memorial day 2013

gotta love long weekends.  i kicked mine off right by 1st hanging with shirley on saturday, who was in town for the weekend!!!  yippee!!!  she was so sweet and got me some chevron-like fabric while she was in seattle for a wedding!  i love it!  it will be used to make a summer dress for our visit to capri this summer!  whee!! 

of course, i had to finish a garment in time for my reunion with shirley, hehe.  i used the rest of that lotus leaf fabric from mom's mother's day top to make myself a peplum top!  the lining was my beloved silk and egyptian cotton bedsheet.  

i used the pattern from my oregon beach dress to make the bodice.  for the peplum skirt, i had hoped to make a cute short half-circle skirt.  however, i had very little fabric left after making the bodice, and thus i cut out 2 long rectangles, stitched them together lengthwise, and made a gathered peplum skirt.  i'm actually happy i went this route because now the top looks quite different from my oregon beach dress!

around back, i had an invisible zipper (this one being my 3rd attempt because the 1st 2 were each too short and thus i could not fit my shoulders past the tiny waist part of the top!!), along with 3 button and loop closures above the zipper.  they were leftover from mom's top, and it would have been a shame to not use such perfectly matching buttons on this garment!

on sunday, alex, an old friend from grade school, threw a barbecue in prospect park.  the day was beautiful.  i let him pick what i should bake for the event, and he chose strawberry rhubarb pie, of course... rhubarb is not always easy to find.  i successfully hunted down 3 stalks!  here are the strawberry and rhubarb before sugar and other sweet wonderfulness was added.  the color was so vibrant:

i squeaked out 2 small pies... on which i cut out pi symbols as vents, of course!  once a math teacher, always a math teacher!  

transporting the pies was no small feat.  i went to the small grocery store next to my apartment and asked for a box big enough to carry 2 pies.  they gave me a small box in which i could only stack the pies, so i asked them for the lid of another box so that i could create a divider.  genius, no??  the pies were still hot, so it was imperative that they sat on flat surfaces so that they would not fold and drip everywhere.  this looks like a mini-oven!

here's me in the lotus top again (you know i'm going to wear it to school this week too... just you wait!), on alex's friend's rooftop as we were waiting to catch views of the sunset. my friend ryan took the pic... as i was yelling at him to hurry up because he was so slowwwwww.

bunks was up to no good all weekend, making messes on my new west elm couch!!!  what nerve!  his entry has been banned onto the couch unless i am home to monitor him... so i lined the edge of the couch with tins of sewing thread.  i'm such an innovative thinker, i know.

happy long weekend to all and to all a goodnight!

why have i never thought of this before???

hehe!  bunny brownies!

mom's mother's day top

for mother's day, i made mom a top using butterick 5608, view c, and this green and gold lotus leaves cotton that i bought online years ago from this online fabric store's closing sale.  i only had 1.5 yards of it, so i had always saved the fabric until i knew exactly for which project to use it.  

it's funny how something that can look so ridiculous on one person can be so stunning on another.  on me, the shirt looked like a sack.  thus, my mannequin will provide the model shots...  here's the front:

and the back.  next time, i'm going to make the part between the 2 shoulders narrower.  neither mom nor i have that wide of a back.

i'm sure you all guessed that i had to add my own design element to make the project more of a challenge!  how about a line of button and loop closures on the left side of the shirt?  not bad right?  the pattern doesn't call for anything on the sides, not even a zipper!  you can hardly see the buttons because they were a perfect match!!!  i found them in the numerous boxes of vintage buttons that carin gifted me.

a zoomed-in view.  i added a modesty panel in the back so that in case the buttons were loose or unbuttoned, mom would not be showing that much skin.  hehe.

here it is on her!  cute isn't it?!?!?  i want to make myself a version, once i finish tweaking the pattern to my measurements and once my seniors finish their calc finals at the end of this week!  ahh!!!  i'm drowning!!!!!

happy mother's day!

bake sale beasts

i baked 2 batches of fudgy brownies last week.  for 2 student council bake sales.

look how teeny these chocolate chips are!  my brownies have a very chocolatey inside.

we were bake sale beasts.  $330 in 1.5 hrs total!

lace top + earth day!

i finished the lace top just in time for earth day!  very appropriate, if you ask me, seeing as the lace is from a thrift store!  for the back, i used one of carin's vintage acrylic buttons.  after some polishing, the button became quite shiny!  the left one is an unpolished one, and the right is polished:

here it is, installed just above the zipper.  i like that it's clear and doesn't detract from the busy lace, yet is pretty!

here's the back, zoomed out:

and the front, on my mannequin:

and here i am, wearing my new shirt at school!  this is my 1st garment that is this loose.  i'm so used to my clothes being much more fitted that i stupidly thought this top would require a zipper.  NOPE!  so glad i realized this AFTER i installed one, TWICE, because i'm the idiot who doesn't line up zippers before attaching them.

not gonna lie, i'm a huge fan of this top.  although, not sure what's going on with all those wonky folds in this pic.

in honor of earth day, i baked some leaf and shamrock sugar cookies.  i would have made bunnies, but i figured everyone is tired of seeing my adorbs bunny cookies.

speaking of bunnies, guess who got cute bunny studs this weekend!!!

