So what's next?

Now that the One Dress To Rule Them All is finished (yay!) and awaiting the big reveal in June, and it turns out I do have a little bit of time left before the wedding, it's time to figure out what to do with whatever sewing time I have left between now and then! Well, I've been thinking about this quite a bit, especially recently as I've been back at my retail job and have had more mental time to kill. I'm trying not to be overly ambitious because, you know, 2 months to W-day and that might take up some time. But here's what I'm thinking...

• Doug's tie, of course. Which will be much easier and quicker to finish, because I can totally sew that while he's around.
• Honeymoon clothes! I've been plotting my wardrobe for that out in my head, and I'm sure that will get a post at some point. But I do have a few holes that need filling. Particularly, I'd like to make one or two pairs of shorts, and for the sake of time, I'm going to do a total cheater refashion and cut off/hem a couple of pairs of jeans. They're thrifted jeans that I've pretty much only been wearing to the garden shop--one is a little too short for my legs anyway, and the other was a victim of the dryer ink disaster last fall. The obvious damage looks like it's mostly lower down on the leg than I would need anyway. I do need to cut them long enough that I can also wear them to work in the summer, which means no shorter than mid-thigh, but I think I'd be more comfortable with that length anyway. And both of these pairs fit pretty decently at my waist, so it should do. I still totally want to test out my Thurlows on another pair of shorts, but that can wait until after the wedding.
• Also for the honeymoon, I'd love to do a trial run of the Tiramisu dress! I don't have too much in the stash that would have the necessary yardage, but I do have some plain navy blue jersey bedsheets that I inherited when my brother got married. They're too big for my bed, so I've been hoarding them for the last few years purely for muslin purposes, and navy blue should fit wonderfully into the color scheme that's shaping up in my head. I'd also like to knock out a quick tank top as a palate-cleanser, and I have a potential idea for a layering piece. Because you know I will be the one who will get cold on a tropical island!
• One little secret I've been keeping--I did buy three patterns off of Etsy around Christmas, for some lingerie. (Which is strange for me to type, knowing that my mom might be reading this...) But if I have time, I'd like to test out at least one of them. (My fiance would probably say that I should make this first priority, but I don't know how badly my friends will try to embarrass me what I'm getting for the bridal shower yet. I'll find out on Saturday.)

There, that doesn't seem terribly unreasonable, does it? I have a few things lined up in my head for after the wedding as well, including a whole lot of Thurlow work so I can try to have some actual pants that fit before the fall rolls around, and a couple of self-challenges that I'm setting for myself. One will be an ongoing project, one will have a deadline, but more on that later. The one thing I will reveal is that I'd asked Gillian for a sewing dare that actually involved, you know, sewing.   The dare she gave me:

@sew_and_so OK, #sewingdare: Treat yourself to a cute new pattern and lovely fabric to make it! You deserve a treat!
— Gillian(@GillianCrafts) March 26, 2013

I polled the quite biased sewcialists on Twitter, and the consensus was that rewarding oneself for accomplishing a huge and very time-consuming couture sewing project trumped stashbusting pledges. (But I promise that this will be my only cheat, since technically, the lime green silk was bought with the wedding in mind, and therefore falls under the parameters that I'd set!)

I'd considered buying something for the Pavlova, since I did already treat myself to this new pattern, I'm just not sure I have things in the stash to make both pieces.  I'd also thought that I could use it as part of the honeymoon wardrobe. But hours of scouring my favorite fabric websites turned up nothing that's jumping out at me for it at this point. And, as Gillian put it in a later tweet, "go big or go home. right?"

So, for my sewing dare, I treated myself to the Darling Ranges dress by Megan Nielsen, and some fabric from Gorgeous Fabrics. I haven't tried a Megan Nielsen pattern yet, but I've heard good things about them. It was a tough call between this one and the Reglisse dress from Deer & Doe, because that one is just too cute and it reminds me of something that Jane Bennet would have worn in the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. But in the end, the Darling Ranges won out, because...

