I’m all about a structured shirtdress, and this tweed is awesome. It’s very coat-like in this more substantial fabric, with lots of buttons, a double-breasted front closure, button-closeable-flapped patch pockets, self-fabric belt and shoulder epaulettes really copping the ingredients of a traditional trench coat. And it is described as a “coat dress,” so even the manufacturer says you can wear it as either, but … whatever. In that respect I can look at wrapdresses as bathrobes, right? It’s way cooler as a 100% dress than as a coat, says me. If you look at the biggest possible view, you can see the multiple gores of the skirt, the waistline seam, and the armscye princess bodice seams which will all make fitting this thing way easier. I mean, you won’t be wearing a pair of pants and a blouse underneath this thing, so you definitely don’t want traditional trench coat ease in this thing. Pattern possibilities: New Look 6815 if you give it a seam at the waist and fudge the skirt into a multiple-gored one and add a bit to the center-front pieces to get the overlap down pat. (Of course, the back has a shaped upper yoke and a center pleat running the length of the bodice which is chopped up into four pieces itself, but … I just don’t feel like playing around in photoshop that much just now. Maybe (read: probably) later.)

So here’s a sewing conundrum: the sweater dress. Not only is it a conundrum in the difficulty of caring for, finding a good pattern and fabric for, and then aren’t sweater knits sort of a pain to sew anyway? I’ve also got to decide between BCBG’s shawl collar-midriff band combo and the inimitable DvF’s three-quarter-length sleeved keyhole mandarin collar wrap option. My brain is facing a meltdown, I tell ya.

Teeny blog-snack, just to remind myself I’m not a complete slug. And also that I should probably stop by the store sometime soon to replenish my stash of baseball-watchin’ junk foods.
What I got done over the weekend: fabric prep (preshrinking) for the cape and lining, including a head-scratching hour or so trying to fit all the pattern pieces onto a little over two yards of 30″ wide fabric for the latter. I tapered the flare at the hem (104″ is a lot, so I trimmed off about 10″ total) and cut off about 2.5″ in length, ’cause I didn’t want it to cover my whole butt, anyway. The length of the finished cape per the pattern envelope was right under 30″, the width of my lining fabric, so I knew I’d be able to shave a bit so that I could squeeze the pattern pieces on lined up with the cross grain instead of the selvage. I’m not sure how exactly I want to sew the lining to the cape, but I don’t think I wanna stitch ‘em together and then turn it out, which is what the pattern directions tell me to do. I want a longer turned-under cape hem, not for the wool & lining to be all even-steven. So…it’ll still take me a bit to work out the details, though I’m happy with cutting out a medium after tissue fitting and, I mean, it’s a cape so there’s not a lot of fitting finesse I’ll have to tinker with.The shoulder seams look pretty good already, I think.
Plus there’s a high of eighty degrees today with lots of sun, and Chicago isn’t supposed to be all that cold so I don’t feel obligated to finish it before we leave later this week. Bonus! I do, however, have to think about what I wanna have for Chicago and whether or not any work toward its construction is required of me. Shoes? Nah, I got enough of them. That silver twill skirt? I have one more gore of lining to sew on, and then I’ll tack down the high waistline facing and hem the sucker and then I’m all done. Chunky red coral necklace? Well, I’d have to get a design figured out and then do it all up, so … maybe, maybe not.

Next time: prepare for more fabric! because I need to get my witchy skirt done up by Hallowe’en, and also ’cause I just bought some teal/kelly green wool jersey and some ice-blue velvet. UHM. Yeah. They would look great together, though.

September? ‘Sridiculous! I’m such a wank-off. So I’ve been thinking about candy a lot lately, perhaps because the autumnal equinox and its incurrent chill in the air has me daydreaming about hallowe’en and—what else?—bucketfuls of bite-sized, chocolate-covered goodness. It’s much more appealing than huge slabs of chocolate-covered goodness because, hey, it’s only just one little bitsy bite. Mmm! tasty! and now you’re done! I need to think about sewing, and blogging (and cleaning, saving money, spending time with loved ones, planting flowers, and life in general) in much the same way. Just a little bit here! mmm! lookit how lovely such a petite incarnation can be! Because eventually, you eat pounds and pounds of candy; sew up entire garments; blog yourself into some kind of analytic significance; save enough money to buy bitchin’ pairs of Marséll shoes and all that other stuff. So: watch for my random thoughts which may not be so lucky as to be piled into Casseroles of Verbosity. (Which are awesome besides! who doesn’t love potatoes?!)

