New York, New York!

I feel like I have so much catching up to do right now! I finished two more Thurlows late last week, and still need to take pictures of those. There's the latest Wardrobe Architect study. And then, over this past weekend, my husband and I went to New York City! His birthday was yesterday and mine is later this month, so we thought a little getaway would be a fun way to celebrate.

Our hotel, as it turns out, was in the Fashion District, since we arrived via Penn Station and that was very close by. So that means our hotel featured things like this artwork made entirely from spools of thread! There was also some kind of sewing workroom directly across the street (though several floors down), which I could peek into every so often and see what they were working on. That was pretty neat.


We did do a lot of the typical touristy things, like Times Square and stopping into the Empire State Building. We went to the NY Public Library and the American Museum of Natural History (the one from the first "Night at the Museum" movie), and spent some time in a big NHL store, because he's a big hockey fan. But what you probably care about the most is that he let me go to Mood!


He even held my coat for me while I was shopping. He's the best. Though I think he was a little overwhelmed--he's seen it on TV while I've been watching Project Runway, but I don't think he quite expected it to be quite so jam-packed with fabric!

We didn't see Tim Gunn, for the record. Or Swatch. But I did see a bag of his dog food on a shelf by the register.

I know this picture is a little blurry, but I'm posting it anyway because it makes me laugh. ALL THE FABRIC WILL BE MINE!!! Precioussssss fabric.... Ahem.












So what did I end up with, you ask?

I made up a careful game plan before I left home--while I did build a travel allowance into my Stash Diet pledge, I wanted to be responsible, so what I decided to focus on looking for was 3 yards of some colorful lining for the winter coat I already have outer fabric for, and some notions for a Cooper bag, which I also already have fabric for, and can't get anything locally.

Aaaaaaaand I didn't buy a single thing from that list. They didn't have the bag notions, and the only lining type stuff I could find was all solid colors--everything else was too sheer and would likely get shredded quickly. So I'll just get some polyester silky print at Joann's sometime instead.
This is what I actually bought. There's 3 yards of each piece. The top one is an embroidered cotton that was in with the eyelets, black on either ivory or light tan. (I haven't seen it in the sunlight yet, and it's looked different depending on the lighting.) The bottom one is a lovely soft knit, I think maybe an ITY. I probably should have looked more closely at fiber contents, but I was too busy looking for prices, to be honest! (It was $14 per yard for both pieces, which is a little higher than I usually pay, but how often do I get to go fabric shopping in a fabric district?)

I already have a loose game plan for both pieces, too! For the embroidered fabric, I'm thinking a fairly casual jacket that I can throw on over either t-shirts or dresses, probably with some kind of contrast (read: black) collar and possibly cuffs, if it's 3/4 sleeves. (Which I'm strongly considering, since the fabric seems more suited to warmer weather layering anyway.) As for the knit, definitely some kind of dress, though I'm not sure what sleeve length to do, if I make it with sleeves at all. I just need to figure out what patterns to use!

Stash confessional: Cyber Monday edition

Actually, I think I showed very good restraint! I'm trying to be sensible as I'm considering purchases for next year's projects (since there's absolutely no way I'll get to any of these things this year!), and do a little wardrobe planning. I've been eyeing a few things on Fabric.com in particular, and have been checking quite often over this past weekend in hopes that some of these things would go on sale. I didn't have any luck on Black Friday, but I did have a couple things on my list go on sale for today. For the others, I'm still in the waiting game of holding out for sales vs. jumping on it when quantities get dangerously low.

So here's the latest acquisitions:

Black organic cotton knit. I bought 2 yards to make the long, non-pieced version of McCall's 6559. I'd figured a black maxi-dress would be a good basic for my wardrobe, since I can even wear that for summer performances. And I'm also planning ahead for a travel wardrobe for a trip that my husband and I are hoping to take next year, and this would also fit nicely into that! (I know it looks a lot like the Mission Maxi, and I'm usually quite happy to support the independent designers, but this pattern was on sale for something like $.70 when Joann's was celebrating it's 70th anniversary.)



2 yards of black Bemberg lining. Because when Bemberg is on sale, you jump on it. I strongly debated between 2 and 3 yards, but since I don't have a specific plan for this yet, I decided to be conservative.








1 1/2 yards of this cute floral cotton print. It was on clearance, and I bought this to make bias tape for the Sewaholic Robson coat. My lightweight long denim jacket is starting to look quite battered, which is no surprise since I think it predates this blog. So this one is definitely on the radar for next year's sewing. I have my main fabric picked out, but that one wasn't on sale, so I'll say more about that in a minute.