1. I've been wanting a more autumn-friendly dress for awhile now--most of my dresses have no sleeves and are in summery colors.
2. I have two weddings to attend this fall, and will need something to wear. I'm a bridesmaid in one of them, so that's covered, but I still will probably need something cute to wear for rehearsal dinners and such, right?
3. Even though it's a longer-sleeved dress, it doesn't look frumpy. Those are hard to find. 
4. As it turns out, it's a good thing the Darling Ranges won out, because apparently I just won the Reglisse pattern from a giveaway at Paunnet! Thanks, Anna! 

But.... I'm sorry to say that I think I've failed this dare.  I bought this fabric for it:

I tried to be smart about the fabric choice, and choose a print that--guess what--already went with a bunch of things in my wardrobe! So I was thinking that I could layer this with my  brown jacket, or my brown hoodie cardigan sweater, or the thrifted tan jacket that I picked up recently,  or throw a coordinating knit top over it and wear it as a skirt, and so on. (My other choice was this adorable dragonfly print, but I realized that would require a lot more effort to work as a layering piece. I also managed to resist the temptation to further break the pledge and buy both pieces.) Also, as far as fabric choice goes, I do have a serious weakness for paisley!

But--and I am not blaming Gorgeous Fabrics for this, because I know the problem had to be my color perception--now that I'm seeing the fabric in person, I'm not so convinced that this is a good match for this pattern. The blue looked way more teal instead of this colonial blue, and the fabric looked brighter in general on my computer monitor. If I were to be perfectly honest, if I saw what I got in a brick-and-mortar store, I wouldn't have bought it. And my gut tells me that if I make this dress out of this fabric, I'm going to think it looks totally granny (and not in the chic way) and I'm going to hate it. So that leaves me with two questions--what can I do with 3 yards of dull-colored paisley fabric, and do I have anything in my stash that I can actually use to make this pattern? A serious question, given that most, if not all, of my fabrics are more separates-length yardages...

Maybe this would work better as the Reglisse. What do you think?

Post-wedding dress wish list(s)

The other sewing dare I received from Gillian was to make a list of things I'd like to sew after the dress. As it turns out, I have a bunch of different pieces of fabric bagged up with patterns and ready to cut and sew....and absolutely none of those are things I want to make right away! (I'll get to them sometime. Really.)

I actually have two entirely separate lists, because there's things I'd like to make for the honeymoon if I have time before the wedding, and a different set of priorities I need to think about if I don't. So here's the lists!

If I have a couple of months after the dress:
I am going to need some new things for the honeymoon/summer, I think. I don't think I can realistically expect that I'll be able to sew everything. But ideally, I would at least like to sew something new for it. (Is it weird that the thought of retail shopping feels like such a drag now? Hopefully I can at least thrift a few things, because that's more fun!) I've been plotting out possibilities in my head from my current wardrobe, and I think I can put together a decent travel wardrobe for a Caribbean getaway, but here's a few additions I'd love to have:

• After such a time-consuming, fitting-intensive, couture EVERYTHING project, I think I'm really going to need a palate-cleanser. Since I already have the fit tweaked and I know it's a quick one, I'm thinking another Renfrew will be just the ticket. I'm thinking the short-sleeved, scoop-neck version, so I don't have to mess with altering the v-neck front just yet. The only catch--I'd want to make this something I could wear for the honeymoon, and would you believe that I don't think I actually have any knits that would work for that purpose? They're all either cool rayon prints that have way too much yardage for me to "waste" on a top that will only use about half of it at the most, or the cotton/poly blend solids that I picked up at Joann's. Which I think would be too hot for summer in the tropics, you know? If I'm going to stick to my stashbusting pledge, I need to think of a way around this.
• I have about a yard of denim leftover from the jeans, and since I am desperately in need of shorts that fit--most of mine are WAY too big around my waist because it was the only way I could find any that fit my hips at the time--a wearable muslin of the Thurlow shorts would be great. The fabric is wide enough that I think I could just manage to squeeze them out. To save fabric/speed up the process/make sure it fits first, I'd probably leave the welt pockets off, and then just go jeans-style with patch pockets if I had enough fabric left.
• Another wish-list item would be a wearable muslin of the Tiramisu dress. I have quite a bit of navy jersey, from bedsheets of all things. (When my brother got married, he gave me the now-too-small jersey sheets that he'd been using so I could use them for fabric purposes.) I think a basic navy dress could be great for things like the "resort formal" dress code at some of the ritzier restaurants at the resort we're going to.
• I may actually do some sleepwear/lingerie. (Gasp! At my fiance's request, of course.) I do actually need some summer sleepwear, since I had about 2 things I rotated between all last summer and just never had the time to make anything else. And I do have a few patterns I've collected recently to make some appropriate things.