Today’s bitty thought: I’ve got to preshrink my navy melton so as to really get thinking about making my cape. Subtext to today’s bitty thought: I’m totally going to make a cape! I’ve got two yards of a nice navy wool melton, ditto for some fancy silk-blend brocade for to line it, and a pattern and everything. I think I may just dunk a bedsheet in the bathtub and do a london shrink, or I might toss it in the washer and then let it air dry? What I do know, however, is that it’s cool and cloudy and windy enough today to make me wish I had a toasty wool cape to wear right this instant.

But part of being thirty, for me at least, is being able to fake some maturity and play Stuart Smalley with yourself: to be able to re-hash things that made you feel bad when you were a kid, and give yourself a break. To say it wasn’t stupid to try to teach people how to be good at math, but more than that, to really believe it wouldn’t have been stupid. I’m still sort of tripping over that, and maybe I always will because I, you know, never did that project, but this same theme revisits me all the time. I see it at work, with my friends, with my hobbies: this crazy, eyeball-popping perfectionism that I have to HAVE in order to feel OKAY about doing anything at all. I’m especially conscious of how much I do this with sewing-related activities, both actually sewing and procuring stuff with which to actually sew (fabric and notions and patterns, good grief).

And now, for the *ahem* MEAT of the situation.

I’m going a little crazy lately with … well, I guess a lot of stuff, but let’s focus on sewing business. I keep buying fabric, and patterns, and buttons, and books, and magazines, and notions, and tools, and all kinds of STUFF. I even hired out a Cedar Specialist to create a shelving solution for the fabric that has taken over the top of the hope chest, because it’s been too full to fit any more fabric for over a year now. It’s not for having a lack of inspiration, in the form of any possible variable, it’s just that I’m suffocating under the weight of Possible Perfection. I’ve got all these vague, washed-out pictures in my head of what the perfect dress in that one fabric could look like on me, and there are Two Main Things totally, utterly, completely, balls-to-the-wall wrong with that scenario. First, they are vague, fuzzy, underexposed and off-center pictures that I only have a kinda sorta glimpse of because I’m trying to be all natural and organic in my VISION. Just let it come naturally! don’t force it! let it be, man! and et cetera. And you know what? It’s deceptively and crazy-ass difficult to draw fantastically intricate and clean detail from the sweeping thoughts that surround a first impression. That mess is hard. Monks and shamans and hippies work their whole lives to get good at that, and even when they’re a hundred years old they’re still not perfect. Which leads me to the Second Main Thing wrong with trying to get work done based on intangibles: it works, for a split second in your head, because of its intangible nature. That dress looks perfect on my frame and those colors are stellar with my complexion because I’m taking the most sweeping glance at it imaginable. I’m not breaking down any of the hundred parts into how it might work in reality, so that all the details I could possibly want are already present, I just have to squint to make them out. Unfortunately, this kind of defeats the purpose of leaving the house in the morning; if I want otherworldly perfection, I’m going to have to start taking a lot more hallucinogenic drugs and, for my more materially pressing concerns, regularly happen upon brown paper bags full of twenty-dollar bills at the bus stop. In the meantime? I have just got to get some FBA techniques down pat and start sewing up some dresses.

The provenance lies in my lazy searching technique.

So guess what again, y’all! I just sewed the first ever prom dress for a bowling pin! Now that’s probably not at all true, but in looking around for some pin-art inspiration, I found exactly zero occurrences of sewing apparel for the pin. Lots of painting and decoupage with 2-D and 3-D objects, mosaic-style and sculpture style, and I even saw a drum set sprinkled in the results—but no polka dotted prom dresses anywhere. Granted, I looked neither long nor hard for truly representative examples of bowling pin art for auctioning purposes, but I did perform a google search (images too) and checked out flickr. (Although at the Pin Projekt there were two, count ‘em two, other entries with little custom-made clothes for the bowling pin—multiple outfits, in fact. Guess I need something bigger and better to shoot for next time.)

