Muslins, muslins everywhere...

...and not a finished garment to show for it! Yet.

I cut out muslins for 3 different things in my mini-wardrobe on Saturday-- the jeans 2.0, my pair of shorts, and the bodice for the maxi-dress I wanted to make. (And since I had to find a knit for the dress, that means I'm using up another piece of stash! Ha!) Spent some more time on Saturday sewing the dress "muslin", and worked on tweaking it again this morning-- no band today, so I had a couple hours to sew!

And, well, I'm not sure this dress is going to be happening as originally planned. I'd already raised the neckline a bit, and the front part of the bodice fits really, really well. The midriff part had to be taken in about an inch and a half on each side (which I did after taking these pics), but I'd expected that.

Also expected was that I'd have a bit of trouble with the back, due to the elastic. (And, I'm pretty sure, reading some Pattern Review articles on it.)
I just wasn't expecting this much trouble...good thing I'm wearing the camisole here, because the back is definitely sagging below my bra! And this is with a mere 3 inches or so of fabric sewn to the bottom. I shudder to think of what an entire maxi-dress skirt would do. After these photos, I lopped off about an inch of the elastic (minus seams) and several inches off the back side pieces. Still was sagging. I'm really doubtful that I can modify this enough to support an entire maxi-dress skirt, even with building in a bra. So I'm thinking what I may end up doing instead is to use what's left of the knit and the stuff I got to make the built-in bra to just turn this into a halter top. Would be good for July 4th, if it doesn't clash with my hair too much. And then for the dress, go with a slightly more bra-friendly pattern from my stash. (I'm thinking the bottom right-hand corner with the big print view. At any rate, will make it a faster sewing job, which I kind of need right now. And though I usually don't pay much attention to it, I think the maxi-dress trend is supposed to have passed.)

No pictures of it, but I did sew the jeans muslin 2.0 together. Took some tweaking, probably due to my slightly oddball pattern drafting (masking tape on newsprint), but I'm glad I allowed 1" seams. Taking those down to 5/8" made it fit just about perfectly. The yoke is still a bit off and gapping in the back (and on the sides a bit), but it's close enough that I think I may just cut it like this and then tweak it in the actual denim so I can make it work with any additional thickness.

Also done over the weekend: Using some scraps from that muslin to finish the first section of my much-needed jewelry organizer. I've got 18 necklaces in it so far (9 per side), and it looks like it's going to work pretty well. I'll try to get pics soon.

Also also done over the weekend: I spent Friday afternoon playing with my bamboo scraps and dummy to see what I could come up with for that top. So this is what I currently have pinned to my dummy. The straps are just twisted up scraps that I pinned on to determine what sort of straps-- they won't stay that rough.

Honestly, at this point, I'm kind of torn. I like the concept of it. But there's that tiny nagging part of my brain that wonders if wearing something that looked like this out in public would give off too much of a Tinkerbell vibe?

I guess it would also partially depend on if it would actually fit. There would be a zipper involved, but it would be hard to bring that past the waist at all with this skirt action going on...makes me wonder if I'd even be able to get it on!

So, it stays pinned to my dummy while I ponder all of this.

So I have absolutely nothing that I have to do on Sunday, other than go to church. My evening Bible study and flute orchestra rehearsals are both cancelled due to the holiday weekend. So my plan is to try and get the actual denim for the jeans cut out on Friday or Saturday (we'll see, since I have plans for both evenings!) I'm hoping that my mom will let me borrow one of her extra machines (yes, she has more than one), and that I can find a place to set those up along with my serger so that I can just go assembly-line style--I forget whose blog I read it on (sorry!) but I remember reading something about someone who made a pair of jeans and used two machines so she could just keep the topstitching thread in one and the actual sewing thread in another and not have to keep stopping to rethread the machine. Which is pretty brilliant, I think. If I can do that, and if the fly zipper doesn't give me too much trouble, in theory, I might be able to get these jeans done by the unofficial start of summer!

Happy sewing day!!

After all of the business going on with me lately, it was so nice to just have a day to do nothing but sewing-related things! (Ok, sewing and laundry-related things. But technically, I sewed some of the things in said laundry, so it counts, right?)

So after taking a look at the denim that I have for the actual jeans, I realized that the flowery denim I've been making the muslin out of is probably too heavy to get an actual idea. So I'm going to make a new muslin out of actual muslin (and then once it's all figured out, transfer it to the flowery denim to use it for the pattern so I don't waste the fabric! Since I can use the muslin for other things.) But I didn't have enough muslin on hand. So what I ended up doing today was making the skirt for my mini-wardrobe in almost its entirety (since it's bias-cut, I have to let it hang before I can do the hem). Then I ran out to JoAnn's with my mom so I could get some muslin, the ribbon for the drawstring, and some trim for another mini-wardrobe component--she needed some stuff there too. (And I ran into my high school flute teacher and her daughter while we were there, which was a pleasant surprise!)

