Coming soon: More personal photos

I'm very excited because I'm getting a camera phone soon! Maybe as soon as TOMORROW!

I think I might have blogged earlier that I was getting a hand me down camera phone from a friend, and I did, but she had warned me that it was beat up and not really very good and guess what? She was right. So I started whining to N. (my BF... I'm trying to think of a catchy nickname for him but so far have drawn a blank) on a regular basis about how I really really really really want a camera phone so that I will have a camera with me at all times and can pictures of things for my blog and of questionable parking practices in the city and of weird and fabulous outfits on the street and so on and so forth.

I didn't expect to really get one, but N. has been going through all our bills to find ways to save on monthly expenses and realized that if we change cell phone providers we can shave a substantial amount on our monthly bill AND get cheap (with the rebate) new phones with cameras. Yay!

So I figure I'll take more pictures. For example yesterday I wore a skirt I made to work, but I haven't ever gotten around to modeling it for a picture but I easily could have taken a shot of the inside of the hem to demonstrate my finishing techniques or whatever at any point during the day and then downloaded it to post here. Hopefully I will have many opportunities like that as I wear more of my own creations and also as I get used to having a camera with me all the time.

Speaking of hems, I finally pressed up the hem and the sleeves on my black eyelet dress last night and started handsewing them. Hemming is the only type of finishing I know how to do pretty well, so that it looks neat on both sides. This is because even before I started sewing much from scratch I frequently had to hem things to fit my short self.

I handsew all my hems unless it specifically seems that machine stitching will add a good design element, which is pretty rare in the styles I like anyhow. First I press up about 3/8 of an inch with some stitch witchery (that sticky iron on stuff, you know) and then another 5/8 to 1 1/2 inch or whatever seems to look good to sew. I usually use either the slant hemming stitch as seen about halfway down this page of hand sewing stitches, or more often, an uneven slipstitch as illustrated slighly further down the same page. I prefer the latter because it really is almost invisible, but the former is faster for when I'm feeling lazy, and easier if the fabric is tightly woven and hard to push the needle through. Or if I put the stitch witchery too close to the first fold I pressed up, since the stitch witchery is hard to push through sometimes. In fact that's a good tip: don't put your stitch witchery right up into the fold! I'm gonna have to remember that one.

There's one little trick I use that I'm not sure where I came up with, it may be really obvious but I'll share it anyhow. Even though the stitches are very tiny they still show just a little bit on some material in the right light or from the right angle, so I want them to be very evenly spaced. So I use a pen to mark two little lines on the tip of my left thumb (I'm right handed) so that when I grasp the hem to sew I can make sure the needle comes out by one mark and goes back in at the other.

See, if I had a camera phone I could take a picture of my thumb which still has some residual ink from the marks I put on last night. Because I know everyone out there on the internets is just dying to see my sad chewed up little thumb.

On Summerset Banks's Pins and Needles blog, she asked: do you have any particular "go-to" garment, the one that you wear all the time for all types of purposes because it's just that versatile/comfortable/ awesomly stylish/whatever? OK that's a paraphrase. Anyway, I don't, but I sometimes have in the past, and I'm hoping that something that I make in the next few months will become that go-to piece. I'm musing over the idea of a dress made of sweatshirt material (I saw some thin sweatshirt material at Fabrix that I almost bought some of and will probably go back for) that, if I pick the right pattern, could be a go-to dress, since it will be relatively warm for the SF cool weather, and as a dress it can be dressed up, but as sweatshirt material it can be dressed down. It will also match with almost anything I'd bet, be comfy, and not wrinkle easily. Ooh, and best of all, now that I think of it, it will match some fab chartreuse and red kitten heel peep toe shoes I got from a friend but have never worn out because I don't have anything to match them! So now I HAVE to make it. I'm also loving all the canary yellow accessories that seem to be in this season, which will also go with sweatshirt grey.

Anyhow we'll see, and I'll try to remember to revisit the question at some point in the future as more of my projects get completed.

Not a good sewing night

Last night I didn't have any extra work to do, and I got done with the work I did have earlier than expected, and there was nothing good on TV, so it was a good time to get some sewing done. Too bad I couldn't get anything to go quite right.

