Desert Shirtdress

I’m pretty in love with the Alder Shirtdress by Grainline Studio. This version is a good vacation dress, breezy fun, colorful, but yet slightly polished. I feel like I could wear it to the Grand Canyon and still get into a semi-fancy restaurant for dinner.

I didn’t wear it to the Grand Canyon (we went hiking) but I did wear it on the drive back to the airport. I made the bf stop on the side of the road somewhere near the Hoover Dam to get in the pretty background. He had a slight trouble understanding why we couldn’t just take picture in the back yard. (It’s a desert dress! We have to take pictures in the desert!)

(Totally worth it)

I bought this fabric sometime last summer at Harts Fabric on a trip to Santa Cruz. I’m fairly positive I bought it specifically for this pattern. Knowing that you think I would have bought just a smidge extra for stripe matching but naw, why be prepared? I like to live on the edge. Thankfully most of the stripes match up rul well. The only thing is I wish I had moved the left top piece over slightly so the pattern in the pink matched up on both sides. I also wish I had extra fabric so I could wrap everything I own in it and make a matching entire wardrobe. It’s so soft and lovely! Sadly I used every bit of it for this dress but I think you can still buy it at Stone Mountain and Daughter.

But take a look at that back collar! Dats some nice matching.

The pockets, on the other hand, were a happy accident.

I didn’t realize the stripes repeated in reverse, so when I cut out the pockets it took me a sec to figure out why everything didn’t match up perfectly. But then I decided I liked it better. I think it makes the pockets stand out, but not too much. In a nice way.

 

I really like how the pattern fits. I made no changes other then grading from a 10 up top to a 12 in the tush. I think next round I could cut a straight ten and be fine. It’s a loose fit and I would mind the waist having slightly more shaping. I’ll also move the buttons a tad in the next rendition. It pulls slightly up top which I think could be fixed better with button placement then with sizing.

On our way home from the Grand Canyon we also stopped by a small diner for some breakfast and found this beauty…

They really know how to get me!

I’ll end with this pic. Not sure what’s happening in this photo, I think I might have lost something.

Ease-y does it

Some times you win, sometimes you loose, sometimes you cut a hole in your almost finished garment while clipping a seem.  It HAPPENS.

See what I did there.

So, what happened was, I was cutting the collar facing because somehow I sewed it into the shirt when I was trying to finish the edges (funny how often that occurs) and I accidentally snipped the back of the shirt.  Pretty much exactly what I’ve done multiple times with my surger, but turns out I didn’t even need my surger to do that this time!  Lucky me.

 

(Picture pre-incident, when everything was going so well)

If you look at the pattern pieces, you’ll notice the shirt is made so the back yoke is all one piece with the front yoke area.  So to fix this tiny little minuscule mistake, I would have had to take apart the entireeeeee shirt.  LAME.  And, I was almost done.So instead I patched the hole by making some makeshift double sided iron on interfacing (that’s when you sort of remove the non sticky part of single sided interfacing so it’ll stick two things together.  Super MacGyver and shit).   I ironed a little patch onto the back and then hand stitched around it.

I think I did a pretty good job.  I was considering putting interfacing over the inside of the back so it doesn’t unravel, but I didn’t want to make it too bulky.  I’ll just have to see how it wears.

What’s MORE important, is how awesome this Deer&Doe pattern is, it’s like super awesome. A few weeks ago I stumbled into magic-land and discovered the lovely Paunnet and then she led me to THE BEST MOST ADORABLE INDEPENDANT FRENCH PATTERNS OF ALL TIME, aka Deer&Doe.  Or also, the only independent french patterns I know of, there could be a gold mine of indy Frenchie patterns out there, just waiting for me to discover.

For now I’ll just enjoy these little babies:

  

It took me a whole two seconds to order the dress upon seeing Paunnet’s darling renditions.

Chambray Airelle Blouse

Also I didn’t mean to practically make the EXACT same shirt as the one in the sample, it was just one of the few bits of fabric that I trekked over from the homeland.  I was going to use it for a Collette dress but decided it was too light weight.  It’s just perfect for this top.

For the next rendition I was thinking I might make a size bigger, or cut sleeves a little longer or shorter, but I really don’t thing I’d change it too much. I might have to try a more rounded collar, oh and to not cut a hole in the back of the shirt. But no promises.

Corduroy

One of my favorite books when I was a kid was the book Corduroy, about a little stuffed bear at a department store that was trying to find a button for his overalls.  I don’t remember the whole story, but I do remember there was some sewing involved.  Foreshadowing my friends, foreshadowing.

Green Overalls. Green Skit. Coincidence? I think not!

Fast forward till the second week of February, 2013 and guess who finally finished a project?!  Whooooohooo, this girl!

That’s right.  I was inspired but the ever adorable Tilly and this post to pick up a copy of Grainline’s Moss Skirt pattern.  And tell you what, I’m so glad I did.  It is just the perfect amount of simple and adorable.  I pulled out all the stops too, finished the edges properly and topstitched like a queen.  I decided to lengthen the skirt and ended up adding 3 inches.  Which was a bit tricky because I didn’t have any tape to adjust the pattern. (Don’t worry, I MacGyvered my way out of that situation.)

