Recap of last weekend

OMG. I need a break from the knit-along math. I need to talk about something else for a change. :D

Last Friday, I was talking with my lovely and talented friend Moe over at her blog, Stitch, about shoes, and the subject of cowboy boots came up. I realized that I hadn't worn mine in ages, so I thought hey, what a good excuse to bring them out, since we were going out that night with friends after all. So I went for my best Dale Evans look.

(Notice I forgot a belt loop? Hee! Thank goodness I figured that out before we left home.)

I got those cowboy boots as a birthday present from my dad when I was in high school (I believe it may have been my 16th birthday). We went all around Chicago looking for the perfect pair, and finally got these. Simple, classic, black Noconas. They fit me like a glove. I have always loved them.

I had a great hair thing happen on Friday, too. I had what I'd consider almost the perfect hair set! There is always something that needs tweaking or pushing or prodding or something when I set my hair, especially these days as my hair is getting longer. I did a similar side-parted setting pattern that I've used in the past (with sponge rollers, but pillow rollers in my bangs, set to the side). But those times it was for a completely different updo:

That time shown above (around Christmas, obviously) I only partially brushed out the curls, pinning the back up into a roll and pinning the sides into place.

This time, I used more rollers to try and help speed up the drying time with the extra length, and my goal was to wear my hair down, not up or partially up (which is how I almost always wear it) so I wasn't sure what to expect with the final result.

But I took out the rollers, I walked into the living room while I was brushing out my curls and by the time I walked back into the backroom, boom, it was perfect. I didn't need so much as a bobby pin. I even had to steal a photo in the bathroom when we went out that night to try and document it. How silly is that? lol Hopefully I can repeat it.

The set lasted so well it even held up the next day perfectly. Though withstanding wind on the train platform...not so much.

Actually I took that photo to show my mom that I finally found a style of wearing my hair where I can fit a beret on the back of my head instead of having to cover my bangs with it. For some reason up until now it's always wanted to fall right off. (So mom, I know you're reading this, it works!)

That was on our way to our favorite antique malls Saturday morning. On the way, we discovered a very strange new thrift store. It seemed mostly like someone had thrown a bunch of junk into a storefront. And I mean a bunch. No prices or anything. It was even hard to walk around. There wasn't much I was interested in, but I did get two buckle blanks for sewing, for $1 total. I'm not positive, but if this one isn't celluloid it sure looks like it could be. I love it!

At one of the antique malls, we visited our favorite booth. The one I mentioned earlier, that's the odd booth that has clothes and accessories that only seem to fit both Mel and I? Mel got a great casual cowboy hat and I picked up a vintage knitting bag (forgot to photograph that one) and two garments.

A black full skirt that has kind of a sheen to it, with embroidered flowers on it (hard to photograph black)...

I really have no clue what I'll wear it with, but for the price I couldn't resist.

I also got a lovely cheongsam kind of blouse...

And a close up detail of the awesome closures (the top one needs to be tacked down, so I got it for a great price)...

I think that one will be coming to Viva with me, if I can figure out what to wear it with. That's the problem I always have with separates. Ugh. If the skirt was a pencil skirt I'd say they'd make a nice pair, but I didn't like the two together.

And at the antique mall, Mel got me an awesome robin's egg blue wicker purse for our anniversary, which is Sunday. I love wicker purses and this is one of my favorite colors. I saw it from across the antique mall and made a beeline for it. Before I even got it in my hands, Mel was offering to buy it for me. :)

Saturday night we went to our friends Ben and Elisa's house for dinner, which was killer. Homemade jambalaya and key lime pie. Elisa really outdid herself!

Before we headed to their house, we took some photos. Awhile back I decided it would be fun to take one photo of us a week, in the same spot on the sofa. So this was about week four, I think. I'm wearing a wool tweed dress I recently got on Etsy.

