Hush Hush!

I have been working on a little "something something" lately. I can't mention it nor describe it because it just happens to be a Christmas present. *cue all friends and family into worry mode*. However, as I go through this project I've learned a few things that I just couldn't miss writing down.

First of all - I found my favorite pattern, by far.

Not the best picture, but if I got any further away from it, I would have given away the secret! As soon as I saw the pattern, I knew I had to do something with it. It's your best guess - is it a Salvation Army find? Is it something I already owned? Or is it just a piece of regular ol' fabric? You shall see after December 25th!

So while I was sewing up my Christmas gift, I had an absolute crisis.

 

Yeah - these right here? These should not have had to be used. Alas, they were. Here's the story: I was watching a YouTube video that said "go ahead and sew right over your pins". Mind you, this is something that I've done before so I went about my business and pinned up my Christmas gift (yes, with my usual 10-20 more pins than actually needed. I really need to quit that habit) and started to sew. About 15 sewed-over pins later - CRISIS. My needle hit the pin. As a result, the needle bent in half, jamming itself inside my machine. Yes, you read that right. Inside. The only thing I could see was the colored little head. And I was a bad little blogger because I didn't get a picture of it. To be fair, pictures weren't the first thing on my mind.

 

After staring in amazement for a few minutes (mumbling "seriously? that just happened?), I had to figure out what to do. So... I went into panic mode - totally rational. My first step was attempting to drag my husband away from his video games. When that didn't happen instantaneously, I grabbed the above needlenose pliers. I also pulled out every piece of paper that I owned in my craft room in search of the booklet that came along with my machine. Then I grabbed the pin and pulled. Really hard. Luckily, I didn't break anything but the metal foot thing on the machine continued to get in my way and I wasn't able to pull straight up. Then I actually took a look at the booklet, and didn't it show me how to take that foot off.

 



Once I got it off, I just pulled really hard and out came the pin. Luckily, once I started sewing again, there were no side effects and nothing was broken. I have a feeling that I struck lucky on this one, so from now on I'm certainly pulling out pins before it goes through the "feed dog" - yup, learned that from the book that came with the machine.

In the end, I got the Christmas gift about halfway done, and hoping to get it done in the next week if I keep plugging away at it.

Up next: I have a Christmas party on the 15th and I have some awesome purple Nine West shoes that I've been dying to debut ever since I bought them. I think another Salvation Army Trip is in order. This time, I have an idea to create a whole new dress using a few different pieces. We'll see how it goes!

Also found a neat fellow blog (this one much more popular) that is just like taking a Home Ec course - but a real one, not the Minerva-style one we had; we learned how to write checks and organize the teachers office.  If you're interested, here's the link. I'm certainly going to check it out. I'll be a pro before you know it!

"So... do you actually wear this stuff?"

Oh my blog! (bahaha... get it?) Life has been crazy lately, so unfortunately I haven't been able to do any new outfits for the Thanksgiving season. This fact makes me very sad, but I believe I'm going to don the Muu Muu Magic dress for Black Friday Shopping, so at least I'll be representing my project in some way, shape and form for this holiday.

Now, word about the blog has gotten around, and those who haven't read it often say "oh, I saw your post on facebook - what's that about?" So I explain what I'm doing and show them pictures. No matter if they've read this blog or not, the reaction (and facial expressions) are usually the same: shock, "oh", a slow nod and raised eyebrows, and finally, "so do you actually wear this stuff?". And the answer is....

YES!

I know, I know - it's crazy talk. I know that the stuff I make is not the most fashionable stuff on the market, and it certainly is a different taste (I'm not entirely sure that the taste is even mine, in all honesty), but it's just something about putting things together and creating something new that really makes you proud. Proud enough to show it off. Proud enough to not be ashamed when you hear "wow... that's different." (You'll see more of what I mean when you see the Christmas skirt I have planned in my mind...)

So here are just a few examples. Remember the blue dress? I often wear that to work - usually the same outfit/colors that I wore in the final picture. The only problem I'm finding with the skirt is that it stretches out pretty easily, so by the time I get home it's about 2 sizes larger than it was in the morning. I may have to re-visit this skirt to get some sort of better button holes on it. You know - better buttonhole than the "cut and prey" buttonhole that's on there currently.

The muu muu magic made it's own debut a few weeks ago. The hubby and I, along with a buddy of his, watched a Syracuse game at home and then I did a bunch of errands around town in it (with not even one dirty/odd look at my outfit that i noticed). Also, remember The New Nightstand? I was wearing the Muu Muu when I finished that :) The only thing I'm having a rough time with for that dress is the accessories. I bought brown boots and brown leggings - and it's just too much brown. I ended up wearing my favorite grey boots with the leggings and it didn't look bad, but all I could hear were E! entertainment voices in my head saying "brown and black do NOT go together!"

