Cookie Break for Winter Solstice

Here, have a cookie.

Is everyone enjoying the winter solstice?

Today I baked about 200 cookies.   I'm keeping about 50 for myself (heh heh) and giving the rest away as tokens of appreciation.

It's kind of wild that mixing all of this...


Creates this...


I really am appreciative that I will be on vacation the week between Christmas and New Years, for the first time since 1998.  That is very exciting.

And yet, I wish I was off this week too.  2 weeks in a row, at the holidays.  Hmmmm....Well, you know what they say, "When you give a mouse a cookie..."

Ba-dump ump.


I haven't been in the sewing room for any weekend in December....until tonight when I started a tank for the gym.  I also rediscovered a cardigan that I sewed in March and never blogged.  I might it tmw night.   I need to plan the Christmas menu as well.




Lacy overlay for the gym tank.

I don't know why I'm pretending like I don't have to go to work tmw.  I do!
Be well!!

Catching up...

So much to catch up on....
Bloglovin
So a few weeks late, but here goes:
Follow my blog with Bloglovin
Honestly, I never used Google Reader, just read blogs down the sidebar of my own blog...but it is pretty cool how bloglovin sends email with all of the posts y'all write, right in there...

Online classes
I finished watching all 3.5 hours of Sew Better, Sew Faster:  Garment Industry Techniques by Janet Pray, on Craftsy.  Wow.  There is a boatload of good stuff in there. Lots of fast and furious notetaking on my part.    Janet shows how to sew without pins or basting, and how to make a super-professional looking jacket.  I won't make the jacket anytime soon (though it would be awesome if I could make it in time to show her at the ASE).  My list of sewing tools to buy grows!  Highly recommend.  LOVE the notetaking feature.

I enrolled in Understanding Knit Fabrics on PR.  It starts Tuesday night but I already have received my kit and have been fondling the 20 knit fabric samples.  I am super-excited for this class.

My new calling cards.
I was running out of my old calling cards, and Moo was having a sale, so here are my new cards:



Old Moo cards, left, new Moo cards, right.

I think I might like the old cards better but I like the color of the new cards, so...

Proof of actual sewing

Here is the muslin I started working on last weekend, sneak peek, another oops shot:

And here's one of those "looks like some kinda weird instagram photo" but it's not, maybe my camera is starting to die.

Anyway, that was just the muslin and it had some fitting issues, especially in the back, that I 'fixed'.

So then I started cutting it out of this purple lusciousness (I'm skipping over a whole lot of fabric related drama):

Pinned to Izzy

and was feeling all proud of myself for cutting knits single layer....and then realized when I cut the 3rd piece , I had not followed the cutting diagram (which I did follow when I cut the first two pieces, I don't know why I forged ahead with the 3rd piece without consulting the cutting diagram again) and didn't have enough fabric left to cut the 4th piece.   ARGH!   Cue fabric related meltdown (ok, that's a bit of an overstatement.  But it was definitely time for dinner by that point).

For a dress pattern that has  all of 2 pieces (really, 2 pieces), I have already invested about 8 hours in the muslin, cutting the underlining to underline some very special yet incredibly see-through fabric, making a sample of fabric + underlining, then ditching that plan (special fabric and underlining) entirely because I couldn't handle the amount of chevron matching that would be involved, and then cutting into my new "real" fabric to this, um, point.

So I wrote three pattern reviews tonight, so I'm all caught up on that, yay!

Here are my pumpkin vines:


Green eyed susans from the Princeton Farmers Market (with decorative grass):

And my black eyed susans that came back:

And cookies I made last weekend:

Be well!!

McCall's 6078: this foot is made for walking

I was in need of some "instant gratification" sewing, and McCall's 6078 fit the bill.(Pictured here with my J Stern Designs jeans, and bathroom clutter.)

It was a PR "pattern of the year" in 2011, and I saw Bonnie wearing it at PR weekend last year and had to have it. I'm always in search of a good cowl.

There is some swayback pooling but in this fabric, it doesn't bother me.


With View C, you can move the contrast loops up or down to change the shape of the cowl.

It's still too deep for me. These pix are "carefully adjusted".


