The Queue:

Friends, I have made the choice to start a new leaf.

It's a new year, which is giving me motivation to re-write the sewing queue I have kept for years... But I think I am going to take the old queue and place it here for posterity's sake... When's a better time than throwback Thursday??

Looking back has me thinking... And the new queue, with a post to explain, will go live on Monday.

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Gwen over at After the Dress inspired me with her queue posts, which are added each Wednesday.  This is the place I'll keep a running list of upcoming projects, and the blog entries they will(I hope, one day) link to upon completion.
Not everything will come to life, and definately not in the season the idea is posted, but I figure this is a way to begin to keep track of what I'm doing.  And let my imagination come up with all the things I could be doing.  Strikethroughs are the things that don't quite make the list anymore, what with all the new inspiration coming my way.  I'm not completely erasing them because they're part of the journey though, you know?

Winter 2013-2014
Corduroy blazer
Quilt for J.
Bag for Mama
Jewelry roll for KDB
Purple plaid kindle cover for my baby brother
Big brother backpack for a little cousin
Fancy dress for a feisty fancy girl(and her baby doll will need one too, of course.)
Slippers for dad


Fall 2013
Colette Juniper wearable muslin
Sewaholic Thurlow wearable muslin
Pleated yoke shirt in floral print
Colette Laurel? Eucalypt tank dress? Something.

Spring/Summer 2013
Red TNT skirt for baseball season
Red stole completed 2016
Knit tees. With cute details.
Navy stripe mystery fabric skirt
Crazy floral pleated skirt
Border print pleated skirt
Bag for my BFF

Winter 2012-2013

Blue cord skirt

Green knit shirt

White knit shirt(Spring 2012)
Red patterned woven top

NICE black or navy pencil skirt
Pink patterned woven top

Fall 2012

Red cord skirt 

Brown woven skirt:  Kickpleat, pencil-ish, pockets

Stripy dress… Maybe just a top? Wide band at the bottom and sleeves in the shot cotton? Just to get it done without more fabric…

Green linen-blend skirt:  Big pockets! Not much trim, A Line.  (Completed 1.12.13)

Refashions/Alterations:  

Nana’s dress tried on again, none needed

McCall 5801 Dress… Or just make it a (lined) skirt, but make it wearable! With pockets!  Maybe divert from the princess seams till I have a block? Work them out with a fitting buddy?
Deep red dress... Hemmed and belted- Completed 2012

Spring 2012
breezy white woven top
another woven top: moda half-moon paisley in grey in an OOP Simplicity pattern
grey pleated skirt from Winter that was not Completed Aug 2012
White topper- half-sleeve in white twill
white tee with fun neckline
lavender tee
Spring Refashions/alterations galore:
Restore Mom's white eyelet dress to former awesomeness Completed July 2012
red skirt Completed 4.3.2012

Summer 2012…

Brown bike-able skirt… maybe knit, maybe a bubble.

Scraps of the purple-white floral dress to a bike-able skirt

Rie dress- eyelet and dotted swiss

Shirtdress- blue Oxford cloth
sky blue knit top
royal blue gauze skirt

Spring/Summer Refashions/alterations galore:

Re-work Easter 2011’s dress for better insides and fit

Finishing touches on the Easter Dress of yore- M5801

…Pinstripe dress of yore needs bindings and a cowl.  Do it to it!

See 2011 list… Do those

Winter that Was Not 2011-12:

Coat liner

Pop-of-color dance skirt- Completed 2.10.12

Refashion purple plaid skirt

Winter schoolbag

3-season grey twill bikeable skirt…pleats? Pockets for sure…- Completed Aug 2012

Grey button-back man’s shirt refashion- half-sleeves

Winter Alterations galore:

Cobalt dress- take it in (gave it away instead, it's three sizes too big now)

Purple/grey tweed dress- take it in

2 pairs of pants… take in

Cardigan refresher

Fall "6PAC" 2011
      filled out with the sweater from Feb. 2011, and the red dress from April 2011.
brown multi-gore swish skirt
brown herringbone pieces:
     pencil Skirt (February's suit skirt)
     vest (instead of February's suit jacket)

Summer2011:
Alterations galore:
Rose dancing dress
White vintage eyelet dress
Easter Dress
red pencil skirt
Vintage green shirtwaist dress

April 2011:
Red dancing dress completed 1.4.12
Re-work print dancing dress
Add gores to black dancing skirt
Easter dress- completed 4.24.11
Petticoat
March 2011:
Print dancing dress - completed 3.18.11
Elastic belt-completed 3.18.11
Black dancing skirt- completed 3.14.11
refashioned men's shirt to sailor shirt-completed 4.6.11
February 2011:
Suit jacket
suit skirt
refashioned sweater
January 2011:
-A dress w/  Burda turtleneck- completed 1.21.11
-a half-circle skirt with bias strips- completed 1.24.11
-a makeup bag
-elastic belt- completed 1.23.11
December 2010:
-Burda Turtleneck- a long-sleeve version
-Burda Turtleneck- a half-sleeve version wadded 1.19.11

The Finished Dress

Throwback Thursday once more- one you all have been waiting for!

