I hate moving. Possibly because this is the 15th time I have moved in the last 14 years. Moving into and out of the dorms each year in college each year really racked that number up quickly, but there are three moves across the country hiding in there too. And every time, it seems like there is more stuff to move, although now that I'm married, there is definitely a lot more stuff because there are two of us contributing to the number of boxes. Furthermore, these moves ALWAYS happen during the hottest months of the year.
This was the biggest move yet, possibly on the hottest day yet, and I'm still recovering. But, now that this move is basically accomplished --- all our stuff is at the new house, just some cleaning left at the rental --- I'm hoping this is the last time I have to move for many years to come.
There's still lots to do. We have boxes everywhere, not even necessarily in the rooms where they belong, and we barely got our bed put together last night before we collapsed into it. Most of the furniture is scattered helter-skelter, and we have a new couch we need to go pick up today. But maybe by tonight, we'll have our new sofa and the TV set up and we can turn into zombies for a few hours and just relax every muscle in our bodies (including our brains!).
The most fun part of this was the moment when we let our cat out of her locked room so she could start exploring her new home too. She very cautiously explored every room, but wouldn't come down the stairs to the ground floor for a while. She's quite comfortable with her surroundings now, and has taken to lounging on one of the middle steps of the staircase. Not like the last time we moved, when she was scared of the ceiling fan and hid under the covers in the bed for a whole week!
The next several weeks will be filled with unpacking, but now that we're here, we can take our time. Right this moment, I don't feel like touching boxes, but we have other stuff we need to do first today anyway. So I guess we can mark this down as a successful move since we're here and nothing valuable or irreplaceable was broken. Hooray for low standards! :)
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
I'm not here
Well, I guess I am somewhere, just not where I usually am. I'm in Denmark. That's Sweden across the water in the photo. I'm standing on the tower of Kronborg Castle in Helsingor --- also known as Elsinore Castle and famous for being the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
What am I doing in Denmark? Well, working as usual. But taking a little time here and there to explore.
In this photo, for example, I am visiting the Queen. Except she wasn't accepting visitors.
And nothing caps off a 2-week workshop like a visit to an amusement park. Luckily, we picked an evening basically free of wind and rain so that we could enjoy the fresh air.
No time for sewing recently. As soon as I get home I'll be busy packing and moving into our new house! Yay! But no time for sewing then either. Maybe in August...
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
McCall's 6073
I was finally home during daylight at the same time as James, so I got a few pictures of my recently finished McCall's 6073. I posted a bit about this dress here already. This dress is really comfortable. The knit is kind of silky and very swishy as I walk.
I haven't hemmed the bottom yet, and I think I might just chop an inch or two off the length and leave it unhemmed.
I tried to get a detail shot of the neckline, but this knit is kind of hard to photograph because it has a bit of shine to it.
The pattern is really simple and should go together quickly now that I have my fit issues figured out and I've made it once already. I have fabric to make another one, a border print knit jersey, but that may not get done any time soon given everything else on my To Do list. But for now, I'll enjoy this version.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Tuesday's Transit of Venus
On Tuesday, something happened that won't happen again until December 2117. From our viewpoint here on Earth, the planet Venus crossed directly in front of the Sun, blocking out some of its light and causing a baby eclipse. This event is called a transit (as in "Venus transited in front of the Sun"). A group of us took a few telescopes to the roof of the nearby parking garage and took advantage of a perfectly-timed break in the clouds to observe the event (well, part of it anyway -- it lasted several hours and ended long after the Sun had set for us in Atlanta).
Both of the pictures below were taken with my cell phone. The first is an image of the Sun projected by some mirrors onto a piece of paper where it could be safely viewed. The second took some careful alignment of my phone camera lens through the eyepiece of a small telescope with a solar filter. I'm very pleased with how both turned out (although they're certainly not as detailed as this photo or this one).
Other than the Sun itself, Venus is quite obvious in both photos. Sunspots are easily visible in the first photo (as well as a few thin wispy clouds that got in the way; they look like faint fingerprints or blotches). And if you look around the edge of the Sun in the second photo, you can see several solar flares and prominences. Each one is caused by ionized gases trapped in the magnetic field of the Sun and is approximately the size of the whole planet Earth.
Isn't astronomy fun?
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Lots of sewing!
True to form, I haven't been following the sewing plan I laid out in my last post. But I'm about to get back on track. Here's how I got off track in the first place...
I visited my sister in Kansas last month for a bit. While there, she explained that she didn't have any skirts that fit her properly at the moment. This is exactly what got me started sewing in the first place -- the desire to have a few simple skirts that fit well and didn't cost me an arm and a leg. I would have made her one while visiting but she doesn't have a sewing machine, so I offered to make her two skirts when I got home. I was also under a bit of a deadline because she and her husband are moving to Hawaii in mid-June and I wanted her to have the skirts before they left.