Sunday I spent most of the day preparing to cut my fashion fabric for the Swing Dress Sew-Along. At this point I now have the bodice done and the front attached to the midriff. I'm definitely not in love with how this pattern is written, but I do think I'm learning a lot in the process, and Casey has been a great leader. I'm hoping it will all come together soon, I have so many projects bouncing around in my head that I want to get to! :)

Swing dress sewing misadventures

This weekend was one of those weekends that really made a somewhat novice sewist want to chuck her sewing machine out the window.

[from Sensibility.com]

In Casey's Swing Dress Sew-Along, we started the muslin. Because not only have I never sewed a dress before but I've never sewed anything with that kind of overlapped v-neck, I have been very diligent in going through all steps. I cut my pattern pieces out of Swedish tracing paper (I love that stuff), measured my nape-to-waist and trimmed down the bodice pieces accordingly, along the line it tells you to. I sewed it all up and the waistline in the back was 2" above my waist. I took it all apart, cut out another set of bodice pieces 2" longer, sewed it all up again and it looked like you could fit a sack of potatoes in the bodice with me. I even posted the horrifying photos on the Flickr group for the sew-along, which was helpful if a bit humiliating. (I am so not posting them on my blog.)

The next day, I cut the bodice pieces again, this time a size smaller. Then I trimmed the overall height of the waistband a bit, but lengthened it to account for an extra 1" in the skirt that I thought I could use at the waist. That extra 1" is something I haphazardly let out in the skirt instead of actually cutting out the next size larger skirt pieces, because I basically have no muslin left to play with at this point. All I did was decrease my seam allowance on the front center and back by 1/2" per side and ripped out the old seams.

I sewed it all together. This time I got a much better looking fit on top, with the exception that it feels like the bodice is riding up my girls a bit. The waistband isn't sitting flat on my stomach at the top, but hovering in a little gap between my waist and my bust. (I also don't like that the way you attach the waistband on the front is by top stitching, but that's just me. Can you just turn the pieces right sides together and stitch that way?) I'm thinking an extra 3/4" in length would help. Since I knew I was running out of muslin, on this third set of bodice pieces I cut the original size, folded up the excess I wanted to get rid of and sewed it. Because of this bit of trickery I actually think I'll be able to rip out the stitches, re-fold giving myself the extra 3/4", sew it again and not even have to undo the construction of the bodice and skirt (which is a pain in the ass...especially when you've done it three times already). I'm hoping that will get the front waistband in the right place.

I still have a lot of issues to overcome. The side seams look like a mess, with my size 12 bodice and half-ass modified size 14 skirt that's going to eventually get cut between the 14/16 sizes—nothing matches up smoothly at all (I tried adding in a small fabric insert to make the transition from the bodice to skirt at the side seam smoother, but I didn't need the width of the extra fabric above my waist). Plus, it occurred to me on the bus this morning on the way to work that the reason I haven't been able to get my skirt notches to match up on the side is that I must not have the back waist seam in the exact center where the front waist would be if it didn't have the wide waistband. I'm not sure what to do about that (and not sure which side is higher since I'm at work and my muslin isn't). I also don't have a dress form and this has a side zipper, so I've been making do with one side seamed and the other held or awkwardly pinned together, but I worry it's not giving me a complete picture of how the waist will fit. (I'm going to have to install a zipper on my muslin, aren't I?)

But overall, I feel better about it today than I did on Friday when I made the first two ill-fitting muslins, or Saturday when I took the ugh photos of the worst muslin. I do admit, on Saturday after taking the bad muslin photos I just abandoned the sewing completely for a craft I actually understand.

 (Which reminds me, more info on the vintage sweater knit-along coming tomorrow!)

And in-between bouts of sewing nonsense, we did have a productive thrifting adventure yesterday. I found a 1960s yellow floral nightgown/house dress (similar to what Divine, as Edna Turnblad, wore in Hairspray while ironing), a simple vintage cotton blouse and a pair of cute red Hush Puppies. They're from the 1980s (and I can't even begin to tell you how much I do not consider something from the 1980s to be vintage *shudder*), but I think they have a cute kind of outdoorsy vintage look, with their sensibly tiny wedge heel. I think they'll be fun for summer and camping.

