Category: All (-ish)

Postcards from Write Around Portland, Joshua Tree, Ukrane

Three postcards arrived in the mail today and none of them were from Postcrossing.

I’m taking a writing class through Write Around Portland and the second of the wonderful surprises of the class (the first is that there are always snacks to eat during the class) is that each week we get a postcard from our instructor complimenting some aspect of our writing.  It’s very sweet.
 

The Aunts went on a trip and Aunt Pat sent me this postcard. Guess where they visited?
 
I have a friend living in the Ukraine for 10 months and she sent me a postcard.  It took her three months to discover where they were keeping the postcards in the Ukraine. Sadly, she does not share this with me, so if you visit the Ukraine, you will have to find them on your own.   She also observes that all the buildings are ice cream colored.

Thanks Write Around Portland, Aunt Pat and Margaret!

Laurie Notaro

Kelly and I wandered down to Powell’s for our third Laurie Notaro reading.  She was funny as ever, in her hilariously charming over-sharing way. If you are looking for a bit of a pick-me-up any of her books of essays will do.

ps.  The gallery installation behind her was incredible.  A whole heap of author portraits done by two artists. I especially loved the style of Allison Bruns (the top one pictured here).  She was great at capturing expression.

More pictures of the exhibit.
http://powells.tumblr.com/post/51569909347/travelingbookgirl-powells-city-of-books

Three sentence movie reviews: Star Trek Into Darkness

I loved the Star Trek reboot and was looking forward to this movie.  It delivered everything I wanted: humor, action, plot, special effects.  And, it quasi-inspired me to actually watch the original Star Trek movies which, except for the whale one, I’ve never seen.

Cost:  $6.00 (plus another $7.50 for wine and popcorn)
Where watched:  St. John’s Cinema

45RPM: Brown-Eyed Girl

Where I match a song to a specific memory.
My first job was in a tiny restaurant where they served good food and lots of it.  I worked Saturdays, alternating waiting tables with washing dishes.  My companion in work was a boy my own age, S.  We were acquaintances, people with things in common who never really became close friends, though I liked him.  He was smart and funny and a good conversationalist. In fact, at the end of high school, I surveyed the scene and decided that of all our classmates, he would be the one I would marry, if I had to marry someone.  Partway through our acquaintance on the job, he decided to reject who he had been and he foraged a new self, changing his name, quitting wrestling, getting rid of the music he was leaving behind.  Instead, he starting going by his middle name K., focused more on the art he created and he pledged his musical troth to Mudhoney and other bands we were then calling “Alt.”  To me, the reinvention seemed unnecessary, as he seemed the same as he ever was, but he said things were much better this way.  His devotion to his new alternative way of life was so complete I was surprised one day that he commented how much he liked Van Morrison’s  song “Brown Eyed Girl.”  The song was played in heavy rotation at the time, thanks to being featured in movies and it was impossible to escape if the radio was set to the oldies station–they played it seemingly ever hour.  It seemed so run-of-the-mill for my very unique coworker that I forever linked the two of them together.

Drafting new facings, cutting and basting

Here was the original plan for the facings, but I’ve got to make new ones due to arm area expansion.
 
It was easy enough though.
 
It’s important to star one’s cutting layout.
 
Bodice stuff that needed to be cut on the fold. 
 
Prepping my cutting area.
 
Have you seen the movie Unzipped, about Isaac Mizrahi’s fall 1994 collection?  It’s a great documentary.  And one thing I learned is that all the women making the fashion wear black all the time.  So I’m wearing all black in homage. Also because it’s rather cold today.
 
I really despise cutting out.  It might be better if I didn’t have to crawl all over the floor all the time.
 
After cutting out the underlining, I was to put out the main fabric…
 
…and lay my underlining pieces on top.
 
Then Gertie told me to carefully baste around each piece and then finish cutting out.  I suspect this is one of those things Gertie does because she likes to be careful.  I’m doing it, but it’s taking forever.
 
But look how pretty it looks when it’s done.
 
However, I needed to watch a movie to keep me occupied.  And when that movie was over, I was nowhere near done. Grrr.

Today I spent five hours working on this and I’m still not done with this week’s items.  

Final muslin fitting, prepping material

Muslin #2.  I can see that lengthening the front now has me in trouble with the back. The side seams are even.  I sense a muslin #3 in the future.
 
The back is now a little bit better.
 
The front is reaching my waist.  And notice how taking all that fabric out at the armpit level helped tremendously.
 
But I’ve still got a shoulder thing going on.  I solved this by having Matt cut back until there was a bigger opening.
 
Why is this picture upside down?  There is now more room in the shoulder area.
 
Here is the pattern for #1 topped with the pattern for muslin #2 in front,  with the changes outlined for #3 in green.  I’ve known it since I tried on Sara’s strapless formal dress in tenth grade, but man, do I have shoulders.
 
Muslin #3.  I feel like I could pull in the shoulders a bit, and the waist, but I don’t really know what I’m doing here, so I think I will leave it.
 
The back looks good.
 
Sentinel is a good helper.
 
Now to press all the underlining material.  This dress does not skimp on material.
 

Tracing pattern pieces

I’m feeling confused about how to make the changes from the muslin to the pattern, so I’ll distract myself with tracing all the pattern pieces.
 
Here’s the official pattern piece.
 
I devised a check system to ensure that I got all the pieces I needed.  I have to be wary of project pitfalls and one of them is not having everything I need.  If I miss a piece and have to backtrack to this stage, there’s a good chance I won’t finish the project.
 
The file cabinet holds what I need.  Here is a skirt piece and a pocket.
 
I only use the finest tools.  A true statement in the case of the rulers, which have been invaulable.  A false statement with the pattern weights which are just whatever object I can find to serve as “heavy.”
 

Muslin fitting part 1

I want to start off this post by saying that when I was looking at the fitting pictures from the Crepe Sew-Along Flicker Pool, the ones that helped the most were those of people who were not anywhere close to model sized.  So even though I’m not thrilled with my size in any of these, I’m doing it for the good of the fitting process.
Here’s the first muslin front view

Side view

Back view.

Thank goodness I had a handy helper who did his darnedest to pin, even though he had no experience and no idea what he was doing.  Plus, he had to listen to his girlfriend’s not super specific instructions (“See that floppy part along the bottom?  Can you grab that?  No, not that floppy part, the other one.)  The fitting process would not have been done without him.  Thanks Sweetheart!

Here I have drawn where my “breast point” (aka nipples) are because those darts are very high and I need to lower them.  I’ve also pinched a bunch of excess fabric in the front around the armpit area.  I’m also making note that the waist doesn’t actually make it to my waist, so I need to add length at the bottom.

Matt has pinched off a bunch of droopy stuff on the back.

Another side view of the lack of extending to stomach.