Update

I realized that I have neglected my blog and the last project listed. That dang dress is still on my dressform, pinned and ready to go. What got me was the fact that I couldnt get the bodice to fit correctly. I then stated I would learn how to make my own sloper and I would readjust the pattern. Did that happen? No. Why? Because I'm lazy. There is nothing to blame but me. I am no longer in school...my weekends are technically free. Damn you Amazon Prime with your infinite listing of old TV shows!

More than likely I will put the dress aside and work on smaller projects. My mom and I are opening a small shop at a local flea market. I will focus on selling my crafts and some select vintage items. I will also create a etsy account. I decided to call the shop "A Vintage Affair". Super cute right? There is so much to do, so much to cut and sew. We open on July 7th and I have one purse made. This is not good.

Wish us luck!!!

Project #2: Simplicity/Cynthia Rowley 0334

For my next project I decided on Simplicity/Cynthia Rowley 0334. I was skeptical about this dress because the model is the exact opposite of what I look like. What threw me off was the shortness of the skirt...I never wore anything that length and I don't plan on starting now. No worries. I just used the top from Dress C and the skirt from Dress A/B. Problem Solved!!!

I will be using two different fabrics; the print is for the top and the solid is for the skirt. I still have to decide on which buttons to use for the tabs. I am leaning towards the shiny vintage red buttons. I wish buttons still cost 29 cents!

The Blind Leading the Blind Stitch

So, I have a headache. I blame the 3 1/2 hours I just watched of Nova's documentary "Becoming Human". We evolved from Apes! We got pubic lice from Gorillas! There was more but that's what has decided to stay in my brain.

Back to my headache. I have one, and that means I can't wear my glasses for a long period of time. I planned on sleeping it off when I remembered that my sister-in-law gave me her pants earlier this week to hem. If she is like me she has like one or two good pair of pants to wear to work...and I have one of them. I need to get these pants hemmed yesterday.

Even though I am blind without my glasses, I figured what the heck, I will do my first blind stitch on my machine. I've been wanting to learn this stitch since forever, I just never had the foot. Well, I thought I didn't have the foot. Did you know that your machine comes with a baggy full of little feet?!! Even though I've had my machine going on a year now and I've seen the little bag but it has never clicked. I have a zipper foot, a darning plate (what the heck is it used for?!), a buttonhole maker and a blind stitch foot.

I start off practicing on some scrap fabric..and I'm glad I did. I went through a couple of edges before I got it right. Halfway through I realized that the springy thing on the side of my foot moved the guide!

I think that the blind stitch came out superb. You can't even tell that it's there...which I guess is the point. I should open up a shop that only does hemming! I would blind stitch the heck out of everything.

Things I've Learned:

1. Blind stitching can be just as addicting as serging.
2. This will probably be the easiest thing I will learn.

1st Annual Easter Arts & Crafts Project

I come from a very arts & crafts family, mainly stemming from my mom. She can turn a sock and milk gallon into something awesomely wonderful. We are always doing craft projects but never together at one time. So, that is why my mom came up with the idea that every year on Easter Sunday we will do a family craft project. To kick off this tradition she decided we would decorate flip flops! I don't know how long we sat there, but the end results came out to be super cute.

I took the longest to finish because I couldn't for the life of me design a decent flip-flop. I literally put mine together in the last ten minutes. As with any craft project, heavy duty glue guns were in use and all the neighbors heard every couple of minutes were a chorus of not so nice words.

My mom is so hardcore she didnt even flinch when she slammed her hand right on the pin of a brooch to kill a mosquito. It was surreal to watch her pull the brooch from her finger....crazyiness.

Here are our flip flops...and my husbands craft project.

My Mom

My older sister Amanda

My younger sister Tamara

My 3 year old niece Sophia

Mine!

My husband Alan

Project #1 - Vintage Vogue Pattern 8789

The Project!