I also got a fun Etsy find in the mail. Some deadstock plastic barrettes, still on the original cards.

The little ones are sadly too small to hold back my hair at the sides like I sometimes wear it, but they may prove useful for some future hairstyle. The large one, however, is perfect. It worked great for a casual hair day like yesterday, when my curls from my set had relaxed to waves.

The seller has several other sets of barrettes obviously from the same lot, for anyone interested. Now that I have long hair for the first time since high school, I'm remembering that "jewelry" for your hair can be fun.

Distractions aside, anyone else working on the Swing Dress Sew-Along who's having better luck than I am? I guess at least I can say this is a good learning experience, even if I'm a complete hack at how I'm going about it all!

Weekend round-up

This weekend flew by! I didn't even have any time to knit or sew. Yesterday was the first time we were able to see Mel's parents to exchange (obviously belated) Christmas gifts, so we had them over for lunch. Then like entertaining superheros, we turned right around and hosted an impromptu gathering with some of our friends last night.

Our friend Jen made yummy bruschetta. I was going to make our popular roasted garbanzo bean snack and then post the recipe here, but we decided there was already enough food, so you'll have to wait for that another time. ;)

Emma, who's from Wales, brought back a bottle of the Welsh whiskey Penderyn when she was home over Christmas.

Mel was trying to decide what it smelled like before tasting. The whiskey drinkers among our circle of friends (which does not include me) gave it a thumbs up.

This is me in our very plain jane kitchen. I really want to paint it and spruce it up but it's a small galley kitchen, so there's not much to work with. I have a few plans in my head rolling around, though.

I'm crap about doing outfit posts, so all I can really tell you about the above outfit is the overalls are from Jitterbugin made with a vintage wool plaid. I wish I had several more pair in solid colors for winter! The plaid is fun but kind of limiting to just the right blouse, so the scalloped peter pan collared one I'm wearing is literally the only one I have that I can wear with them right now.

After all the flurry of entertaining yesterday, we had a lazy morning and then went thrifting. Sadly we came up completely empty. To add insult to injury, there were two potentially great finds that weren't meant to be!

Great find that wasn't meant to be #1: a boxed set of 78s of Bing Crosby singing cowboy songs. I absolutely adore Bing Crosby and we both love anything cowboy-related, so at first glance this really excited us. Then Mel opened it up... and it wasn't any of the right albums. Curses!

Great find that wasn't meant to be #2: a vintage woman's Pendleton jacket in pastel blue with a light yellow, peach and brown plaid. I love a good Pendleton. Sadly, this wasn't a good Pendleton. Well it was at some point in its life, but those days were long gone. Now it had lots of stains, dozens of small holes and only one button. So disappointing! My only consolation was that someone obviously loved this jacket, and loved it hard, for a long, long time.

After the crummy thrift store experience we had an early Sunday dinner at a favorite haunt, the Lincoln Restaurant. Basically a big diner with several rooms, lots of wood paneling and Abraham Lincoln memorabilia. One neat thing about this place is they host un-diner-like events, like a Monday Banjo night, a Saturday night free speech forum, and comedy nights.

We found out about the free speech forum in 2006 on accident, when we went there with friends prior to a Halloween party. Someone happened to be speaking about gun control laws in the front room. There we were in the back room, dressed like Bonnie and Clyde, fake guns and all. What miscreants!
The Lincoln also has really good food. Oh, and Cokes the size of your head.

I swear I don't make it a habit of consuming odd things like tiki drinks and Coca Cola out of beer steins, though the last two weekends may lead you to believe otherwise.

Now we're just relaxing and watching documentaries.

Hope you had a lovely weekend like we did!