Category: All (-ish)

Crepe finished! It’s a dress!


Things I like:  the sweetheart neckline, the back, the fun sleeves, the length, the material, the fact it’s a wrap dress that wraps in the back.

Things I don’t like:  it’s a good standing dress, but it gapes when I sit, which I’m not thrilled about.  Also, I have miles to go on the fitting thing.  The bodice is too loose.

Overall:  Very happy with it.  It’s so summer!

Postcards from Russia and WDC

I love the simple line drawing on this postcard.  David sent me a portion of Charles Bukowski’s poem “Consummation of Grief” which is striking and which I have fallen in love with. Thanks David.

This came from one half of my favorite blog: Pike Schemes.  We will see each other very soon and she is as excited as I am.  Because there’s nothing like a little trans-continental postcard communication when a face-to-face meeting in the hometown is imminent, though still seeming to be very far away.  Thanks Sara!
 
She apparently also was cleaning out her stamp collection.
 

45RPM: Cathy’s Clown

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

 I grew up singing.  Not in a choir, or formally, but just whenever. Around the house, walking down the street, driving, in the shower, doing the dishes, all of those are good times for a song. Whenever a song hits me, I usually sing it.  One of the best compliments I ever received was a friend who mused, “I always thought musicals were unreal, all those people bursting into song at every moment.  Then I met you.”  My singing voice isn’t particularly good, but it’s fairly on pitch, plus I can remember a lot of words and I’m very enthusiastic.  My friends in high school were wonderful in so many ways, but I think my favorite thing about them was that they too burst into song at random moments.  One sunny afternoon we were just sitting around downstairs when suddenly Cindy started beating out a rhythm on her leg.  Enough of us recognized it as the intro to “Cathy’s Clown” and we hit our first note and were off and running.  “Don’t want your luh-uh-uh-uh-ove, any-more…”  We sang through the song, with Cindy taking a guitar arpeggio here and there.  Our rendition was good enough to bring my mother from the laundry room, smiling at our crazy youthful theatrics.  We were smiling too.

Art Building looking metal-tastic


There are intriguing spaces left in the metal facings.  I’m wondering if those will be taken up with “pops” of color.
Interestingly, there is now a sign with the artist’s rendition of the building, but it’s rather inaccessible, and plus, I’ve waited this long, why see a picture of the finished product now?

In other news, Matt’s mother was visiting and she wondered what the large tower thing that has now been mostly eclipsed by the building.  You can just see it peeking up on the left.  She took a picture and emailed it to her partner.  Et voila!, she had an answer.  It’s a long range microwave relay tower. It carries voice and data for the phone companies.  Now I know too.  Thanks Linda and Pat!

Pressing the facings, joining bodice and skirt

Here you can see how I used an improper marking pen on a previous project and stained my tailor’s ham.  Here you can also see that the tailor’s ham comes in handy (or ham-dy?) for pressing this dress.
 
Here you can see the facings flipping out on the arm holes, completely ruining the effect of the cool sleeves.  I’ll show them what’s what, just you wait.

At this point, aside from facing wrangling, I just need to get Julie to mark the hem and then sew the hem and then I’m done.  Ahead of schedule, even.

Tacking down the facings.


The bodice has facings along the neckline and the arms.  I am making tiny stitches in the facings and sewing the seam to the facings, to encourage the facing to roll the right way.  Sentinel is helping and watching a movie with me.

Even after I did this, the arm facings would not behave, constantly turning out.  I ended up doing what Gertie did and carefully sewing the facings to the underlining.  That worked well, because of the two layers of fabric, but I’m not sure what I would have done if I had only one layer of fabric.  I’ve made a not on my pattern to underline, should I want to make this dress again.

Sewing the pockets and skirt


One of the best things about Collette patterns is that she usually includes pockets in her skirts.  Here are mine.  I’ve always thought pockets laid out like that look rather dirty.  Thank goodness they will be tucked away where no one can see.  It occurs to me that right now we’ve got a sort of external genitalia thing going on, but as soon as I sew this up, we will revert to an internal genitalia thing.  But maybe that’s just me.