I can't remember where we left off... But I can tell you life happened.  I really have intended to write this post for a long time, but there are big things happening in life offline that have pulled me away from the blog-o-sphere.

I was gonna give you all more of a blow-by-blow of the ending fiddly bits- and the meltdown they almost caused.  This last bit is, I think, the thing I would do the most different, and where the best of plans ended up falling through with even better results...

All the buttons and the hem were done, by hand, on my living room floor, with the dress sitting between me and a dear fitting angel on the Wednesday before my bachelorette party Thursday and the weekend of wedding adventures. Those hours of help were filled with great conversation, wisdom shared, and oh, the stories... I'll always be grateful for the best of folks sharing their time to make this dress and this wedding happen.

My aunt and my cousin steamed the dress on the farm the morning of the wedding while my amazing bridesmaids and I were all getting hair done and having too much fun with makeup.
 Another aunt put together a veil from some tulle when I realized my grandmother's from 1952 had been left at home, 4 hours away.  I made a bow tie the morning of the wedding from some lovely Liberty of London lawn, backed with scraps from my wedding dress.  It was wonderful... The whole wedding was a great big child that the village raised, and my wardrobe was really just one illustration of that, even as last minute as it was.

 Last minute is in my blood- There's a picture of my mom ironing the Mother of the Bride dress that her mom wore to my aunt's wedding with a clock in the background, showing that the wedding started 5 minutes later.


Accessories:  If there is interest I can pull better pictures of everything.

-pearls from my grandmothers were made into my tiara, which also included a pin from my Nana, who passed away in July(she taught me to sew, and was able to help me re-make the veil I originally planned to wear).
-I wore an heirloom pair of chandelier earrings with raw diamond centers to flowers, which were first worn by my great-great-Godmother- they're over 100 years old!
-My pearls were a gift- I think from my dad's mom, but I can't remember which ones I went with in all the crazy.
-The wrap was from a professor- she brought it back from me from India as a surprise gift!

But I'm going to hush and give you pictures because they are what you really want.    The silk really glowed in the light and fell beautifully- and I'm kind of still in love with how it all turned out, despite how last minute some of it was.  I posted a couple of shots  of us practicing our first dance just so you could see how well the dress moved, and because my bustle made me really stinking happy.

Thank you thank you thank you for all of the comments, the support and the encouragement you have shared through this process.  I have always been told that whether or not you can imagine every detail of your wedding after the fact, you will always remember how it felt... and it felt wonderful to have all of my family and all of the food, and the love in one place for one magic night.

Stitching, fitting woes and SO CLOSE

This is another post in my new(ish) Throwback Thursdays series.  I've used this spot as a way to highlight the process of sewing my wedding dress over the past few weeks, although a bad cold kept me away from the computer for a couple of weeks, and a new computer means this is a post without pictures.  Read on for the latest steps in the journey!


So I overcame fear of the machine, and it was smooth sailing because of all of the hours of basting.
And it was a big moment when I finally got to put the dress on... and a good bit of shock too.  In the 2 and a half weeks between un-stitching the muslin and putting real stitches in the silk, I'd lost nearly 3 inches at my bust and probably an inch at my waist. Thanks, stress.  And thankfully, a good bit of the excess pinched out at the sides pretty easily, and with the addition of foam inserts at the bust, the shape was maintained without messing with the hand-sticthed, carefully clipped princess seams.
 This was not a welcome surprise, but I unpicked the join of the lining and the dress at the top, berated myself for not trying it on sooner, stepped away from the dress overnight, took in the side seams, and put everything back together.

I used organza selvages to strengthen the curve at the neckline, and all the way around the dress, which really helped the integrity of the silk when the top had to be un-stitched and re-stitched. The straps went in the front at this point, to be pinned to the right placement in the back.

