What Has Shannie Been Up To?

On Saturday I got to see The Strangers with Kimbra. Despite the rude old lady behind us, we had a great time. Kim made me an adorable purse out of butterfly chic camo, and it was stuffed with movie goodies. Kim is amazing!

I highly recommend The Strangers. The word that comes to mind is INTENSE. There's just some minor gore, but the anticipation and the creepiness makes this movie really freaky. If you like to be scared at all, go see this movie.

Sunday morning I got up to start getting ready for dinner with my Mama and decided it might be nice to have breakfast in bed with my Honey. I made pancakes with fresh strawberry syrup. But I was mostly proud of my little garnish. If you look real close you'll see some fresh home-grown parsley. I know it's not rocket science to grow herbs, but I germinated this parsley from seed and I have a nice little herb garden growing in a pot on the patio. Why am I so proud of this? Well, when you garden in containers it usually means you have to hand water them. I'm not so good at remembering to water things. Plants do much better in my care if they're on some kind of automatic watering system. But I've been taking good care of this pot and my pot of mini roses Aunt Deb gave us for Christmas. When our beta was still alive I used to pour the old poopy fish water into the plants and they loved it! Since the beta has gone to a better place, I save the water leftover after steaming vegetables and feed them with that. Anyway, we had a nice little breakfast in bed for Father's Day and the parsley garnish did a wonderful job of sprucing up the pancakes.

Saturday was also Kelly's Birthday. Happy Birthday Smelly!

She and I had lunch on Wednesday before they left for Cleveland and I gave her a dress made especially for her. I discovered that Simplicity has a few patterns that have cup sized pattern pieces. This is fabulous! I was able to make Kelly's dress not only to her size measurements but to her specific cup size. The dress fits her wonderfully and she looks beautiful in it. Now I just need to get a picture with her wearing it. The dress looks much better on Kelly than it does on my dress-form.

 

A couple weeks ago Kim and I entered the Vintage Pattern Contest over at Pattern Review. We used a free couture pattern offered at the V & A Museum in London. It's from their Golden Age of Couture exhibit. I went over to Kim and Alex's house and we had an all-day sewing marathon. Kim's adorable gatos, Roxy & Romy were a great help and Alex fed us good food all day.

I'll post pictures and lots more information about the dresses when the contest is over.

Sewing, Sewing, Sewing

I've been really in a sewing mood. It must be because February is fashion month, and the fashion node in my brain is responding to environmental signals. Or I'm just a big dork that likes to sew a lot!

I've been wanting to make my own jackets to wear to work for a while now. I work in a very cold, poorly constructed cement building. It doesn't matter how warm it might appear outside, it's guaranteed to be freezing in my lab. I have to dress in layers at work because, when I leave my lab to go just about anywhere else on campus, not only I get hot, but the people I work with all think I'm wacko for being bundled up all the time.

I need cute jackets that are warm but still fairly thin so I can move around and do my job. If hooded sweatshirts, and warm cozy sweat pants weren't so completely unflattering and slovenly looking, I would wear them to work everyday. The hooded sweatshirt with the Kangaroo-pouch really is the ideal upper body warming garment. I love them, I could write a whole blog about them... maybe someday.

I bought two vintage jacket patterns from Michelle over at Patterns from the Past. Patterns from the Past is really great. I've been buying vintage patterns from them for close to 10 years. I highly recommend checking them out. Anyway, I bought one car coat pattern with raglan sleeves, and one kinda fitted jacket pattern that is fully lined. The car coat is Kwik Sew 419. It has raglan sleeves and can be made single or double-breasted. I'm not a big fan of double breasted things on women, so I made the single breasted version.

As long as I can remember my mom had this plaid stuff in her fabric stash. I would rummage through things looking for something cute to make Barbie a new dress or some sort of garment to torture my cat, Muffin, with. And I would always get down to the big piece of plaid and realize I was at the bottom of the stash. Eventually I realized that it's probably some good fabric and I should save it for... something. So when I kinda took over her stash for her, I always had it at the bottom just like mom. Well, I finally washed it and cut into it. I think it's wool. Its really thin, but really warm. Perfect for my chilly lab.

For some reason I always put crazy deadlines on my sewing projects. I told my self I was going to make this last Monday night and wear it to work on Tuesday. I did, but Tuesday was miserable. I stayed up until 3 am, because I didn't actually start sewing until about 8:45 pm. Needless to say I was really tired by the time I got to the buttons. I didn't have any real buttons that would work, but I happened to have just the right size forms to make my own. I didn't even try to make the plaid match on them.

The other jacket pattern is a Simplicity pattern from the 70's, I'll post pictures of it when I start sewing.

My cousin Alex's girlfriend, Kim, gave me the cutest birthday card with a pink and green paper flower on it last month. I liked the colors so much I wanted to wear them. Kim is so crafty and talented. I thought I should make a Kimflower shirt, since she took the time to make me such a cute card. I made the paper flower into a broach, and bought some $1/yard pink and white polka-dot fabric. I had the green quilting cotton in my stash, so I just made some bias strips. I downloaded the Tara top pattern from Burda Style. I changed it a little to have kimono sleeves. The bottom is too wide, so I need to take a few inches off each side before I wear it. Burda Style is a really great source for free patterns. Anyone who sews should check it out.

My mom is the sweetest lady in the whole world. If she thought you might need it, she would give you the shirt off her back. So I wanted to make her a special shirt for her fun little get-away to Arizona this weekend. I always use Simplicity 4077 for her shirts. They just look really great on her.

I used a corduroy print that has just a little bit of stretch. And I found these great blue shank buttons.

(I really need to learn to take better pictures!)

Silly Seventies Sundress

Saturday morning while I was supposed to be finishing 3 baby quilts and/or making my dress for Valentine's Day, I decided to make one of my Mom's vintage patterns from 1977. It's a very groovy little sundress that takes no time at all to cut out and sew up. I love the pattern envelope because the girls look they should be out in a field singing about how they'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

 

I made the shorter version, and I hemmed it even a little shorter. I used a really thin $1/yard cotton and I trimmed it in some blue cotton remnants that I had in my stash.

The dress is a little bit frumpy. But, it's ok, because I'll probably only wear it around the house and maybe to sleep in.