Finished as much of the sewing on the skirt as I could do-- no pics until it's hemmed. And then I started working on this-- I had some rather large pieces of the bamboo fabric left, since the skirt was only four pieces and cut on the bias. So I'm trying my hand at using the leftovers to do some draped designing. This is what I have so far for the front, pinned on the dummy-- I'm hoping to add some lacing to the front center to give it a bit of a corset look. I'm giving it a rest for the night while I think about the dart placement-- I'm leaning towards the bust dart (left) rather than the full-front dart (bottom) because it seems to be laying on the side better.
I'm also hoping to take advantage of the bias-cut lines from the skirt and make the bottom more assymetric--when I had a bunch of it pinned onto the dummy, it looked cool. But we'll see how it is after I get it more pieced together. And this is not going to be strapless-- I'm wanting this to be a more casual top, so there will be straps added! Anyway, I'm hoping I can get it worked out so it looks good, because I like the idea that I can possibly use almost the entire piece of fabric!

Easter outfit!

So I've been having this wardrobe problem lately: I'm craving bright, springy colors, and my wardrobe isn't cooperating. Or, I should say, the weather isn't cooperating. We're having a rather cold spring-- and I'm not just saying that, I was looking at the weather.com page yesterday at work, and the high temperature was easily 20 degrees below the average for this month around here! Which, being a warm-weather loving girl who hates being cold and gets into such a state ridiculously easily, means I'm still stuck wearing my winter clothes. I haven't even been able to manage 3/4 sleeves too often yet! Sigh.

Anyway, since Easter is on Sunday and I had nothing to wear that fits my two requirements (warm enough that I won't get frostbite in my perpetually cold church building, but still something cheerful and springy), a refashion was definitely in order. (And perfect timing, too, since bathroom renovations in the house means that the pool table I usually cut out on is covered in stuff related to that, and I can't cut patterns!) So I took this hand-me-down that my mom made/passed on to me when she decided it was too frumpy and dresses aren't her thing anymore anyway....
(Yes, this was a two-layer dress!)

...and turned it into this, which I finished on Tuesday.
I borrowed the bodice (with a modified neckline) from Simplicity 7072, since I'd made it before and knew the fit. The skirt was actually the part that came first-- I cut the bottom off of the original overdress and draped it into a somewhat pleated skirt on the dummy. The original underdress on this one shows up as the band around the waist:

(Yeah, I know, it doesn't look like the fit on the waist is too great here.)

And this is that zipper I had that big fight with! Take that!

So what happened to the rest of that underdress, you may ask? Well, I turned it into a shrug...which isn't actually finished because it was kind of a fail with this dress. I made a shorter one because I didn't think I'd have enough fabric to make the shrug both longer and with longer sleeves. (I didn't.) But the empire-waist shrug with the regular-waist dress just isn't doing it for me. I may go back and finish this at some point....if I can figure out what else could possibly be worn with it!

So, since sleeveless dresses in cooler spring weather and an overly air-conditioned church still isn't a good idea for me, I spent the last two days turning this....

(white knit top banished to the refashion pile because it was just too short and a bit too see-through for my comfort)

into this.

(As modeled by my lovely dress form with the dress.)

It would have been such a simple fix--all I did was cut it down the middle, trim off the neckline, turn it under and stitch. Ok, so it was still a simple fix. It just took me longer because I decided to hand-sew the facing down. It's a very stretchy knit, and I figured the machine would probably just make it all stretched-out and ripply. Not to mention I pretty much had to stitch it right on the edge of the turned-under part, and thought hand-sewing would give me more control. So it's not perfect-- there's definitely some crooked stitches here and there. But at least it's not all stretched out. And the hand-sewing wasn't bad, actually-- it was kind of relaxing, surprisingly. I was originally going to add buttons and buttonholes too, but taking 2-3 inches out of the middle means it would just look like I was wearing a size smaller than I'm supposed to if I actually did button it. So I think I'm going to leave it.

So there you have it-- my almost completely recycled Easter outfit. The only thing I had to actually buy for this one was the lining-- the dress fabric would not have been good without it, a bit too see-through!

Shirts, Soup and Students

I just wanted to give a shoutout to my flute students-- as I was reminded today, they're such a wonderfully creative group of kids! And not just with music...
This isn't actually from today-- it was part of a Christmas gift that one of my long-time students gave me this past year. I'm not sure if she or her mom did this one, because they're both kind of crafty, but I love this thing. It's basically just a little cardstock sleeve for a pack of post-its, held closed by a little teeny piece of velcro. I love the play on words with the music stamp, of course. And I'm trying to protect it in my bag as much as possible, because I seriously want to keep using this thing once the post-its are gone!


