Mirror Photos Day Two

Sorry for the "Let's all go to jail!" expression on my face here; I was rushing to get *something* shot before heading to the airport. (Also, usually I have feet.)

This dress is fantastically comfortable; it's this one again, Butterick 7513. The only flaw in it (for me) is that I set the zipper in too low on the left side, and so the fabric is stressing there -- not when I put it on, but when I take it off. So someday soon I have to take the zipper out, reinforce that stress point, and put the zipper back in, only higher. (And if you think that sounds like fun, email me and YOU can do it. And then you can whitewash my fence, if you give me your apple.)

Sweater is, again, from Lands' End. I keep buying their sweaters, especially once they go to $20 on clearance, but I really wish they would put a "true red" in their color lineup.

The bag (you can see it on the table) is a Fossil I bought on eBay; the leather is really nice -- soft but sturdy -- there are a lot of pockets, and my laptop + power cord + notebook + something to read fits in it just fine, but the crossbody strap is a bit too thin to be comfortable, and so I end up holding it over my bent arm a LOT, Mary-Kate Olsen style. (Which I hate.) Also, it snaps shut instead of zipping shut; ten demerits. I switched back to my Chrome laptop backpack for the plane, and shoved the handbag into my luggage.

Oh -- I almost forgot. When I was getting on the plane, the crew member at the door said "Hey, you look like that educational play toy stuff I buy for my kids!" So I told him that yes, I WAS very popular with infants. That's me -- forming young minds. Scared yet?

Increasingly less-rare sighting of alphabet dress in the wild

[photo from GEL 2008 by the fantastic Gene Driskell; L to R: Michael Montes, yours truly, Bran Dougherty-Johnson]

I know y'all are always clamoring for pictures of me wearing the dresses I make, and I know I have been consistently disappointing on that front. (I would do so more often if I weren't too lazy to go get a tripod to use with my camera. Also, I never know what to reply to the inevitable comments of "Erin, I thought you'd be taller.")

But here, ta-dah, is a brand-new dress that I made to wear to last week's GEL conference. (If you don't know the GEL conference, it is my great pleasure to introduce it to you -- go check out the link above! Watch the videos! Pressure your employer to send you next year!)

This is made from some fabric I bought from Reprodepot, but which seems to be missing from their site now. And the pattern is Butterick 7513, which sews up like a dream. So easy! (I left off the sleeve bands, though, as I thought they'd be bulgy under a cardigan.)

What you can't see in the photo is that the buttons are covered in scraps of a different-scale black-and-white alphabet print. (You also can't see how hard Michael was making me laugh a few minutes earlier.)

This was a two-alphabet-dress trip for me; I wore the blue letter-and-number print dress the next day. Eventually I suppose I'll have made enough alphabet-print dresses that I can wear nothing but fonts for a week straight, and will have completed my descent into caricature.

By the Numbers

Remember those nursery curtains I bought at Target? They turned into this:



It's Butterick 2626, the same dress as the one in this post. It's not ironed -- this is how it looks after being hung up wet from the dryer.

I didn't realize until I took the picture how ... prominent ... the numbers are on the bodice. In my mind, it's an alphabet dress, not a numbers dress, but I don't mind. (And since I'm going to be wearing this mostly for work, I hope I earworm everyone I meet with Dolly Parton's "9 to 5".)

It took me forever to figure out what buttons to use, until I remembered I bought fifteen packets of covered-button forms at the last Hancock's notions sale:


The covered buttons were EASY. There's a template on the back of the package and then all you have to do is get the fabric wet and put it in the mold. It took less time to make the buttons than it did to sew them on. (Just remember to check the orientation of the shanks if your buttons have a definite up-and-down ... a couple of mine are sewn on an angle for that reason!)

If I had it to do over again, I would, and with a glad heart, but this time I'd unpick the curtain hems BEFORE washing them; the sizing made the fabric stiff and in my haste I ripped one of the hems along the seamline, which made cutting-out a bit awkward. (If you have rips or stains in your fabric, you can mark them the way I do, with blue painter's tape -- it's stiff enough so that you can feel it from the wrong side but it comes off easily without leaving any sticky stuff behind.)

The obligatory "Let me show you where I screwed up" part is here:



The skirt has an interesting slashed/darted opening on the left for the zipper, and the right-hand side is supposed to have just a plain dart. Which I forgot to make. Which means the back skirt is not centered on the back bodice. To which I say: big whoop; I gave up being worried if people were staring at my ass a decade ago.

Here's the full back view:



Despite that annoyance and assorted others (if you remember, this is the dress where I turned front and back bodice gathers into darts, plus I had to let out the waist an inch, which is irritating on a skirt with side-seam pleats) I will probably make this pattern at least once more. It's so comfortable!

If you're playing "spot the pockets", they're set in the front skirt seam, between the third and fourth outermost pleats. Very convenient!