First of all, I've been working on a Vintage Vogue pattern for a dress with a sort of weirdly shaped neckline, that forms into an almost sort of triangular opening in the front, with basically 3 points. I can't find an image of it online and I don't have it handy to scan, but it looks a little like this pattern, but without the gathers on either side and straight lines, not curved. (And honestly, I guess I should be happy that it's not more like this picture... this looks even harder!) It also has an option for a collar attached to it, and I wanted to make that version since it seemed a bit more casual looking to me, and I had visions of wearing this to some outdoor singing gigs with my red cowgirl boots and red lipstick, or to summer daytime parties with footless tights (even summer is cold enough for tights here in SF) and red ballet flats.

I'm making this out of black eyelet, which I love, but that caused some problems with attaching the interfacing that was called for in the collar and in the neckline facing since my interfacing was all white and would show through the eyelet lace. So originally, I put the interfacing on some black muslin and used that for the interfacing on those pieces.

Well, I just couldn't get the collar and neckline facing to assemble correctly. It looked terrible. And at first I thought that it was because the black muslin and the interfacing attached to the pieces was just too thick and was keeping it from bending into the right shape. So I ripped it all out, and bought some black interfacing to use instead. Last night I tried to reassemble it all with this version, and it still wouldn't come together right! The points weren't clean enough, the back of the dress was sort of gathered and wrinkled in a bad way, and the collar didn't line up right.

I'm really bummed because I love this material and I don't have enough left to do an easier dress with. So tonight I'm going to rip it out again, and give up on doing the version with the collar, and hopefully I have enough eyelet to cut out the neckline facing again and this time I don't think I"ll bother with interfacing, but just use the material plain or maybe with a black muslin backing to it. And if THAT doesn't work I may have to give up entirely and just make a skirt instead of a dress.

I also worked last night on this tunic dress, Butterick 4920, that I originally saw in blouse form (you can do a blouse or a dress with it) on a couple of blogs including Stacy Sews and Cat Fur Studio. The blouse would probably get better use, but I decided to go for the dress just because I had a ton of fabric for it, a pretty and smooth dark wine colored jersey that I got at one of my favorite SF sources for cheap cheap fabric, Fabrix on Clement Street. I chose the burgundy color as a replacement for black. I'm trying to get away from wearing too much black, and since the other dress that's giving me fits is black eyelet, and I also have a bunch of black poplin for a sort of mod shirt dress Burda pattern I just bought, I needed to branch out. This color is dark and deep enough for evening or for a more somber occasion (I have a wake to attend in NYC in April, and I might wear it for that) but isn't the same old black.

Quick word on Fabrix: I love it because it's so inexpensive, I always find (metered, but still) parking when I go by, usually on Monday afternoons on my way back from therapy, and the fabric is all on huge bolts at least 60" wide so you get lots for your money. The drawback is that they have very little in the way of notions. Well, that's not totally true, since they have a lot of ribbon by the yard, and a huge bin FULL of buttons, but you have to sift through the buttons for, like, hours to find all the matching ones you need. You also really have to look for a while to find the good fabric, because it's all sort of piled up everywhere and some of it is not only cheap (as in, inexpensive) but what I like to call cheap-ass (meaning tacky and not well-made). But I love the process of digging through lots of stuff, I find it entertaining and even calming, so that isn't really a drawback to me.

But back to the tunic dress. I shouldn't complain too much because it did come together mostly pretty well, and the fabric drapes beautifully, but the finished edge on the front modesty panel neckline gapes, isn't stitched straight, and looks yucky. It's because I'm not good at sewing details on stretch knit. I think I'll have to fix it by turning it under once more and somehow blind stitching it down in the hopes that the stitches won't show.

So my bad sewing night last night wasn't all bad I guess, because the frustration just made me more determined to come home tonight and fix it all. I hope it works out. I really want to make enough items to wear mostly things I made myself on my trip to New York, so that's an ambitious goal that I can't meet if I have to keep ripping stuff up and starting over again. My next adventure: learning to make buttonholes, so I can make some blouses (one from white lace, another from a sheer black with pink roses) and that shirt dress! Maybe this weekend if I don't have to work! Ooh, and I want to make an Easter dress too. More on that later.