What, a finished project? REALLY??

Yes, I finished something. Not a sewn something, but something nonetheless. I made a big crocheted beret with a knit band out of some black cotton yarn a friend gave me when she was cleaning out her stash. Whenever I need a really quick project fix, so that I can truly feel I've accomplished something, I crochet a hat or scarf.

I've been crocheting longer than I've been knitting or sewing, and I don't need a pattern to make most things I want to make. And since I live in San Francisco there's a need for hats and scarves year-round, so they're things I can actually use. Not like for instance the halter dress I'm almost done with, which is fab and retro and all that but not exactly something I'm going to wear on a weekly basis.

That halter dress by the way was basically all finished till I sewed on the hooks and eyes to fasten the halter on the back of my neck, and realized I sewed them on all wrong. Which would be easy enough to fix but I REALLY sewed them on, really tightly, really securely, so after I spent from midnight to 12:20 Saturday night trying to rip them off while there was nothing on TV but a history channel tie-in to that 300 movie about Thermopylae and I wasn't feeling nearly testosterone-y enough to put up with that, I gave up. I'll do it sometime later this week when there's something decent to watch to distract from my frustration.

Also over the weekend I set the sleeves in my purple tunic and they came out all right. Well enough that I am not embarrassed to wear it, which is really my only criterion for success in sewing at this particular point in my learning process. The picture here is of the neckline when it was still all messed up; I just folded it under another time and fused it in place to fix it, but no pics yet of the finished project. I still have to hem the ends of the sleeves before I can model it.

The best thing though is that I re-did the neckline on the black eyelet, and without the collar it came out fine! Now I'm hanging it up over night to let the bias set, and I'll hem it tomorrow and tack down the facing which is sticking out a bit, and model it soon. If it ever gets warm enough I'll even wear it out somewhere. Joy!

I told myself I wouldn't go to the fabric store again till I finished something but of course I did. I got some black cotton with white line drawings of flowers that I think I'll use for the Burda shirtdress from my previous post, instead of the plain black which I am using for the Butterick 4790 instead. I think that it will be my Easter dress since the other fabric is pink flowers. I also got some stretchy red fabric that I don't know yet what I'll do with, but it was a gorgeous shade and only $1.99 a yard so I had to have some. This was all from Fabrix, natch. The lady at the cutting table asked me, Anything else for you today? And I answered, God, no, I have to get out of here quick before I spend any more money! So I paid my $12, and disappeared into the early afternoon fog.

Sweet sewing dreams

Actually, it's a little more like insomnia, but I have this thing that I do when I'm trying to fall asleep at night. I make lists. I'm an obsessive listmaker, I do it as much for fun or to occupy myself as for organizational purposes.

The things that I list vary over time according to my current interests... ok, obsessions. But there are a few things that I come back to again and again. One is a list of names. Even years ago, before I ever thought seriously about having kids, I'd make lists in my head of baby names I liked, mostly girls' names, but sometimes boys' if I really wanted a challenge. I'd go through the alphabet and have either one name per letter, or as many names per letter as I could think of. Sometimes they'd have to be names I actually liked, and sometimes they'd have to be names I really really hated.

Most recently I gave myself the challenge of listing one girl's name and one boy's name for each letter, and every one had to be unusual or uncommon, but still something that I would consider naming a kid without feeling like I would be traumatizing the poor sprog for life. For example, D might be Dahlia, because that is both unusual and pretty, but not Dorcas, which is just unusual and old-fashioned but not suitable for today's public school playgrounds.

Anyhow the other things that I always like to list are articles of clothing. In this case it's not just a list of words, but a list of images in my head of outfits I'd like to wear. Sometimes for a particular occasion. Sometimes I restrict myself to new combinations of clothing pieces I actually already own, or to new pieces added to complete outfits of things I have already.

My absolute favorite is to mentally plan what to pack for a trip. The restriction I put on myself for that is to take the absolute minimum amount of clothing necessary to be stylish and ready for every anticipated activity on the trip, so mostly everything has to match and be interchangeable and layerable (I know, not a word, but whatever) and probably all go with a single pair of shoes that I can walk in, or maybe one pair of walking shoes and one pair of dress shoes depending on what's planned for the trip.

Lately though I've added to my list making: I'm now making mental lists of all the stuff i want to sew. Again, always with challenges/restrictions, either the same ones as with my other wardrobe lists, or the newest one which is that it has to be stuff I can do either with the patterns I have already or with the fabric stash I have already.

Anyhow I'm beside myself with joy over my current bedtime listmaking possibilities because not only do I have a sizeable stash of patterns and fabric, but I also have a trip to plan for! To NYC, in April! Can I sew most of my wardrobe for the trip? Probably not, but that won't stop me from trying.

Anyhow I'm posting the pattern envelope pics for my latest two acquisitions, both Burda, which I've never sewn before. The shirtdress will be in all black, with some darling little mod black and white buttons. The wrap dress will be this stretchy brown and blue sort of crinkly chevron stripe pattern stuff I got on my last trip to Fabrix. Only the black is likely to go to NYC with me though, so I'll probably start with that.

I'm still not done with the tunic dress because I need to pick up some elastic, and get up my courage for setting the sleeves in. I'm not so good at sleeves yet, I haven't practiced much. I could leave it sleeveless but really don't want to because I have farmer arms right now (you know, glaring white at the top and sort of tanned on the bottom) plus I need to tone up to avoid the dreaded upper arm jigglies.

The black eyelet is on my schedule for this weekend; I haven't gotten around to ripping out the disastrous collar yet because I've been hemming a halter dress in the hopes of actually, you know, totally finishing at least SOMETHING sometime soon. I save hemming and/or ripping to do by hand in front of the tv while I watch my shows, most of which are on hiatus right now because of the basketball championships or something.

Also in the planning stage: a nice big chunky stylish beret type thing I want to knit or crochet. I need more decent-looking hats for bad hair days now that my hair is growing out and doesn't look as good with my short-hair hats from before.

And seriously, I'm going to get some decent pictures of my own up soon. I really don't care as much as my boyfriend does that they're perfect, so I'm just going to do it myself and stop counting on him to fix them for me, at least for the blog where it doesn't matter that much as long as they don't totally suck.

(oh, and I'm so excited, I actually got a comment! a helpful one! yay, I'm not totally posting into the vast wilderness of unread internet space!)