moving on...

While I still have a few things to finish there, like cleaning up old tags and constructing my finished projects page, I got enough work done to make it official: I am moving to Wordpress. And changing the blog name.

I will leave this site open, mostly because I don't want to have to redo 8 years' worth of links to old posts. But from here on out, all new posts will be at the new site.

My new address is sewadagio.wordpress.com.

(Special thanks to Gillian for the suggestion, even though I altered it a bit!)

Until I actually get a new project done (so, so close), happy sewing, and feel free to stop by!

To move, or not to move...

I've been debating about moving this site from Blogger to WordPress for awhile now. It seems so much easier to deal with comment replies, and I like their tagging system better than Blogger's. The photo and text formatting has been annoying me lately. Through playing around with a secondary blog, I've also learned that it's really simple to pre-write a post on my Kindle through their app, and then go back and add photos and links when I can get to my computer, which is really helpful since I can write while trapped on the couch with an eating or napping baby. For some reason, there isn't a Blogger app, at least not an official one. Not that it would make a difference, because I'm using the official app on my phone and this is my third attempt at writing this post. It loses a huge chunk every time I put the phone down and have to reopen the app. (Incidentally, this is also how my flamingo skirt post got wrecked. Grr.)

But sewandso is already taken at WordPress. And I have 8 years' worth of posts, comments and mostly Google-hosted photos that would have to transfer successfully to make it worthwhile. I just don't have time to reconstruct on the photo end of things in particular. So here's what I'm wondering:

-How much work would be involved in getting this up and running again if I made the switch?  Particularly photos and links to previous posts.

-What would you do about the name? I'm still rather fond of this one, since I've always been a multicrafter who just happens to sew the most.

-Is it worth the effort?

Thanks in advance for feedback.... And here's hoping this stupid app doesn't eat my words again.

administrative details

Just two quick things today:

1. Since the sidebar widget I had for my finished projects hasn't let me add anything to the list since May (really, Blogger?!), I finally got fed up and reworked the page for what's in my closet to take care of that. It's just a big link list now, since trying to figure out how to add that many pictures would take forever, given that this is on the older side for sewing blogs. But I did at least organize it between what's in my closet/what isn't in my closet anymore/stuff I made for other people/etc.

Incidentally, I'm kind of surprised at how old certain items in my closet are now. Like that black military jacket I made back in 2006--whaaaat? I guess that explains why the lining is tearing. I'm also wondering how many of those current closet residents will get to stay around post-baby, but I guess it's too early to worry about that.

2. Since I ended up with significantly more yardage than I started last year with, and the Facebook group is really fun, I'm doing the Stashbusting Sewalong again. With all new themes and a bunch of new hosts! I didn't volunteer to host a month because, you know, baby stuff, but best of luck to all you ladies who are participating! So here's my pledge for this year, which I kept really simple:

I, Becky, will endeavor to end 2015 with less yarn and fabric than I started this year with, and to only buy notions as needed for specific projects.  I shall also try to limit the number of new patterns I buy for myself this year. 

To avoid stressing myself out, I purposely am not doing a number of yards/pieces of fabric type pledge this year, since I have no idea what sort of wrenches being pregnant and having a newborn will continue to throw into my sewing. And I did also specify limiting patterns for myself, because I'm sure I'm going to want to start collecting a few kids' patterns. I do have a few from things I've made for friends before, and whatever's in my Burda magazines, but not a whole lot to pick from in my pre-existing stash. If Hobbit cooperates, we should see if we're having a boy or a girl in less than two weeks, which I'm getting quite excited to find out!

And with that, I guess I'd better finish practicing my flute so I have a shot at actually cutting something out today. Yeah.

Finally finished my August Sewcial Bee project...

And just in time for Pantsapalooza!

So here it is, my Tiramisu dress and its chocolately color inspiration.

There's not too much to say about the pattern that hasn't been said by scores of bloggers. I'm happy with the fit, overall, now that I tweaked the bodice. It's probably not as deep of a V as it would have been otherwise, but I feel like I can comfortably wear this for teaching and church and such and not feel like people are looking at my chest, so that's good. And I do think the solid chocolate brown was a good move. I'm also happy to have something I can wear these (barely seen) yellow beaded earrings with, because there's not much in my closet that goes with them.








And here's a slightly blurry side view, in which my husband was getting creative with posing, and probably a more accurate color assessment. (My weekend is entirely booked, between work and church and music-related things, so I have no idea when I'd be able to get a natural light shot. Thus the indoor pics.)

I also finished trimming and pinning up the third hem of my friend's wedding dress today, which will be a hand-sewing job, in preparation for busy work during tonight's episode of Project Runway. 

