Thursday, October 31, 2013

Halloween Time!!!

I know it's been a minute... 

Shoot me later, but I plan to catch up shortly!! 

The latest project (on a list of about 3,000 items) is a wonderful Halloween costume for my son. Now for the story part! My darling, handsome cutie is now at this age that clearly he thinks he is the coolest thing walking and everyone else is just not as cool as him. So as Halloween approached I asked him if he wanted to dress up and what he would want to be...

That took a week! :-(

Once he decided that he wasn't too cool for Halloween, we set out on the journey of costume discovery. (Which ultimately meant that he would look online for something he wanted!) As he searched on Party City for costumes he found one and brought it over...


What the FIRST thing that I look at... THE PRICE.. 

The costume was $179.99!!! CLEARLY someone at Party City has lost their ULTIMATE mind!! 

What did I say after looking at the picture... "huuummmmmmmm I can make this!" 

So I set out to do just that!! After studying the picture and planning my attack, it was off to JoAnn's!! (Cause I had some AWESOME coupons and was NOT afraid to use them!!!) 


So here is the start....
 

The inspiration...









And the final product! 
 


This thing had a shirt, vest with tails, waist belt, hood, some sash thing, pants, leather wrist ties, and boot covers. And MOMMA made them all!! 





 





 



Best part about it my husband asked our son, "why is mom making this costume for you?", my son's answer "Because she's AWESOME!" 


yep.... AWESOME! :-) 


Some from one AWESOME mom, 



HAPPY SEWING ALL!!!

























Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Sew Forth & Sew On

Sew, I am finding that sew much of my time is spent sewing for others. The others is very often my daughter, the younger one.  Sew, here I go again.  Her birthda is tomorrow.  She wanted a "fabulous pair of pants" to go with her "fabulous new shoes".  And being the pliable one, I had no choice but to comply.  Actually, she has done this sew many times, that I expect this before each "event" in her life.  And since she will never read this blog, I guess I don't mind sew much! :-)

She found a photo of Rihanna wearing a pair of "cigarette" pants.  Needless to say she had no idea what a cigarette pant was and as she described the pants, I knew eactly what she wanted. Sew, when she returned from her summer internship last week, we headed right off to the fabric store.  We found this great red suiting that I thought was a perfect choice for her "vision".  I used this McCall's 6758, pattern and I loved the final result.

And here is the final product!


The lighting isn's great on these, but this is the best I could do as she was packing to leave and was not a willing participant.
 
Sew now that these are finised, I'm on to the next project; a dress as a birthday gift for a friend! 
 
Sew Forth & Sew On
 



Sunday, August 11, 2013

Soooooo I'm so behind....


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There are times that you look at your mental list of things to do and realize there is no possible way in heaven or hell you will make it through a third of it! With that being said updating my virtual life to match my real life has taken a SLIGHT back seat.

I PROMISE TO DO BETTER!

At least that is until there is a Harry Potter marathon and then I can't and won't make any promises!!! Lol hey don't judge I have an addiction after all this time....


So where did we last stop, OH well I had announced my wonderful engagement! *update... MARRIED NOW! :-)

So the wonderful world of wedding planning! I must say I am and was the furthest thing from a bridezilla one could ever see! However, can't say the same about other people in my life... The plan was simple... Set a destination, invite friends and have fun!

Goal, set, match in my book!

It was wonderful! We got married at the wonderful Paradisus Palma Real in sunny (and humid as hell!) Punta Cana, Dominican Republic!



I (being the fab o friend I am) made all my bridesmaids dresses. Given the location I thought the perfect style would be an infinity dress and I must say they turned out FABULOUS! My friends looked great and we really had a blast!

Adding to my FABULOUSNESS, I also made my darling flower girl's dress. I love my Tay, even if she can be a little diva sometimes! She was fab as my little helper!



















Oh and I customized her basket because anything
Less would be totally uncivilized!! LOL

All in all it was a ball and I would trade the experience for anything in the world!!!




Because these two live to torture me!!!!! LOL :-)


Well, gotta keep updating!! More sewing projects to post!! 

HAPPY SEWING!




Saturday, June 29, 2013

The Things I Love!

