Basking in the glow of an organzied fabric stash

Here it is cookies---my reorganized fabric stash.    None of it is out in the open anymore!

From left to right, top to bottom:   All my ponte roma knits are together in the right side of cube 1, all my joann's or other knits are in cube 2, all my linen look, "nice gray suiting fabric" and lining fabric is in cube 3.

Cube 5 contains some lovely brown fabric; cube 6 is black fabric including tons of black eyelet I have...cube 12 has fleece and some flannel...and the rest of the cubes are mainly organized by color.




Then there's a sliver of another closet;  from top to bottom this contains:
ponte roma knit that I ordered on the internet that has horizontal lines in it?  No wonder it was on clearance. It would have cost more to mail it back than the refund I would have gotten, so it's for muslin...then some sweatshirt fabric, some outerwear fabric, and a huge amt of corduroy, most of it "uncut".  Then  a lot of rib knit, then flannel at the bottom.


I found some real gems while reorganizing the stash and some fabric I liked at Joann's so much I bought it twice without realizing it!   I have twice as much black broadcloth than I  remembered.  and did I mention, some really nice gray suiting?

My scraps are going to the girl scouts.

The only fabric pieces that aren't in the closets are two pieces of embroidered linen look that I will use for muslins....and they are under the bathroom sink!

The best part was finding my coconut shell buttons I bought in Hawaii--they weren't in my button box so I had NO IDEA where they were...turns out they were with a UFO in the fabric closet.  The buttons on the left were purchased at the Hilo Farmer's Market in 2006 on the Big Island.  They were 50 cents each.  But the ones on the right....they must have been from 2008's trip and I don't remember where I bought them?  Maybe I should re-read my blog postings from that trip?  LOL.


I used the flower buttons on the first jacket I ever made which was right before the Nov 2008 trip, as I recall, which was why I wanted to get more coconut shell buttons.  But why didn't I get more flower ones??  hrm.


I wore the Muse dress today and got tons of compliments at work and at the gym, yeah!

Here's the second part of the slow food reveal for Gwen.  It's split pea soup from the Prevention Slow Cooker recipe booklet thingie.    It's vegan.  I think next time I would use 4 cups vegetable broth and 3 of water instead of 4 and 4.  It didn't really smell good  while cooking til near the end.


I see a urologist on Friday for my pelvic kidney--wish me luck!
Good night and be well!

Blah blah blah and underwear. Oh, and food for Gwen.

So after the Muse dress I felt like I should whip up another dress real quick...yeah right. I needed a break. I wanted to make a super quick skirt, using this fabric and this WIDE elastic:



I decided to muslin it first. I naively thought that I could just cut a big rectangle o' fabric out, and sew it to the bottom of the elastic, while stretching the elastic out, easy peasy done done done.

SO here's my muslin (and my out-of-the-closet fabric stash):


It looks amazing on Emma. HORRIBLE on me. So horrible that I'm not showing you pix, and I've shown you pix of some pretty horrible things on me. HORRIBLE.  There's no need for THAT to be floating around the interwebs.

So I whipped up some underwear instead (elastic from sewsassy.com, tutorial from Antoinette, applique from Vogue Fabrics PR Weekend Chicago; fabric NOT from Vogue Fabrics):


Yes! That is a sequined pineapple.  Aloha!

I took care to make sure the striped lined up on the sides, but sadly cut the crotch section askew.


Whatever, only you and me will know that.

Farmer's market flowers from this week (larkspur, which I haven't seen in AGES).  They are thirsty so be sure to keep filling up the vase.


Roses from my neighbor; I got these in exchange for my mint.


Here's my poor rose bush that came with the house; black spot hits it pretty hard each year but right now it's blooming:


Rose A:


Rose B:


Rose A and B cut separately:


Rose A and B together:

That blue vase is from my mom. It's a childhood favorite of mine.

Library books...4 is too many; one is overdue. That "Myth of Stress" one is AMAZING. It takes a key concept from "Change Your Brain, Change Your Body" and expands it to a whole book. If there is something in your life that you feel should or shouldn't be happening now, but isn't, this will get you to understand why. Really, really amazing.  Sleeping seal print from OneBreathPhoto on Oahu keeps watch over me while I sleep.


And Gwen, I cooked two dishes on Saturday. I'm going to do the slow reveal and only post one of them today. It's a lemon chicken orzo soup from The Food You Crave by Ellie Kreiger.  I didn't put the eggs in it; it just seemed weird to me to put eggs in a soup?  So I didn't do that.   I love it when a recipe calls for fresh lemon juice  because I can use my lemon squeezer.  So. Much. Fun!



Be well. Good night!

Butterick 5244 day 5 muse navy dress: I think I'm done!

I took a break from the Muse dress last night to garden.  It was a hot evening but I felt like I was neglecting my plants which needed attention.  I may have gone a little overboard with finishing planting AND weeding in the same night.  I am sore today in several places....

But tonight I was back at it with the fitting of the back of the Muse dress. Thanks to all who left comments regarding my dilemma.

Jacqui, I did go back to Joann's on Tuesday and they only had one of those anchor buttons left (I had thought about adding a back tab with two anchor buttons as a way of tightening up the fit). Ironing helped but the CB seam wasn't great. I took out the shaping of the CB seam and redid it.

Mushywear and kbenco,you were right about adding darts and playing with them til they are right. I wound up adding two smaller darts between the existing darts and the side seam. This did the trick.
So now it looks like this:

Remember, it looked like this at the end of day 4;


and this without any darts at all:


Here's how the back looks now;

And the front is as cute as ever:


All the dart excitement:


And on Emma:


As far as where I "knew" to put the darts--the longer darts were in the same vicinity as the darts on the purchased dress. For the additional darts, I put on the dress and used a binder clip at the point where I wanted the major thickness of the dart on each side. Then I took the dress off, turned it inside out, and used tailor chalk to mark the positioning of the clip. Then I removed the clip and sewed the darts. They were shorter and not as deep as the original darts. Ironed, and tried it on and phew it finally fit.

I did go through my dress patterns looking for one with 4 back darts but alas, none of them met the challenge.

The shaping is starting to pull the side seam toward the back but not enough to make me want to play with it more.  I think I'm done with it now.

Ok, the collar one last time:

and the tab detail: (The buttons are navy blue (like the fabric color) from Joann's, La Mode buttons, Hook 1068, style 39994.  They are 1.25 inches, washable and dry cleanable, made in France, ooh la la!).  The fabric itself is from Jomar in Philly during Antoinette's visit last Sept, $2 a yard) mid-weight knit:

and the welt pockets outside (yeah, this picture does look purple--it's navy blue)

and inside: (the dot fabric is Joann's lining fabric)


Overall this dress took me 20 hours but it was well worth it for everything I learned--welt pockets, the importance of ironing (again), using a sewing gauge, and the importance of enjoying the sewing and being patient and learning...  Thank you PR member Kathy in NM for the inspiration!  She wore the muse dress at PR weekend.

I will pattern review it this weekend. And I'm changing my PR name to BlossomKyle with 100% of registered voters voting for it!

I am excited to start my next sewing project. Most likely a dress (maybe even the vogue rose dot one, like Jacqui's !) or possibly a simple gingham skirt.



OH, apparently Hal gave himself a time out:

and here are my pumpkin seedlings that sprung up from last October's decaying pumpkin:

I have always wanted to grow a pumpkin myself. 2011 is definitely my year!

Good night and be well!