This is the point where I needed to go to the fitter/hemmer who is a friend of a friend and get the back marked for all the tiny pearl buttons, and for the accompanying tiny button loops.  She also pinned the hem in place, and I was very proud of myself, y'all.  I left it with her for her to hem. I let my baby- the project that had consumed all waking, non-working hours for some time at this point- in the hands of an almost complete stranger.

She had the horsehair, and the silk thread, and the dress, and I'd see it in a week to sew on all of those tiny pearl buttons and the bustle.  Cue a sigh of relief and the simultaneous biting of nails...

Cutting and basting

This is installment 2 of Throwback Thursdays... I am attempting to catch up the blog with all the sewing I've done and somehow missed blogging about, and I figured the best place to start was my wedding dress.  So without further ado...

Trying on the muslin over the petticoat and corselette was a really good feeling.  I finally felt like I really knew what the dress would look like! And it was so fluffy! And not at all what I imagined and everything I imagined. It was pretty great. And of course, I forgot to take a single picture.

So it was time to mark my fitting changes (running and stress had made all of my measurements smaller from the waist up... Not fun. :/) and when that was done, I got to rip the muslin apart, iron all the pieces, cut them down, mark the right sides with washi tape, and then lay them out on a silk sandwich that was 8 yards long. 

The makeup of the sandwich: habotai silk lining on the bottom, silk organza in the middle, and the gorgeous shantung silk on the top layer. I pinned the layers together using superfine, very sharp silk pins, and it took a few attempts, but I finally got all of the muslin pieces on the silk, on grain.  Small victories, and pretty scrap piles! Silk at the front, lining in the middle, organza at the back. I've found so many cool uses for the scraps.  To include the bias mentioned last week for the edge of the corselette... I also made enough for the shoulder straps, hanger straps, and more!

Then came the basting. I pinned pieces together 2 or three at a time, then stitched it all together with orange silk thread, just to make sure everything would lay smoothly and come together properly. Everything stayed pinned in its silk sandwich all put away till I was ready for it, and I went from front to back, adding godets in batches. It took many many hours, but it was a strange sort of calming, if that makes any sense. I just listened to podcasts, and stitched. It was meditative and prayerful and calming, and since the rest of wedding planning was really going crazy, I was so thankful for that. 

Once everything was basted together, it was kind of difficult to imagine turning my sewing machine loose on it.  It was one of those silly things that was half-paralyzing:  I was so close to finishing this dress, without a whole lot of time to spare, and I was TERRIFIED that using my sewing machine on it would somehow ruin it.  So it sat.  For 2 days.  And I turned my attention to other wedding-y things that were demanding, like flowers. And wine choices, and vendors... So I'll leave y'all here till next week.  

Wedding Dress Guts

Why yes! It IS over 2 months after the wedding.  And I did, indeed, finish my wedding gown... not as on time as I would have liked, but there you have it.  When we left off, we were at 17 hours and a finished muslin.  Then came the guts... All of the underpinnings needed to really showcase the fabric and the lines and the awesome sauce nature of all of the work. I'll keep working through the dress in posts in a new bloggy bit of awesome I'm gonna tag as throwback Thursdays, looking at completed projects I neglected to blog as I was completing them.

I started from the bottom... It was like petticoat junction, except not really. I DID make one fantastic petticoat though. It was fun, especially once the colored stuff came into play. There was a red/pink layer on the bottom, then a blue layer, then 2 white outer layers. So fluffy. SO FLUFFY! You can tell in the photos that there are actually 2 pieces, the outer layers and the inner layers... It made it that much easier to get everything through the sewing machine. 

I spent about 12 hours, maybe more, building this petticoat.  It was a process to be sure, but the colors would have been difficult to duplicate in anything RTW, and I got to split the back of the petticoat and then add in even more fluff on the outer layers to help the train do its thing better.

Next came the corselette I built. The outside was a twill, and the inside was a batiste, both cotton. I used spiral steel boning in combination with steel corset boning, and I cut everything down and capped everything off. Add in soft foam cups, and we were in business! The top of the corselette was finished with shantung bias after this photo was taken to ensure that if things played peek-a-boo, it wouldn't be as obvious.

That's the quick-and-dirty version of the underpinnings saga.  My goal is to post the rest of the wedding dress construction in a couple more posts, about once a week, and get back to blogging on a more regular basis here in the near future.  I miss it! The internet sewing community is such a great place, and I have more time and sewing mojo than I have in a while so I am looking forward to blogging a bit more often.  Check in, y'all! Happy Friday!