Last weekend I made one of the skirts, and this weekend I made the other. The first is a six-gore skirt with side-seam pockets in a blue linen blend that I picked up at JoAnn Fabrics. The second is a two-gore (is there such a thing?) skirt in a brown linen/rayon blend from Fabric.com. While she chose the basic colors, I picked out the fabric. I tried to stick with easy care fabrics that were light and breathed well.
Both are self-drafted and fairly simple with elastic waists (to minimize fitting issues given the distance between us and time table I was working under). After looking at a few skirt tutorials, I decided to basically wing the design. I decided against circle skirts because of the need to let the skirt hang for a good amount of time before hemming. I also wanted to minimize the poofiness around the waist that gathered rectangles can give you. I ended up with modified trapezoids that gave myself square edges at the waist and hem for ease of sewing the waistband and machine hemming. The final skirt pieces looked a bit like this:
I tried to keep the seams as low-profile as possible, so I simply zigzagged over the edges to finish them. While I'll have to wait for my sister to receive them and try them on, here's how they turned out:
Of course I'll have to wait for my sister to get them and try them on to know how well I did just based on her measurements, but hopefully the silhouette is simple enough and the waist forgiving enough that they'll look great. Maybe she'll send me some fun shots of her wearing them in front of palm trees!
After finishing the blue skirt last weekend, I had to wait for the brown fabric to arrive in the mail. So I decided to start a quick and simple project for myself in the meantime -- View A (short skirt) of McCall's 6073 with a pink floral jersey ITY knit I had ordered from Fabric.com during a sale ($2.99/yard) and had sitting in my stash for a while. Unfortunately, "quick and easy" projects never seem to be all that quick for me.
I finally finished the dress today and I'm very happy with how it turned out overall, but it took me much longer than it should have. Some of that was due to inattention, such as sewing two skirt pieces together so that the wrong side of the fabric was facing the right side. Some of it was due to the extremely unclear directions for the neckband. I pondered and arranged my pieces and simulated various translations of the directions and pondered some more for an hour or two on that one step alone. Finally, I ignored the directions completely for that step and just winged it. However, given my perfectionist nature, I did pull out and redo the top stitching in several spots, especially around the v in the back neckline, multiple times. The same is true of the arm holes.
Perfectionist tendencies aside, I also had to make some fitting adjustments as I went along. I cut a straight size 8, although I did remove a bit of width from the back neckline before cutting. I ended up having to make a swayback adjustment of 7/8" at center back. Furthermore, I had to pull out the side waist seams and remove about 2" of ease from the back waist to help counteract the weight of the skirt pulling the bodice back away from my body. Finally, I ignored the waist elastic (which may have contributed to the previous issue). I haven't hemmed it yet (not sure I really need to, but I probably will eventually). I'm planning to wear it to work tomorrow, and hopefully I'll have some modeled shots to show after I get home. I'll take some detailed shots as well, the light was fading when I managed to grab this particular shot.
After finishing the dress and tossing it and the skirts into the wash to remove any remaining washable marker or loose threads, I popped in a twin needle and hacked 3" off the length fof a new Old Navy tank top/camisole. I'm finding that most of my tops (especially from Old Navy) are just too long. They sit around my butt, which is not a good look for anything other than possibly jeans. I also don't really like to tuck in my tops. They have a way of puffing out around my waist and working themselves out and generally distracting me all day long. My modification of this tank seemed to work out pretty well, so I'll probably be doing more such modifications in the near future to make some of the items in my wardrobe more versatile. I only wear jeans on the weekends when the temperature is below 80 degrees, so that means I don't wear them much at all for about 4 months of the year, and at most 2/7 days per week the other 8 months of the year. I have way too many tops that I only feel comfortable wearing with jeans versus a relatively small amount of time when I can actually wear them.
In addition to all this sewing, I've been watching Lark Rise to Candleford, a BBC period drama set in two neighboring small towns, on YouTube. Some kind soul has posted all the episodes (in 10 minute chunks) and I've made my way through Season 1 already. It's quite possible that by the time my husband gets back on Thursday from the training exercise he left for last week, I'll be finished with Season 2 as well. Let's hope I haven't gone crazy and finished all four seasons by then!
I visited my sister in Kansas last month for a bit. While there, she explained that she didn't have any skirts that fit her properly at the moment. This is exactly what got me started sewing in the first place -- the desire to have a few simple skirts that fit well and didn't cost me an arm and a leg. I would have made her one while visiting but she doesn't have a sewing machine, so I offered to make her two skirts when I got home. I was also under a bit of a deadline because she and her husband are moving to Hawaii in mid-June and I wanted her to have the skirts before they left.
