a month late parent conferences dress

holy moly, i finally finished the dress i was going to make for the parent conferences in early november.   oops.  i've been super swamped this year.  i probably have 10 more students than last year, and whew, it's drowning me.  anyhoo, not to be deterred, i plowed on, and finished this dress.  last night.  finally.  i'm donning this for the next round of parent conferences in february.  in the meanwhile, i'll wear it to the holiday assembly at school this friday.  whoo!

you may remember this dress from being the same as the one i made mom to wear to my cousin brenda's wedding.  hehe.  that was 3 years ago.  i took down my alterations for what was needed to be changed from mom's dress so i could make one up for me too with the leftover fabric.  new and different projects are that much more exciting so i never got to version 2.  this fabric takes up a LOT of room, so finally i made it to reduce my stash of fabric.  the lining fabric was gifted to me by the theater director of my school.  (they gave me all their extra fabric... it sits under my desk at work... my fabric collection is starting to invade school too...)  i handstitched down all the seams along the bust and sides of this dress so that everything sat flatter:

i even handstitched the bottom hem to enclose the lining bottom.  handstitching is tedious, but so satisfying when complete!

around back there is an invisible zipper and a hook and eye closure at the top of the neckline:

i'll post a pic when i finally get around to taking a pic of me in it this friday.

for my bday, eric's mom gave me a magnetic enclosing faux book with a beautiful cover.

i finally found the perfect use for it:  because it is so roomy and closes magnetically, i've been using it to hold "works-in-progress."  it is large enough to fit the fabric, pattern, and notions necessary for each project so far, and nothing falls out!  thanks, alice!

next up:  mom's bday shirt.  oh wait, her bday was in august...  *grins sheepishly*

running shirts, check!

i know you were all anxious about whether or not i finished eric's running shirt in time for our oregon running trip.  fear not, i delivered!  (i might have stayed up until 2 am finishing this the night before we left... i had school that next day too... it was rough.)

here's the bday boy modeling the shirt on day 2 of our run.  we ran 25.9 miles total!  5.5 on day 1, 10.2 on day 2, 10.2 on day 3.  unfortunately, the straps on eric's backpack chafed the fabric so much that now there's lots of pilling along where the straps lay.  so sad.  i thought this wicking fabric was so cool, but apparently it didn't survive past 3 days of bag-chafing.  he still has it and wears it, but it just doesn't look as crisp as it does here.

the running was STUNNING.  the mckenzie river trail goes through dried lava beds, old growth forest, hot springs, turquoise lakes.  the trees were gargantuan.  here's little eric making his way around one of them.

we spent the last day in portland.  this might be my favorite picture from the trip:  a book-lover playing in the aisles of powell's.  he brought back a paper bag filled with books.  we checked out this mega bookstore after our anniversary dinner, hence why he's dressed so dapper.  if you zoom in closely, you may recognize the tie from a series that i made him a while back!

on our return back to brooklyn, before we realized how pilly the fabric would get, i dove into making another running shirt for eric from the last bits of the yard i bought.  not bad, right?  1 yard = 2 running shirts.  well almost...  i just ran out, so the front had to be cobbled together.  eric wasn't thrilled with the 2 bottom pieces: he kept saying it looked like a skirt.  we checked in with shirley, and while she claimed it didn't look like a skirt, she did say it looked very much like i ran out of fabric.  "just work your helen magic on it to fix it," she recommended.

so, i made the split in the bottom panel functional: i built in a pocket into the right half!  i added a bottom layer to the lower right panel and sewed in a lapped zipper so that it would be semi-hidden.  now eric has a place to store his keys or whatever other nonsense he needs to carry with him while he goes for a run.  

nifty, right?  i hate the bunching of the material when it isn't worn.  it makes the shirt look sloppily made.  however, this shirt was sewn with much better stitching and more ample seams than the first one, so it fits him at the armpits better.  SIGH, if only the material were nicer.

this weekend, we finished building a greenhouse for the kale and some of the collards!  we've also got a pepper plant in there too.   we picked up an awesome piece of plastic off the side of the street that we've been saving for a year.  such the perfect use for it!!

it's tall enough so that even we can fit inside, seeing as we're both of such staggering height hehe.

poor bunksy, the naughty boy, ate a small bag of trail mix that we got for our oregon trip, and gave himself quite the tummy ache.  candied almonds, raisins, dried cranberries, pepitas, walnuts.  you'd think these were all fine for a rabbit, but the sugar really did a number on his digestion.  we stayed in this weekend to keep the poor boy company and to nurse him back to health, so in the meanwhile i baked cookies!  chocolate peanut butter cream cushions, from a book that my dear aunt stella gave me back when i was 9?

think a french macaron but filled with peanut butter butter cream!  i even reduced the sugar content of the filling AND mixed in some wheat flour with the regular flour to up the healthiness factor of it.  always thinking of our health, hehe.  oh speaking of health, i forgot to note that bunks is now fine.  back to cat-chasing and his general ramBUNKtiousness hehehhehe!

i'm now in the midst of parent teacher conferences, and had started a dress for the conferences, but you know how this story will end... i probably won't finish my dress on time.  even if i pulled an all-nighter tonight to "make it work."  sigh.  you'll never see me survive on project runway.

new tie for the bday boy!

shirley was in town last weekend and we embarked on a new project together.  she bought this amazing vintage simple box pleat dress.

