Wharf Blouse

Finished this tonight. And hmm... not quite how I'd envisioned it. I made the V more shallow, of course, and so I wouldn't ahve to deal with the ties around the waist I made the lower portion more of a bias cut for fullness. I was originally planning to do the extra criss-cross ties, but didn't have enough twill tape. And I'm thinking I may need to tighten the ties around the shoulders, because it doesn't look right. So honestly, I'm not entirely sure if I like this one.

And this is the closeup of the decorative stitching. I really like how that turned out, at least. Not as subtle as the original, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well the varigation lined up, especially since the light and dark sections of the brown and teal alternated in a really cool way.

The necklace isn't done yet. Over halfway though.

the unintentional jewelry recon, continued

As of tonight, I have one half of the shell necklace redone, though it was further complicated by the string being too short and having to figure out a way to tie on another piece so it would stay (with a little help from some nail polish.) I've also started stringing the strand for the second. Not sure I'll finish it tomorrow, because now that my two heavy teaching days are out of the way for this week, and I have nothing better to do right now since I got laid off from the coffeeshop (not really sure what to do yet about looking for another job, since I'd need to take off 3 weeks in July and it's nearly June), I think I might do some more sewing then instead.

Also realizing I need to figure out what to do with the other part of the shell stash-- similar shells, but in a black/charcoal instead of gold. I'd prefer to do a different style necklace if at all possible, and I mght as well think about it while I have a huge stash of the clear seed beads out and readily available.

The wharf blouse, and an ill-fated repair

I started sewing together the Wharf blouse on Friday night, though most of the sewing was actually decorative stitching. I really like the way the varigated stitching turned out though.

I'm currently attempting to fix my seashell necklace, since one of the kids at my teaching job broke it. It would have been fairly simple, only involving running a string through one strand of it, but then a seashell just broke off the other strand. So now I have to remake it. *facepalm* So this entry's mostly for my own reference, so I know how many beads and such.

top strand: 12 shells
bottom strand: 11 or 13... I really should have counted this before I restrung it. :P
loops: 12 beads (2 of them used to double the thread through)
between loops: 7 beads
before the loops start: 5 inches of strung beads

The Lizzie shirt, and adventures in pattern-making

And the finished product! I finished it on Saturday, but just got a picture this morning. I wore it on Monday and the gathering on the side worked just fine, though I think I may need to put some kind of snap or hook and eye in there just to get the crossover to stay in place--otherwise it has a tendency to sag over the beaded band.

This is my next project, from last summer's Anthropologie collection. I got the stuff to make it then but ran out of time. So I spent a good chunk of Saturday trying to draft a bodice pattern from this book. I was just doing a basic one at first and planning on altering it from there. But I don't know if I took the measurements wrong, or if I drew it out wrong (there was an awful lot of math involved), but the muslin I made on Sunday sucked. The shoulder seams were practically short sleeves, the extra length at the waist was sufficient to make it just hit my waist, and I didn't like the placement of the darts at all. So I ditched that for now and went back to altering a pattern I had. It's cut out, just need to sew.

And I need to decide if I'm going to re-sign for the next few months of Wardrobe Refashion. I'm inclined to do it-- the only factor is, I still haven't figured out if I can make a winter coat warm enough for me with my wool allergy.

The Lizzie shirt, in progress

My Pride and Prejudice- inspired shirt, in progress. (Can you see why I couldn't pass up this former skirt?) I got the bodice sewed together on Monday night, and last night I got the ties and the band in the front sewed together, as well as the bodice to the bottom front. Tonight I did the beading on the front band there-- it's not sewed down yet, but I think it'll add some nice detail. The beads are from the stash that my best friend got for me when she went to Africa last summer, and as you can see, they match the iridescent fabric extremely well:

I think I'm going to have to make some jewelry to go with it from the rest.

And a closeup look of the wrap-look bodice-- this was the part really inspired by Kiera Knightley's dress in the last post, though hers went more to the waist and I didn't have enough fabric to make it more than an empire-waist. So hopefully it'll look all right when it's sewed into the sides. Perhaps I'll baste it first-- if it looks bad, I can always just undo the basted gathering and make it a normal wrap, right?

*shrug*

I didn't have a chance to take a photo until today, but I finished the sweater-knit shrug to go with the Morning Glory dress on Thursday.

It was kind of a pain working with the fabric in parts, since it would occasionally get caught in the metal plate under the presser foot of my machine (one time, it took both myself and my mom to get it out!) And it took a little longer than it probably would have under normal circumstances, because I did most of the seams as French, both for durability and to make it look more finished. The one place where I ran into trouble with this was the flounce on the sleeves, since I sewed them both the wrong way out and had to hand-sew the seam down to the outside. But it looks ok now. This was made from McCall's 5096, though I altered it a bit-- I changed the shape of the flounce to make it more pointed on one end instead of a round ruffle, and added it to the 3/4 length sleeve. I'm hoping I can find some other outfit to wear the shrug with besides the dress, though as you can sort of see from the picture, it matches the blue in the dress perfectly.

Drat, I thought I'd taken a before picture of this. Guess not. Anyway, I started work on a recon I've had in mind for awhile tonight. I'd originally been playing with an olive green snap-down Gap shirt, but I don't like anything I've played with to make it another shirt so I guess I'll wait until I need a bag to deal with it. So instead, I'm working with this thrifted skirt that I got awhile ag0. It was an awful style, this elastic-waist yoked pleated thing, but I loved the fabric (a shimmery iridescent green-purple viscose.) I'm turning it into a short-sleeved top, since I've discovered that I'm badly in need of things with short sleeves that are NOT T-shirts to work in. I'm altering a pattern that I've used before because I know it fits, but my inspiration is coming from, oddly enough, this dress from the newer version of Pride and Prejudice. I'm also planning on doing some beading on it, because when my best friend went to Africa last summer, she got me some packs of African-made seed beads there and one of the colors just happens to match it very well. So we'll see how it turns out. I've got the altered pattern piece drawn out and the pieces all cut out so far.