I also realized that today is 7 years since I wrote my first post on here. Crazy, right? 

in the spotlight

It was definitely a surprise to me to hop on Feedly this morning while practicing some scales (I know, bad musician), and see my own wedding dress pop up! Jessica from Needle & Cloth kindly decided to feature me in her Daily Spotlight series that she just started-- we've virtually gotten to know each other a bit over the last several months, as she's also in the process of making her own wedding dress. And I'm quite honored to be featured there, as my little blog is one that generally keeps to itself!

An update about yesterday's sewing machine fiasco: Should the worst case scenario happen and my trusty Bernadette (aka Bernina 1280) has to go off to that great sewing machine repair shop in the sky, my mom has kindly offered to let me keep the machine that she's lent me for dress-finishing purposes. So I won't be machineless. Which is good, because I've gotten all spoiled on nice machines and my eyes may have been popping out of my head a little to look online and see what it would cost to get even the most basic of my brand new! I'm planning to take Bernadette to the shop on Friday and see if I can get an idea of if she's fixable/if it's too expensive to bother. I did some price comparisons to see what it would cost to get the same model machine on eBay so I have a better idea.

Pictureless update

Just a quick update post:

I finished the last of the 23 lace appliques today!

I also put it on Donna, and it looks like I don't have to tweak the hem. Whew.

Now, I'm one hook and eye away from finishing the outside of the dress entirely. Next step: Figuring out how to do a waist stay and tulle petticoat, while still leaving room to attach the lining to the waist stay, because I also figure that can substitute for the waistband piece on the inside and therefore add one less layer.

Also, it's a good thing I wasn't planning on sewing last night, because all of the brouhaha about Google Reader shutting down was very distracting. Thankfully, the Twitter sewcialists were quick to point out options for those of us who used it for our blog reading. (Of course, this does make me wonder if Blogger will be on the chopping block at some point too...)

Edit: I've started using Feedly and like it so far, but for those of you who use Bloglovin', here's how you can follow me on there:

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

puzzle solving

After the great lace disaster of last week, I've managed to get to the point where the front is basically done, and am now applying lace to the back! Which, surprisingly, has turned out to be more complicated than princess seams. Between trying to somewhat match up the motifs that are going over the seamlines and trying to keep it flat and intact over the organza part--I'd like to avoid having to stitch that down so it looks nice on the inside--trying to do this one side of the back has become like trying to solve this complicated puzzle where I'm carefully trimming around bits of sunflowers and overlapping other bits to try and make a fabric that still looks nice but stays flat. All this while trimming and stitching as I go. I tried putting the bodice on Donna and trimming out a piece of lace to put on this piece yesterday, and it didn't work, so I had to resort to basically having the entire piece of lace hanging off of this thing at some point and stitching as I go. I had to make some overlap, but I did have a couple of flowers touching on the front as I tried to work around the princess seams, so it will have to do. There's not many other options for a lace with a lot of netting in between flowers. Most people probably won't be looking that closely, right?

At least those other cut pieces won't entirely go to waste, as I can recycle the sunflowers as skirt embellishments. I'm having my leg model here so they really pop! There's about 6 fully trimmed out so far, and others in various stages of cutting netting away. I've been working a little of this in between things so I can break up the mountain of hand-sewing on occasion.

The other major thing I've gotten done this week was sewing twill tape around the top of the bodice to help shape and stabilize the neckline, and turning and stitching those pieces down. It took some re-reading of Bridal Couture and a shoutout for some clarification on Twitter to figure out exactly how best to go about it, but I think the results turned out well. I grabbed this pic on my phone in-progress...










And here's the result! It did make a rather nicely-shaped neckline, I think--maybe a little pointier than I would have wanted on the right side, but we'll see if I redo it. I did do this part with some negative ease, so it should help the thing curve in and fit me better, too.






In continuing the tradition of showing the guts of the dress, here's what it looks like inside, with the photo seriously filtered to really let it show. For some reason, this side was way more ripply than the other side, and I may end up re-doing this particular section to attempt to get it to lie flatter. (I think this is the pointier side, come to think of it...maybe that explains it.)

One last order of business before I get back to work-- I was recently given the Premio award by the lovely Hana. It's to thank the last 9 people who have commented here, and I'm all in favor of more commenting (and have been making an effort to leave comments more often myself this year!) So I'd like to send a shoutout to Hana (still the most recent commenter!), Donna, Murieann, Helen T, Gwen, soisewedthis, Allison, Christina, and Carolyn.

I apologize to those of you whose blogs I didn't link-- I discovered as I was doing this that apparently Disqus won't link me to the blog for the commenter like the default settings do. I also learned from Hana that apparently the comments don't work on Internet Explorer! Has this been an issue for anyone else? Would it be better if I try to undo the Disqus and just go back to the default commenting?