Monday, April 26, 2010

Colette Patterns Rooibos Dress

I saw Gertie's post on the Colette Patterns Rooibos dress and wanted to make it immediately. I had a gift certificate to one of the online fabric stores and bought the pattern. I bought royal blue stretch cotton sateen at Joann's (also with another gift card ---> Thanks Mom!) for the dress and some notions. I thought I was all ready to go.

Then I saw the sizing....It seemed to be like the current RTW vanity sizes, which puts me at around a size 2/4. That didn't seem right because I thought I needed a bit more ease in the bust. Is 1/2in ease even enough to move??? I decided to cut a 4 in the pattern (only after I traced it twice! {once on crappy paper, then again on nice white doctor's office paper}) I measured and realized a FBA would probably help. So I did that, made a really crappy muslin, and it seemed to fit okay. I just thought I would have to extend the darts up a little in the final version.

I cut my final fabric, basted the bodice together and it looked awful! I tried fixing the darts, gathering instead of darts, and tucks instead of darts. Gathering looked best, but still made my boobs look droopy. The bodice was hideous. Luckily I had enough fabric to cut out a straight size 4. It fits better, but still not great. I don't think the neckline is quite me. Other than Gertie's version and the pattern picture, I haven't liked one version of the dress I've seen made up. I'm sure I haven't seen them all. There are too many sewing blogs out there to read!

Right now the dress is in pieces and I don't know when I'm going to have time to finish it. The Boyfriend's birthday is Friday. I have my digital photography class tm night, dinner with the Boyfriend and his Dad Wednesday, and my amazing quilting class on Thursday. I have to finish baking the cake too. And go shopping for his other bday present. Too much to do!

I'll upload the pictures of two of the previous things I made later.

Hooray! I'm actually blogging!


Saturday, April 24, 2010

I won!

I forgot to share on my last post that I actually won something. To start, a while back I won a Xyron sticker maker from a fellow blogger, but it was never sent to me and her original post was deleted. Sadness! I was really looking forward to making stickers. I felt a little cheated, but it's not like I paid for it and it was a generous offer and still read her blog. Today, Karma (I didn't bitch this woman out) made up for it and I won Simple Shapes Spectacular Quilts by Kaffe Fasset on Sew, Mama, Sew! Perfect timing because I just started taking a quilting class at the Craft Center. The teacher is awesome. She's really knowledgeable and flexible with her teaching. She is allowing me to be crazy and over-ambitious. I feel like I have to get a lot of quilting done before I start school because I'll probably never do it again. I like it a lot actually, but clothing is so much more practical and I think I'll have way too much on my plate at FIDM.


This posting has confirmed that I am a horrible writer. Maybe I'll get better over time.

And here's a random, beautiful video I found reading blogs:





Friday, April 23, 2010

Goodbye WordPress, Hello Blogger!


I have a blog...again! I ditched the WordPress blog of the same name because it was too damn complicated. Blogger is AMAZING! So easy to use...Well anyways, here are my goals for this blog:

  • TAKE PICTURES! I need to start taking pictures of all my finished projects. This will involve getting the boyfriend to take pictures of me in the daylight! My apt. is small and dark. Maybe I should find a place to put up a white sheet, open my one window in my teeny living room/sewing room and have him take pictures there. Taking pictures of myself just isn't working.
  • Start writing reviews of the patterns I use on Pattern Review (making a link is so easy!) and then using the review template on this blog.
  • Post a weekly goal list (like Peter) I hope it's okay to link to his page.
  • Use Picasa to upload my photos.
Okay, that's it for now.