Weekend Recap

The weather was beautiful this weekend. Even though yesterday was pretty gray most of the day, I loved it. We spent some time doing karaoke, some time with family, and some time doing nothing at all on the couch. Successful weekend.

Stylish Blogger Award

Amber of The Evening Tree nominated me for the Stylish Blogger Award and to accept I have to dish out the dirty details on myself with 7 facts.

Thanks, Amber!

1. I was born in Texas and lived in California all of my life until July 2010.

2. My aunt is Selena's (the singer) second cousin. So that makes me...musically talented at all? No. I sing terribly, but it's something I love to do. I also played guitar in high school but gave that up after a couple years.


3. My ears aren't the same. They're each a different shape and one sticks out more than the other.

4. I get the words "chicken" and "kitchen" mixed up a lot when speaking and it's very frustrating.

5. I love horror movies. From terrible, lame B movies to campy classics to seriously scary stuff. The worst part is - I'm not immune to all of them. I really do get scared and regret it later, but I always come back.

6. I was once on the History Team in Jr. High. I brought the whole team down, though, because I didn't know anything about history, nor did I try and study before our competitions. That's sort of how I've continued to live life.

7. My favorite person in the entire world is my little brother. He's soon becoming a man and I'm still remembering when he was a baby. I hope in the future we can make up for time we have spent apart.

Geez only 7? I can talk about myself for days.
That was fun though, so now it's time to hear from the next victims. I'd like to nominate the following bloggers.

Jorth

Michelle of Sparkling Bliss

Jelena of Just2Chilli

La Petite Josette

Corie of Red Letter Rising

Julie

Shalon of design art soul

Friday Feature

I'm featured over at Mama's Sewing Room as her Fabulous Friday Feature! Thanks, Kathleen!

Leaping Rabbit

Meet my newest creation. This rabbit is a foot long and is really winning my heart every day that goes by.

Also, check out this tutorial on how to make your own fabric labels. Pretty cool.

Drafting a Pattern Day 2

And now we come to the finished product! I'm very pleased with how it came out. The right strap is a little droopy because the arm needs to be adjusted a little but not a big deal. I plan on making a few more variations with the fixed strap, maybe some pleats, maybe less billowy.

And this is how I dressed it up for going out on the town. Now it's just time to start going through the weird yardages of polyester I have and destash a little by making a few more of these.

Drafting a Pattern Day 1

So I don't know if you remember this first shirt I designed without a pattern. I was really excited about upcycling the skirt and making the top half and sleeves out of sheer black fabric. That shirt I just went nuts with and didn't do a muslin for. Which resulted in 8 hours of work.

This time I decided to take about 4-5 measurements and draft my own pattern FIRST and make it out of muslin before I try and tear into some fabric. It took me 3 hours to get a muslin version that fit well and about 30-45 minutes to make the actual shirt. The top has four pieces since I knew I'd be using a gauzy voile-like material: front, back, front facing, and back facing. This makes it less sheer at the top. I left the bottom loose and billowy since I wanted to add gathers.

Sewing front and back together on the right side.

Finished top half with facings - muslin is a little too thick for two facings, but it worked well.

Cutting up the bottom part which I keep calling the "skirt" in my head. I originally had a parallelogram going on but that resulted in a HUGE triangle once I put it on.

Gathering the bottom half.

Preparing to sew the bottom to the top.

Success!

Starting to cut into my fabric that I'd been saving just for this project for a month. Now here's the sad part. Yes, I made my own pattern. Yes, I made a muslin first (even ran out of muslin). So, yes, I should have known just how much fabric I needed. But I didn't. I was missing about a yard and a half to finish with this fabric.

So here's the replacement fabric. Two and a half yards of a very similar voile-like material. I wasn't sure about it at first but I chose it because it was the closest to the original fabric.

I'll have the big reveal tomorrow!

New/Upcoming Projects

Last week I made a bunch of party favors for my Mom's next party. Thought I'd share those since I had a lot of fun making the color combinations for the bookmarks and then tying them up with pretty ribbon.

I also thought I'd share my next project. I can't say when I'll do it but it's definitely in the queue. I found 3 yards of this plaid stuff at Savers and this pattern at the thrift store in Sandy. I'm going to make the top, since I'm starting to have way too many dresses and this plaid seems a bit much for a whole dress.