If I don't have much time before the wedding...
Then I'll probably have to just suck it up and take a break from sewing. (Nooo!) And then keep a knitting project around so I don't go crazy from complete lack of craftiness. But there's definitely a few things I'd like to do once I get settled in after all of this:

• I need to make some curtains for his townhouse. I've figured out that I can recycle my bedroom curtains for the office, because the beachy stripes are masculine enough for his taste and the color just happens to go very well with the walls in there. But I also need to make a new curtain for the sliding glass door, one for the kitchen window, one for my sewing room and two sets of curtains for the bedroom. The bedroom would be the highest priority, since I need the light blockage. I do have fabric for all of these, and I'll probably keep them very simple in style, because fancy-schmancy draperies aren't really my thing. Also, rectangles are faster to sew, and that means I'll be able to get back to clothes sooner!
• Pants, pants, and more pants. I easily have materials for about 5 or 6 Thurlows, and once I get the fit figured out, I think I'm just going to assembly-line sew all of them at once. I'm so sick of wearing pants that are too short for me, and I rarely am able to find RTW pants that fit me well enough to justify buying them. Since she specifically designed the pattern for the larger hips/smaller waist types, I'm hopeful that this is going to be THE pants pattern I've been looking for! Also, more jeans, because I've been wearing my one me-made pair pretty much every time it's clean, and therefore I need more.
• A knit dress for the fall would be good. Perhaps the Tira if I can figure out how to lengthen the sleeves, or perhaps revisiting Butterick 5206. I do have a couple of fabrics in the stash that I think could be good options. If I can figure out how to get around the fact that both prints are fairly thin knits with white backgrounds, and therefore I may have to be concerned with opacity. (Has anyone had luck with lining knits?)
• Yeah, I'll probably still end up doing that sleepwear/lingerie at some point. He's been asking so nicely.

sewing lace and sewing dares

For those of you who are following this, here's what I've spent the last four days doing. That is, if you count me being about this far before, and then having to rip off all of the lace and start over. On a side note, while I've been trying to avoid that bubble in the chest area around the princess seam, I'm hoping it'll lay better on me. Admittedly, I do fill out the top better than Donna.

I'm working on the first of the two side front pieces currently, and it's somewhat of a beast. I've been having to do some very careful trimming and overlapping and tugging and lots of little tiny hand stitches to keep fragile edges from unraveling. As you can see at the top, I did have to overlap the sunflowers a bit in that one spot, and I'm having to patch together a leafy bit in the middle there. I'm hoping that since I won't have that extreme curve to deal with in the back, it'll come together a little easier there. But I did have an easier time with it the second time around--the first time, one of those sunflowers landed right at the curviest part of the princess seam, and that was being awful to sew around! (Not to mention visually just BAD.) So obviously, this is what I'll be working on again for the next several days at least--I do want to make sure that I get both side fronts done before I do the back. Also, I need to do some seam work before I can lace-ify the back, since I do have that organza/dupioni seam in the middle to deal with. I recently got a few supplies from A Fashionable Stitch, including some narrow twill tape to help give me a good stable edge there (based on the Bridal Couture book instructions. So I might get a machine sewing break, maybe?

In other news, I'm sure many of you have seen the "Sewing Dares" thread over at Crafting a Rainbow. It looked fun, so I sort of dared Gilian to come up with a sewing dare that didn't actually involve a new sewing project. Because, you know, this dress thing. So she, in turn, dared me to start a Twitter account! (And a secondary post topic dare, which I'll do later after I can collect my thoughts.) So you can now also find me on there as @sew_and_so. So far, the bloggers over there have been super-welcoming. And if you're on Twitter, let me know so I can start following you! I'm still getting the hang of it, so bear with me.