Last weekend I made one of the skirts, and this weekend I made the other. The first is a six-gore skirt with side-seam pockets in a blue linen blend that I picked up at JoAnn Fabrics. The second is a two-gore (is there such a thing?) skirt in a brown linen/rayon blend from Fabric.com. While she chose the basic colors, I picked out the fabric. I tried to stick with easy care fabrics that were light and breathed well.
Both are self-drafted and fairly simple with elastic waists (to minimize fitting issues given the distance between us and time table I was working under). After looking at a few skirt tutorials, I decided to basically wing the design. I decided against circle skirts because of the need to let the skirt hang for a good amount of time before hemming. I also wanted to minimize the poofiness around the waist that gathered rectangles can give you. I ended up with modified trapezoids that gave myself square edges at the waist and hem for ease of sewing the waistband and machine hemming. The final skirt pieces looked a bit like this:
 |  |
Of course I'll have to wait for my sister to get them and try them on to know how well I did just based on her measurements, but hopefully the silhouette is simple enough and the waist forgiving enough that they'll look great. Maybe she'll send me some fun shots of her wearing them in front of palm trees!
After finishing the blue skirt last weekend, I had to wait for the brown fabric to arrive in the mail. So I decided to start a quick and simple project for myself in the meantime -- View A (short skirt) of McCall's 6073 with a pink floral jersey ITY knit I had ordered from Fabric.com during a sale ($2.99/yard) and had sitting in my stash for a while. Unfortunately, "quick and easy" projects never seem to be all that quick for me.
 |  |
I finally finished the dress today and I'm very happy with how it turned out overall, but it took me much longer than it should have. Some of that was due to inattention, such as sewing two skirt pieces together so that the wrong side of the fabric was facing the right side. Some of it was due to the extremely unclear directions for the neckband. I pondered and arranged my pieces and simulated various translations of the directions and pondered some more for an hour or two on that one step alone. Finally, I ignored the directions completely for that step and just winged it. However, given my perfectionist nature, I did pull out and redo the top stitching in several spots, especially around the v in the back neckline, multiple times. The same is true of the arm holes.
Perfectionist tendencies aside, I also had to make some fitting adjustments as I went along. I cut a straight size 8, although I did remove a bit of width from the back neckline before cutting. I ended up having to make a swayback adjustment of 7/8" at center back. Furthermore, I had to pull out the side waist seams and remove about 2" of ease from the back waist to help counteract the weight of the skirt pulling the bodice back away from my body. Finally, I ignored the waist elastic (which may have contributed to the previous issue). I haven't hemmed it yet (not sure I really need to, but I probably will eventually). I'm planning to wear it to work tomorrow, and hopefully I'll have some modeled shots to show after I get home. I'll take some detailed shots as well, the light was fading when I managed to grab this particular shot.
After finishing the dress and tossing it and the skirts into the wash to remove any remaining washable marker or loose threads, I popped in a twin needle and hacked 3" off the length fof a new Old Navy tank top/camisole. I'm finding that most of my tops (especially from Old Navy) are just too long. They sit around my butt, which is not a good look for anything other than possibly jeans. I also don't really like to tuck in my tops. They have a way of puffing out around my waist and working themselves out and generally distracting me all day long. My modification of this tank seemed to work out pretty well, so I'll probably be doing more such modifications in the near future to make some of the items in my wardrobe more versatile. I only wear jeans on the weekends when the temperature is below 80 degrees, so that means I don't wear them much at all for about 4 months of the year, and at most 2/7 days per week the other 8 months of the year. I have way too many tops that I only feel comfortable wearing with jeans versus a relatively small amount of time when I can actually wear them.
In addition to all this sewing, I've been watching Lark Rise to Candleford, a BBC period drama set in two neighboring small towns, on YouTube. Some kind soul has posted all the episodes (in 10 minute chunks) and I've made my way through Season 1 already. It's quite possible that by the time my husband gets back on Thursday from the training exercise he left for last week, I'll be finished with Season 2 as well. Let's hope I haven't gone crazy and finished all four seasons by then!
Sunday, May 20, 2012
In the works
I've started working on a new dress, and I've decided to do things right this time by making a muslin of the bodice to check the fit before cutting my fashion fabric. I have enough large scraps of other fabric that I don't feel guilty "wasting" fabric for this. And really, for New Look 6723, there isn't too much fabric required if you don't cut out the skirt.
It's a good thing I decided to make a muslin before running off and cutting up my fabric because my first bodice muslin had a terrible fit! Some of the issues I expected - such as the gaping back neckline. But my big surprise here (something that probably should not have been a surprise) is that I needed to do a FBA. I don't think of myself as being particularly well endowed, but apparently my bust is a bit on the large size for my small frame, at least according to The Standard Size. So I did my first ever FBA following the directions in Fast Fit by Sandra Betzina and changing the B cup to a C cup. It was really easy for this princess seam bodice. I also took in the back neckline on each side by 3/4" and the front neckline by 3/8" on each side and tweaked the side and back princess seams. When I was mostly happy, I pulled apart my muslin and used it to create new pattern pieces, then cut out a 2nd muslin.