I originally thought it’d be neat to make matching outfits for me and the ‘pin, so that was my initial modus operandi. It more or less came out that way, only in reverse: I used some fabric left over from a blouse I recently finished for dressing the pin. I wore the blouse to the auction and matched the pin (kinda sorta) after all, and it was painfully cute as long as you noticed how nonchalant I was being. Mission Accomplished! And I managed to learn some stuff along the way, which is my REAL modus operandi. Modus operandi modus operandi! I feel all college educated.

I knew I wanted a circle skirt for Ms Pin, probably because I want one for me, too. And I suspected I’d go a little nuts in terms of the details, and let me tell you it’s way easier to draft and sew a prom dress for a bowling pin than it would be for myself. Now that I’ve got my first set of fancy dress training wheels, maybe I’ll feel a little more comfortable jumping in the deep end and sewing up something crazy for myself next time. So I started with the circle skirt; and I made it *way* too long; the pin was on top of an upside-down cup in this picture, which gave it about five inches in height. I not only overestimated how much length* would be required to keep it floor-length while still counting for how far away from the body I wanted it to stand, I underestimated how long the hem’s perimeter** was.
*about half an inch; I made it like three inches too long.
**seven feet! really! it was amazing.

I first thought I might be able to use up some of that length by making the hem do twisty, crazy filigree style loops and curls, which I was going to use a medium-light gauge craft wire to sculpt. I narrow hemmed the skirt and drew the wire through the length of it, so that it was enclosed by the fabric but still very much able to be bent up and twisted. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures because the initial result was not at all what I had in mind, and I wasn’t thinking that it would be nice to document not only what worked (here I was forcing myself to be optimistic) but what didn’t work, too. I accepted my self-imposed necessity to hold off being all doom ‘n’ gloom, but I didn’t really want to photograph my ineptitudes just yet. If only I’d known how nicely it was going to turn out! Live and learn. The wire was too heavy for the lightweight poly chiffon, and it was much more difficult to bend evenly than I’d imagined. I ended up playing around for only an hour or so before I said Forget This; every ripple I bent into the wired hem caused the whole skirt to become unbalanced, and it was markedly challenging (read: totally damn impossible) to perfectly bend the wire to match the perfect draping of a circle skirt. So I took it out and lopped off the three inches that it was too long, and a smidge begrudgingly did a new narrow hem on the length of it. The new, shorter skirt had a hem that was almost a foot shorter: down from 84 inches to a mere 73. Piece of cake! To make it stand out a bit, I made some 1/4″ tape from some polyester crinoline and sewed that along the edge with two lines of stitching.

and then .
Next was the waistband, since I knew I was going to need a waistband. I wanted a tightly gathered look, so I cut out a rectangular piece of fabric about 6.5″ long (narrowest circumference of the bowling pin was 5.75″, plus seam allowances/room for trimming) and about 5″ wide (gathered into a ~1″ band).

I gathered it at the ends, finished with a continuous strip to which I sewed a couple of little snaps, and added two lines of ruching/gathering/uhm, thread so that the waistband itself was divided into three equal chunks of scrunched up goodness.

and .

And then, there were yoyos.

I have already forgotten how many, but it was in the area of twenty. Or maybe 21, since I did use the bottom of a beer bottle as the template. I brought them in to work with me unfinished, and spent an afternoon going back and forth between serial checkin and journal claiming and yoyo stitching. It was awesome. I’ve already decided that the next project I undertake involving yoyos will most certainly find me doing at least some of them in the workplace—I got a much greater sense of accomplishment from having left for home that day with a little baggie full off puffy, polka-dotted fabric treats. It was as good as eating donuts with dinner.

I ended up constructing the “bodice” part of the dress completely out of these yoyos; I stitched it all together, one yoyo at a time, first to the upper edge of the waistband, and eventually to each other. It worked out to be just about right in how it looked, and I even had a few left over that I used to modestly adorn the full skirt. Though I must note: I wanted a cluster of four yoyos and a cluster of two, not three and two. One, ahem, went missing during the early stages of construction.