If you know anything about me, you know I love a few things with great passion.  I love to sew! I love my girls. And I love my sorority.  More specifically, I love many of my sorority sisters.  So, whenever there is a chance to combine any of the above, I try not to miss the moment to do so.  I thought my girlfriends would enjoy the fruits of my labor.  I decided to make garment bags, embroidered with our sorority name and their line name (from their pledging days) on the bag.  Our sorority is celebrating 100 years of existence next month and there will be throngs of members in D.C. to commemorate the event. 

I think they enjoyed them and I certainly had fun creating them.  I !hope they find them useful and cool! Now back to my regularly scheduled obsession.




Wednesday, June 19, 2013

The Merry Merry Month of May

It's June and its getting to be pretty hot in the South.  May has come and gone and left quite a wake in it's path, as far as my life is concerned.  Some very good, some very, bad.  I'm trying to handle the bad.  And now for the good; both my girls had a memorable May 2013!.  One got married, and the other graduated from college.  I'm so incredibly proud of both of them! And of course sewing played a major part in both events.  The graduate - my dd wanted a unique dress for the graduation ceremony - Mint Green.  And apparently (as I read somewhere) this is the color for the season.  There were actually quite a few young ladies wearing the color, incuding my daughter's best friend.  But they never had a conversation about it, so I thought that was hilarious.  Of course, no one looked as good and my little pumpkinseed did in her frock (but I'm not biased in the least - LOL!)

All she told me was the color - mint.  And because of the timing, this was another one, I had to make without a single fitting.  Fortunately for me, this girl has a perfect body and with the exception of being a bit hippy, there are rarely any changes I need to make (now that I know her body).  I selected this pattern- McCall's 6647.


And the fabric - a lovely eyelet from fabric.com and did everything except hem it before I arrived for graduation the night before. 






And while I would love to take credit for this fabulous tip, I read it on someone else's blog.  Unfortunately, due to the mayhem that has been my life for the past few months, I have no idea to whom the credit should go.  So, if she/happens happens across my blog, please accept my apology for my failing memory.  But, it's too great not to share.  I am very persnickety about the little things when sewing, buttons, zippers, linings, etc.  One of the things I hate is to not have the right color zipper or even cute zippers when they matter.  The tip here is a way to always have the perfect zipper.  I guess this would work with either, but the reference here was for invisible zippers.  Take your white zipper and the fabric and purchase nail polish the color of the fabric (or the perfect contrast if that's what you are going for).  Polish the zipper pull (and the top of the stop if you want) with the polish. You might need to apply two coats, letting it dry completely after each coat.  I just placed my zipper across the top of a glass or cup so that it doesn't touch anything while drying.  And wahlah - perfectly matched zipper.  It's a small thing and given where the zipper was in this dress,(the side) I don't know that anyone would have noticed it.  But of course I did, and I guess that's all that matters!



Tuesday, April 9, 2013

The Pussy Bow You Say!

So much has been going on in my world of late.  The daughter I share this blog with is getting married next month!  She lives in Atlanta now, but I hosted a shower for her in Memphis last weekend.  I am SOOOOO proud of her for all that she has accomplished and that she will accomplish.  She is SO much smarter than me and that, as the kids say, gives me life.  I have much to brag about these days because my youngest is graduating from college next month! And though she would roll her eyes if she ever read this, I can brag and say that she just found out she has been selected for an internship at Johns Hopkins this summer!! Yeah for them.  Here we all are at the shower! I made my dress and the youngest )on the right) and the bride made the delightful frock she is sporting(in the black & white)!  So much fun to share such a joyful (though frustrating, at times hobby).  The youngest one does not so, but certainly benefits from her sister and mother's obsessive ways!
 
 
Now the week before this event, I was sitting at home thinking about my schedule for the next day. I had already put together, for the most part the youngest one's dress and it was just awaiting her arrival for fit.  SOOO, I had nothing to do (well, you know, nothing I wanted to do) and I felt as if I needed something cute to wear to work the next day.  So, I went adventuring through my pattern stash and this pattern begged my attention.
 
