Alive, Awake, Alert, Enthusiastic

This post title was inspired by one of the most annoying, and most beloved, HOBY (Hugh O'Brien Youth Foundation) morning - anywhere from 6am-7am - wake-up songs.

So... there are a few things I haven't done in quite a while:

1. Sew
2. Blog
3. Sleep
4. Breathe out of my nose and clear lungs

In all honesty, number 4 is the one that is hindering the first three activities. The *dun dun dun* cold has remained and apparently it's taken up a long-term residency. I haven't gotten to any projects, as I mostly come straight home from work and plop on the couch and take DayQuil, then NyQuil when it's an appropriate time to go to bed (around, oh, 9:00pm - that's totally normal, right? Right?!)

I have, at least, gotten to the bottom of the cause of this cold. Recently at work I was given a new floor to audit - I work in a local nursing home. That same floor that I was given to audit recently got closed due to a "severe respiratory illness" that is averaging about 3 weeks to recover from. Mystery solved on that one. Oh the joys of working in healthcare... Anywho, everyone on the floor was tested for flu and tested negative - so thankfully, I can pretty much assume that I do not have the flu as well. That, in small favors, is called "lucky".

With the average recovery time going about 3 weeks, I'm a good halfway through it. I'm hoping to speed through the next half of this cold and get back to sewing, blogging and sleeping as per usual. As soon as "normal" happens, I promise you will get a project. In the meantime - just know that I'm still alive and awake, and currently working like a champ on the alert and enthusiastic parts.

Skirtin' the Sickness

So this weekend I had tons of plans that got side-railed by *dun dun dun* a cold. It started on Friday and has yet to get it's butt kicked by a healthy dosage of DayQuil and NyQuil. It's quite the fighter and it has chosen to stick around. So here I am: on a sick day, on a Monday, sittin' on my couch blogging. I live a crazy, crazy life.

Last night, I finally felt a little better (by better I mean I finally got out of bed) so I decided to try some sewing. I took a mens shirt that I had picked up on my trip to the thrift store in Oswego that had an "everything you can fit in a bag for $3" sale. I crammed a lot of stuff in that bag, so I picked up this shirt for about 25 cents. At this price,even if my sniveling, sneezing butt messed it up it wasn't exactly a what I would call a "loss".

Sophie will be kind enough to model the shirt, as I was by no means going to take a picture of myself in this sickly state. I make no apologies because really, I'm doing your eyes a favor.

The SAS logo really hindered my use of anything up top, so I decided to go ahead and chop it off at the armpits, as such.

I really adored the pattern and the fabric was stretchy, warm and pretty fantastic. Being that the bottom of the shirt was uneven - the front was shorter than the back - I cut off the back hem and flipped the shit upside down. I then cut about 1 inch off the side to make it more fitted. I then sewed my top hem about 1 1/4 inch down, in order to make room for the elastic. I used the safety pin trick to weave the elastic into the top hem. Then I attempted to sew the two ends of elastic together.

At this point, disaster struck. My bobbin on my machine kept falling out of its little bobbin hole thing and the thread kept on breaking. I had no idea what was happening, so like a rational adult I had a straight up hissy fit and yelled "I quit", called it a night and went back to bed.

Today, I came back to it. I looked at the bobbins that I bought and realized that I had bought the wrong ones. I'm not even entirely sure if this is why I had all the problems last night - it's a toss up between that and my machine being totally dirty/dusty - but I decided I did not want to go through all that again. Besides, I started this blog for practice, so I saw it as an opportunity to practice my hand sewn blind stitch. I actually got this right on the first try and it looked pretty good. I couldn't muster up the energy for my usual happy dance when things go right, so I just settled on a sip of orange juice and a snotty "hell yes".

A half hour later or so, I ended up with this - again, modeled by Sophie.

And of course, I had to style her up.

This shirt is a lace shirt that I bought at the Salvation Army. I had full intentions on it being my first dye project, but I think I like it too much to play with it. At $1.25, there was no real "lose" situation whether it remained un-dyed or if it gets dyed.

Sorry of this post is a bit boring... my sick brain isn't quite so "on top" of the usual sarcasm and witty quips. I'll be better in the next post, when I'm all healthy and stuff. 

 

No Sew Fo Sho!

So today I was totally in the mood to sew but didn't want to have a two hour ordeal. I was looking for something quick and simple - so I turned to a no sew project. I know, I know - that doesn't make much sense. But I've had two things swirling around in my mind for a while now that I just wanted to get out of there. The first was that I wanted to use this new product that I bought called "Liquid Stitch". The second, was that I really wanted a shirt at WalMart but couldn't bring myself to spend the 7+ something on it. My thrifting (as well as the knowledge that the fabric was cheap as all et out) has made me a smart shopper... or an obsessive one. Take your pick.

