SewLoca

Don't get fresh with me Rooty Tooty!

My friend/ coworker Sylvia had a birthday this week (55!) making her eligible to order more budget-friendly options off the senior menu at our local IHOP.

I once showed Sylvia a picture of this cat iPad cover available for sale on Etsy.  In her aged state, she somehow got it into her head that this was a free downloadable pattern (Nope.  It’s $78 made to order) and has been pestering me since Christmas to make her the “cat iPad cover”.  Well, I simply can’t say “no” to a senior citizen, so this January, Sylvia got her wish.

Wasn't I a good enough servant to you?

In her day to day life as our school’s speech and language pathologist, Sylvia uses her district-issued iPad quite frequently.  At this point, she was looking to upgrade from…..wrapping it in saran wrap.

While I really do love the cat iPad cover above, I wanted to make something that looked less……. like it wants kick your butt and eat you.  Instead I wanted something modern, but with a 50′s flair (a nod to her birth generation).  I decided to make this great envelope iPad cover listed here on tipnut.  Here were some of the additional inspirations I found on pinterest:

<= I LOVE the cat’s blue eye shadow!!!!

I soo want to wear some!

 Ok, maybe not.

Sylvia said that her favorite colors were purple and “peacock colors”.  Because I don’t want my husband to have a valid reason to divorce me over my “fabric addiction”, the challenge became how to make this darned thing without setting foot in a fabric store.

Here were some of my initial ideas:

a little too dowdy...

a little better, but kind of...limbless

that's it!/ front and back

starburst inspiration from this fine china

After digging manically through the stash, I chose a jean for the outside, a purple sateen for the lining, and a light brown felt for the cat.

I'm going to eat your soul....

I then set to work ….

(Segoe Script)

My heart dropped a little when I realized that the script embroidery + jean fabric reminded me forcefully of Guess! jeans in the 80′s.

I then figured that since my goal was modern+50′s…. if you take the mean of 2013 and 1958 you get 1985.5.  There you go.  See?  Math explains everything.

Flash forward through many OCD-filled hours…and here’s the final product:

front

back

I added an empty head under the velcro so she wouldn’t look decapitated (or would it be de-cat-itated?) when the envelope was opened.

All the cool cats are wearing mid-back bows

And finally, here is Sylvia with her fancy new iPad cover.  Goodbye saran wrap!

(This was the only part of our classroom that was sort of picked up.)  No time to clean though….we’re off for a frugal birthday lunch at the IHOP!  (After our very hard, super laborious morning of work, that is).

Or I just forgot how to sew.  Or suffered brain damage somehow.

My co-worker’s daughter had a 4-year birthday party this Saturday.  Along with a gift for Riley (the birthday girl), maybe I should have taken along those infant bibs I made when her baby brother Christian was born and I never gave to him?  (He’s almost 2 now).   The bib tutorial I used can be found here.

a day late and a dollar short

Because Riley’s poor father has to work with me at least 2 days a week…which involves incessant listening to me talk at him, hearing unsolicited advice,  and relentless harassing, I decided to take a stab at making it up to him by sewing his precious firstborn a Disney princess dress.

Take it again. I think the thermometer needs more time to warm up.

Riley loves Rapunzel, so I decided to make another version of Simplicity 2065 with sleeves from Simplicity 2817.  But, somehow along the way I lost the ability to sew properly.  In my defense, I may have had a fever at the time.  On the third consecutive trial of taking my temperature (after 2 readings of 98.7), the digital thermometer registered at 99.5.  See?  Super hot.

this is how I didn't look

So you can all feel better about yourselves by hearing about how much I suck, here is a list of the mistakes I made along the way:

• sewed lining of the over-skirt in the completely wrong position
• sewed on the sleeve lining backwards
• joined the shoulder lining backwards
• sewed the tulle to the wrong side of the ruffle
• eyelets kept falling off
• Cut a chunk out of the bodice lining when trimming the waist seam
• Incorrect bodice construction

But let’s try that again….  Time to have a glass of wine (maybe that’s why I kept messing up?!?), channel my inner cheese, and here goes:

Oh dear little Riley…

It’s not that I made a desperate attempt to patch up the lining I hacked……

It’s that, like a classic Raggedy Ann doll, I added a heart on the chest to serve as a constant reminder that those around you cherish you always.

I meant to do that

It’s not that I banged eyelets into the dress like a crazed woman with a hammer until I ran out of eyelets hoping the ones I put on would at least hold until the end of the party…

It’s that the eyelets on the dress, like your baby teeth, will slowly fall out marking time as you grow

It’s not that I somehow sewed the bodice incorrectly, un-stitched it, tried to fix it and was unable to, purposely redid it the wrong way, and 1hour later desperately tried to make it look like the original mess I had…

It’s that the bodice serves as a reminder that when you embrace imperfections, they themselves can be beautiful

"Beauty always promises, but never gives anything". Simone Weil

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye." Miss Piggy

All in all, it’s a dress… it’s a metaphor…  it’s me praying that Penny does not want to be Rapunzel for Halloween because I’d rather sew a hole through my left pointer finger (again) than make another princess dress.

Happy Birthday to Riley!!!  (as modeled by Penny)  Hopefully you like your Rapunzel dress a bit more than Pascal here did.

"Mommy says if I ask to be Rapunzel for Halloween, I'll never get dinner again"

But peplums are awesome!!!

meh

adorable!