BUNKS!  jk hahahha!  he's using my lap as a stepladder to get onto the coffeetable.  apparently he reallllly wanted to read my final papers from college.  

happy earth day!  give all your little bunnies a hug and a kiss hehe

mobius strips??

i accidentally ended up with a mobius strip when trying to sew my next project.  THREE mobius strips!  You know, those loops that have only 1 side and twist on and on for forever?  before i show you the nonsense that i created, let me back up and explain what was my intended goal... view a of the shirt below:

here is the line drawing so you can see just how cute the pleating in the front would be:

i used this light tannish grey stretchy cotton-blend shirting fabric for the yoke and underlayer, and for the over lay i used this vintage lace that i found at the "scrap exchange" in durham, nc when i visited my friend erin 4 years ago.

the bodice part, while difficult, went without a hitch.  i ended up sewing the underlayer together at the sides separately from the lace overlay so that the lace would flow independently... perhaps.  however, the shirting fabric is stiffer than jersey and thus the lace isn't flowy... oh well.  they still looked nice together.

and now for the yoke on top... that's where the mobius strip comes into the story.  the instructions told me to create the yoke separately as an outer layer and as a lining.  no sweat, i thought to myself.  i've got this.  easy peasy.  then they tell you to invert the lining so that it sits inside the outer layer like a facing, and then you are to HANDSTITCH the lining inside the outer layer.  uhhh, i hate hand-stitching.  so, i decided to outsmart my instructions and i machine-sewed them together...  it became a mobius strip!! 

oh silly me, i think to myself.  i just twisted one of the sides of the sleeve before sewing it to itself.  let me unstitch the regular stitching (AND THE UNDERSTITCHING to keep the lining in place) and try it again.  in my haste, i passed off version 2 as being perfect, and did the other sleeve.  wait, i created another mobius strip!  how is that possible, oh silly me, i think to myself.  the other one is perfect... no wait... also a mobius strip.  GAH!!  FOILED BY MYSELF!  i wasn't content going to bed last night until i had at least undone the stitching in the sleeves.  i will save that part for tonight.  here are the pieces so far, pinned onto my mannequin.

not sure if i'm crazy about this.  i'm really hoping the final result turns out better than what this looks like right now...  i feel like it looks stuffy and bleh.

meanwhile, bunks was bored out of his mind and was cleaning his paws, despite my raucous laughter when i discovered the 3 mobius strips that i had sewn.  that's my clean bunny!

compliments galore!

i've never gotten as many compliments for something i made than i did today when i wore my oregon beach dress to school for the first time!  yippee!

oh hello!

guess who!

oh you again

happy bunny day!

for bunny day this year, the fam and i met up in dc.  bunks came too!  look at the wee boy!

no trip to dc ever happens without a requisite trip to gstreet fabrics, the greatest fabric store in the world!  i scored some awesome fabrics of course... no shocker there.  here we have some yellow stretchy rayon jersey with purple and navy squares and a quirky blue zigzag border (maxi dress?  short summer dress?  we shall see!), black polyester chiffon with colorful dot clusters (drapey summer blouse?  if i had more, i would totally want to make a flowy short summer dress.  not sure that 1 yd is enough fabric to cover enough skin to be called a dress, though!!), 

navy, cream, and magenta striped satiny something-or-other.  it is thin.  not sure what the material really is though.  i'm thinking a shirt-dress variation?  the orange is a cotton blend tweed (it's less than a yard, but i think i can squeeze out a pencil skirt!).  and finally, the navy is this cotton jersey knit that i plan to use as a lining for this embroidered wool that carin from work gave me!  see, i'm a good shopper... i only purchase what i know i will use... if i had all the time in the world hehehhehe!

a fabric shopping success!  the fam and i biked throughout rock creek park on saturday.  it was pretty out, although my allergies started getting the best of me.  the drive back was also particularly long... holiday traffic.  no worries, as i got to travel with the cutest easter bunny in my lap!

oregon beach dress!

nope, i didn't actually wear this to the beach in oregon.  too cold.  however, i did sew a beachy dress while in southern coastal oregon during spring break, while visiting shirley!!  i got the 70's vintage beach print fabric during my visit to knit'n kitten in portland this january.

i used mccall's 5753 pattern to draft the bodice (like in the black dress below- low scoop neck but without sleeves).  unfortunately this pattern needed major tweaking-  the arm holes had to be lowered and the back had to be made narrower.

for the skirt, i decided to try my hand at a circle skirt!

circle skirts are particularly difficult to hem, because the bottom of the hem is wider than higher up, thus when you fold over some of the fabric, there is always a bit extra!  GAH!  no worries... neat ironing will do the trick!  note: this is probably the only in-progress pic you'll ever get of me working, as i certainly can't take pics of myself while my hands are occupied!  thanks shirley!

since shirley lost her zipper foot, i had to handpick the zipper.  first time i've ever handpicked a zipper!  you can't even see my stitches, i made them so teeny!

not bad, right?  my stitching is pretty neat!

the best detail of circle skirts is that they are super twirly!

to celebrate my visit, shirley baked an amazing blueberry pie... check out her presentation... much better than my pies ever look!  she also made so many amazing meals: roast chicken, mashed potatoes, fish, risotto, and more!  i was spoiled!

i made shirley a jar of origami stars as a thank you for being such a great friend!

STARS!  despite how many stars i've made in my life, i still love them!

while i sewed, shirley made muslins for this awesome top that had a vanishing lapel... using surgical gowns for muslin fabric!  how genius, right?  thinking about this still cracks me up, hehe!

we didn't just sew during my visit... although there was much sewing to be done.  we also hiked and explored southern oregon's beautiful coastline:

and northern california's redwood forests:

i had such a great trip and was bummed that the time flew by!  here's a final pic of me twirling in my new dress!!

thanks for having me over, shirley!  and thanks for the awesome pics!