Finally, the retro dress. Today at my job I had the pleasure of handing out free turkeys to our employees. It is the first day in a long time that I didn't want to quit, and I had a blast making people's holidays a bit more special (and affordable). Another good part of it was that I could wear casual clothes. I had to take the opportunity to debut a project dress at work, so heres' my work outfit :

I know I didn't post a very good "after" picture of this from the wine tour, so here is a better one. It's the retro dress, a pair of dark skinny jeans and my favorite grey boots.

So there you have it - yes, I am doing this for practice, but these items are not going to waste either. Except maybe the New York and Company (Wannabe) shirt. That doesn't fit and was a fail. All the other ones, though, are fully put to use :)

I'm hoping I won't be on a project hiatus for too much longer. After Thanksgiving, I'm hoping to have a few Christmas projects going on for all the parties and festivities going on around the holiday season. I'll be sure to post 'em, as always, success or fail. In the meantime, my dear readers, (because thanks to Bloggers tracking, I know you're actually reading it! *huge smile*) I hope you all have a fun, safe and enjoyable holiday!

The New Nightstand

I know, I know. "A nightstand? That's not interesting at all!". However, this needed to be done - my craft room was severely lacking in storage and I was finding that I had to throw all my potential projects in a corner on the floor. Not ideal. So... I bought storage. But I didn't just make it all easy peasy on myself and go out and buy a new piece. Oh no. I had to have something for the blog.

So I found this little beauty on one of my shopping trips at Salvation Army, and once I saw the $7.99 price tag, I just couldn't pass it up.

Sorry it's a bit dark. This was taken in my garage around 6pm last night. Stupid time change. This was a nightstand but it was a bit too awkward and a bit too big to be put anywhere, but those two doors open up to a very large storage space. I knew I could put it to good use - but it certainly needed a bit of TLC.

First thing I did was a nice coat of spray paint. Everything in my craft room is white so I wanted it to fit right in.

Personally, I think it looks better already! So then I was thinking about the possible uses of this nightstand. I am all for multi-purpose pieces, so I thought it was a perfect height for a seat. Just to set the scene: for all these projects, I have been working in my craft room that contains two tables: a work table (a 6ft foldable table) and my sewing table (a desk my dad for me in high school). While working on projects, I would have to drag my chair from one table to another and back again everytime I changed tasks. It was time for a different approach. So I decided to make a cushion for the top. So I went out and purchased myself a slab of MDF board, 2" foam and some fabric.

The fabric. I knew I wanted orange, and in the "Home Decor" fabric selection in Joann Fabrics, there were only two choices. Joann Fabrics fail. Anyway, I had this choice and I had a bright orange, Hawaiian print choice. I think I certainly chose the better of the two.

At this point, I sucked up to the hubby to get the circular saw out, which actually didn't take that much persuasion, and cut me an octagon from the MDF board. Then I took out the bread knife and cut the foam to the same size. (I read on other blogs that cutting foam with a bread knife was easy. Easy? Yes. Even? Hell no.)

So I didn't want to just sit on a foam for my cushion, so I decided to wrap it up in some of the batting I had for some previous table runner projects.

With the batting, I just covered all sides of the foam and did the sides like Christmas wrapping, then got out my handy dandy glue gun and glued  it on all sides. This resulted with quite a few glue strings all over my craft room and a handful of burned fingertips, but it got the job done.

Then, I ironed out the fabric. I'm sure you've noticed that I have not mentioned this activity in any of my other projects and this is for good reason - I hate ironing, and my ironing board is 2 feet long. It's both annoying, and takes forever to get a garment done; I'd just rather have crumpled clothes. For the seat cushion though, I figured a fold down the center wouldn't quite look effortless and professional (ya know, 'cause that's obviously what I go for in my projects...). Then I placed the foam on top of the wrong-side-up fabric and the MDF board on top of the foam. From there, it was just a matter of getting my Christmas present wrapping skills to work - gather, fold, and staple. Except, my stapler that I am in love with and typically has monster power (which my husband proved when accidentally stapling his jeans to his skin in college) did not penetrate the MDF board. Damn. In pure laziness, and because it was still sitting there from the batting and foam, I tried to glue the fabric down with the hot glue gun. And. It. Worked. BONUS! Nightstand was painted, cushion was done, it was just a matter of putting all the pieces together.

 Ta da!

It does need another coat of spray paint, and then I'll put my new knob pulls on all snug like, and then either wood glue or screw the cushion on, but otherwise, I think it'll look pretty awesome in the craft room. For only about $35 bucks! And it'll be really nice not to have to drag the chair around the room after myself, as well as not have weird old lady clothes hanging around in the corners making people ask questions.

Few things on the mental checklist: 1) Furniture is rather fun to redo - and taking a break from being the subject of my pictures is pretty nice. 2) Use coupons and never pay full price for anything at Joanne's. Original prices: fabric - $10.99 and foam - $14 or 16 (I lost the receipt). With coupons - that combine - my purchase price was $10.80. I get so many coupons in the mail and in my e-mail, there's no excuse for me to pay full price.

New York and Company (Wannabe)

Gonna go ahead and start right off by saying - this is a fail.

