-made garment.  however, as i sprint to my gate 20 mins before take-off, i get a text that my flight was delayed.  hallelujah!  thus, i successfully made it to school today, as you can see from the school office pic above.  the risks we seamsters (what i call sewing teamsters) have to take... hehe

the weekend of t-shirts

eric's nephew, reid, celebrated his 5th birthday yesterday.  we spent all saturday making him a t-shirt for the occasion.  i say WE because i sewed up the 3/4 sleeve baseball tee (the twin-needle is giving me a hell of a time on the new sewing machine, arghhhh), while eric printed a tricerotops, tweaked a silhouette of a small boy to be a smaller boy looking like reid, put that boy on the tricerotops, and cut that image out of freezer paper.  (he rigged the most genius platform so that he could light the image from underneath to see it through the freezer paper and to cut out both without having to trace the image 1st with pencil)

then we ironed the freezer paper onto the t-shirt and he painted into the stencil he had made.  on the back, the t-shirt had "reid" and a 5 

the shirt was AMAZING.  

look at the detail that eric was able to put into the stencil he made!!  the little boy had a cowlick in the back of his head and little bangs in the front, just like reid!  he shortened the arms and body of the original image to make the boy look younger.

we then steamed the paint so that it puffed up a little bit.  you can sort of see the texture in the pic above where i'm holding the t-shirt for display.

because the inside of the stencil was so intact and intricate, it pained me to throw it away.  remember the little t-shirt i made for my friend amanda's son, jacob, with the necktie sewn onto it?  unfortunately the shirt got ruined by jacob's friend (he got tons of paint on the back), so i had promised him i'd make him a new shirt.  here was my chance!  i made the same t-shirt as reid's and ironed on the negative of reid's stencil onto jacob's.  i painted rays of paint beaming off of the image so that it would look like spray paint around the image...

it came out super well.  the details that were spectacular on reid's shirt were maintained on jacob's!  we did nix the cowlick and bangs on jacob's, since jacob has neither.

this fabric could also be puffed up, so we steamed it as well.

on the home front, bunks and squeeks had a moment of extreme cuteness this weekend:

they battle for dominance of the yard and apartment but also are really intrigued by each other.  unlikely animal friends =)

peach cake!

eric's dad delivered more peaches from the backyard.  peach desserts are da bomb.  eric sliced probably 6 cups of peaches while i made the cake's cookie bottom layer and the brown sugar and cinnamon topping.  i tried this recipe from "joy of cooking" with apples a couple of years ago, and it was nauseatingly sweet.  these peaches, although very ripe, have been a little tart, so i figured they'd be the perfect fruit to lay between the layers.  we used 4 cups of the peaches, which means 2 more cups for more peach desserts!!!

this cake:  also da bomb.  might be my new fav dessert.  the topping came out kind of caramel-y.