I'm thinking, there must be a way to change the pattern so the cowl isn't so deep.  Cowls always want to fall into a V naturally on me instead of an arc....Also, in its current state, if you bend over, the world can see down your shirt, easily.
  
I have an idea and will test it soon... it seems like it's better when I hike up the inside of the strap for about an inch above the loop.

 Anyhoo, I used a walking foot for the first time.

My friend Debbie showed me how to use one in January. This fabric needed it, it's an ITY that I bought with Vanessa in Atlanta last year, one that I was scared to death to work with. Turns out this scary looking contraption foot is easy, the hard part is the boatload of patience to sew sooo slowly (my instruction manual said to "sew at a speed between slow and medium". I bumped it up to medium. )

I even used it on my twin needle hem. 

A whole new world has been opened to me....I can see more ITY knits in my future.

Oh hey, look, here's a pic of the fabric I bought in Atlanta last year--I've actually sewn 2 of the 3 fabrics up, woo-hoo! (the clock fabric is an apron, sewn last summer...)

I made more cookies tonight. Last week I shared too many cookies and didn't keep enough for myself. This week, I'm holding on.

Hope you had a great holiday! Be well!

Firsts of 2013

Sorry, Flickr won't cooperate tonight and won't show my rotated pix as rotated.

I am still fitting the Sewaholic Thurlow trousers.
I started on Dec 31.  I'm on muslin #4.
And still have far to go.
Luckily I'm enrolled in "Altering Pants" on PatternReview.com, and Angela Wolf started helping me fit them to my body last weekend.

That necessitated buying my first bolt of muslin.


A whole bolt of muslin is actually kind of dreamy.
Finally my first wearable garment off my new sewing machine and my first underwear of the year!

Black Fabric: hmmm...probably Joann's.
Iron-On Patch that wouldn't iron on, so I sewed it on: Definitely Joann's.
Hot pink elastic: Pacific Trimming, NYC, MPB Day

I think it's adorable.

I made chicken pot pie tonight, from scratch, even down to the cornmeal crust. The kitchen looked like my sewing room does after a project. 

The recipe from Cook This Not That is MUCH better, but in that recipe I used store-bought phyllo dough and I liked the idea of the from-scratch-ness of this recipe.

Sadly, the cornmeal crust didn't taste like much. It probably needs a boatload of butter and some sugar to make it better, ha ha.  The filling doesn't have any milk product at all.  Traditional pot pie has cream and lower-cal ones use skim milk.  This one just uses chicken broth.

I'd say this dish is like the wearable muslin of cooking.  I'm going to eat it (well, the filling at least) but it's not going to be made in this form again.

But it looked adorable in the cookbook in red ramekins:

I hadn't been to the PPL for a while and it was fun to browse during lunch last week. SO many books I couldn't carry them all, so I got these to start:

I leave you with this.

I helped my friend Debbie learn a bit more about her sewing machine last weekend (which was really fun to hear her reaction especially as she didn't know her machine had so many features, like automatic threading). That was another first, showing a friend new sewing machine features.
We went to the Ardmore Farmers Market so I could relive some college memories.
Ok, ONE more.

Delish!
Well, just ONE more.

Ok, this is what I really came for:

The same woman who served me in college served me last weekend. With the same chocolate chip cookies I adore.  LOVE.  Almost as good as mine.  Different than mine.  But yummy.
Be well!

Perspective on Burda Style 7253

Thank you for your sympathetic comments on my last post. (JuliaRu, if I had a way to directly contact you, I would have because your sweet comment made me feel SO much better.)

I was distraught and I have since calmed down, waaay down.

To answer your questions, the fabric is a "linen look" blend of non-natural fibers. I don't like wearing natural fibers generally because they wrinkle easily and I hate looking like a wrinkled mess, especially after carefully ironing a garment only to look like I'm wearing something that was last seen balled up in a corner. But it was probably a combo of that (as several suggested) and the fabric being cut off grain like Gwen suggested.

Anyway, I decided to wear the dress to work today and guess what, now I like it!

So here I am, just awakened....before work...