That’s about what it feels like in my brain the last couple weeks: I can’t seem to concentrate on any one thing without immediately getting sidetracked. There are some up sides to it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s sort of taxing. I went to the ABC Sale this Saturday past, and found a nice little haul of goodies no doubt in part because I was too overstimulated to get bored and want to go home. Naturally it was worth it because, aside from getting lots of neat things, I love a good yard sale:

Free patterns! a leather satchel for $5! liberty of london silk paisley tie for a quarter! and a funky ultrasuede purse and a vintage-y white sweater and a nice handful of scarves and kid leather gloves, and I spent about $20 all together. Not too shabby—and next year I’ll know to hit the accessories and textiles rooms first. But even afterwards I was too riled up to just go home and have a nice sandwich and relax for a bit: I just wanted to go out and find more little gems in slightly neglected thrift-store-type places. When I get rewarded for knowing stuff (Liberty of London? a quarter?! wooo!) or being in whatever random place I happen to be in or for having exact change, it’s not enough to let it be: I have to expend more energy to keep my good thing going, or something. Sometimes that works wonders; you keep your eyes open and continue to see fantastic things. But it makes me tired and sort of disheartened with how flaky and obsessive I can be all at the same time. What is my solution? I’m taking a big fat week off work.

Equal parts fabric, coffee, paint, squiggley lines, Golden Girls, working on my tan, petting the cat, and cookies.

I have some tenuous goals for next week. I do want to have something (and some things) to show for my nine consecutive days at home, but I’m going to concentrate the most on keeping anything work-related from entering my head. I will focus instead on:

Eating a good breakfast;

the growing springtime around the house;

the best way to drink a pina colada in the hammock without spilling it;

starting and finishing at least one springy, summery article of clothing (probably with polka dots);

Petting ollie the best love girl;

Playing dress up.

I’m also going to try to blog a smidge every day, if for no other reason than I must document vociferously my “no damn way I’m going in to work today” lifestyle—you know, for memories to hold dear when I finally have to go back.

See you first at the farmer’s market and then at the ABC.

p/s. Anyone know where I can score an “Eat Local” and “Buy Local” sticker for my car?

I’ve been sewing it up a smidge the last couple weeks, and it feels really good. Part of that is knowing, seeing firsthand, that I’m getting better. Better at sewing in a straight line, and a curved line, pressing neatly, and even figuring out what changes to make to have whatever garment it is actually fit my body better. I’m still having some issues at being slightly prompt with it all, but you know what? Stuff is getting done. I’m doing all right. It’s working. And part of that is because it’s beginning to warm up outside–the transition to springtime is at least in full push, even if I might wear wool sweaters a few more times before they get put up for the season. However it happened, I think I realized that the beginnings of change are what gets me going the most: so while I’m not at all organized enough to plan out a SWAP (Sewing With A Plan), I *do* have some ideas about stuff I want to sew up for the warmer days of 2008.

Bright or bold and slightly goony-abstract floral prints.

Seriously, I love that mess. And it can get tricky using them without looking like a cartoon character, but with proper grounding it’s just buckets of fun waiting to happen. Also it makes you want to drink blueberry dacquiris in the park, and what the hell is wrong with that? Full skirts for the heavier weights with big prints, dress bodices and short-sleeved blouses for the lighter weight, sheer stuff, both to be paired with solid colors and my excellent taste in shoes.

Minorly unexpected color combinations.

Keep it safely distanced from that day-glo nonsense of the early nineties, and pair rich tones with more neutrals. Go opaque brights with sheer muted tones, get your brown on with the teal, mix silver grey into the yellow and deep plum. C’mon! Get your chocolate in my peanut butter.

Wear amazing shoes with everything, period.

This may mean spending some money on new shoes. I can totally live with that. And all these totally impractically expensive shoes have nothing really to do with sewing, except that I can be inspired to match my blouse to my colorblocked Miss Sixty wedges or match my saddle brown with black to highlight those fan-effing-tastic Costume National wooden sandals. And if I sew all my clothes and still look like a million bucks, it means that I just saved like two thousand dollars, right? HMM WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THAT MONEY. Hmmm.

How high is this wedge? What’s your estimation, here?

Amazon says it’s three and a half inches; Zappos says it’s three and three-quarters inches; and both piperlime and shoes-dot-com say that it’s four inches. I think it’s gotta be between 3 3/4″ and 4″ at least, so … is amazon smoking some shwag or what?