My splurge item was this stretch teal denim, which I'm planning on making into jeans. I know I've said before that I thought I preferred non-stretch denim for making jeans, since it will hold its shape better. But I think I'd like to try a pair of two in stretch denim for ease of wearing, now that I have my pattern more or less figured out. I haven't done colored jeans since I was in high school and the dress code said that any color but regular blue denim was ok. But teal is a color I wear a lot. And Heather totally enabled me to go for it on Twitter, so that makes it ok, right? I got 2 1/2 yards, and it's wide enough that I think it will be plenty.



Still on my watch list:

More black jersey! This one is a rayon/spandex blend, and I'm eyeing it for two of the more recent Cake patterns. Specifically half of a Red Velvet (to pair with something already in my stash), and the Espresso leggings, assuming I can get that pattern to work for me. (I do have a stash fabric to test it with, but black is always useful. Also, the black leggings I desperately bought at Kohl's to wear under my work jeans when I was on outside register don't like to stay over some of my curvier bits. Ahem.)




The aforementioned main fabric for that Robson coat. This one is a non-stretch cotton twill. Have I mentioned my love for teal lately? Plus this one also fits into my potential travel wardrobe quite nicely.







This is the one I'm most looking for a price drop on, because it's coat fabric that has absolutely no wool in it! It's listed as a "very heavyweight" 100% polyester. I'll still need to underline it with something for warmth, I think, but I like the look of it. Especially since it's plaid-like, but not so much that I have to go through all the hassle of actually matching things. It's also nearly $17 a yard, which puts it right up there with the most expensive of my wedding dress fabrics! I only need 3 yards, since I'm just going to use the same peacoat pattern that I used for my current winter coat, but I still wouldn't mind a lower price, since I'm still going to have to buy underlining and lining. (I'm looking at Thinsulate, and that seems to average about $7/yard.)

Annoyingly, I could get that fabric on sale now, if I wanted royal blue or red. But I'd prefer to stick with the black, since that will go with all of my scarves already! After all, I'm even slower at knitting than I am at sewing!

Speaking of lining, I'm tentatively eyeing this. But I'm not 100% sold on it. I just want some color inside. But if it doesn't go on sale, I can always get some poly charmeuse with a coupon at Joann's or something.

Look at me, being all coordinated! You'd think I'd been reading Gillian's blog or something.

Thrift store scores

....mostly, anyway. I do have one purchased piece at the end that I need some styling help with, so stay tuned!

Other than sewing, the main way that I've gotten clothes into my wardrobe ever since I was a teenager has been thrift shopping. I got away from that a bit after I stopped doing the Wardrobe Refashion pledges (mainly because I desperately needed pants for work, and that's the one thing I've never had much luck with buying used--or new, for that matter--stupid pants. One of these days I will conquer fitting you!) But I've been getting back into it lately, mainly because I have a friend that I go with pretty much every time we hang out. I like it because you can find some really unique stuff, and it's usually a lot less expensive! So I just wanted to share some of the things I've found over the last couple of months.

These are some of my favorite finds this year. From the top: a long zipped-up vest thing (not quite long enough for even a mini-dress, but it'll be great for one of the concerts I'm going to later this summer!), a printed wrap top, an Asian print cross-over top, a striped blouse, and a mock-wrap top. Figures that most of them are crazy prints-- I just can't seem to stay away from them!

I often see fun details on them that I want to try and pull into my sewing, too. Like the pleats on the sleeve of the wrap top. Or this gathering detail on the green top--it's hard to see because of the print, but that was what drove me to buy it after I tried it on (the print was what grabbed me, of course!) The black and white pinstriped blouse is a kind of sedate print for me, but I loved the closure detail--it's a bunch of hooks and eyes rather than a button or zipper. (Which pretty much demands I wear a cami underneath in case of wardrobe malfunction, but I'll be warmer in the fall and winter that way anyway!)

Now for the styling help:

I can't really say this was an impulse buy for me-- I literally debated it for weeks, watched it go out of stock and come back in a couple of times, before finally getting the Thekkady vest from ModCloth. After going through my little style project, I decided it might be fun to try and pull vests into my wardrobe again, and this one was pretty cute. The only problem is, now that I own it, I realized that I have absolutely no idea what to wear with it! I don't have a lot of solid-colored tops, and many of the ones I have are V-necks or have other detailing that would make it difficult to wear with this. Not sure what, if anything, would work with it in the way of prints or dresses, either. So in order to actually make this work in my wardrobe and justify my purchase, I need to figure out what to wear with it (or what to sew to wear with it)! So any suggestions are welcome!

And with that, I'll now return you to your regularly scheduled crafty-related posts...after I write another one, of course!

Shakespeare on the Green

That's what I've decided to call this top, anyway--getting inspiration from Anthropologie (and now ModCloth as well) always makes me want to give my garments cute names!