i've had this bold striped corduroy fabric by lisette for several years now.  i was so drawn to the colors and the softness, but have had a hard time figuring out exactly what to use it for.  it is rather ridiculous...  i've decided to use it for the dress on the left!  crewneck with long sleeves.  the front yoke will have the stripes going horizontally.  i'm slightly fearful that having long sleeves will be entirely overwhelming with this bright fabric, so i might shorten them to the cap-sleeve later.

but then, before i could finish, eric had a birthday.  and a family birthday dinner.  so i put aside my dress and stitched him a tie... in the same fabric!  selfless?  yes, i know.

eric also loves bright colors too.  hehe.  we both consider orange the best of all colors since it is the BRIGHTEST!  here's a pic his dad took of him donning the super cheery tie!

this weekend i also made 3 dozen molasses chewy cookies.  we tore through them.  less than a dozen left  =)

tomorrow we leave for oregon.  we're running the mckenzie river trail for his bday.  26 miles.  gulp.  we've been training.  i've also allotted us 3 days to do it.  (now it sounds easy, right?)  really the scary part is that i'm making 2 running shirts for eric for it.  with wicking fabric.  i've drafted a pattern because he really wants the shirts to be raglan sleeve and i didn't have a pattern for that before.  i cut out half of 1 shirt last night.  can i finish in time?  we shall see.............

moth-busters

we have a bit of a moth problem at home.  they keep attacking our wool.  and grains.  it's getting old.  i read online that moths hate the scent of lavender because it is so overpowering.  lavender isn't my favorite scent either, but it sure beats having little holes in all our sweaters, so i sewed 11 sachets out of this cheap cream poly gauze that my coworker gave me from the theater department's stash of fabric.  (they gave me the whole stash!!  it sits behind my desk at work because i can't possibly keep it all at home.  no worries, eric!)  really i cut out fabric for 12 sachets but i somehow lost 1.

eric has a ton of dried lavender buds, well a pound really hehe, and i bought another half a pound.  we literally have lavender everywhere now.  next up, i'm going to cook the wool in the dryer to kill any moth babies, and then i plan to wash it in the washer with woolite.  no worries, we'll hang dry them after.  we'll then store all the wool in tubs stuffed with lavender satchets.

death to the moths!

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.

summer radio silence has ended!

been super busy this summer.  after the birdy mobiles, i baked these oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

and this blueberry pie.

eric and i then went to montana to meet up with his friends, float down some rivers, and go camping in a tent!  omg so fun.  we also went fishing a lot, but caught nothing but some tree branches hehe.  on the last night, i baked a pie for his friend who hosted us.  pie in a square dish: i feel like that's an oxymoron!

eric's friend florence gave us a bunch of rhubarb stalks from her garden in bozeman.  we carried them home and i baked them into a strawberry rhubarb pie.  so beautiful isn't it???

here's the pie, baked!

eric and i started a huge garden in our backyard this summer.  it has yielded many gigantic summer squash:

perfect for baking into squash/zucchini bread!  (we currently have 6 loaves in the freezer... eric would like that number to get up to 12...)

here's a meal we made from all homemade or homegrown goods:  swiss chard, amaranth, cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, kale, chives, and beef dumplings (those we folded... they don't grow in gardens unfortunately!!)

bunks turned 8 this august.  8!  we're growing carrots in the garden, and i accidentally pulled this one too early, soooooo, the teeniest carrot for the wee birthday bunny!

faye, eric's niece, has her birthday the day after mine.  i thought i'd sew her a bday dress, as she's super fly and adventurous.  i bought the southport dress pdf pattern from true bias and printed it out at 89%.  (i calculated that faye, at size 10 kids, is 89% of an adult size 0!  and who said fashion designers don't need math!)  pdf patterns suck.  you have to tape all the pages together and then cut out each pattern piece.  SO tedious.

bunks was so bored.  grumpy boy.

because i bought the adult pattern and not the kids one (so that i can print out more copies in my size or in sizes of my adult friends hehehe), i wanted to make sure the neckline was a little more modest.  i raised the neckline for faye's version:

my friend shirley always thinks i sew with perfect finishing.  here's proof that i'm a dope and sewed the bias binding too tight.  since i already trimmed the seam allowance, i ended up just separating the 2 ends and stitching them down flat.  i know, i could have redone it, but that would have taken FOREVER.  otherwise, the other armhole is nice!

here's the finished dress!  there's a drawstring at the waist and a waistband casing to enclose most of the drawstring.  you may recognize this fabric as being the same as the one i used for my sleeveless parent-teacher conference dress from 3 years ago.  my coworker carin gave me this vintage fabric from her mother's collection.  it's soft rayon.  i love it.  i still have a little left and plan to make mom a top from the rest!

eric helped me choose both the fabric and the buttons.  2 hrs he spent on button selection!  2 hours!  he also suggested that i do 2 close together at the top and the rest spaced out farther.  i dig it all, and i think the buttons are perfect.

here's the back.  the dress was a little long on faye, but fit her quite well across the top.  she'll grow into it!  she wore it to school today for her first day of 4th grade!!  i'm so flattered!

and finally, here's the peach pie i baked with the peaches eric's dad picked from his garden for my bday.  so delicious!

work starts next week!  i hope to do more sewing in the afternoons after i get home from school!!