Dia de los Muertos dress

I have always been fascinated by Dia de los Muertos.  I like the way it combines mourning with a certain lightheartedness, with sugar skulls and dancing skeletons and visits to the graves of those we've loved.

A few years ago I bought some Day of the Dead themed fabric, and have been planning to make something out of it ever since.  This year I finally got around to it.  I didn't have anything to do for Halloween that warranted a full-on costume, so I wore this instead.  If something that required a costume had come up last minute I would have

just painted my face like a skeleton and gone as one of the skeletons on my dress, but that didn't happen.

It's a duro dress, which is a design that I think lends itself to themes.  I don't normally like to sew theme dresses, because then I feel limited in how often I can wear them and my thrifty nature requires me to only make things that have multiple uses, or at least things that I can convince myself will have multiple uses even if that is just denial on my part.  but this?  I can wear it every year!

So I wore it to work Friday, and got many compliments, particularly from strangers on the Muni train in the Castro.  I would have worn it Saturday too at the Dia de los Muertos

 procession, but it was raining cats and dogs so I didn't go.  Then I wore it again today under my choir robe at All Souls' Day mass where we sang the Mozart Requiem.

I also included a picture of my skull necklace,

 which I bought in San Antonio over 10 years ago at an artsy shop in the King William District which specialized in such things, shortly after I first developed this ongoing fascination with Day of the Dead.  I used to wear it quite a lot, though nowadays I'm only goth on Halloween itself so after today I'll hang it back up on the vanity where it's been for all 4 and a half years we've lived here.

New fabric, and a new resolution

It's been a good long time since I posted because it's been a good long time since I sewed, or since I knitted anything exciting enough to post about. Plus, I still want to lose weight, so I've continued to be ambivalent about sewing anything new. But I want to get back into it, and I figure if I sew as I lose weight I will always have stuff to fit me, and if it's something I sewed it ought to be something I can alter later on if I want to take it in.

The other problem now though is that I have a lot less time than I used to. I have a new job, which I love by the way, but it is full-time instead of the 80% time I worked before, and it takes greater mental energy and an earlier bedtime so I just don't have the wherewithal to come home at night and do a bunch of crafting. Especially cutting. I hate the cutting part.

But, I still have plenty of patterns, and plenty of fabric, and I went ahead and bought more from Fabric.com just yesterday. As you can see by the accompanying pictures.

I'm taking inspiration from another blog that I subscribe to on my feed reader, Sew Every Day. I like this blog a lot, even though it's not as flashy or tip-filled or even as frequently updated as other favorites like A Dress A Day or Stacy Sews or Gorgeous Things, all of which I also adore. Sew Every Day is nicely written in a straightforward way, and it's accessible, because she just plugs along and does something sewing-related most days, even if it's as small a task as sewing a single seam. She makes lots of good basic clothes for herself this way, which is what I want to do.

So I'm making a resolution to do something similar, and sew a little almost every day. Realistically this will probably mean more like, oh, 3 times a week most weeks, none at all for a week every once in a while, with a two to three day binge of sew sew sew sew sew every six month or so.

The plan I have for now is to keep making dresses, mostly shirt dresses and maybe one or two more duros (even though those are getting kind of played out, they're just so easy and fun and versatile!). I'm trying to make sure that every dress I make is usable for slightly warmer weather (it never gets all that hot around here, but sometimes warm) but also, more importantly, can be layered with a turtleneck and tights and boots for the much more frequent cooler weather. I find that shirt dresses and duros are good for these purposes. Although there's also a need for the in between, where I just throw a cardigan or blazer over the top, and duros are hard to put things over because of the kimono-like sleeves.

I also like the dresses to be sort of more on the casual side. Just the fact that they're dresses makes them dressy enough with the right accessories, but I like things that can look dressed down too, and I think once again duros and shirt dresses are good for this, especially if I choose the right fabric. That explains why I'm so into plaid, it can look professional enough for my job, but also casual enough to wear out to the park on Saturday or to the sports bar on Sunday.

some finished projects

I took these photos over a month ago but am finally posting to prove that yes, I do occasionally finish and even wear dresses that I make! Here is a duro dress, and a knitted dress.