After this pattern instructed me that it was the one, I started my fabric stash dash.  As you have seen from my many posts, I have been having a love affair with Houndstooth.  It started way back when I saw the Ferragamo Spring Collection and he had this darling wrap dress! And so, I ran across this sheer houndstooth polyester pretending to be charmeuse some time ago.  When I purchased it, I thought it was terrible sheer and see through and would only be good for a scraf to accompany a coat. But, when it popped into my hands last week, I decided, it was the right look.. and I could always make a little tank underneath for modesty!  And so, here is the final product. (And yes, I purchased the houndstooth shoes back when I made the wrap dress!)
 

The funny thing behind this is that I didn't really think I had enough fabric when I started. The bow pattern piece was so long and it said to cut two.  But I placed them all on the fabric and it just worked out.  I cut the pieces and not until the scissors were down did I notice that the bow was to have been cut on the bias.  Of course I would never have had enough fabric for that, so perhaps thats why I completely ignored that most important detail.  But I was determined to go on.
 
So, when it was time to join the pieces (and it should have looked like one long piece), I joined mine and it resulted in a perfect "V"!  My goodness.  So, I decided to cut one of the pieces until I could fit them properly.  This of course caused me to loose some length on one of the pieces, but it worked out in the end.  The only other thing I should have done was to make bias fabric facings for the armholes edges.  The pattern actually said to use bias tape, which I did, but it's a bit stiffer than it should be for the fabric.  I think I have some remnants left and might try to do that later.  But, I do like the contrast even now.  The skirt was one that I had previously made in a white denim (that I adore) so this came together incredibly fast. 
This was my work attire Thursday morning after finishing it Wednesday about midnight. (I started about 5:30 Wednesday.)
 
Now, its time to start working on the mother of the bride dress.  My fabric arrived last week.  Found my inspiration dress so it's off to the races!
 
Be Sewful!





Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Shirts For Shirts Sake

If you are a sewists, sewer, or whatever creative term is currently popular, you know that you are inspired by almost anything, almost anywhere.  So it goes with this shirt. I saw this shirt in a store last year.  I love unique details and the zippered pockets caught my fancy, as they say.  I went so far as to find what I thought were perfect zippers and knew that I would find a great cotton for the fabric at some point.  It was on the list.   
Well, it didn't happen until the latest pattern review contest.  As I've said previously, I don't really expect to win those things, but they are pretty good motivators to keep you working on one thing or the other.  Although, I must say, I DEARLY wanted that Mood's gift certificate in the last challenge.  I didn't win, but I appreciate the votes I got!  Thank you all!  Anyway, so this is next up.  I started with this Butterick pattern - 5526.
 
I chose View D, but I added the pockets.  My DD sent me a photo of a men's shirt she had just made (and has yet to blog about it - hint, hint.) And once I saw it, I decided that changing the front band and collar stand would be a good look. The pattern review contest was that it needed to be a fitted shirt.  So my shirt has the princess seams in the front and back. 
Just let me say that us sewers are an odd lot.  I say that because I suspect I am not the only obsessive sewer out here.  These simple little pockets were maddening for two straight days! It was important that you could see the zippers, as in the inspiration and after cutting these pockets three times, I was still standing, "spirited" beverage in hand, pondering how I could make this work?  This had always seemed straight forward to me.  I took the pocket and initially cut a slit at the desired position and was treating it like a welt, that's simple right?  Well, the first one was too wide at the ends of the zipper. So once the zipper was inserted, there was a gap. After the third set of pockets (maybe it was that "spirited beverage"??, I looked back at the inspiration and saw that there appeared to be a facing and the zipper was "inserted" into that facing.  SO, I cut the pockets for the third and final time and created a self facing, cut the slits the same as for a welt, inserted the zipper and whalah!  I laughed at myself because I am firmly convinced that the simple things keep me "flummoxed" (in my Tim Gunn voice) remember the blazer pocket flaps? 
But I completely LOVE the final product.  I used the white contrast for the inside front band, collar stand and the inside of the cuffs.
 
 
I will definitely make this again, probably in a red and white and a solid.  This will be a great work shirt for me, and I can pair it with jeans for a casual look.
One more item for the "collection". 
Well, time to post the product!
 

 
Be Sewlful!