Saturday's errand outfit

This was the last weekend before the wedding, and it was full of errands and unexpectedly getting a dead car battery replaced. One of the errands took us to Wisconsin, where we stopped for lunch at the new Mars Cheese Castle. So all I have time for this week is just a quick outfit post!

I'm wearing a sundress I purchased at VLV this spring, a beige beaded cardigan (because it was actually quite chilly) from Etsy, carrying a wicker basket purse with lucite handles from Etsy, and wearing a pair of shoes that I just purchased from Lauren at Wearing History! They are cream-colored wedges from the 1940s. Aren't they great? I can't wait to wear them in autumn with jeans, a casual sweater and white blouse for a vintage campus look.

The next several days will include last minute projects, cleaning, preparations and trying to decide how the heck to style my bangs for the wedding...you know, the important stuff. ;)

Have a great week, everyone!

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! ;)

A busy bee

I have been so, so busy lately. I have not even had time to think about writing a proper post other than for the knit-along, and I am so behind in my feed reader! So in no particular order, I'm going to do a short list of things that have been on my mind lately.

1. Okay, I admit this one is in the correct order. First and foremost on my mind has been wedding preparations. June 17th fast approaches, and even though we're planning this to be as low-key as possible, there have been all sorts of things that have come up along the way, including craft projects. I'm going to dedicate a post to it all soon, but I thought it would be worth mentioning that today is the very first day couples can apply for a civil union license in the state of Illinois. A historic day for our state! (We'll be getting our license next Friday.)

{source: Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune}

2. I have decided I might be ready to try shorts again. Maybe. I think the last time I wore shorts was when I still thought it was okay to wear opaque tights with cut offs. Suffice it to say that was (fortunately) many, many years ago. This time I'm thinking 40s style, with more modest coverage than you typically see in modern shorts. Now I haven't sewn pants yet, but shorts are just short pants anyway, right? Why not start there, seeing as it's almost summer? I have been wanting to buy Wearing History's Smooth Sailing pattern for ages for the trousers, but think they'd also be splendid as shorts. I also like the shorts from Lauren's Sailor Girl Playsuit pattern (Casey made a lovely pair that look very versatile). I did buy the vintage pattern below, which has three styles of shorts. I like view 3 the best. I think I may like the pleats in view 1, too, but I would definitely start with view 3. I don't have the pattern in hand yet to know how "Simple to Make" they actually are, and I'm wondering how they would look without a cuff.

{source}

What do you think? And what would be a good fabric selection for shorts? I'm thinking solid colors, and something machine washable. Cotton twill? A linen blend (I'm thinking a blend so they wouldn't wrinkle when I sneeze)? I am still pretty much a dunderhead when it comes to selecting fabric, I admit!

3. I have two sweaters going at the same time on my needles. After finishing up Briar Rose (pictures later today!) and the black sleeveless shell I wore at VLV, I was desperately in need of some knitting that involved a) color and b) something other than stockinette. One is red and a vintage-inspired modern pattern, Henrietta Maria. I'll be reversing the original color scheme and am making a couple of minor alterations to better fit my vintage aesthetic, which mainly involves adding a bit of length to the body and the ribbing and knitting slightly longer sleeves.

{source: Cotton Gin & Tonic}

The other is robin's egg blue, the vintage pattern It Cannot Fail to Please from A Stitch in Time Vol. 1 that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, modified to work in DK weight yarn.

© Arbour House Publishing

Both are distracting me from working on any sewing projects whatsoever. (When I'm busy it's so much easier for me to contemplate sitting down with a knitting project than a sewing project.) I'm knitting both in Cascade Ultra Pima, a DK weight cotton that I have fallen in love with. It's lovely to knit and comes in a great variety of colors, both major pluses in my book. The sweaters will be short-sleeved and should be weather-appropriate for all but the hottest and muggiest days, I'm hoping.

4. While I haven't talked about it, I have not forgotten about my Handmade Vintage Wardrobe Challenge. I just haven't had the time to blog about it or give it much thought! But both of my current sweaters fit into my challenge color palette, as did Briar Rose and the two sewing projects I finished for VLV.

