October Sewing Agenda

Hmm. I seem to have misplaced the first half of my October. If someone sees it, could they please mail it to me? There'll be cookies in it for you! Ahem. I actually have quite a bit of sewing to do in the remaining 16 days of October. Since I can't give you pictures right now (I need to call the repair shop and see how they're doing on my laptop), I'll give you a list. Everybody loves lists, right?

1) Finish my little black dress for the Pattern Review LBD contest. Thank goodness this one is going a lot better than the last one. I'm using a simple dull black crinkled rayon fabric from Wal-Mart, and I think it's going to be nice. I'm using this pattern, B5350:

I'm making view C, the crossover bust, and I've loved making this so much that I'm already dreaming up several different versions. It only takes 2 1/4 yards for the version with the contrast midriff, and the midriff itself only takes 1/2 yard, so it's great for using up remnants and small increments of really cool fabric. I like it a lot! I still have to attach the skirt to the bodice, put in the zipper, and hem it, but there's no more than 2 1/2 hours of work left on it. If I'm lucky, I should get this done tomorrow.

2. Finish making my two bat-print dresses. I actually finished the first one- I had a 1-yard remnant of a purple chiffon with black flocked bats, and I used it to make a Project Runway pattern, Simplicity 2965, with the purple bats as the top and a coordinating purple knit jersey as the skirt. The skirt looked seriously terrible when I was done, though- it bulged around the pockets, had awful VPLs, and generally made me look shlumpy and frumpy. So I took the skirt off and got some black fabric (because how much purple fabric do you have laying around the house?), pinned the skirt, and just haven't recut it and sewn it yet. It's actually pretty simple, I just need to do it. Again, maybe 2-3 hours of work for that one to be done. The other bat dress is going to use this bat satin knit I got from Joanne's (pic courtesy of Fabric.com):

Isn't it cool? I'm going to be making it in another Project Runway pattern, 2588. I haven't used it before, but I've had the pieces cut for ages, which is actually usually the most time-consuming part of the process for me. (I'm left-handed, so most scissors and I don't get along well. I shall love my mother forever for getting me spring-loaded scissors that are a breeze to use.) It's a pretty simple pattern, so although it's my first time using it, it shouldn't be so hard. I'm hoping for five or six hours on this one.

3) Make my doll show dress. I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but I'm a doll collector and I have a huge collection. Every year for the past five years my mom and I have gone to the one big Colorado doll show up in Denver. Usually it's in June, but for whatever reason they moved it this year to late October. I've been wanting to make a "doll-ish" dress for years, and I'm determined this year to do it. I have this great pink patterned jersey that I desperately want to post a picture of because it is so incredibly adorable. I intend to use the 2588 pattern again, so that should speed it up, but pattern placement on the fabric might make it a bit tricky, so I'm allotting 6-7 hours for this one. It's on October 25, so I've got me some quick sewing to do.

This isn't even counting my Halloween costume, which also needs to be done by the 25th for Trick or Treat for Unicef. (The 25th is going to be...interesting, assuming I can get everything worked out). That deserves a full post all on its own!

So I'm going to be a very busy sewing bee for the next couple of weeks. If I don't post that much, it's because I'm too busy actually sewing to blog about sewing! But I will try and update whenever I get a spare minute, even if it's just a quick thing like "Finished the skirt on Bat Dress 1-yay!" The upside of this is, when I get my own laptop back, I will have scads and scads of actual sewn products to post about, rather than fabric and vague, possibly never-to-be-realized pattern ideas. (See also, the Fall Concert dress, which will still be made, but about a month too late to actually be worn in the concert; I ended up running out of time and using the brown Dress Rescue dress instead.) Won't that be cool?

Excuses, Excuses

Yikes! I know I've been gone a long time, but I really have had legit reasons, such as my personal laptop completely fritzing out (it's at the repair shop right now; I'm updating from my DSi!) and lots of busy-making work. Seriously, I can't tell you how much I would rather have been blogging about sewing last night at 11 o'clock than writing a very depressing paper about discrimination against blacks in South Africa for my University of Phoenix sociology course, but the paper needed to be turned in, so there I was. I have been sewing A LOT lately, though, so I have lots of goodies for you guys when I can do neat things like upload pictures again. I've completed two Dress Rescues. I'm working on my second LBD, this time for the LBD contest at Pattern Review, and it's coming together a lot better than my first one did. I have a boatload of new patterns and my third (and final for a long while, if my dad has anything to say about it) order of yummy fabricness from Fabric.com to show y'all. So stick with me, kids; you won't be disappointed!

A Funeral For The First LBD

So, my LBD is officially kaput. I'm not so sure this is the pattern's fault as it is mine, but I'll blame the pattern anyway, 'cause I like to defer responsibility like that. I'm not quite sure how, but all of my lining pieces seem to have ended up different lengths than my bodice pieces, and that never ends well:

It's kind of hard to see in the picture, but in some places the bodice lining is seriously about half an inch shorter than the bodice front, and even on the bodice front the pieces were different lengths. Again, I tried to be careful, and I honestly have no idea how that happened, but it did.

Also, I cut the bodice lining backwards, forcing me to either completely redo it or stitch it on so that the seams ended up on the outside instead of the inside. I was too excited to get the dress done to completely redo it, so:

I suppose I could've fixed these things, but ultimately I think I could sew a better dress in the time it would take me to recut the lining pieces, rip out the seams, and restitch it because this fabric was a major PITA when it came to taking out seams. It was really thin, cheap fabric, and it tore and got runs in it like nobody's business. I found a little sticker on it that said "Alco .60", so I guess it was 60 cents a yard at the Alco in Fort Morgan before it went out of business. You get what you pay for! Even though I'm a little frustrated that this dress didn't turn out, I'm not all that down about it. I learned to be more careful about matching when I cut out pieces, to double-check that my lining faces in the right direction when a bodice requires directionality, and that really thin fabric should be used for lining instead of actual whole garments. I didn't ruin any good fabric, and I can use what's left over as lining and facing on other projects. So it was a failure, but one of the learning-experience kind.