Anyway, it's finished as of about five minutes ago--I almost had it hemmed on Friday night, and then discovered that the bobbin thread (which is what was showing on the outside) was too blue of a green and it was showing very obviously. Not only that, but my machine had skipped several stitches. So I ripped it out last night after my killer 10-hour work day, and sewed it this morning since I don't have to get to church early for tech crew or anything.

This is the same Burda 6-09 pattern as the last shirt, so rather than do a whole pattern review, I'll just talk about the changes. I knew I wanted to make this one look rather different, particularly since they were two different shades of the same color. So instead of using the pleated front piece this time, I used the front lining piece that I decided was unnecessary in the original shirt (I had it cut out anyway, since this was the test version.) And then I extended the dart in a pintuck all the way to the shoulder to make a mock princess seam. Since I still had the problem of not having allowed enough for a hem on the sleeve, I extended the sleeve with the box-pleated trim. And then added some center-stitched box-pleated trim around the neck as well. (The edges of the trim are done with a rolled-hem stitch off of my serger.)

To give credit where it's due, the inspiration for the pleated trim came from the "Shakespeare In The Park" top at ModCloth.  So I'd already decided to give it this name before I finished it...the neckline trim ending up a bit more ruffly than I thought ended up being a bit of a happy accident in light of that! It's kind of reminiscent of those Elizabethan ruffs without being so literal. Also, I have to say that I'm really impressed with ModCloth's customer service--after commenting on the usual length of their dresses in a recent post, someone from their business took the time to comment on my post to point me to a page where they'd collected their longer dresses! I don't actually need to buy any dresses at the moment, but I think they just convinced me to go ahead and get this vest that I've been debating about...

And one more shot of the back. So now that this one's done, I'm hoping to maybe get the next sewing project cut out this afternoon--I'll be making this skirt in a solid black. The only hitch in the plan is that I seem to have misplaced my directions for using the skirt sloper pattern that I made in the Pattern Review class last fall to check the fitting of a different skirt pattern! I emailed them to see if I could get another copy of that particular lesson, since the pdfs won't save onto your hard drive-- I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen, but worth a shot, right? I'd better head to church now, though.

wedding outfits and sewing phobias

I think I'm caving; I'm 99% settled on buying a dress to wear to my friend Tracey's upcoming January wedding, instead of making one.

This is the dress I've picked out, from modcloth.com. I like the kind of 60s-ish look to it, love the color (though I'm hoping it's not too close to that of the bridesmaid dresses--Cassie, if you're reading this, help me out!), and I think it's a simple enough style that, with the right accessories, I could wear this for both warmer or colder weather (would need to find a sweater and tights to wear with this, and possibly shoes since I'm not sure either my black heels or my ill-fitting brown ones would work--I'm thinking if I can find a pewter-ish colored flat in my size, that would be perfect for both the look and accommodating any chance of icy parking lots!). And therefore I could be justified in paying the $53 for it. (And free shipping if I also get the cardigan that I fell in love with from there!) But still, I'm hesitating....buying a sweater is one thing, because that's something I can't really do myself. But for some odd reason, part of me is feeling like I'm failing a bit or copping out for buying a dress instead of sewing one. Probably from spending so much time on the Wardrobe Refashion bandwagon, where buying new = bad. I'm telling myself that at least I'm supporting a smaller business and independent designers. And I really don't have time to sew a dress, especially with all of the stuff for my room still in the queue. But honestly, after the last several clothing project fails, I think part of me is a little afraid to sew clothes again. Weird, huh? I need to find a way to get over that. (And I also need to go to work! Yikes!)

Friday Favorites, Episode 26

Trying to make this quick, because I have to do some dusting and want to do some sewing!

1. Craft Leftovers had a tutorial for making small boxes for gifts-- just in time for my starting to think of Christmas!

2. At haha.nu, there was this really great pictoral tutorial for making roses out of colored maple leaves. I love this idea-- great fall decoration, not tacky, and completely biodegradeable at the end (assuming the wire would rust away). (Linked through ThreadBanger.)

3. Over at Laura's Sewing Room, she showed a trenchcoat that she recently finished. It just really makes me think of the mod part of the 60s. Which is good.

4. Lindsay at Lindsay T Sews featured a beginner's guide to fabric shopping in NYC's fashion district. I wish I'd had this for the one time I went, because we had no idea where to start!

5. Wardrobe Refashion picks of the week: This dress. And this top.

Ok, time to get some necessary stuff done. Like dusting and getting stuff out of the dryer. And then, hoping to finish the gypsy blouse tonight! And I went through my pile of stuff to refashion and took pictures of most of it (minus some of the t-shirts) so I can start thinking of what I'm going to do to them. Debating whether to post some of it up here... that would be a really picture-heavy post!