The Weekend Update

It's been a crazy week.  Bare with me as I ramble a bit here.

I woke up Monday morning, ready to tackle my skirt and clean the house.  Instead, my mom and brother called me from the hospital.  I ended up at the hospital all day.  Turns out my mom had appendicitis, which is a lot more serious than I realized as a kid.  No worries, my mom is fine, but I took care of her and today was my first real day at home.

Now on to some craft-related updates and thoughts!

I lost the waistband pieces to McCall's 5591.  Now, I'm pretty absent minded, and I misplace things a lot.  But I've been really good and careful about keeping my patterns organized, so I'm very upset that they've disappeared.  I'm guessing I put them into the wrong envelope.  But since I have 3 other skirts made from this pattern, I think I can retrace the waist band and make it work.

Fabric Mart is having an awesome sale.  They have a ton of fabric for 75% off.  I ended up getting 23 yards of fabric for only $31 including shipping and tax.  I'm so excited for it to come in the mail!  Plus I got a mystery bundle.  I got some awesome fabric in my last mystery bundle, including a Calvin Klein silk chiffon that is just gorgeous, so I'm very excited to see what I get.

And my last thought to leave you with... Project Runway is back on Thursday!!!! Yay!!!  This is the first season of Project Runway that I've had a blog, so you can be sure I'll be adding my opinions to the blogosphere.  Plus I love reading the blogs that Lifetime hosts.  It looks like this season I can look forward to catching up on Friday mornings with Peach Carr, Nick Verreos, Mychael Knight, Laura Bennet, and Jonathon Kayne.  I honestly don't remember Jonathon, I'll have to do a little refresher there.  I loved Laura's blog last season, and Peach is just a hoot, so I'm excited!

Hope you've all had a much better and more productive week than me!

Tried and True

I found a solution to my little wadder depression.

That's right, I'm cutting out my FOURTH version of McCall's 5591.  Second time making Version A.  The fabric is a poly poplin from fabric.com in gray.  Knock on wood, but this should be fairly straight forward.  I feel like I could follow this pattern in my sleep at this point.  The fabric is a nice medium weight, not too heavy, and not too light.  It's a nice solid, will match a lot of things, and it hardly wrinkles so it'll be nice for job interviews.  Hopefully this will go smoothly and I'll be out of the wadder dumps. :)

Wadder

I loved that word.  Wadder.  I just found that in blog world this week.  I can't remember where I first saw it used, but I swear I've never seen it before and now I see it all over the place.  From what I can deduce, a wadder is a failed garment that you toss into the corner in a wad.  Unfortunately, the discovery of this word coincides with my own wadder.

Remember how excited I was to make this skirt?  Didn't work out so well.

I have no pictures, but trust me on this one.  It came out HUGE.  I used my body measurements, and I even went down a size in the waist because I knew I wanted it snug, and I still had to take 2 inches off the waist.  Then, as I tried to cut out 2 inches, I think my back seamline got all off and my zipper ended up crooked.  I redid the zipper like 3 times, but it was still all off.

So what are your options when you have a wadder?  This is what I'm dealing with...
1.  Let it sit in a wad in the corner until I'm calm enough to tackle it again (this is where I currently stand)
2.  Scrap it and use the fabric for something else- this fabric happens to match my bedroom decor.  If step 1 above doesn't work out, I might put it in a frame and hang it on the wall.  Or I could make a decorative pillow.

While my wadder wastes away in a corner, I'm in need of some instant gratification.  I'm not sure exactly what to sew next, nothing in my queue is super easy.  Although not quite instant, I picked up my knitting needles after a long hiatus for some distraction.

I chose a nice, simple little cardigan pattern from Lion Brand Yarn's free patterns:

This can be found on Ravelry here.

I'm using a red cotton yarn that I bought for another project.  Although knitting is always slow going (I'm still on the raglan increases after a week of working on this), I'm very happy with how nice it looks. Check out how even these stitches are!

Busted!

My knees, that is.

Turns out I have chondromalacia patella, a minor form of arthritis.  I've worn down the cartilage in my joints from going up and down the stairs so much at work.

What does this have to do with my blog?

I'll probably be on a sewing hiatus.  I cut and pin my fabric on the floor, and at this point I just can't get up and down like that, too hard on my knees.  Gosh I'm old!  And I'm also bummed, cuz I was hoping to sew a LOT once school was out.  Oh well.

Polo Ponies!

Now presenting one of my favorite outfits...

I made both of these pieces 2 or 3 months ago, but just never got a chance to photograph it.  I love this outfit; from afar it looks professional, retro, and a little secretarial.

But when you look up close...

Polo Ponies!!!

The top is Simplicity 2501 in version B.  I saw this cotton shirting on fabric.com in the $1.95 section and knew I had to have it.  Not much to say about the pattern, easy, straight forward, and of course too big in the back!  If I were to make it again, I'd go down a size, maybe 2 sizes in the back.

The skirt is my third make of McCalls 5591, version B.  I've already made a purple and a denim skirt from this pattern.  This one is a cotton sateen, which looks nice and crisp, but is very wrinkly.  I ironed it this morning, but that proved to be a pointless endeavor an hour later.  Anyways, not much to say about this pattern, I obviously love this pattern and I'm sure I'll continue to use it.

I think it's one of those outfits that radiates how good I feel.  One of my favorite parents in my class had me twirl and told me how nice I looked.  What a nice way to start the day!

Extra credit to anyone who noticed my hair.  I got it cut this weekend (which I LOVE) and changed the color (which I feel ambivalent about).  I tried to go back to my natural, light brown.  So I chose a box of dark blonde and gave it a go.  It came out medium brown.  In what galaxy is this dark blonde?!?!