Monday, June 29, 2009

Cuteness!!

At work every week we have a meeting, and each week someone different is in charge of bringing a snack. Most of the time people bake cookies, buy a cake, bring some chips, etc. etc.

Well, let me introduce myself. My name is Out of Control. It was my week this week, and I wanted to make something fun and also get a chance to release some pent-up energy the culinary way.

Have y'all seen this site? If not, please check it out and follow Bakerella. I first discovered her when she was featured on my fave blog, Pioneer Woman, and I drop by her site occasionally. I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but I couldn't resist her Father's Day cheeseburger cupcakes. They are so adorable!!!! I sometimes make cheeseburger cookies for Art, which consist of two vanilla wafers, a grasshopper cookie or Thin Mint, some coconut and icing, but these were more labor intensive and way more adorable.

This is how mine came out (ML is the abbreviation for our building):


They were a hit!! Please go to Bakerella's site and make them.

Of course, nobody wants to be my friend at work anymore because I clearly am Out of Control, but you know what? You will do some crazy things to avoid calculus.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

THE. DRESS.

I contemplated waiting a little bit to post this, since I clearly JUST blogged about the bridesmaid dress, but what the heck.

First of all, I must report. Since I measured myself for this pattern, I've dropped two dress sizes. Yes, yes, I can hear you all saying "QUIT WHINING ABOUT LOSING WEIGHT!!!!!" I'm not necessarily whining about that, but what I am whining about is that my cut dress no longer fit!!! I suppose it's better than if I GAINED two dress sizes, but when I put the finished dress on I was somewhat bummed out.

That, on top of all the first-timer mistakes, made me less-than-confident to wear this dress to the wedding.

But nobody noticed anything and it was just fine!! I probably won't have time to change the imperfections about it before the July 4th wedding I'm going to, but I don't care. I'm very happy that I was able to do this!!

I'll start with some pictures of the finished product (I'm sorry about the horizontal-ness... not sure how to fix that):



Man, I just love looking at that yellow fabric. It's probably the prettiest yellow fabric I have ever seen.



And then I might show you what the back looked like. Whoops.



That was a zipper issue. And I really have no idea how to rememdy this one. I cut the pattern the way they said, and I can make the pieces fit together, but for some reason installing the zipper set it off SIGNIFICANTLY.

Speaking of the zipper, I picked an invisible one. Why? I enjoy self-torture. That's the only reason I can come up with for wanting to do double the work.

Since Bernina wants $45 for an invisible zipper foot, I pulled out my mom's Singer from circa 1965. Isn't it a beaut?



This sewing machine is the marathon runner of sewing machines. It's the one I learned on, and I'll tell you, it works just as nicely as my three-year-old baby.

Here's a picture of the way the dress looks from the back. Fortunately, the zipper crookedness is less apparent here:


You can really tell how poorly the dress fits from this angle. That neckline is supposed to hug my neck, not droop down like that. PS - check out my new haircut! Do you want to know how I fixed that? I'll keep it real for you... I folded the shoulder seams over and ran a straight stitch right over them. I kind of felt like a pageant mom fixing my kid's dress at the very last minute with safety pins.

The neckline (not shown) was also troublesome, and I didn't have enough fabric for an even hem all around. So shoulders, neckline, zipper, hem... there were problems all over the place.

And you know what? I'm the only one who noticed any of them!! I rate that... SUCCESS!!

All in all, I'd give myself a C+ on this dress. I've definitely found a new part of sewing that I like, but I'm very relieved to go back to quilting and needlepoint for a while :).

Except when I see things like this. Then I want to make clothes all day long.

Let me know what you think!! :)

Hemming 101

So, a friend of mine recently asked me to hem her bridesmaid dress for the wedding I went to last weekend.

I said sure, because I do things like that. I have a guilt complex.

The bridesmaid dress was polyester, but that stiff bridesmaid-y material, which I have never worked with. Actually, little did my friend know that this was my first hem ever.

So, I took to my #1 resource, the Internet. God love the Internet. There was a rolled hem tutorial that walked me step-by-step on how to hem such a thing, and it worked out perfectly.

Here's the before picture, of my friend standing in the dress once my mom and I pinned it up:


The next step was to take the pinned edge and measure and mark 5/8 in. up and pin and press on that new line, then stitch. Trim the excess, roll down 5/8 in., stitch, done!

Here's my pinning:



And here you can see that I pinned on the wrong side, so I had to take the pins out verrrrrry carefully while I stitched!



Here's the finished product, all hanging up and ready to go!!!



Nobody at the wedding noticed it was a totally homemade hem, which was obviously my goal!

This was the only sewing I did before the Praxis, so I'm glad it was simple!

Back!

I promise I have not abandoned this blog!

Praxis... DONE (won't get the results til July, not talking about it until then!), Art's visit... DONE. Now I have a relatively normal life until August, when I go to Texas for a month!

I got to sew a few times during my hiatus, and cook a recipe, all of which I will post probably later today after class.

Until then!!! Welcome back!! :)