I started sewing Vintage Vogue's 8789 almost two weeks ago. It all started when I saw a cute red dress on Talbots.com...but when I finally set aside the cash to buy the dress...it was out of my size. Story of my life. At that moment I was like forget you Talbot's, I will just make the darn dress.

It seemed simple enough. The pattern I ended up looked nothing like the dress at Talbot's, but it was cute and vintage and I am a sucker for anything with a full A-line skirt.

The fabric I decided on was shantung in an olive green. I am doing a lot of earth tones this Spring and I decided that this color would go great with my wide brown leather/hemp belt and nude wedges and one of my signature cardigans.

FYI, my sweaters are only a "signature" because I have to wear them to cover my tattoo for work and they help conceal these arms of mine.

As I started handling the fabric I realized that I was familiar with shantung...it was the fabric I was going to use for my bridesmaids dresses. Why didn't I use it? Oh, because it sucks at handling spills and stains. The slightest touch of oil on your fingers creates this dark spot that is impossible to conceal.

Right off the bat this fabric was most definitely the wrong choice for me. Not only do I live in the Texas heat...but I am the kind of person that sweats in rain. All I need is to wear this dress to work and exert to much energy that causes a sweat outbreak from under my boobs. Nothing says gross! like sweaty boobs.

I had two options, either buy new fabric or include lining. Since I already shelled out $30 for the fabric I was sure as hell going to use it. I spent another $10 on lining and sew-in interfacing.

The Woes of Sewing

Lets just say that I had a couple of set backs through out this project. I will chalk it up to a valuable learning experience. First, can I say that maybe beginners should avoid obvious stripes in fabric. The shantung fabric have these little lines in the grain which what makes the fabric so attactive. Since the dress has a v-neck top I thought it would be awesome to position the grain lines to match the diagnal lines of the neck line. Woe is me, reader. I tried TWICE to achieve this look...I failed. You know what separated me from diagnal bliss? Flipping the freaking pattern backwards. Two days of figuring this out and screwing up....and this genius fix came literally a minute after I cut the fabric.

Second problem. I don't know if other people are like this, but I cannot speak to someone or watch TV while sewing. My husband was doing me solid and ordering new blades for my rotary cutter but he asked for the blade size while I was using my tracing wheel. I exchanged my tracing wheel for the rotary cutter to measure, then I went back to tracing...with my rotary cutter. I sliced two huge slits on the back panels of my top. I screamed. I cried. And ultimately gave up for that day. Thank goodness I had enough left over fabric to cut another set.

The only good thing that came out of the the rotary debacle is the fact that I needed to add about inch on each side for the top to fit properly. I didn't bother checking my measurement against Vogue's when I first started this dress. As with ready to wear clothing, size 20 is a bumpy ride for me. Either they fit my waist but add extra baggage to my boobs, or vice versa. In the end I ended up cutting an additional two inches from the top of my shoulders to make the dress fit properly in my bust...but that made the length of the top shorter in the front. This was not a problem since I planned on wearing a wide belt with the dress. In the future I need to figure all this measurement crap out before I cut.

Zippers Straight Stitches and Hems, Oh My! Sewing the zipper on this dress was such a bumming experience. I have no idea how to sew a zipper correctly...even with a zipper foot. The side of my dress looks like a hot mess. I am glad that my sweater covers up the majority and the skirt is full enough to where the zipper dissapears in the pleats.

I watched a video where the seamstress stated matter-o-factly that she can tell what caliber of seamstress you are by your straight stitch. My stitches are inconsistent to say the least. I blame it on my machine...my husband says it's a "user-error". Either way I need to get better at sewing straight. I purposely picked this dress because it does not have any topstitches.

I even picked this cute decorative stitch for my hem so that I didn't have to focus so much while doing a straight stitch. Speaking of hems, I spent $6 on fusible hemming tape and it was a waste, at least for this dress. The shantung started crinkling up on me when I tried to fuse the hem. I should have did a test piece before spending 20 minutes pinning the hem tape.

Original Design vs. Personalized Desgin

This pattern is considered "easy", and I bet if you knew what the hell you were doing it would be a piece of cake. But this is me and I make an obstacle out of everything.