And here it is after wearing it all day:



So there are horizontal wrinkles across the skirt part of the dress, from sitting down, which runs into the pucker situation on the side seams. Somehow this now makes it all ok, like it's just normal wear. Even if the side seam wasn't puckered, the wrinkles would be there no matter what--it's the nature of this kind of pegged skirt design.

So I have made peace with this design.

Side view after wearing all day:

Back view:

But yes, Summer Flies, that button *is* the bomb:


Ok, so based on your advice, I am going to buy the regular ham, ham stand and seam roll from Stitch Nerd. Excitement fills the air!!!


No one is going to take the jeans class on Pattern Review.com with me?? Sniff.

Cookies anyone? I made them tonight, Nestle Toll House chocolate chip with walnuts from scratch. YUM!   The ones in the bags will be distributed at my meditation group tomorrow.  The big container is a thank you for my chiropractor.

Velosewer thanks for baking with me via twitter!  It was fun!

Ok, I feel better now!!
Be well!!

Christmas wishes

Merry Christmas everyone!

I wish you good sewing and celebrity sightings:

My holiday card this year.  Me with Suede from Project Runway season 5 at the American Sewing Expo, Sept 2011.  I'm wearing New Look 6000 and those adorable Mary Janes from Sears (still on their web site.  Type cupid shoes in their search box).

I wish you many beautiful blooms:

My coworker gave me this Christmas cactus last year.  She repotted it in April when it was dying due to my ignorance.  Now I know, even though it's a cactus it likes a LOT of water.   Last year the blooms were bright pink.  This year they are orange.  My coworker said it "turned Princeton".  Why are they orange now?  pH of soil?  (I thought that was only hydrangeas).  Did she replace the cactus entirely??

I wish you good eats:

Warm chicken noodle soup--made with flat leaf parsley I bought at the farmer's mkt this summer.  Amazingly, the parsley was still growing outside (barely!)


Chicken rotini

Or minestrone if you're vegan

I wish you yummy snacks :

Nestle Toll House Cookies with walnuts from scratch

I wish you easy hair and fun holiday jewelry:

I got it straightened again! And don't you love the moose pendant?


And of course, most of all, I wish you good health!
Merry Christmas one and all!

Straight hair?! and Simplicity 2154 this time in brown

Hello!
I liked Simplicity 2154 view D (the 60's retro pencil skirt) so much that I made it again, in the same corduroy, but in brown! (that shirt is purchased). This time I cut the 14 and wound up sewing the side seams down a bit more still..but otherwise it was the same alterations as last week's blue skirt.   I think the waistband could be tighter, but it is nice to be able to breathe while seated, I suppose.

And here it is styled with New Look 6735 leaf vest I made last week

I wish I could say that making this skirt the second time was easier and faster than the first, but I had an invisible zipper meltdown where I somehow twisted the zipper when installing it...twice.. It totally baffled me! Third time was the charm.

So what do you think of my hair?

Do you like it? Does it look weird? Does it look like Ozzy Osbourne hair?  That was the first person I thought of when I saw it...

For the first time in my life I had my hair straightened today. It will only last til it gets wet. I have always wondered how it would look!  My hair is pretty long straight...

Some more pix:


and another

I started working on Simplicity 3673, which is a 50's retro pattern.  Here's the back of the jumper so far, with darts on the left but not on the right, yet.  I don't know if I'm going to finish this one, sewing with this plaid is driving my eyes a bit bonkers.

So as my birthday is coming up, I made some cookies and cake for work for an afternoon celebration. (At my office, when it's your birthday YOU bring the celebratory item. And I must say, several officemates are in denial about having birthdays). So I made Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies with walnuts from scratch:

I had a total fridge cake meltdown as well with the whipping cream.  This has NEVER happened to me before.

So I started over and used a metal bowl and metal beaters that I put in the freezer first; used my mixer instead of the food processor; and finally had success with whipping the cream!

Ta-da!  MUCH better:

(Oh, and thanks last week for the comments about the soup; I didn't try to fix it and it tasted fine.)
Farmer's Mkt flowers for this week:

I did a lot of chores today too, and with that, poof, the weekend is gone!
Be well and good night!