Made and Making No. 3

Happy Friday! I didn't have much creative time this week, but I did finish off one sewing project and start another. Could I finally be on a roll?

{all images link to Flickr for full size}

Clockwise from upper left

1. My latest sewing project. I've been thinking the last week or so about what I'm in the mood to be wearing lately, and it's coming down to lots of separates! My green skirt was the first attempt to start filling in the gaps in my separates wardrobe. Having publicly complained about my recent frustration with sewing collars, I had a heart-to-heart with myself about giving them another try as I really do love them. I've been watching Sunni's 2-in-1 sew-along, and when she mentioned an alternate way to sew a collar everything fell into place in my head. Don't you just love when that happens? So this week, I dove into a 40s  Butterick blouse pattern. Well, slow dive. I'm still cutting out the pieces.
2. Homemade pesto snack. With the food processor Mel and I got for a housewarming gift from my mom and step-dad, we made pesto this week! Two batches. One using garlic scapes from our CSA, one using basil from our yard and a bit of garlic scapes, too. This is a cracker with homemade pesto with manchego cheese and grape tomatoes from our neighborhood's tiny farmer's market (we're glad to have one at all). Oh yum, yum.
3. A tip I made up for myself. Solid-colored fabric remnants annoy me, because I cut something out and then have no idea which way the grain is going once the selvages are gone. So I'm starting to attach a teeny little reminder of the fabric and grainline.
4. Underlining. The blouse I'm working on will be underlined! I've never done this before, but I've read about it plenty. Most recently Lauren from Lladybird talked about it. I followed instructions from Gertie's Blog for Better Sewing. I know there's a shortcut, but I have a hard enough time maneuvering fabric, so I'm hand basting. I love that it's making a slightly-underwhelming-in-person cotton lawn print really pop.
5. A possible future project. Recently I was reminded that I love the idea of embroidering quilt squares from the vintage Aunt Martha's kit I have of state flowers of all 50 states. Well, 49, as I discovered this week one was cut out, but I don't know yet which one! I may work on this in cahoots with my good friend and quilter extraordinaire Elisa, because I don't know the first thing about quilting. But I can't shake this idea from my head. It would be a long long long loooong-term project, obviously.
6. My finished apple tree dress. It's finally hemmed, so here's a sneak peak! Hopefully I'll discover the photos I took under the awning portion of our deck during a rainstorm turned out. If not, I'll have to shoot for another photo session. I really like the finished dress, very comfy and cute, and my first time doing side seam pockets. I think this technically qualifies as a quilting cotton, but it's about the nicest cotton I've ever worked with. I'll tell you about it when I post final pictures of the dress soon.

I'm very excited that my dad is staying with us for a week, so there's probably not going to be much "making" going on next week, except him doing helpful dad stuff. So next week's post might be things like "oh look, my dad added an exterior outlet on our garage". ;)

Have a great weekend, my friends!