I desperately wanted to participate in Sunni's Ginger Sew-Along and turn Ginger into a pinafore with some navy gabardine in my stash, but I couldn't get it together in time. I hope to tackle that after the wedding, even if my wool-blend gab is less than weather appropriate at that point. By then I should be able to focus more on sewing, too. I have so many ideas in my head that I haven't been able to explore due to lack of time!

5. We went camping in Wisconsin over the long Memorial Day weekend and while we met with some rain on one of the days, we did not wash away in the major storms that hit Illinois and Wisconsin. I'll post pictures of our trip in the next few days, but here's a preview!

Our wedding invitations

I'm so excited to share this post with you!

Mel and I have been furiously making plans for our wedding and the first family party that we'll be having. When I announced our engagement, I mentioned we would probably end up doing a very small ceremony, with the bigger events being family parties in each location where we have a lot of family, and that's exactly what we're going to do. We're trying to keep everything as casual and low-key as possible, and that's all working out just fine.

Once we conferred with several important attendees on a date for the party, my mind went into overdrive to design an invitation. We had just under two months before the party date. Designing something for yourself, your own harshest critic, on a really strict deadline? Not easy.

But somehow, just before VLV I hatched the perfect idea for the invite. I knew it was going to take some work. The time frame was going to be tight: we get home from VLV on a Thursday. We go to work Friday. We go out to Mel's parents' house on Saturday to discuss party plans (since they are hosting the party) and completely firm up the date. Sunday we start taking photos for the invites, I design the invite, and I send it to Moo to get printed on postcards by Monday night.

It sounded crazy. No way could I whip up an invite in Photoshop in one day. I am not a graphic designer by trade and though I've had lots and lots of experience designing things over the years, it usually takes me a little while until I get into a rhythm with a project. One day to find the rhythm and get it all done? Yeah right.

And what if the photos came out crappy? Or the lighting was bad? That's a problem I have a lot in our condo, which is where we were planning on taking the photos because we needed a solid-colored background and didn't have enough time to inquire around for alternate locations, and no time to even get to and from an alternate location with me still having time every other waking moment of the day to design, anyway. There were a lot of things that could have gone wrong.

But you know what? It went off like clockwork. Mel's photos came out great. I managed to design an invitation that we are still both giddy about and that everyone so far has loved. My hair didn't dry after setting it a bit too late on Sunday, but that was no matter as I set up the tripod after work on Monday, worked on my photo that evening and submitted the design to Moo before my self-imposed deadline. The cards even came 4 days early so we got them in the mail sooner than we planned, stuffed in brown postcard-sized envelopes with National Park stamps. And the invites looked freaking amazing. It was meant to be!

While I have you on the edge of your seat, I'll first run through my inspiration for our wedding invitations. Though technically, these aren't wedding invitations, they are invitations to the party, the first of which will be held the day after the wedding. We'll reuse the design, altering time and location information on the front and back for the other parties later in the year. (Moo will print runs as small as 20 postcards, which is perfect.)

I wanted the invitation to look like an old west show poster. Great fonts, somewhat sensational writing style, the whole bit. Something like this...

(source)

Or this...

(source)

No small order. We also wanted to slip in a little reference to our favorite postcard. Our friend Jen sent us this vintage postcard after the first time she went camping with us a couple of years ago. She replaced the name on the front with our names, as you can see.

And last but not least, we were inspired by this particular photo of everyone's favorite vintage Western couple, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. I loved how they were standing back to back, giving each other a sly little eye. And I just love Roy and Dale, anyway.

(source)

I also wanted the photos to look a bit like hand-colored vintage photos, to be more in keeping with the idea for the rest of the invite.

And this is what I came up with! First, the photos we took.

This is Mel's original photo (well, after Photoshopping out a light switch and nails in the wall). Before...

And after...

My before...

And my after...

And the grand finale, the front of our finished invitation! (Last names blurred. :) Hopefully this won't be a letdown after my big buildup, hee hee!

Isn't that so us?? It feels great to have designed something I am truly 100% happy with, for such a special occasion—our special occasion! :)