I especially like the Duro, which I usually wear now with some tan western style boots. It's proven very versatile for going from work to various after-work events, like a fundraiser we had with the Social Justice Council for a Guatamalan mission. The dress is festive and stylish enough for a cocktail reception like that, but business-like enough for the office.

The knitted dress has proven slightly less useful because it's a little bit low-cut and I can't really decide on what shoes are good to wear with it. I don't mind lowcut dresses or tops, in fact I wear them frequently, but I do have to pay more attention when I'm wearing something as plunging as this!

I haven't been sewing quite as much lately, but I'm getting very far along on a nice knitted dress with a cable down the front. It's purple, which I know a lot of people don't like, but I think it will look fab with my red hair and some black boots and denim jacket. Right now it's covered in dog hair unfortunately so I don't really want to take any WIP pictures until I can make it more presentable.

I'm working away at it furiously precisly because I am so tempted to stop. I'm terrible at finishing things before starting other things, and I have an idea for a grey cabled cardigan that I want to use to learn how to use steeks, but if I start that I will have more unfinished projects that will fit in my knitting basket and I promised myself not to do that anymore.

Happy discovery, and breaking a vow

Last night I was going through all of my fabric to see what I can actually match up with some patterns and what I really want to make sooner rather than later. I have one basket full of fabric in the corner by the sewing machine, and two large plastic bins on top of the big bookshelf. Which by the way is an extremely un-earthquake-safe placement for them. I need to quake proof the house sometime. But not yet. Too much sewing to do.

So anyway at the very bottom of one of the un-earthquake-safe plastic bins I found a knitted purse project I had been working on a couple months back and hadn't seen since then! I'd looked, I thought, everywhere, with no luck and even started a new version of it, grumbling all the while because this one was about half done, but I didn't think to look under fabric because I keep yarn and fabric basically separate. Usually.

I remembered how it got there. I used to keep a few small knitting projects, each in its own freezer bag, under the couch for easy access until the day we left Sparky out in the house on his own with Scout to see how he would behave. He behaved by dragging out all of those knitting projects and chomping away. fortunately he didn't destroy anything I really cared about but the freezer bag for the purse project was all tattered and the yarn was all tangled and I was too annoyed to deal with any of it so I threw all the gnawed on knitting stuff into this bin, and proceeded to pile fabric on top to put all my misbehaving dog troubles out of sight and out of mind.

Anyhow here are some pics of the purse in progress. And my foot. And a doggy toy. Those components were unintentional.

I'm using some yarn I got on eBay, very cheap, and now I know why because it is super-old and kind of brittle so I have to use two strands together and break off at weak spots in the yarn and start again, hence all the ends hanging out all over the pictured finished piece.

It is just a plain basketweave sort of stitch, 8 knits, 8 purls, repeated with a single knit stitch on every row at beginning and end for selvedge. You can see the unblocked finished piece as well as the other piece in progress. I'll next knit or crochet a strip about 2 inches wide or so to single crochet both pieces to as the sides and bottom. I'm undecided about the strap. I don't want too long a handle or strap, just big enough to go snugly over my shoulder and under my arm when I'm wearing a jacket. I made some I cord to test for this, but now I'm leaning toward using some large rectangular plastic handles that I will cover with the same yarn in a sort of single crochet to make them match.

I will definitely do a lining out of whatever decent matching fabric I have on hand, and put in a magnetic snap for the closure. Hopefully I can finish it very soon to take to NYC, but I'm not sure because I have lots of sewing to do for the trip also.

I basically decided to break my vow not to buy more fabric and to go get some black denim or suiting to make a jacket out of to take on the trip, because I don't have any decent black blazers or cardigans right now. I will probably also look at some other patterns for tops, and if I see some red/black/white plaid cheap I'm getting it to make a simple little button down shirt from. Because yes, I plan to learn buttonholes tonight or tomorrow. Seriously! And, if I find suitable red and/or black cottony fabric I will make the duro dress to take also because I'm tired of waiting till it's close enough to October to use the Dia De Los Muertos fabric for it instead. I can have more than one duro dress, can't I?

As you can probably tell I'm using red black and white as a theme so that everything I make and pack will match and so that I can wear red lipstick all weekend because I want to and that's all there is to it. Does anyone else in the world plan to sew a whole wardrobe simply to match a lipstick shade? I doubt it but I don't care, I'm doing it.