I finished the 2nd muslin today and the fit is significantly improved. I only had a few small changes to make --- evening out the waistline because it was still dipping down lower in the back than the front, and tweaking the front armhole after my major changes to the front princess seams. So I'm all ready to cut out my fashion fabric now. I picked up 2 yards of the green leaf cotton lawn (shown above) from Fashion Fabrics Club a couple of months ago after eyeing it every time I browsed their selection. Good thing I got it when I did, because they don't seem to have it anymore. The background is a fairly sheer ivory, so I'll line it with some nude-colored cotton lawn from my stash.
I'm hoping it all goes fairly quickly now that I've fixed my major fit issues, because I can't wait to make a Cambie dress! And I have the perfect fabric for it too, also a cotton lawn from Fashion Fabric Club, but with really cute purple and pink polka dots! I'm going to make the full skirt version first with a straight neckline (see Tasia's tutorial here).
I'm pretty sure I'll need to check the fit on the Cambie dress bodice too, but I'm planning to make several versions, so the time will be well spent. I can't wait to have some fun new summer dresses!
 |  |
It's a good thing I decided to make a muslin before running off and cutting up my fabric because my first bodice muslin had a terrible fit! Some of the issues I expected - such as the gaping back neckline. But my big surprise here (something that probably should not have been a surprise) is that I needed to do a FBA. I don't think of myself as being particularly well endowed, but apparently my bust is a bit on the large size for my small frame, at least according to The Standard Size. So I did my first ever FBA following the directions in Fast Fit by Sandra Betzina and changing the B cup to a C cup. It was really easy for this princess seam bodice. I also took in the back neckline on each side by 3/4" and the front neckline by 3/8" on each side and tweaked the side and back princess seams. When I was mostly happy, I pulled apart my muslin and used it to create new pattern pieces, then cut out a 2nd muslin.
I finished the 2nd muslin today and the fit is significantly improved. I only had a few small changes to make --- evening out the waistline because it was still dipping down lower in the back than the front, and tweaking the front armhole after my major changes to the front princess seams. So I'm all ready to cut out my fashion fabric now. I picked up 2 yards of the green leaf cotton lawn (shown above) from Fashion Fabrics Club a couple of months ago after eyeing it every time I browsed their selection. Good thing I got it when I did, because they don't seem to have it anymore. The background is a fairly sheer ivory, so I'll line it with some nude-colored cotton lawn from my stash.
I'm hoping it all goes fairly quickly now that I've fixed my major fit issues, because I can't wait to make a Cambie dress! And I have the perfect fabric for it too, also a cotton lawn from Fashion Fabric Club, but with really cute purple and pink polka dots! I'm going to make the full skirt version first with a straight neckline (see Tasia's tutorial here).
 |  |
I'm pretty sure I'll need to check the fit on the Cambie dress bodice too, but I'm planning to make several versions, so the time will be well spent. I can't wait to have some fun new summer dresses!
Monday, May 14, 2012
Cute stuff
We're currently in the process of buying this house (adorable, no?). Our inspection is scheduled for Tuesday morning, and we're hoping there are no hidden surprises waiting for us.
It will be so great to finally have our own home! I realized the other day that I have moved 12 times in the last 14 years (moving in to this house will be move #13). Eek! Because of my apparent nomadic existence, and the fact that I have spent 12 of the last 14 years living in dorms and 1-2 bedroom apartments, with the last 2 years spent "temporarily" living in a rental house, we actually have very little furniture and not many housewares. We didn't even register for china or any of the typical registry items when we got married because we had no idea how long it would be before we were able to have our own place with enough room for more than 4 plates and bowls. So now that it looks like we'll actually be living like adults in a 3300 square foot house (that will be extremely empty after we move in due to our lack of furniture and housewares), I've started browsing around for some nesting ideas. Here are some items that caught my eye this afternoon:
kate spade new york Market Street in Pink (surprisingly, my husband really likes these too!)
That's it for housewares (ha!). The following items are all ones that I would like for my sewing room (i.e., the formal dining room).
Garbo Chaise - because who doesn't need a fainting couch in their sewing room??
Apothecary Chest - all those little drawers would be great for storing notions and trims!
Sewing-related artwork for the walls:
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As you can see, I didn't get too far past finding things for my sewing room, but there will be plenty of time for the rest later. Luckily, I don't have a terribly large amount of time for online window-shopping because furnishing a home seems like a good way to go broke quickly. So we'll try for the one-item-at-a-time method instead.
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