So here's the shirt that I wanted at WalMart. I decided I was going to make one for myself - it couldn't be that hard, right? So I went in my heavily overloaded drawer of t-shirts and picked a simple pink one that I haven't worn in years. Good thing I'm a slight hoarder! This was a light, cotton, stretchy shirt. There was nothing wrong with it, really, other than it was begging to be cut up.

So the first thing I did was take a piece of chalk and draw a line on the back where I wanted my open back to be. Then I cut one side, folded it over and followed that edge to cut the other side.

At this point, I had not yet decided to use my Liquid Stitch. It was something I knew I had, but wasn't entirely sure what to do with it so kept it in the back of my craft room. It was when I folded all my raw edges under from the shirt and realized exactly how thin and stretchy the fabric was that I decided to break it out. I definitely didn't want to put this fabric under my machine. It would have been hilarious and entertaining, I'm sure, but I kind of wanted to get my night going without having to swear and throw things. So I got out my tube of Liquid Stitch, used a totally unnecessary amount of pins to pin down the edges, and went to work.

Upon opening of the tube I was unimpressed. I would have sworn that I got taken by the maker's of Elmer's glue. It appeared as glue and smelled like glue and I'm pretty sure if I were to schmeer (yup, schmeer) it all over my hand and let it dry it would peel off in a gross see-through layer like glue. Don't try to act like you've never done it.

At this point, the process was started so I had to finish it. I followed the directions, putting a little bit of glue - er, Liquid Stitch - down at a time, using my finger to make it even and then pressed the fabric down into it. I then made a bow-like shape from the cut-out that I had and "stitched" that down as well. Then, continuing with my direction-following, I let it sit for more than 30 minutes. In all actuality it "rested" for a good hour and a half because the fat kid in me got distracted by dinner and the couch. When I went back to it, the "stitching" was completely dry and not even hard, as glue would have been. I've decided Liquid Stitch is one notch above Elmer's glue - good enough for a quick fix, but probably not something I'll use in my normal rotation. I then grabbed a small piece of leftover fabric from my Muu Muu Magic project and wrapped it around the middle of the bow to make it "scrunch" up and more bow-like. This is what I ended up with:

 

So it's not the most drastic change this girl has done, but it was quick, simple and certainly added a bit more "pizazz" to a regular ol' t-shirt. Who knows... this shirt may actually make it out of the t-shirt drawer now.

I also wanted to update y'all on my New Year Resolutions. The first resolution, to get healthier and get rid of some of that holiday poundage has successfully failed, as predicted. This pretty much always happens to me. Why? My birthday is 10 days after the New Years Resolutions are created. You can't really resolve to eat healthier and lose weight, and then stare at a birthday cake (and the leftovers!) without breaking that resolution like a stick. So yes, I gorged out for my birthday, and I plan to do the same thing in an upcoming trip to Lake Placid. So, maybe this one will continue once my January festivities wind down.

My experience Syracuse one is going along swimmingly though! That same weekend I made a trip to Oswego with my sister-in-law and we checked out a new thrift store. It was a blast and we had tons of laughs, and I got a full WalMart bag full of fantastically hideous items to remake for only $3. Then, just today I found a store named Clothes Mentor. I had never been in this store, although I've driven past it plenty. The prices were a bit more expensive than Salvation Army, ranging from a few dollars to over $50 (and above) but it was all very well made items from known designers and in good condition; they refuse to take it if it looks even slightly used. I picked up a cute skirt, a dress and a belt for $16. Not my usual deal, but I was okay with splurging just a bit for the cause.

As for the "choosing a regular blogging" day, I still haven't. Sorry all. At some point, I'll get into a nice routine when I can choose a regular sewing/blogging day and then I can break it out. For now, I'm here to please and choosing a day and not blogging on said day would cause a bit of disappointment, and that's not ideal. Someone suggested to me that I should make a bunch in advance and then just post my blogs on the regularly scheduled day, even if I don't sew. Two problems with that - most of my projects are 3+ hours and require at least one glass of wine to keep sane. This cannot be a daily thing, folks, and nothing would come out well if I do a marathon project weekend to get ahead of myself. The second problem: every time I complete a project, I am WAY too excited to post it. I would never be able to get ahead of myself because my excitement would bubble up too much and I'd end up posting each and every project that same day. So... just stick with me and sign up on the side of the blog to "follow" me (stalker) and roll with me while I try to figure this all out.

What'd I learn? 1) Liquid Stitch - easy way out, not ideal for anything other than impossible fabric. Gets. Everywhere. 2) It's pretty fun to try to copycat items I see at the stores. I see a Pintrest board coming out of this one.

