... elastic-waist skirt

Some nasty weather and unexpected life events prevented me from making it out to Brimfield last weekend, which means I'll have to wait for the July show. Bummer! It's been an altogether dismal start to the flea market and yard sale season in the Northeast, in terms of weather. I'm seriously jonesing to dig through someone else's junk (not a euphemism).

So, more sewing projects! Which are not weather-dependent. I whipped up this quick elastic-waist skirt from some printed twill I picked up recently. I really love the pattern and colors and it has a nice weight to it with just a little bit of stretch. 

Twill skirt

Front (also could be the back)

The front is pretty much exactly the same as the back, and it has pockets (of course). I finished the hem with some grosgrain ribbon before I hand-tacked it.

... super-bright taffeta print dress

So when I said I had some taffeta in a really bright print, I wasn't kidding!

My eyes!

I kind of fell in love with this taffeta at the fabric store. Honestly, the lighting in my apartment is really bad - it's even brighter in real life. It's got a kind of abstract animal print thing going on, which is not usually to my taste, but the colors just jumped out at me. 

garment front

garment back

Since the print was so bold, I kept the shape really simple - it's basically just a tank dress with elastic waist and a button closure in the back. And pockets, obviously pockets! 

... navy linen casual dress

This website, I've been neglecting it! I admit, sometimes I go through a phase where all I want to do when I get home from work is have a glass of wine and watch Masterpiece Theater and be generally unproductive. But I have a backlog of fabric calling my name, so it's never that long before I start a new project. The weather is just starting to feel actually spring-like, so I decided to work with some navy linen to make a casual day dress. The casual dress is my go-to wardrobe element in the summer – I can never have too many! 

... party dress for a friend

 Remember that project I mentioned a while back? Finally finished! And it was a fun one. My good friend Hilary was throwing a surprise birthday party for her husband Tom and asked me to make a fun custom dress for the occasion. I rarely make clothes for anyone but myself, so it was a good challenge for me (not least because we live a hundred miles apart, so I couldn't fit her very often).

As inspiration, we used this Marc Jacobs dress Zoe Deschanel wears in the movie 500 Days of Summer:

picture from ASOS BLOGS 

Very cute, very expensive, very no-longer-available! But a good starting point. It took some searching to find navy eyelet fabric - I finally found some through an etsy seller based in Singapore. I was able to fit the dress to Hilary twice - once with a mock-up of the dress made of scrap fabric (which had an awesome 80's paint splatter print, incidentally) and once more with the actual dress before I put the zipper in. Behold, the result!

And the back, super cute:

... birthday banner

I'm working on a sewing project for a friend at the mo that's taking a bit of time, so I don't have a lot to post. But today I realized it was about time to take down my birthday banner (more than a month after my birthday), and I thought, gosh-darn it, it was cute. So I thought I'd throw up a quick post about making it.

Flag banners - so hot right now.

Is it lame to make your own birthday banner? It might be. It's at least lame-adjacent. But it was a big birthday for me ("venerable, but not at all matronly" is how George described it on the party invite. You can guess the number). I wanted an excuse to make a cute flag banner anyway! And here's how I did it:

... lining for an old steamer trunk

While George and I were out for a run last summer, I spotted a sweet old steamer trunk at yard sale. We stopped and asked the yard sale proprietor if we could come back in a bit and buy it. We (quite literally) ran home and got some cash and the car - $12 later, it was ours (the yard sale lady threw in a little oil painting I liked for free - I love yard sales).

Hello, storage!

We are always looking for more storage in our little apartment, so this was a huge score. But before we could actually store things in it, it needed a little interior rehab. The originally lining was torn to the point of being unsalvageable and it smelled MUSTY.

Before: old lining, smelled like basement.

... plaid skirt (with mixed results)

Spring is coming, and like most people in the Northeast, I'm viscerally longing for warmer weather. The stores are starting to carry spring clothes, the runways are showing fall clothes which really seems like jumping the gun, and I'm itching to make some light, breezy dresses and skirts for the warmer temps.

But I have unfinished business, before the cold weather is gone for the year: this black plaid fabric that I bought almost three years ago. Every winter since, I've meant to do something with it - preferably before black plaid fabric goes out of season. And every year I've never gotten around to it. So before I bought any cotton lawn or planned any sundresses, I was determined to use. that. fabric.

The fabric wasn't really inspiring me on its own, so I decided to copy a J. Crew wool skirt that I liked:

Photo from www.jcrew.com

Photo from www.jcrew.com

Cute, right? You don't have to like it. No judgement. Anyway, getting the folds "right" was pretty tricky - I say "right" because I don't think I entirely succeeded.

Attempt #5 or #6

The result (please excuse the quality of the pictures! I seem to be getting worse at taking them):

side view

back

front

This, my friends, is a solid Meh at best. The fabric (which is not wool, but sort of a medium-weight woven business) didn't really want to cooperate and I didn't get the draping quite right. The back looks better than the front, which is not generally what you're going for in a skirt. Would it have been way easier (and quicker) to just make a simple A-line skirt? Uh, yes. But it's good to try something new. Even if it doesn't work out, you usually learn something. And honestly I'm just glad I finally used that fabric. I can move on!!