Off the Clock

My daughter messaged me late last night to tell me she's been invited to a birthday party with a 50's pinup theme - and of course she has nothing to wear. I told her I would sleep on it. Feeling somewhat refreshed this morning, I agreed to make her a dress. Mom turned me on to Gertie and her blog, and I knew that I would find something appriate starting there. Darling daughter and I messaged back and forth today and we have settled on Butterick 6049 . Here's Gertie's blog post about this dress. Daughter loved this dress right off the bat, which made me really happy because it is marked as "easy". As I told her, that makes the whole thing much more likely to happen lol. We have to decide if we are going to go whole hog with a crinolin and all, but that decision can wait until the dress is done. In the meantime here is a little gif that made my inner geek smile.

 I love Talk Like a Pirate Day. Every year I get into the spirit with lots of "Aaarrrr"s and "Aye Matey"s and "shiver me timbers". When I was leaving work today I reminded the guys that tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day. So imagine my face when I ran across this fabric at the fabric store's 50% off sale! I mean really - what are the odds of running across this adorable pirate fabric the day before TLAPD? It's not like I was looking for it; I was there buying lining for a couple of jackets I'm thinking of making. So needless to say I knew what I had to get done tonight. I washed and dried the fabric - a cotton poly blend with no lycra. Somehow I managed to stretch out the neckline when topstitching. I'm still not sure how that happened, because I thought Phoebe's IDT system was supposed to stop that from happening. To try and fix it I tried sewing a bit of clear elastic across the back of the neckline. It's minimally ...

I've been busy sewing for my daughter for the last while. She's got a skirt, a sleeveless tee and a short sleeved tee from - what else - New Look 6735 . The problem, well actually there were a couple, is that the skirt ended up a little on the short side (in my humble opinion) for my tall daughter, so I added a yoke from McCalls 6966 . The other problem is that she didn't want the back seam on the tees. No problem, I can cut it on the fold. Except that I forgot when I laid it out and cut it for the seam. Twice. I have fabric to make her two more tees but I need her to try on what I've got done so far. I did write on the bag with her pattern tracing to "cut with a double fold!!!", so hopefully I get it right next time.  Sheesh! So my aim this week has been to do some sewing for me.  An idea I picked up from the internet was to made a 3/4 sleeve tee with a matching infinity scarf.  I saw this done in a pretty solid sage green, and it looked almost like ...

When I first got back into sewing last winter I started stockpiling fabric. Initially I was more disciplined and bought fabric with specific patterns in mind to use them for. Then I started having some success with knits, and bought knits every time they were on sale just to build a stash. The whole fabric-buying concept has turned rather willy nilly with no game plan in place. This isn't quite as disastrous as it sounds because I mostly live in jeans and so knit tops always "go". But I've read a couple of posts lately about wardrobe planning that has made me think I need to be putting more planning into my purchases. Sometimes less is more. I found a new blog to follow, The Vivienne Files , which is all about wardrobe planning. There is an excellent post that talks about the Chanel theory where the author quotes Chanel as saying "One shouldn't spend all one's time dressing. All one needs are two or three suits, as long as they and everything to go wit...