hi-lo dress

A few days ago I was shopping at Goodwill to outfit my husband for his summer internship.  I wandered away while he was trying on clothes and found this gem:

The colors screamed, "SUMMER" so loud I had to have it.  It was a pricey purchase for me, at $6.25, but that goes to show the extent of my love at first sight.  First, I hacked off the sleeves.  I left about an inch of the sleeve intact to give myself some fabric for the hem so I wouldn't have to make the strap any more slender than it was.  Think:  a hem at this point would have meant spaghetti straps.

Honestly, I should have really ripped out the seam and done it more cleanly since there were so many ruffles in the sleeve, but I was really excited to finally be sewing on my new table and get a new dress for Casual Friday.  Next order of business was to pin and take in the sides a little (not shown) and bring up the waist of the skirt.  Again, when bringing up the waist, I should have picked the seam and resewn, but I didn't want to! I folded over the amount I wanted to move it up and then sewed very close to the current waistline.

Lastly, I folded the dress in half, down the very front (think: line between your bosom), laid a favorite hi-lo skirt on the waist, and made a half-circle cut.  This made my dress hi-lo.  Some important notes: 1.  Make sure your waist is where you want it to be before you make the cut out. 2. You don't have to cut out the entire side - mine only ended being about have of the bottom hem.  Re-hem the section you cut out and rock it like you own it!  

Sorry for all the cheesy rock analogies - my husband's internship is in geology!!!  My next post is coming soon on how I took all of his over-sized dress shirts in to make them fitted.

diy craft table (aka. the wooly mammoth)

Our table is done!  Our table is done!!  It took six long weeks of arduous labor and then a week of waiting to let the polyurethane cure, but it's done!!!  The folks over at Shabby Dwelling had a great tutorial that was recently taken down.  I was hoping to add a few directions to their otherwise amazing tutorial on how we scaled up the size, but it is no longer there!  And I unfortunately didn't take enough pictures to walk you through the process without their instructions.  Sorry folks!

As we were building, we made lots of mistakes.  Most of the table has been built, taken apart, and rebuilt at least once.  Does that mean we actually built two tables?  Fortunately, none of the mistakes are very noticeable.  And, a few weeks later, I'm not even thinking about them.  Kind of like how I stress over all the minor issues in my new sewing projects until I've worn it a few times and realize I'm the only one that knows.  Or cares.

Visible mistakes aside, the table needed a name.  The Table just isn't good enough.  After the 900,000th piece of cat hair made its way permanently into the endless layers of polyurethane, we decided she's going to be called The Wooly Mammoth.  Feast your eyes on our beast:

on slapdashery

slapdashery:  (n.)

1.  the act of doing things in a careless or hurried way
2.  utilizing a complete lack of patience when trying to make or build something
3.  my middle name

Construction doesn't lend well to slapdashery.  Sewing doesn't usually either.  It's like baking, requiring close precision.  My husband is the baker, I'm the cook.  He saved this desk.

I struggle with patience.  It would be quite adequate to say that I am not a process oriented person--I want a desk and I want it now and will do everything I can to get it done in a day.  But alas, polyurethane takes 24 hours to dry, supplies need to be purchased and then returned and purchased again, and boards need to be cut and then cut again.

Here's what I've learned about building desks:

1.  Measure.  Then measure again.
2.  Don't guess what height you want your desk.  An arbitrary number of 33 inches, because I like tall desks, doesn't work with any chair that would still allow me to touch the floor.  Too bad I found this out after I build the supports.
3.  Wood soaks up a lot of paint and stain.  So buy extra--a lot of extra.
4.  I haven't the faintest idea how to clean a paintbrush so it won't harden with polyurethane.
5.  My cat can squeeze out of window open only 5 inches.
6.  My square isn't square, so all my cuts were at an angle.  Now my whole desk is angled.
7.  Angry painting in the dark does not a pretty desk make.
8.  1"x10" lumber is actually 3/4"x9 1/4."  This makes a big difference when the side support of the table sticks out those extra 3/4".  I'm convinced the fourth dimension is where all of the wood that's missing from these measurements is hiding.  It's just a bunch of skinny slivers of lumber hanging in space.

We're getting close--I can see the light.  Tonight we will be screwing the top boards together to make the table top.  And it will look like an actual table.  Then 5 coats of paint + 2 coats of an accent design + 5 coats of polyurethane + 2 days of drying time = a functional, amazing, mind-blowing desk.

the traveling sewing machine

For many years, my sewing machine lived in it's original box in my tiny closet underneath all of my clothes.  Every time I wanted to sew, I needed to go dig it out of the bottom of the closet, which usually took a lot of effort and heavy breathing.  When I finished graduate school, I repurposed my desk into a sewing table.  It was tiny, but a lot better than excavating my sewing machine out of my closet every few weeks.

During school, my desk lived in the living room.  Meanwhile, I had a room full of dying plants all to themselves.  It was called the Dying Plant Room.  I desperately want to be a gardener, but I'm just not good at it.  The dying plants lived on, but always looking desperate for even a single drop of water.  When I finished school I didn't water the plants more, I just used my newly-acquired wisdom to know that I should give them away.  So I gifted every half-dead plant to a friend.  How nice of me.  With those plants gone, I moved my sewing machine desk into the Dying Plant Room and rebranded it as the Craft Room.