I must first say that I need no real trigger to daydream about shoes for hours, whole evenings and/or Saturday afternoons, and in hindsight? for many years. But it’s been marked the last couple days, more than normal. I do talk a lot, and I even buy kind of a lot when it comes to footwear, but what I really excel at is looking at them. I can look for hours– deep into the wee hours of the morning, on dozens of different sites– sometimes with nothing more reputable to go on than a vague description of color or the kinda-sorta remembered name of the designer. Yishikomo? Tomorushi? Kukaburra? No no no. Kishimoto, Eley Kishimoto.

I get obsessed with finding improbably perfect examples of footwear (according to my fickle yet exacting tastes) and SALE is like the biggest word in my shoe vocabulary. Because I love them, LOVE them, but to this day haven’t paid more than about $140 for a single pair. Now, I don’t wear boots, because my hulky calves prefer to not be encased in zip-tied leather coffins (and that might be the only way I could get a damn pair to fit me), but I have some snooty damn taste. If money weren’t an issue? I’d be all over Celines and Donna Karans and Roberto Cavallis, with Sergio Rossis and Robert Clergeries getting overtime as bedroom slippers. I’d have different pairs of shoes in the backseat of my car, just so I could put ‘em on to run into the grocery store to buy unsalted butter or some hot dog buns instead of wearing the more practical shoes I had on at work that day. I’d put special, lucite-encased shelves along every inch of space on the bedroom walls* so as to have my lovelies on permanent display without the hazards of dust encasing their tender, satin ruffles-turned-rosettes or marring the petite beaded accents in the center of that crocheted poppy. But one thing I would not do, no ma’am no sirree, is spend any less time admiring the qualities of Fantastic Footwear. Which, more or less, leads me to the real subject of my post.
*I’m sure Beck, my lovely partner, is like all cool with this. Right, hon?

There’s always a little spring in the air in NC, even in January.

I’ve been thinking a lot about sandals lately. Now I’ve worn a few open-toed pairs this quote-unquote WINTER with tights, and I can surely get behind that look, but I really love showing off the little piggies. Mine are several cries away from uber toe modelling capability, but I can appreciate shoes with wide open spaces pretty comfortably. Especially if I have a freshly touched up double coat of polish. I’ve worn a couple pairs pretty much to death the last few years, a pair of Re-mix Picasso wedgies and a pair of pretty simple Kenneth Cole Reaction rubber-soled ankle-wraps. Both black, both with a nice low wedge, both crazy comfy and both, at long last, in a very worn state. I have other summery shoes of course (of course!) but they don’t have the staying power, or the GO-TO status of these two that, if not the dust, then at least have bitten a slipcover that could use a good shaking out. All this plus the fact that I have already filed my taxes for this year and I’ll be getting a decent chunk of change back; or because I just got paid; or because Venus is conjuncting Jupiter today; means that I’m really pretty ready to take the plunge and buy the next pair. Some of the ones I’m thinking about are totally impractical, and I know I won’t buy ‘em. Some of them have a stronger appeal because I walk about a mile to and from work every day and these look like they should hold up all right. Some of them I’m thinking long and hard about because they’re pretty cheap, others because I’m becoming more and more a slave to trendy fashion! Who knew! So let’s begin:

Perhaps the easiest, if not most logical, point of beginning is to pick up where we left off. I’ve got two pairs of totally dying black sandals, so let’s see what’s out there in open-toed, low-wedged or -heeled, ankle-strapped black sandal world:

Nine West I can sort of deal with. They’re not my favorite quality-wise, and comfort can be real hit or miss, but they do have their copying little fingers on the trendy pulses that beat loudly with the advent of new seasons. I mean, have you seen their newest creations? Marni must’ve done them wrong in a former life.
These are from last year, actually, but I think they’re cute. That might be a smidge too much of a height-booster, though. Three inches is my max, if I include in my range stuff that makes my feet hurt after a full day. And there is that nice platform to offset at least one of those inches, but you’re still up in the air, there. Maybe not the best choice.

Next up on the choppin’ block is a pair of campers. Now, I have a pair from a couple years ago that I totally adore– a pair of red and black sandals that fall oh so perfectly into my checkboard, Stendhal-esque way of dressing myself in the summer, plus they’re okay comfort-wise and the rubber heel is a humongous blessing. But really? They might be a little too orthopedic-looking. Hmm. Next.