I took another trip to the Salvation Army a week or so ago. I didn't quite find as much as I had hoped. I think I had myself all amped up from the past projects that I was expecting to find tons more. I actually found a lot of the same items that were there the last time I had gone so, unfortunately, I didn't find quite as much as I was hoping. Don't get me wrong, I still came home with some fantastically hideous things, but it definitely took some looking. Alas, I did find a few projects and I decided on getting started on this one right away:

Why this one? Well, I was in New York and Company a few months ago and fell in love with a blue shirt with flowers in pretty much the same fabric. It was a really pretty shirt (and apparently already out of stock because I couldn't find a picture on their website) but it carried a price tag of around $50. Too much for my blood, so I passed. Then, I saw this dress. Yes, it was lilac, but it had the same flowers and the same fabric. Yes, it was a dress, but I was pretty sure I could fix that. Yes, it was for $3.00. Yes, it was mine.

My plan was to get it home, slice it in half and make a bottom seam on the raw edges. I thought it'd be a pretty quick project and I was feeling a lazy Sunday. Boy was I wrong.

First thing was first - out with the ever-fantastic shoulder pads. I was amazed these held up throughout the years, as they were being held onto the fabric by one lone thread.

Then I chopped it in half. This was about the time that I actually tried it on. And lo and behold, it fit perfectly until trying to zip it up past the chest area. Damn; too small. So then I got out my seam rippers (don't act surprised) and decided "I could do this". First thing I did was rip out a side, and then I attempted to sew in a new seam. The first few times (yeah, you read that right), I kept on losing the fabric under the footer and the line of the sewing machine started to mimic the path of a drunk driver. Then I realized this function on my machine:

Don't be laughing at my flowers now :) Anyway, I realized the switch that I always often ignored was actually useful. I could move the needle over all the way to the right and get more of the fabric under the footer in the meantime. Luckily, this worked like a charm and I only had to rip out the seam once. (Record!) Lesson learned to not ignore this switch any longer.

At this point, I actually took a good look at the seams. The manufacturer of this dress did two seams - one about 1/2 inch in, and another about 1/4 inches in. I was unsure why this was done and thought this was a bit extraneous, but I decided to put this information away into the back of my mind for the next time I do seams - who am I to judge the professionals? This little amateur is willing to take all the "tips" she can. So, I decided if I were to rip out the 1/2 inch seam and keep the manufacturer's 1/4 inch seam, it would be an easy way to take it out and not have to take out the seams that kept the fabric from fraying - it frayed very easily. It was also a bonus that I wouldn't have to sew in a lot more seams, and instead could keep the original ones.

You can see the small dots of the seam that I ripped out, and the manufacturer's seam that I left there to help it not fray:

This is also evidence that I clearly use too many pins. That is a full three pins in about 2 inches of fabric. I have a problem.

 

After taking out all the seams, and finishing the bottom (I even amazed myself that this was done with no problems), I put the shirt back on. It didn't look all that bad when I was just standing there. Then I tried moving my arms. This is what I like to call my "Hulk Moment" because I could have flexed into one muscle move and ripped through the side seams. Replays of "fat guy in a little coat" ran through my mind.

Of course, I probably should have found a bit better of pants to pose with this - what "Say Yes to the Dress" refers to as "getting jacked up" but I was a bit upset that the shirt wasn't wearable. Although, if I were to ever pick up a second job as a statue, I suppose I could put use to the shirt for that. Let's do a close up:

You can tell that it's tight in the shoulder/chest area just by the stretching of my shoulder to even hold my phone up! Also, you can still see the gaps that the shoulder pads used to live in. How... cute.

 

One thing I am quite proud of is how good the back looks. I know, I know - I literally had nothing to do with it. The zipper was already there and so were the seams... but I did the bottom!

So that is that. I have a pretty shirt that doesn't fit. But that's fine, because I got practice out of it and that is the whole point of these projects. Yes, it does suck that I can't wear it around in public and show it off - but maybe once I start finish my new running program, it'll fit and I can debut it sometime soon? I won't hold my breath (because that didn't help make it fit either.)

 

The other good news, is I still have the entire bottom of the dress to do something with. It could be an interesting skirt, or maybe even strapless sundress for summer (yay for being short!). Any ideas on what to turn this into?

 

Few notes on the mental checklist: 1) When alteration people say "we can always bring it in a few sizes but only can let it out one" - I no longer think they are lying. 2) Dials on the sewing machine are much more useful than just looking pretty. I'm going to play with the different fabric scraps that I have and figure out what all the bells and whistles consist of. 3) It'd be really sweet to have a dressform that mimics me, but for a good $300 price tag, I think that's going to be an investment in the far future, when I know this is going to be a regular activity for me. 4) Find more locations of Thrifty Shoppers/Salvation Army. New items don't come around these stores as often as I had assumed. 5) Donate more clothes/items/etc. to these stores. I see a whole lot of people in there that truly depend on the clothes and items they find. I've always donated, but I've also kept a lot of stuff in my closet "just because". "Just because" doesn't help these people. I encourage you to do the same.