But I had one problem with the new Craft Room.  It was full of windows, which makes it incredibly hot in the summer and very cold in the winter.  Uh, and I usually sew in my skivvies.  I can't be bothered to take on and off my clothes every time I need to try on an article of clothing.  That is really too much to ask.  So the window-ful Craft Room wasn't going to cut it.

So me and my sewing machine are on the move again.  We've decided to invade the Man Cave. This time, we're leaving behind the desk, and making plans to build an L-shaped desk that spans two full walls of the (former Man Cave) now Studio.  This weekend, we plan to commence the epic endeavor of hand-crafting this monster desk, so my sewing will be on hold for a few days.

This hot Man Cave mess will soon be transformed into a sexy Studio!

Wish me luck!

(As a side note, every other room in my house is called the normal name:  the Bedroom, the Bathroom, the Kitchen.)

blue dotted shirt

A few weeks ago I found this:

I loved the bold blue polka-dottedness and the vast amount of fabric.  I imagined a little large old lady wearing this dress to church on Sundays and to dinner with her family.  Her favorite Sunday dinner was chicken dumplings and she always went to see her cousin Maybel, who was also very fashionable.  It was her best dress and she treasured it.  And she never once stained it with communion wine or chicken dumplings.  As I was ripping the seams, I even discovered that she probably sewed it herself.  She loved this dress.  Now I love this dress, but I decided it needs to be a shirt.  And probably a skirt too, but all in good time.

To start with, I ripped the seams to separate the sleeves from the bodice and the bodice from the skirt, so I get the individual puzzle pieces.  I ripped the seams because, surprisingly, as tall and large as the previous woman was (I'm imagining her living in the Amazon), the top piece is actually pretty small.  I needed to save every millimeter of fabric.

Then I put it on inside out and pinned the sides to take it in.  I sewed a straight stitch along the pins and a zigzag stitch for extra security, and chopped off the extra fabric with my pinking shears.  Lastly, I carefully folded and sewed the smallest hem I could manage on the bottom of the shirt and for the sleeves.

And that's it.  I wore it the next day with my awesome, recently-thrifted green blazer.  My husband said, "You look like someone who means business, but wants to have fun doing it."  Score one for the polka dots.

And then I changed into my jammies, but couldn't take the top off.  When I get proud of making something, I need to wear it a lot!  It matched the blue dotted pajama pants that I also just found at the thrift store.  I just had to show you.

ladylike lace skirt

I found this lacy shirt at my local Goodwill Clearance Center on half-off day--that's $0.65 per pound.  I love finding lightweight pieces like this and dropping them into my bin thinking, "This probably only costs $0.10!"

I liked it as a shirt, but I am queen of lacy shirts, and I wanted the challenge, so I decided it needed to become a skirt.  The only problem is that it is totally see-through and I've never made a lining before.

Enter these satin pajamas.  They felt delicious.  And again, I was certain they would only be $0.10 since it was half-off day.  At the time I threw them into my bin I had no idea what they would be, but today they were reincarnated into the lining.

I started by ripping all of the seams out of the pajamas to separate and open up the legs.  Then I hacked off the bottom portion of the shirt right under the armpits.  (I will definitely be making that top into something soon!).

I turned the bottom half of the shirt inside out and sandwiched it with the fabric from a pajama pant leg on either side, with the right sides facing together.  Then I pinned down the sides to fit my curves.  This is when I had a stroke of logic, unpinned the pieces and hemmed the bottom of the satin fabric (the bottom of my lace was already hemmed because it was the bottom piece of the shirt).  Then I repinned, tried it on, adjusted my pins, and sewed a seam up the sides.

 Just to be extra safe, I sewed an extra zigzag stitch outside my straight seam, then cut the extra fabric with my pinking shears.  I did the same thing with the extra fabric at the top of the skirt.

I needed to add a waistband to my skirt, but this was all I had left from my pajama pants.  I had to cut and sew three strips together to make a piece of bias tape for the waistband.

Next I pinned and sewed the satin pajama bias tape over the top of the skirt, leaving a small opening in the back.  I took some elastic from another skirt I fixed up and threaded it through the tube I created with the bias tape.  The last step is to sew the elastic together and the open pieces of the bias tape together.  And VOILA!

i'm boycotting new clothes!

For one year, my goal is to not buy any new clothes.  Instead, I'm going to build my wardrobe entirely on thrifted or handmade pieces.  And I'm going to look hot doing it.

Here's why:

1.  I want the challenge of working hard for my clothes, feeling the pride in how I dress myself.  I've been stuck in the same boring jeans and tshirt forever.  I wear boring, safe colors and very few patterns.  It's time to find fun new clothes, take chances, and get out of the boring box.  I want them to represent who I am.  And I don't want people to think I came from the boring box.

2.  I want to reduce the clothing waste in the landfills.  Do you ever think about what happens to the clothes that no one buys from your thrift store?  They get squished into a huge clothing cube on a pallet, shipped to my clearance center, dumped in big rolly bins for people to sort through, and sold for $1.29/pound.  And when no one buys the clothes at the bottom of those bins, they get sent to the landfill.  Why buy new clothes when there are so many awesome pieces that can be bought for $1.29 a pound?

3.  I want to improve my sewing skills.  I'm starting this project with a basic understanding of my sewing machine.  And by basic understanding, I mean I can basically only sew straight lines.  Hems and curtains.  Through refashioning my thrifted finds, I want to learn how to sew, so I can eventually sew new pieces from scratch (from recycled materials, of course!).

I'm doing all of this with my sweet little sidekick, Olive Ant.  She's the cutest cat, even if she is anti-helpful with sewing.