This is what made me think to blog about them-- I teach once a week after school at a private school in the area, and they've been on spring break for the last two weeks. One of my girls went to Flordia over her break, and she came in today and announced she had a present for me. So I opened it up to find this-- a handmade necklace of a seashell on braided embroidery floss. She immediately said I didn't have to keep it as a necklace if I just wanted the shell, but as I told her, I love seashell necklaces so this is perfect. (Tried it on and it's a good length, too, so I'm definitely keeping this as is!)

I figured while I'm at it, I'll also share one of my favorite soup recipes. I love this because it's easy and rich and has a bunch of vegetables in a way that I don't mind eating them (I do try to eat healthy, but seriously lack a natural inclination to eat veggies!) I adapted this from a recipe in a make-ahead-and-freeze cookbook that my mom brought home for me once (I'm chronically in need of things I can just make and stick in the freezer for when I get home from teaching and I'm starving and/or have limited time to eat before teaching again.) So without further ado...

Beef Barley Vegetable Soup
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 1/2 lb beef stew meat, cut into bite-sized cubes (and I cut off as much fat as I can too)
1 bell pepper, chopped (I like the red ones, but you can do whatever color you like best)
1 c. carrots, chopped (or you could probably use the pre-chopped frozen ones)
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 bay leaf
4 beef boullion cubes (I actually use this beef boullion paste stuff in a jar instead-- sooooo much better than the powder stuff!)
1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes in juice
2/3 c. uncooked barley
1 c. frozen green beans
1 c. frozen corn

In a medium soup pot, heat oil. Brown the beef stew meat over high heat and remove with a slotted spoon. Turn heat down to medium, then saute the bell peppers and carrots in the soup pot just until tender. Return meat to soup pot. Add 5 1/2 c. water, thyme, bay leaf and beef boullion; simmer for 45 minutes to an hour. Add tomatoes (with juice), barley, green beans and corn, then simmer for another 25 minutes. Remove bay leaf.

The original recipe called for chopped onion too, but I'm not a fan of onion so I replaced that with the carrots. You could add them though, just saute them with the pepper. I also cut back on the original amount of tomatoes and had to add more water than it called for. Seriously, you could probably add whatever veggies you want. It's a very thick, hearty soup, and freezes great, and is perfect for a quick meal (once it defrosts) on a yucky, cold, wet day like this that makes me think that weather that's warm enough to allow me to wear my recent sewing projects is never going to get here!

Speaking of sewing, I started sewing on my adaptation of BurdaStyle's Azalea dress yesterday afternoon. I'm making mine as a tunic top, so I eliminated the underdress (the drapey top stuff is thick enough to not be see-through, and if I'm going to be wearing this as a summer top I don't want an extra layer that close to my skin! Not with Mid-Atlantic humidity!) and shortened it a good bit. It's been a pretty easy sew so far-- the thing that took me the longest was the zipper, and that's because I'm trying a new technique to do lapped zippers instead of a center one in the side seam. (Not definite yet, but there's a chance I might be teaching a friend's daughter how to sew with patterns-- the mom can sew, and the girl has her own machine and can make simple things like quilts and pillows, but she really wants to learn how to make clothes. So my friend said she doesn't know how to use patterns very well, and I offered to help out. If that's the case, I want to see if this type of zipper is easier than the centered ones, because I remember when I was a kid, zippers were the most frustrating thing to sew ever. Sometimes they still are. And the lapped ones look nicer anyway. Not that I'm going to let her start with zippers, mind you, but you know it's only a matter of time before she wants something that involves one.)

Anyway, I'm nearly done with the tunic already-- still have to finish the yoke (ran out of time and bobbin thread around the same time) and then hem it. And then I have to make a belt, because it looks like a serious maternity top without it. I saw one in Threads that looked interesting-- a bias-cut tied one that hugs curves very well, which might be perfect to cinch it. But I need to see how much fabric I have to deal with, because I decided that I wanted to make a shrug out of the yoke/belt fabric as well (since I'm an ice queen and get ridiculously cold in over-air conditioned spaces. Which, around here, is pretty much any building that's not my house. Plus then I can wear it sooner, because that will make it good for spring as well.) I don't have a pattern for the shrug-- my plan for now is to stick the Azalea on my dummy and drape something with kimono-like sleeves and see if I like it. And if I don't, it's off to dig through the pattern stash.

But first, off to actually sew!

Edit, 9:57 PM: Oh, this could be bad. I sewed the wrong straps together, so the armholes are in the front and back instead of the sides. And I did some major trimming/corner chopping. Oh, I hope this is fixable without redoing the entire yoke....