So... as I finish up my post (and my current glass of wine) - Cheers :)

Whole Lotta Flowers

This title was inspired by the sentence that my husband couldn't stop muttering every time I came out and asked "does it look ANY better?" I don't know how I feel about this one folks - mainly because, well, it's a whole freakin lotta flowers. (Like how I changed it up there?)

First, let us back up to the inital state that this atrocity was born. It looked like this:

No laughing at the un-makeup'd face or the glasses.

There were 2 things that I enjoyed about this dress: it actually fit me well enough that I would not have had to take it in - the waist was already naturally cinched, and I also kind of liked the print. I'll regret that second one later. There was a way longer list of things that I didn't like: the altogether old lady look, the weird arms, the even weirder shoulders, and the awkward length to name a few.

First thing I went for were those awkward shoulders. Initially, I thought it was shoulder pads that I would find. This was not the case, because what I found was even more odd than shoulder pads:

They were two scrunched up pieces of hard, thick tissue paper-esque type fabric. No wonder they were so itchy. So I ripped the fabric out which, incidentally, also solved the weird arm issue because they were sewn right into the seam of half the shoulder. In the process of ripping out the weird shoulder pads (not even sure if that's what I can call them) it also ripped off half of the arm. I just continued, at this point, to seam rip and ended up with two arms separate from the dress. Goal accomplished. While I was taking things away from the dress, I took off about 3" from the bottom to hike the hem up a bit.

I soon realized that the 3" wasn't enough, so I cut off about a good 2 more inches. My goal was to keep this a work dress, but also didn't want to show up looking like an old school marm. The definitions of our dress code, according to the policy book, is that dresses and shorts have to come to "mid-knee". That's right - not mid-calf, not knee length, but "mid-knee". Considering the fact that the patella is maybe 2 inches in diameter, this is a pretty specific length, but that's for other times.

So along with the length, I decided to try to get more flowers out of this dress. In my attempts, I decided changing the neckline was the way to go. I decided to go with the simple V-neck again, so I cut a straight line down about 3.5 inches down the front and pinned them down. This dress was ready for the big bad machine.

Now. I hope you all are sitting down reading this because I am about to say something that has never happened ever to me. Are you ready? I actually sewed all of the hems (arms, bottoms, v-neck) without any mess-ups. That's right - that is no misprint. Everything went smoothly and I didn't even have to rip out one stitch. I may or may not have completed a full-out happy dance after discovering this fact. (P.S. If this "may or may not" confused you - I'll clarify with... it happened.)

At this point, I had completed everything that I had wanted with this dress. So I put it on. And it was still a whole lotta flowers. Shit. It is better - but it's still not exactly the awesomeness that I had pictured in my head when I started. I did try to class it up a bit - I put on a long necklace and a black cardi, but it didn't save it. The hubsters idea was to break up the pattern with a belt. I do grudgingly agree with that fact, but the problem is that I don't own a wide black belt. Or many belts. With any luck, a few more trips to Salvation Army will solve that issue.  So... here it is.

Ignore that face too. And the white socks. Let's be honest - you're lucky I don't have sweatpants on under this.

 

So it's not the best, but it's what I have. I'm happy that I've finally completed something without messing up royally, but I'm not all that happy with the final product. I'm debating now on chopping it in half and using the top as a shirt so I can get rid of the "whole lotta flowers' with some black slacks.

 

I'll throw it out to you guys - chop it in half, or keep it as is and go with a wide black belt? Leave your comments below!

Green Dress

Happy New Year!

It's 2013!! How exciting - so many good things happened in 2012 (my wedding, working on our new house, this blog!) that I am so excited to see what 2013 is going to bring to the party that we call life.

As for Day 1 of the New Year, this is what it has brought me:

Well, that and some fantastic homemade pizza, but this blog ain't about the food. You'd have to jump over to my gal Danni for all that fantasticness - check her out here. 

This dress wasn't all too horrible, so I thought I'd start off with an "easy" one. HA! Should have known that wasn't an option in this craft room! There were a couple issues with this dress. The first being that the armhole openings were very tight; they were all sorts of jammed up in my armpits. (You're welcome for that visual.) The second...



It had some hooch-tastic slits going up both sides of the dress. But, I fell in love with the bright emerald color and knew in the back of my mind that I had that black lace from this project that would look great with it. In all honesty, I've been thinking about this dress all week. Thinking about these projects in my mind for hours (sometimes days) before I actually start has been quite the annoying habit that I'm falling into. I can't promise that it has helped these into getting any better, so don't get too excited about the pre-planning.