Oh, Fabric, Why Can't I Quit You?

Have you all visited alittlegoodness's Etsy site yet? I desperately need this fabric. (If by 'desperately', you mean 'after sewing up the 15 yards I desperately needed *last* week.')




Included in that 15 yards was a good chunk of this fabric, which I posted about yonks ago, and which is now back in stock at Fashion Fabrics Club:




I also bought (no pictures ... yet) a soft, heavy loden green fabric that is possibly a cotton/wool blend, some lightweight teal denim, and a really nice Liz Claiborne browny-gray ombre-ish stripe. Very somber; I'm thinking I'll try another version of the Why Not Plaid dress with that last fabric. You know, Real Soon Now.

I have come to a sort of détente with my fabric stash: I have an enormous amount of fabric, and yet never seem to have anything I can actually sew with. The fabric I want to sew with has to hit that sweet spot: it has to be something I want to wear, yet not so incredibly gorgeous that I am too cowed to cut into it. (Have you ever tried shopping for "good enough" fabric? It's very difficult.*) So my arrangement is this: I simply buy gorgeous fabric and then wait for OTHER gorgeous fabric to arrive and push slightly-less gorgeous fabrics down the ladder of gorgeousness until they are at a low enough rung to be cut into. Some fabrics, it is sad to say, fall rather rapidly; others have maintained an immunity to scissors and pins for years. The worst is when fabric goes from too-gorgeous to too-NOT-gorgeous and misses the scissor-able stage altogether.

*This may be a business model: a site that only sells mediocre-plus fabrics. "Perfect for semi-wearable muslins!" would be its tagline. Or maybe "Fabrics you'll be 'in like' with!"

Y'all Are Too Nice To Me

Seriously. You leave me nice comments, you send me fun links, and now you buy me fabric. Anna at BootyVintage saw this amazing fabric on eBay, noticed that it was "BuyItNow", decided that no one but me deserved to own it, and bought it right there on the spot!

I *am* the luckiest woman on the planet, dontcha know?

Of course I paypal-ed her posthaste, and soon this amazing fabric will indeed be mine, all mine. Fabric I did not even know existed, and is my favorite color green, to boot (so many alphabet fabrics are pale blue and pale pink, for the nursery).

So now I just have to find a pattern that will let me put a giant "e" right at the center front, and I will have achieved alphabet-dress nirvana.

Oh, and this dress? Arrived MONDAY. Not that I've had time to do much more than gaze lovingly at it in stolen moments ...

Gorgeous Ugly Fabric

Isn't this great ugly fabric? I mean, I think it's very attractive, in a charmingly grotesque way. I have no idea why the pattern designer thought only the letters a-e-g-i-s-v were needed (is it supposed to spell 'visage' and if so, why?) and I don't know why there's some kind of craquelure behind those letters, but I don't care. I like it. Which is why I now have four yards of it. (And it wasn't even on sale--I liked it that much!)

As you all know by now, I'm a huge fan of the unconventionally pretty, which is not to say, in so many words, the downright ugly. I like things to have a hard edge, sometimes, and to make you work to see how beautiful they are. The easy beauty of pink roses and sunsets is one thing; the difficult, ornery, belligerent beauty of rough concrete and sheets of rain is another.

This fabric wants to be a narrow 'secretary' dress with a round collar, midriff band, and contrast piping (and, thanks to Lydia, I actually HAVE this pattern right now) but I don't know when I'll get a chance to make it. I'm pretty overwhelmed with Actual Work at the moment. Making a new dress is starting to feel as far away as some of my other nebulous goals, like "lose fifteen pounds" and "answer all my email" and "live on Moon colony before I die," and having "make new dress" slip into that category is a bit depressing.

But, I'm sure things will lighten up around here eventually, says the woman who is traveling three out of the next four weeks ...

A Day Late, More Than A Few Dollars Short

Carol (of Dandelion Vintage) sent me the link to this auction, which I missed. Completely whiffed. Got behind on my email from being away (>800 real, that is, non-spam, messages) and flat-out didn't get to it in time.

Which is a shame, because LOOK!




Yep, those are little blackbirds spelling out letters of the alphabet. Why? I don't know, but I don't much care, either. I just love it.

Of course, it's probably a good thing that I didn't bid, because I don't know if I would have gone up to $141, which is where the auction ended. And of course I haven't really been wearing my vintage stuff all that much lately, so perhaps I would have spent the $$ and then let it languish in my closet. Better for it to have a good home, with someone who will wear it in the sunshine. Or, you know, a smoky bar. Wherever. As long as it's worn.

However, I have absolutely put these pics in my file labeled "For the Glorious Day When I Have My Own Fabric Mill," because I really want blackbird-alphabet fabric. I also want hedgehog alphabet fabric, too ... just in case you see any of that around.