Category: To Occupy my Time

Have you been to the Good Stuff bakery?

Unless you happen to work at, or attend the school where I am employed, I’m guessing you haven’t because this bakery is run by a fifth grader. He takes orders from Tuesday through Thursday and delivers on Monday.  No exceptions.
 
And when he delivers, there is branded packaging.  He knows his marketing.
 
And his craft.  Those Almond Toffee Bars are delicious.
 

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.

Reunion dress. Material and pattern fitting.

I’m not a “finisher” which means that I enjoy planning and beginning projects and getting them done is my least favorite part.  This means I’m already planning my next project by the time I hit the mid-project phase.  So it was with the Auction Dress.  I couldn’t wait to get started on the dress I will make for my 20-year high school reunion.  This is why I have a firm “one project at a time” rule.  But the auction dress is done!  And now I can make the reunion dress.

The pattern is the Crepe pattern from Collette Patterns.  I’m going to make the sweetheart neckline version.  Conveniently, there was a sew-along on Gertie’s Blog for Better Sewing back in 2010-2011 so I will have guidance.  I’ve even set myself out on a sewing schedule.  When I was making the Auction Dress I hated how the sewing stuff sat out on the dining room table making everything messy all the time.  So for this project I will work only on the weekends and put everything away.  The sewing schedule will also hopefully keep me from the “gotta finish now” frantic nature of the last project.

I picked out the material two weeks ago because that was the day my excellent sewing companion could go.  This project will teach me underlining, so I had to find two kinds of material that worked well together.  With the good judgement of my sewing companion here’s what I (well, it was mostly she, not I) came up with:

The outer layer.
 

The underlining.
 
Here’s how they look together.  There is also a contrast sash that will be made out of the underlining fabric.
It looks good, eh?
 
So this week I’m tracing the pattern and working on the muslin.  I’ve decided to trace the pattern because patterns are expensive and I would like to keep mine in usable condition.
 
Here’s a fun initial pattern fit.  I can tell there will be changes with the muslin.
 
Especially around the sleeve area.
 
Because I totally ripped that open with my broad shoulders.
 

Lint results.

As you may recall, my Lint projects this year were to meditate daily and to eat mashed potatoes every day.  Here are my results:

As you can see, I was much better at eating mashed potatoes, only missing two times.  The first time (March 22) I completely forgot, remembering at 9:00pm that I had yet to eat potatoes. The second time I just didn’t prioritize eating mashed potatoes.  I must note that I still like mashed potatoes and I will eat them again, but I was quite happy on May 6 to not eat them.  It turns out that while I could eat them every day of my life, they are not quite as pleasurable as when I don’t eat them every day of my life.  It would be interesting to see if Andy Lee-Hillstrom (the person responsible for this particular  Lint Project) would have a similar experience.

The mediation was harder, mostly because once I make a batch of potatoes and portion them out, scheduling the eating of them is no problem.  Whereas I must find time every day to meditate.  Most days that’s just a thing that takes some effort and then there are days that even effort doesn’t get it done.  I missed two each of Sundays and Thursdays and Saturdays, one Friday and Three Mondays.  Mondays are my longest workday, and Saturdays and Sundays have less structure, so there’s no “automatic” meditation time.  On weekdays, my “automatic” meditation time is right after I get home from work.  Thursdays, however, are movie night and I usually plunge right into the movie, which causes me to skip the meditation.

I will keep up with the meditation because I feel much better when I do it on a regular basis, much less high strung.


Here’s my final mashed potatoes breakfast, hidden under the spinach and eggs.

Drat. Lining was off.

I am very much “over” sewing this dress.  I melted part of the lining because the iron was too hot (oh well!) I sewed a dart on the wrong side (it’s interior, no one will ever see it) and so I was very excited to put the final stitch in and have a triumphant try-on.  And I did.  And all was not good.  I didn’t properly line up the lining seams with the dress seams and voila! Messy, poorly executed bubble effect.

Matt, observing me taking the above picture said, “It looks funnier from this angle. Let me take the picture.”  So I did.


Happily, this meant that I had to pull all the stitching out and watch another two episodes of Friday Night Lights in order to finish the dress before attending the Greek Easter Celebration.  So some good came of it.

Two headlines from today’s paper

Reading this, I audibly gasped, mostly because I’ve been waiting for years for male athletes to start coming out of the closet.  Also: same last name!
 
Oh Grant Butler.  A few years ago you decided to experiment with being vegan for a few months and I thought, “I hope you can make it that long without cheese” because cheese is the number one reason I don’t want to be a vegan.  The number two reason is that I don’t think it’s actually a healthy way of eating.  But you, Grant Butler, took to it like a duck to water and now your write columns that amuse me such as this:

Now I don’t mind a good veggie burger now and then, but really, the bun?  The bun is the best part, in fact,  the main reason for eating the veggie burger.  When you get right down to it, I would eat the bun with a bit of butter rather than the veggie burger wrapped in lettuce or what have you.