Maybe because they hide my biggest problem area in such cute fashion, or maybe because they remind me of one of my childhood favorites The Jetsons….

but I love peplums!!

Who wouldn’t want to look like an old-school futuristic housewife?

One morning during my usual sneak out of bed at 5am because that is the only time the house is quiet and I can drink my delicious, delicious, so delicious cup of coffee uninterrupted and scour the internet for future projects to obsess over routine:  I saw this on sewing pattern review, and thought it might have potential.

So I thought and thought and thought about it all day (“Students, let’s work on thinking flexibly by discussing the pros and cons of versions A, B, and C of NewLook 6130″).  Driving home from work I even had the idea of sneaking all the way over to Jo-Ann Fabrics and looking for the pattern (“oh family…I’ve had such a tough day at work and just managed to break away now!“).  I admit though, I got lazy.  Really lazy.  I passed a Walmart on my way home, and it was that day I discovered that Walmart carries NewLook patterns…. and really cheap gum.

Cute, but not a prudent choice for my job at the local public school.

I used some of my leftover powder blue pique fabric to make a franken-version.  I was so pleased that I managed to cut the entire top out of scraps..and then realized that I forgot the two back pieces.  :O  I ended up making up some sort of v-back (is that the right word for opposite of v-neck?) from the scrap’s scraps in order to avoid looking like this.  =>

Pants too tight. Can't breathe. Must. Look. Cool.

The top needed a bit of adjustment.  I ended up taking in the sides about 1/2 inch and the shoulder seam by about 1-1/2-2 inches. I think I may have overdone it a tad.  I guess there’s a reason that my friends from high school tease me about my love of near spandex-tight clothing.

And here is how it all turned out:

Next up…I’ll be taking the flying car to Mooning Dales to search for an overly-starched triangle-collar that matches my new peplumed shirt.

I think…

Rip-off this awesome Roland Mouret dress

I’ve had my eye on the Vogue “galaxy dress”for quite some time now.  Clearly, other sew-ers have fashioned FABULOUS versions of this dress for themselves, as evidenced here, and here, and here, and here, and ….

Attempt 1:

Sometime back in August 2011, I found a gorgeous turquoise and black polka dot fabric at my favorite place and it was Vogue galaxy time!!  I got to work one weekend and decided not to sleep until I was finished.  Imagine my surprise when I realized that the sleeves required netting.  “Netting, how fun!” I thought.  I was definitely going to wear this one on my first day back at work.  And then….

Oh my 80’s!!  I was never a very stylish pre-teen, but if I was, I would have DEFINITELY worn this dress with a French braid (or maybe a side pony?) to my school’s “Turkey Trot” dance.

This is what a crazed sew-er looks like at 2am. Please don't judge.

The dress has now taken up permanent residence crumpled in the closet corner waiting for both a hem and that my school of employment have an “80’s day”.  Tell me why, why, why are there so many “pajama days” and never an 80’s day?!?….  I’ll keep my hopes up…when my dream is finally realized, I’ll have the PERFECT outfit.  I’m not getting any younger… so by then my varicose veins might coordinate quite nicely with the turquoise of the fabric.

Attempt 2:

Instantly obtain the physique of a linebacker--shoulder pads ROCK!!!

August 2012, I gave the vogue 8280 another stab with some leftover burgundy poplin I had on hand.  Even though I have been a shoulder pad aficionado from a very young age, I decided to pass on the puffy sleeves this time.

I even lined the dress with some adorable leftover navy polka dot fabric.  “I’m gonna look so cool, like I just walked out of Tommy Hilfiger” I thought.  But (butt) Ack!!!  The fabric had NO stretch to it.

Preferring to keep the more unflattering pictures of my backside off the internet, I will spare you the photo of the reverse of this dress. Let me just say that “butt wrinkles” is not the look I’m trying to achieve.

That day I learned a valuable fact.  The recommended fabrics on the back of the envelope are recommended for a reason.  I’ll add that one to my list of “life’s valuable lessons” along with this beauty (see below):

• It is a BAD idea to attempt to smuggle chocolate chip cookies out of the dorm cafeteria by hiding them in the elastic waistband of your shorts.  When you smile at that sweet looking group of guys walking by, the cookies WILL fall out through the crotch of your shorts at EXACTLY that moment.  (And yes, this did actually happen to me…you think I would have gotten more dates in college after that…but sadly, no.)

Attempt #3: Gabardine

I still don’t know what gabardine is exactly.  I think I like it though..it’s super cheap, machine washable, and doesn’t wrinkle.  The third attempt cost me about $10 to make.  I decided on the same version as attempt #2, but with the flange modification shown here.

Oh thank you fairy godmother, I'm going to look so fabulous at the IEP meeting!

When I tried the dress on, my mother commented that it seemed too fancy to wear to my public-school job.  I decided to wear it to work anyway.  As usual, mom may have been right…when I stepped out of my car first thing in the morning, the school groundskeeper yelled across the parking lot at me “I love the dress!  Where’s the ball?”.

Hot and juicy?!?! (Blush) Why thank you! Oh.....you were talking about your burger...my mistake...

I also got complements from two complete strangers at mid-day, which I took to mean that I was appropriately styled during my lunch outing at our local Wendy’s.  Extra bonus…had I gotten sauce on the dress…it’s machine washable and dry-able!

And finally-enough blabbering, here it is:

And now I’m off to the ball!–and by “ball”, I mean of course, passing out on the couch while watching recordings of the Maury show.  “You are the father” and goodnight.