more bits and a new dress

I forgot about a few other little things that I made. The first were some ballet flats socks. I'm tired of sweaty feet inside my everyday shoe wear and I don't anticipate regular socks in these becoming kosher... ever. This was also my first ever 'socks' that I knit. That was a big step. I had to learn a few new skills for these.




Next were some fun flower hair clips that I made for my dear friend Kat's birthday. Birthday gifts on a budget can be tough, but these were what I came up with. For the teal ones I used some lining fabric that I held over a flame to shape and singe. The others were fancy silk samples of fabric I'd gotten. I used pearls from an old family heirloom necklace that had broken and wasn't worth re-stringing.



Now this is my little pet project that I started. I was walking down Granville St. near the theatre that I work at and there was a window display of a dress with this really fun sewn down pleats over the waist with topstitching on them. I loved that idea and stole it, but changed everything else about the dress. I know that I need to make some dresses with long sleeve since the winter weather will be here before you know it and I am the human popsicle. I found a lovely wool blend fabric in the bargain section of Dresses that I figured would work nicely for it. It was called 'cadet blue' but in many kinds of light it appears half way between navy blue and a deep purple. I really like that. The fabric is wonderful to work with and I did so much in one afternoon that I'm hopeful I may finish this in time to wear for my headshots photo time next month. It is tricksy business picking out a top for those things. Oh yes, and my hair is red again. I missed it.

Catching up...

Considering how many things I've made this summer, prior to starting this blog, perhaps I should do a little show and tell recap.


First, researched my husband's family crest and embroidered it to add onto a tshirt for his birthday.














Then I made a maxi dress out of a bit of scrap material from ages ago and a beach cover up wrap that my sis-in-law was going to throw away at Christmas time. If it is decent material I will always find something to make out of it. I decided to leave the little fringe tassle things on the outside for an interesting look. I don't have a good detail shot of the back, but I also added a bunch of pleats along the back which gives it nice movement and the feel of a train, even if there isn't really one. This has got to be the easiest thing I've ever sewn and yet it gets the most compliments.

After giving into a slight Regency inspiration for that maxi dress, I decided to design a dress that was based more heavily off of a Regency bodiced petticoat I saw. This was my first time ever creating a proper pattern. So much math, but at least now I have a pattern that I can alter to different sizes to make for others.
After that came a little black dress. I'd been wanting to make a LBD for a while. When a pattern came up on Burda Style that I kinda liked, I realized I didn't like the details on it, and instead used the pattern for the dress lining as a basis for my own design. It ended up having a very early 60's feel to it. My first attempt at hand stitching in an invisible zipper after many years of avoiding them with buttons.

And finally, I knit a camera sock for our first ever camera! As a joint birthday pressie, we got given a digital camera. This is a big deal for us. Neither of us have ever owned a camera before, so we bought a disposable for our honeymoon, thinking we ought to get some pics....we still haven't gotten it developed. Without this fun new gifty, I wouldn't have any of the above pictures. It is a snazzy red camera, so I knit up a matching red cover.
That pretty much covers the summer.

Experiment

I thought it might be nice to collect all of the things I might post, including theater stuff and all of my crafty creation, in just one place. So this is it, unless I fail to make this work. I'm not a writer, so this is a big stretch for me. We'll see what happens.