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Craft Rage

...Making a mess of things since 1973

 

A Gift For Me!

Well, I held back from buying the fabric I lusted after yesterday, and rewarded myself with a pattern today!

It's a reproduction of the Butterick 6015 "Walkaway Dress" pattern. I'm a little skeered of it, and I'm all freaked out about what I'm going to make it out of, but I'm really looking forward to giving it a go!
Has anyone out there made this dress? Anyone have any suggestions?

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I've Fallen In Love With Anna Sui

Or maybe with Fabricmart. I don't know.

All I know is that if I can not own this fabric...

...I might expire from sadness. According to my drooling and my lurching heart, this is the fabric I'm supposed to make my wedding dress out of. And it's only $4.99 per freaking yard!!! CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP!!! But it's Christmas - my credit card is not going to like me purchasing 8 yards of fabric!

Ohhhhhh!!! Why did I read Hungry Zombie today? Why did I click on the link?

Whyyy??

 
 

Vintage Patterns, Novice Sewist!

Well, now that the epic cleanup is complete, I get to pull out some of the cool things I've been squirelling away for just such an occasion.


Last year, when I let it be known amongst my coworkers & friends that I intended to sew my own wedding dress, everyone was horrified. See, I'm an accountant - give me an Excel spreadsheet and I'll make it tapdance and wash your dishes while singing along to a Garth Brooks song. However, my friends are pretty aware of the fact that I failed cut and paste in kindergarten, and know that I tend to be a little...accident prone.

Also, one time, I kind of told them the story about how the only item of clothing I'd ever sewn for myself was a dress for my McDonald's Christmas party when I was 13. I didn't use a pattern, and I barely understood the workings of a sewing machine, though my mother is an exceptionally good seamstress. Anyway, the dress started to disintegrate about an hour into the party, and I went home at midnight with staples holding the skirt together.

Anyway, after the announcement, for a few months, they poked fun at me, and generally banned me from wearing a wedding dress they hadn't had the opportunity to critique first. Then one of the girls, KC, started seeing a nice farm boy, and doing nice farm boy things like processing cattle and attending auctions. At one of these auctions, a box of patterns came up for bid, and for kicks, KC put in a bid of $2.00, thinking that she'd be bringing me a joke gift. When she brought them into work, I almost burst into tears of gratitude, to her utter amazement. What she'd bought was a box of the most amazing vintage patterns, nearly all of which are in the size range I need. Not only that, but many of them are uncut, and those that are, are cut in the right size!




Of those, I really love the 2457 the most - once I get a bit of experience under my belt (read; learn how to use a pattern properly) I'm going to make it in this absolutely lovely silky black fabric with red roses - I bought four yards of it with no particular plan, but I just loved the way the fabric felt in my hands.

It's probably not at all suitable for such a structured frock, but what the heck - that's what lining is for! Maybe I'll flatline it to some denim and go from there. Ha! I just heard your horrified gasp. Remember - you have skills and I don't. That means that you have rules, but I don't! Of course, you also have beautiful, wearable pieces, and I don't, but that's what learning is for. Anyway, I was mostly joking about the denim - I'll figure something out.

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A Wasted Week

It's done! It took nearly a week (so much for a simple, one-day project), and the rest of the house has been thoroughly destroyed, but I now have a useable craft/sewing room!

Unfortunately, when I told my fiance over the phone, (he's away with his kinfolk participating in the murder of several hapless deer, an activity which I silently judge, unless I am actually in the passionate throes of wolfing down a large bowl of venison stew), when I told him what I'd done, he paused briefly, then blew out a breath. "Well, that sounds like a lot of work. You... uh... did you forget that we're putting on the extension in the spring?" Oh crap. The extension. And my new, huge, bright Rachelle Room, which I intended to be my craft room.

Oh well, at least I've done a good purge. That's always satisfying enough on its own. And I've organized my little stash (about 200m, nothing compared to some of my sewing heros!) by type and color, into clear plastic bins which will keep everything cat-hair free.

And Smooshy is still alive, and is getting along swimmingly with our other cats, as is evidenced by this picture of her napping in the laundry basket with Joey.

Why did feel such a pressing need to clean up and organize my sewing room, you ask? Well, essentially, after my fiance and I got engaged, I decided to sew my own wedding dress. I knew very clearly what I wanted - a corset topped dress with a full ballgown skirt with big pick-ups, preferably non-white, with a scattering of beads. Something like this:

The problem is, as I have mentioned earlier, I have no sewing skills. No technical skills. But a lot of heart, which has to count for something, right?

Anyway, I bought a bunch of junk fabric and made a mock-up, just hand-sewn and draped on myself (thank heavens for closed doors, because if my fiance had seen me contorting and prancing around trying to drape and pin on myself, he might have packed a bag and left me) and was pretty pleased with the result - I achieved the right overall effect of the pickups on the skirt, and did a mock-up of the corset based on a duct-tape pattern, which worked out much better than I thought it might, all things considered.

The thing was, I couldn't really get the whole outfit put together right, because I needed a dress dummy to help out while I toyed with the pickups on the skirt. So I found a good used one on kijiji.ca, and brought her home, only to discover that I really had no room for her. So in actuality, I just spent a week tearing my house apart and putting it back together so I could make a home for my dress dummy. On some level, that makes me very, very sad.

And also, I guess the second reason I did it is because my fiance bought me a serger two months ago, and due to the extreme disarray in my sewing room, I had nowhere to unpack it, because my other six sewing machines were scattered all over the rest of the room. So my ultimate reward for getting this project finished is that now I'm going to go and learn how to use this scary beast;

I suppose it's really not all that scary, for those of you who have used one before. But frankly, I'm new to all this, and I'm pretty intimidated. Wish me luck!

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