Anyway, a few days ago I played around with this dress on Sophie and came up with this:

No, I did not plan on only have one lace sleeve, but I wasn't going to pin up lace on both sides just to decide I wasn't feeling it. So in this one, I pinned a lace "sleeve" onto the dress and used the last of the lace as a belt (as is my fashion preference lately). I then prompty asked my husband to report to the craft room for his input on this. His response? "It looks goofy". So.... back to the mental drawing board I went. I mainly took into mind that the armholes were extremely uncomfortable. So there was only one thing to do.

Chopped! (and we ain't talking the Food Network Show)

After my small one-person celebration party for actually cutting a straight line, I got out the elastic from my rapidly growing scrap craft pile. I measured the elastic on my body, then sewed the ends together to make a big loop. I then flipped the dress inside out, lined up the elastic to the outside of the dress, folded the fabric over and pinned it all down. Boom! Done. I also pinned up the hooch-tastic slits on the bottom and headed over to the sewing machine. One would think the ease of all of these activities is proving that my skills are improving. My avid readers, though, know that the sewing machine is where it gets disastrous (and entertaining).

The first time I sewed it down (yes, the first time) I used a straight stitch and stitched underneath the elastic. I didn't think it was a problem until I took it off the machine and put it on my body and pulled an apparent Hulk moment when I blew out all my stitches. So... back to the machine I went (after seam ripping out everything I did.) I then went at it again, this time sewing a zig zag stitch, changed the thread to one that matched the dress - not sure why I thought black was a good choice the first time - and this time sewed right through the bottom of the elastic. I put on the dress the second time and it worked perfectly, with not one busted stitch. Bonus. This is what I ended up with after adding the lace "belt":

 Don't mind the major bumpage around the chestal area - it was again cold in my craft room so I just pushed down the straps of my undershirt instead of taking it off.

Now, it wasn't a HORRIBLE look, but I felt like it could be better. So I switched up the lace a bit.

All I did here was tie the lace "belt" apron style and fanned it out instead of scrunching it all up. I think this looks better, and the bow jazzes up the back a bit.

You can also notice in this picture that I sewed up the hooch-tastic slits to more appropriate length. I went ahead and called this dress done... for a whole 2 minutes. Until I put it back on Sophie and messed around with the styling a bit more.

On Sophie, I kept the same belting technique, but added a halter to the dress. I made the elastic tight enough that I don't necessarily need a halter for additional support, but sometimes completely strapless can look funky on me if I don't have an appropriate necklace. If this is the ultimate route, I would go for a ribbon halter so it isn't as itchy as lace.

I thought I'd throw it out to you guys - nothing but the bones of the dress have been considered permanent, so what are YOUR opinions? Stick with what I've done, or add the halter a la Sophie's styling? Leave your comment below and I'll update you later on with the ultimate decision!

Additionally, I wanted to share another fantastic milestone of 2012 that I had achieved - this blog has officially hit over 1000 views! Yeah, I had my own Sally Field moment:

 

Yesterday's post pushed me way over (1036) - I suppose I should give things out more often?

Thank you everyone!

Instead of posting what I've learned at the end of this post, I've decided to go ahead and post my New Years Resolutions. Some of them are my annual staples - you know them, the ones that are broken around mid-January. Others, I really do hope to stick to because they straight up make me happy.

1) Work off all the post-holiday extra poundage. This would be the annual one mentioned previously. Considering I have a Lake Placid trip planned January 21st, the mid-January prediction will probably be right on as well.

2) Experience Syracuse. I've lived here for a good 4+ years - since my 2008 college graduation - and still haven't experienced any of the festivities that Syracuse offers - the beer/wine festivals, the home shows, the Tastes of Syracuse, or any other festivals and other happenings in the area. Except for St. Patricks Day. I said I was interested in the events, not batshit crazy. Keeping the wallet in mind, of course, I would really like to be present at more of these events this year; especially in my new town of Phoenix. They have a Strawberry Fest I wouldn't mind hitting up (you had me at shortcake) and their annual craft fair on the locke seems to be right up my alley.

3) Find more thrift stores! I can't believe I have not discovered these stores sooner! This resolution I decided to hop right into and have discovered a new thrift store in Oswego. This new place has a "fill a bag for $5" special going on, and all day everyday their clothes are $1 each. How could you say NO to that?! *Hint: you can't* I haven't actually gone there yet (only google-stalked them) but I will let you know my findings as soon as I go!

4) This last one is the one that I really want to keep both for me and for you all (in all 11 countries that follow me!) I want to post projects on a more regular schedule. I'm not sure when my regular posting day will be, but sometime in the next few weeks I hope to get a schedule together and will let you all know!