The material is some olive-green corduroy that made the trek with me across the pond.  I was going to make a Colette Parfait with it, but decided the fabric was too thick for that dress.  Didn’t realize Tilly’s version was corduroy too until I was typing this up.  Is corduroy back? Is that A thing? I’m never sure.  But I do know it’ll be lovely with some tights as the weather gets warmer.

The only thing I would change is the zipper. I used a chunky zipper and it looks a little wonky when I put it on.  I also did something weird when I made up the fly, not sure what.  To tell you the truth, I didn’t 100% follow the directions, or read them all the way though (shocking), so not sure what I did wrong.  But the size fits me well and I feel like I might have a few more of these in my future.  

Just look how professional this little baby is?  And oh my! Is that Liberty fabric I see for the pocket lining?  Lordy me, I just think it is. How fancy!

I know, I know, no pictures of me actually wearing the darn thing.  What can I say, the lighting is terrible all day, every day this time of year.  Maybe I’ll try to go outside with my camera, in the middle of the day, while wearing the skirt, and figure out the timer on my camera, sometime soon.  But no one hold their breath or anything. 

[EDIT]

+Photos of Maeve in skirt!  Sorry it’s a tad blurry, I need to figure out how to take pictures of myself in this bleak winter darkness.

I mean, not super exciting as you can’t se any detail.  But proof it fits!

Playing Catch Up

Otherwise known as the “instant satisfaction game.”

You know I may never finish that quilt, or that other quilt (no actually I have to finish that one, it’s a gift), or that(those) dress(es), but oh well.  What kind of creative would I be if I didn’t have any unfinished projects in my stash?  A sad one indeed.

So I left the unfinished projects to stay that way for a bit longer and made another version of that Wiksten dress I like so much (told you I’d be back).

I didn’t line it and kept it the same length as the pattern.  It turned out pretty swell, except I used packaged bias tape along the neck instead of making my own.  Silly little lazy girl, don’t think it turned out as well as the sleeves. Meah.

I might try to draft in boobie darts in the next version. Would probably help the fit and might be fun to try.

I didn’t think I’d like the light blue chambray so much, but it’s really growing on me.

Coral me Happy

If you didn’t know it, I have a slight obsession with the color coral.  This should have been the coral themed month.

This week I finished up another pair of long awaited socks.  I can’t wait to wear them all the time.  The pattern is from Purl Bee, they’re called perfect fit socks and baby they weren’t kidding.  These are a dream to wear. I never wanna take them off.  I bought the pattern and yarn when I was in NYC a few months ago at the famed Purl Bee store in Soho.  Cutest little store ever.  So glad it’s not in my town or this girl would be in trouble.

The ingredients:

  

I added a little cable stich in so that I didn’t get to board just knit-knit purl-purling my way though the pattern.  They alternate rows every 15 rounds, but I wish I’d gone for 10, oh well.  The cables also helped me to keep track of how far I had to go.

• Week: Six
• Started: Thanksgiving 2011
• Completed: February 12th
• Percent done before 2012: %49.9
• Point: 1

And she barly slides in with a point.  I give you exhibit 1:

This is what was completed as of January 1st.  I thankfully had left the toe to stich up so that it would be just under %50 complete.

I started these socks at Thanksgiving.  We were at my grandpa’s and I was supposed to be knitting up these bad boys for my mom for Christmas, but of course couldn’t knit the in front of her.

Somehow I finished up most of the first sock while we were in LA.  My mom’s I wrapped up Christmas Eve.  What can I say, I like to keep it close to the wire.

Deer in the headlights.

I think it comes from growing up in the country, but I have a bit of an antler/deer thing.  I saw this really cool art work a few months ago on some blog.  Amazingly enough googling “art aluminum shooting guns” produced the piece I was inspired by, isn’t technology amazing?

It’s from an artist named Walton Creel.  His work is pretty awesome and I thought it might be the perfect addition to that giant hole in my hoopla wall.

Yeah that one.

My first thought was to do french dots, but I hate those things and they’re too hard to turn out consistently. Instead I went with teeny tiny little x’s.  I also only did the outlines, when I was transferring the image I got lazy coping all the dots, and well, I thought it looked better anyways.

• Week: Three
• Started: June? I honestly have no idea
• Completed: January 23th
• Percent done before 2012: 49%?
• Point: 1 (ok so maybe it only deserves half a point.  but I also did some mending so we can push it up to a whole)

I was having a hard time finishing it because some of the dots from the transfer faded and it took me far to long to just go copy the darn pattern and reverse it so I could understand what the heck I was trying to emulate.

The close up is a tad blurry.  I had a hard time with that light thing again. You can sort of tell they’re little x’s… No that’s a lie, I have a hard time noticing in real life with my glasses on.  But it creates a nice effect right?