Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Project #1: Party Dress

I recently caved and bought The Party Dress Book by Mary Adams, because Amazon.com's recommendations list apparently knows me almost as well as my husband and my parents. I devoured it immediately, because every single dress pictured is vitamin awesome.

They're ruffled little cupcake dresses with organza this and silk taffeta that. It's like five-year-old me traveled through time and made these dresses with her mind. I want to own all of them and wear nothing else, perhaps even to bed at night. If I had the money I'd go to her shop right now and have her make me a dress that I'd wear to work every single day. I'm only sort of kidding.

Seriously, look at some of these pictures:

Bias strip dress. Oh heck yes.

Organza dress. Also, yes please thank you.

Not great for work, but I don't care. I want it.

This is exactly how I dress in my mind, only
with more color.

Ok, words fail me. AzxkfbgxlWANT!
The book comes with a pattern, and the pattern made some degree of sense to me in a way that screamed "I can do this" at 3AM when I couldn't sleep. This is when I get most of my ideas, because at that time of night I feel a bit delirious from lack of sleep and am thus convinced that I am capable of anything. 

We'll see if I can pull this off. I hope so. The muslin practice "dress" (or rather, half-finished bodice and unattached skirt) seems like it will fit me, and that's a good start. I even sewed a boob-friendly area that actually fits me there. I may wind up with another unfinished "I will never learn to sew" dress like the last few attempts, but my goal is to stick religiously to the pattern and not try my usual routine of trying to make adjustments on the fly.

Fingers crossed. I want a fancy frilly cupcake dress and I don't have several grand to drop on one of hers. Either I take up prostitution as a summer job (no) or I learn to freaking sew for myself already.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Summer vacation = Jessie learns to sew.

I have a roller derby blog, a derby quilt blog, and a few other blogs that I haven't updated in so long that they don't even count. Why the new blog? I have several reasons:

Thanks Steve's family for giving
him this machine that I now
use constantly.
• I've decided to finally learn to sew things I could wear. Up until now I've (ab)used my husband's sewing machine so I could make that derby quilt I've been laboring over for years. I'd like to learn to work on more 3D things because challenges are fun.

• I have summer vacation off for the first time since I was 14. I finished my masters last year, I don't have a summer camp job, and I'm not traveling to any fancy places. To say I have free time is an understatement.

• I'm such a weird dress size that I either have to learn to alter my existing clothes or flat-out start making new ones from scratch. Big boobs, big butt, small waist, huge roller derby thighs? Thanks genetics. Thanks skating. >:(

I have the following things at my disposal for this summer:

• A fabric store kitty-corner from my house.

• A Brother XL-5700 sewing machine

• A Brother 1034D serger (I caved and ordered one)

Hopefully by the end of the summer I'll be able to do more than sew a circle skirt. I'd like at least one new outfit for school by September 1.

I'll see where this goes from here.