The Wardrobe

It is done. Well, at least the wardrobe contest entry is done. There will still be a lot of tweaking before the suitcase is sat upon and zipped. I need more skirts that will travel. Really only the blue knit skirt will travel well. I wore the green bias skirt to work today (with the Burda blouse) and it wrinkled even faster than my face is trying to do (I am, shall we say, a little aware of my age spots and wrinkles).

I did everything but the four dresses and the swimsuit in an 11 day period, of which 8 were sewing days. I did the scarf and started the blue knit skirt during the week; everything else was done on a weekend day (counting the night before the official weekend starts and remembering that the first one was three day weekend). I don't usually sew during the week because I get too obsessed and can't fall asleep. I generally have to finish a project in one day, or at most cut it out one day sew it another day because of this problem. It's kind of annoying and it sometimes keeps me from starting complicated projects. On the other hand, I have very few UFOs. Not to say none, of course. But few.

Looking over it, I can see why people are fascinated/horrified at what a prolific sewist I can be. I am kind of fascinated/horrified myself. But I promise I am not a sewing hermit! The first weekend I had movie/dinner plans with a friend Friday, movie/wine & cheese plans with a friend Saturday, and farmer's market plans with a friend Sunday. The second weekend I admit I didn't do anything social Friday because I stayed up all night reading Harry Potter, thereby turning down an invite to a wine tasting party. Saturday I went out dancing. Sunday I had farmer's market plans with a different friend. But I will concede that other than these events I was sewing or asleep (with occasional stuffing of nutrients into my face).

I am clawing my way to yards purchased/yards sewn parity, one hard-won yard at a time. I am now up to 88 yards sewn, 93 yards purchased. So very, very close...

Way too many details about the wardrobe in the review. I am as prolific a writer as I am a sewist.

Using Up Scraps

So, sewing the whole wardrobe from stash was quite a challenge. I have been aggressively buying fabric this year--I totally can't deny that--but I have also been aggressively sewing. I'm at 83 yards sewn in my rough tally on my PR profile; there are about 4 or 5 yards not counted in it yet; purchases are recorded at 93 yards. I had plenty of stash built up before the year started, of course, but I have outgrown a lot of it/become more of a fiber snob. I was really scraping to get enough fabric in coordinating colors to fill out the wardrobe, which helped me look creatively at some smaller pieces of fabric I had.

The floral print here is a beautiful print in colors I love on a hideous fabric. It is almost impenetrable by a needle and is a misery to sew (though a stretch needle, knock on wood, seems to work almost well). It has a great drape, though, and the print is really nice. I bought it to accent an infinity dress I made last year. I lined the straps with it and made a reversible tube top of the dress fabric and the print fabric. It was kind of a disaster. Lining the straps made them way too thick and ugly where they were knotted together, so I ripped out the looooong long seams of the straps. The fashion fabric is really cheap and thin and rolls together really terribly so I started ironing interfacing along the edges to give it enough body to be hemmed but got bored of it and gave up about 1/4 of the way through. I guess I can pull it out for the UFO contest.

Anyway, this is why I had only a little bit of this print. I had just enough to cut out the upper bodice. The scraps from it were quite small. It was pretty serendipitous. The blue heavy knit is from my Mermaid Parade costume and there was more than a scrap left of it, but less than a full yard (I still have plenty to make a skirt). I was pretty pleased with my resourcefulness in combining them, using up stash, and making something to fit in with my wardrobe colors.

What's slapdash about this project are the sleeve bands. I didn't measure how wide the sleeve openings were, just cut binding pieces that "seemed" long enough. They weren't. Rather than measure and re-cut I stretched the bindings to fit the sleeves. This looked horrible so I ripped it out. Again, rather than actually measure I cut some extension pieces. The bindings still weren't quite long enough so I stretched them to fit on the under part of the sleeve. They don't look horrible like before, but are not quite right if you know to look for it (which nobody but you will). This is an instance where being slapdash is pointless and stupid. It would have been *easier* and *saved time* to measure in the first place. I even knew that at the time. I just like my slapdash ways.

You can read the review if you'd like.

Here's a story...

I finished up my entry for the One Pattern, Multiple Looks contest. I wanted to play around with collages because I'm going to have to make a big one for the Wardrobe contest. I conceived of the Brady Bunch idea and decided I HAD to do it. I'm disturbed by how shrewish my tank incarnation looks on the lower right. I was smiling in real life, but somehow it looks like a grimace on the camera.

This made me start thinking about how they did the credits in the Brady Bunch. At first I was all, well you just drag everything into a window on the editing software.... Um, no. That's not how they did it then. But how did they do it? Before I went to law school I worked in public radio in Shreveport, Louisiana (where I had gone to college). We were a dinky station, and still edited sound on reel-to-reel tape. I did arts reporting and cut my tape with a razor blade and then spliced it together with special blue tape to create my pieces. I felt very cool having such an esoteric and archaic skill. But simply cutting frames out and putting them together wouldn't have worked to create a multi-frame image. However they did it, I'm impressed they did it without computers.

I have to confess, there isn't much slapdash about these projects. They were too easy even to take shortcuts. You can read the review if you'd like.

Final Tally

I accomplished everything on the list over the weekend.

-three skirts
-four tops
-one convertible skirt/top
-one (reversible) hat to go with everything
-1:15 marathon photo session. I think I still have flash spots in my eyes.

I want to add one more skirt (easy peasy knit tube), a belt with hidden zipper compartment for credit card security, and a scarf that can be used as a shoulder cover for entering churches. I may not finish all these before the contest deadline.

Then there's the little matter of doing all the reviews.

I am tired.

And now I am ready for Harry Potter. My copy, according to USPS tracking, was delivered to work at 7:00 this morning. I have not seen it yet. The mailroom is about to get acquainted with me if it doesn't arrive soon.

Wardrobe in a Weekend?

The productivity is insane. So far, three skirts, one blouse, one knit top, and one convertible item that can be a skirt or a top. Two more tops cut out and ready to sew. My shoulder hurts and I think my sewing machine is getting tired. Taking pictures of all of this is going to be an ordeal. I live alone and have no boyfriend so it's just me and the timer function of my camera. Over and over and over.


This post brought to you by the fact that I'm a night person and have stayed up this late just because I can.