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!

Weddingish things

Less than two weeks until the wedding! So I thought it was high time I share some details with you.

I'm feeling good about everything. Not too stressed. Just enough relaxed. Most things on the "to do" list are minor at this point, with the exception of a couple of small projects involving embroidery.

The only things I'm annoyed about are the huge zit on my chin, the cut I just gave myself on one of the knuckles on my left hand earlier today, and the two scars I've managed to give myself on my left hand/wrist over the last few weeks. For the record one was from some small cut I got at the airport coming back from New Mexico, and the other was a minor incident with a cast iron skillet last week. All three (zit excepting, of course) are on the hand that will likely be the center of some wedding ring photos. Geez!

This past weekend we finalized our wedding site. Yes, that probably sounds funny to you since the wedding is next Friday. But we're doing a guerrilla wedding. And as such, I'm not actually going to tell you the location until after the fact (not that most of you would know where it was anyway!). Fear not—we're not trespassing or going anywhere we shouldn't. It will be held on public land in a lovely location in Chicago. So lovely, in fact, that we saw a deer when we went to walk around the site this past Saturday. Actually we saw another one but I didn't have the camera ready for the second deer. We definitely considered this guy a good sign.

We have our outfits set. I won't share all the details, but here are a few glimpses. It shall be a fairly vintage wedding, not surprisingly.

A bit of Mel's hand-painted vintage tie...

The label of my vintage dress...

It's a rather casual dress, but I love it. Judging from the style and A-line skirt, I'm guessing it's probably WWII-era. The colors are so rich and vibrant! I didn't actually buy it thinking of it as a wedding dress, it was a dress that sidetracked me on Etsy while I was looking for wedding dresses. But once I saw it in person I fell in love and decided it was The Dress. Here's one more little detail, part of the collar...

I'll be wearing several pieces of jewelry. The only thing that won't be my engagement ring/wedding ring or family jewelry is this celluloid bracelet. The picture is a bit fuzzy but I thought it was funny that Dinah traipsed through the shot...

The other pieces of jewelry will be family pieces, some of the very few I have. My "something borrowed" will be my mom's pearl necklace. My "something old" (other than the vintage clothes, lol) will be a ring of my grandmother on my dad's side, and a vintage brooch and clip on earring set of my grandmother on my mom's side. Here's a photo of the brooch...

My "something new" will be vintage-inspired underthings that need not be mentioned. ;) And my "something blue" will be a handkerchief my mom is supplying that was my great-grandmother's! Pink with blue flowers, which I'll tuck into the self-belt on my dress. Here's the photo my mom sent me of it when she was on the hunt for blue, isn't it so pretty and delicate?

Speaking of my mom, she knit me a wonderful wedding shawl in less than a week! It all started with an idea, and a coincidence, and then a discussion via email about who was going to knit it, her or I, which resulted in her saying, "Let me rephrase this. Your mom would love to knit this for you." Doesn't that just tickle you? So off in the mail to her went the yummy silk-blend yarn that had been in my stash just waiting for the perfect project. It's the palest, palest yellow, almost white. And she's already finished it! Here's her photo of it blocking:

It's a lovely wee little shawlette. The pattern is called Buttercup (Ravelry link). I can't wait to see it in person. Doesn't it look gorgeous? Light and airy and perfect.

Speaking of wedding crafts, I have only one on my plate. I'm embroidering vintage handkerchiefs for both Mel and I for the wedding. Mine will actually be used as part of our ring bearer pillow that our nieces will be sharing duty of, but I won't explain how I'm creating that until after the wedding (partially because the details aren't completely decided upon!). But I will show you just a smidge of my handkerchief...

I actually have never embroidered lettering before, so I did a practice run on a piece of muslin in preparation, after reading this series of tutorials at Needle n' Thread. I used split stitch (which I discovered I'd been doing wrong!), and practiced making the back of my work look decent. More decent than I'd ever bothered to do for embroidering on kitchen towels, anyhow, since I figured a wedding hankie would have a bit more longevity!

Here's a sample of my test stitching...

I also learned how to embroider without creating knots (starting it with a waste knot and ending it by pulling it through), something I didn't read about until after I'd worked the letters shown in this photo...

So there you have it, my pre-wedding round-up. I can't wait to share more details after the weekend festivities are complete! Things kick off next Friday with the ceremony and dinner afterward, and our first party the next day. Please understand if you don't hear much from me between now and next weekend. The "to do" list isn't that long, but I'm sure I'll soon find many things that are missing from it! ;)