Looking over the instructions I noticed that they included this weird ribbon belt inside of the dress. I opted out of the inner-belt since I knew that for me it was not necessary. I think the purpose of the belt is to create a more defined waist. Because of my curves I know exactly where my waist is thankyouverymuch.

On that note, I didn't bother making the cummerbund, is that how you spell it? Anyways. No need for it because I was going to wear a belt. I felt that a sash would make the dress feel like a bridesmaids dress...or even worse that "homemade" look. Face it, no one wants to make a dress and have people know right off the bat that you made it on your $80 Brother machine while eating Doritos and listening to Lady Gaga.

Can I just say that doing pleats is a bummer to say the least? I don't know if I would've been able to do the 100 or so pleats without my dress form. Also, I know that the instructions show you to sew a set of loose parallel stitches in order to gather the fabric to create the ruffled effect. Even loosening the needle tension to the maximum, I still couldn't gather for the life of me. What I ended up getting was a half/half of ruffles and straight fabric. The ruffles ended up making my pleats look a little wacky. Honestly, I feel like my skirt looks like a curtain. The next time around I will say no to Gathering and do larger pleats.

My proudest moment in this dress was the alteration I did to the shoulders. The original design wanted the dress to have these weird mini capsleeves that jutted the fabric out past the shoulders. This aspect made my shoulders look like I was a cross between football player and galactic commander. No thank you. Even though i knew that I was going to wear a sweater...I couldn't get over how ugly the shoulders looked. I was in the final hour putting the last touches in place when I decided to take apart the shoulders and redo them. I ended up doing a double pleat to remove the weird mini cap. I think it looks a million times better than before. I could even do a bunch of mini-pleats if the fabric was thin enough.

Project #1: Accomplished

I think that I am happy with the final outcome of this dress. It being the second dress I have made in my life, I think I did a decent job. The one thing that I wish I could change would be the "nipple lines" as my husband described them, or the dart seams. They do seam rather long on the dress form and on me. They are the length the pattern instructed, but it could be another "user-error".

One of my goals was to make the inside look just as polished as the outside. To me polished means edges that look pretty and not frayed. So, I serged the shit out of my dress. As I was altering the fit I realized that I was serging on top of serging....that didn't look to good so I ended up having to rip thread and start new. Next time I will only serge the necessary. 

All in all, I will definitely be wearing this dress as long I sit in an A/C room with minimal movements. haha.

Things I Learned:

1. Shantung is not water/stain friendly nor is the best choice for Texas weather.
2. Fusible interfacing does not work with polyester lining. Something about the high heat makes the lining get all shriveled.
3. Avoid diagnal lines if you can help it, or do not cut until you know that your diagnal lines will go in the direction you intended.
4. Do not talk to your husband while holding a rotary cutter.
5. Remember to measure yourself and compare to pattern size....you and Vogue might have a different idea on what your size is.
6. A pattern is not etched in stone; put your own spin on the design if you are feeling fierce & Project Runway worthy.
7. Gathering is an art and find your own method that gives you the same look (but will probably include more work).
8. Resist your urge to serge!
9. Sewing zippers is not fun and you should make it a point to practice.
10. Have fun with your machine's stitches...straight stitches are overrated.

Hello World.

If you should know one thing about me is that I do a whole lotta talking and a whole lotta of nothing to back it up. So with that being said, this blog has been kicking around in my mind for the past couple of years. So has sewing for that matter. But with this new year I vowed to be more proactive! (It's July...and I am barely starting this thing...that sounds about right for me).

The mission!
I want to sew pretty things and post pictures of my creations! Problem? I am somewhere in the middle of beginner and intermediate. I have made a handful of things that are actually worth bragging about...all from patterns, but I know that they could be better. I figured that if I force my "crafts" on the world I would be a little more persistant on learning to sew properly. I have a feeling that this blog might contain more bitchin then stitchin...but both will be equally amusing to witness.

Krystal in a nutshell!