Now these! Oh goodness! I can’t go on enough about how Clergerie shoes are practically perfect on my admittedly less-than little feetsies. They’re a little extra wide at the ball which I need, and in the heel too which I don’t but is all right, and the lasts must have my social on them– I mean, the pitch and overall shape is just right. Plus the quality is top-notch, they’re kinda funky-retro but not in any way cheap or hoochy. They’re pretty damn good Me-shoes…ahh, except that they’re like five hundred dollars. And, you know, I just– I just don’t think I can do it. Previous Clergerie purchases were made on the ‘lectronic bay for about 20% of what they cost new. What can I say? I fricking love bargain hunting. This Rosie style is brand new though, and ebay’s always such a shot in the dark, anyway. Better keep looking.

I’m digging the dark silvery color pretty heavily so far, and this might be a neat alternative to neutral black. Reviews say that this is a pretty comfy shoe, even though that heel is up there; the stacked heel puts it neatly into warm-weather territory even if the pewter color makes you think about Autumn leaves and what-not; and it’s on crazy sale right now for like $30. Uhm, we may have to just get this one even if I only wear it on weekends, maybe? Of course, there are other pewter/dark silver/gunmetal/oxidized chrome color shoes out there, and more than one pair might be overdoing it, so maybe not. In comparison, I think I’d much rather have the …

Ooh yes! Mmm delicious! Lovely silvery strappy low-funky-heeled ankle-straped d’orsay GOODNESS! Seriously, I love these. And I love them in silver lame’ more than any other color. I just don’t know how good they’d be for summery shoes, you know? I may get these just ’cause I love them, and not as my must-wear-for-summer-shoes. Of course, I said that about those Espace Mygne heels, too– and now the zappos clearance bin, 6pm.com doesn’t have anything between an 8.5 and a damn 11.

These Faryl Robins I like, though they might not do much for making my legs look sleek; which means I might not wear them much, after all. I do like the retro attitude, and black and the pale natural woven platform ‘n’ heel is a great way to incorporate a more grounded color scheme to the brights we’re seeing all about this season, and again, super sale. Fifty bucks. Which isn’t really all that crazy inexpensive, like twenty bucks, but they’re still like 70% off. So, hrmm.

Where is my candy?

Of course I wouldn’t just wear any of the above just to work; it would maybe only be predominantly to work because, hey: I spend a lot of hours here. But in all this looking at shoes, don’t we need to see some crazy high heels up in here? I thought so.

Aww yeah! Holy cow! I wouldn’t even be able to walk to the bathroom in these, but I want them. Like, reallllly waaaant them; in part because they’ve been for sale at an online consignment place for a while now, and I guess no one else wants them, and the price has been slashed to three canned goods and they’re my size and they’re in mint condition and– and– breathe. Breathe, now. Maybe I’ll cave in this weekend, or maybe I’ll buy something more practical (i.e. something that I would get real-world, out-of-the-house wear from, instead of breaking them out of their dustbags once a month for three minutes while I coo and whisper to them as I lay incapacitated on the bed).

Woo! More pretty green shoes! I’m pretty impressed with Charmone’s offerings, if for no other reason than they’re super high quality and animal-product free. Since I’ve grown into my girly-ass identity, inclusive of the shoes, I’ve been pretty admissive with wearing leather. My standards for quality and appearance are even more unwavering than my hippie vegetarian ways, and while I’d pick the non-leather if I had the choice? You hardly ever have the choice. These beauts not only give you a loophole, but let you straddle the line between 70s glam rock outrageousness and 40s nightclub songstress while you’re being a hippie vegetarian. How cool is that?

These are pretty cutesy, and not in the way I’m always satisfied with. I have some cutesy shoes that I love, but the peeptoe and the bow and the button and the color might put this too squarely on Minnie Mouse for my tastes. But maybe not; it comes in black, too, but I think I like the green better. It’s another one of those they-have-my-size-and-it’s-on-sale-woo! shoes, so it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll buy it. Even if I would wear it about 800% more often than the Vera Wang silk pump up there.

So tell me: what do y’all think?