itsazoefish

i'm usually more successful at not cutting chunks out of my carpet. i'm also usually more successful at not losing control of burning scraps of fabric and setting off my fire alarm. then melting my carpet while stamping out said fire.

today is just one of those days, i guess.

that leaves me with attaching the waistband, putting in the zipper, hemming the outer skirt and putting the ruffle i have decided it needs onto the underskirt. i think after that it's ready to be dyed. it really is a good thing i don't have any dye with me, or i probably would find myself doing that instead of studying as well.

i don't have any progress pictures because they would be completely boring. instead, i present you with evidence of my idiocy.



weeee.

can't say i'm gonna make studying a priority today, but i'm at least planning to do some.

i almost completely finished the top i was working on yesterday. the only thing i have left to do is put in a metal zipper (i don't have one).

it's a single layer of some really weird denim. it's almost stretchy, but not quite, which is one of the reasons i don't particularly like working with denim except as mock ups. in its defense however, this was intended to be a second mockup that i just decided fit well enough to use as a final product. there's a band of elastic at the bottom, because as i plan to use it for dancing, and as it's really short, i'd prefer to have that security.



this is my first mock up. i altered it straight off the pattern (a vogue men's vest. it was the only thing i had near to it, and i've never made a vest before, so i figured altering from men's shapes to women's shapes would still be easier than drafting from scratch), and then these were the other changes i made. i might have cut it a little too short, but i'm not all that worried about it. i really wanted to avoid having to take in the darts, but i just wasn't able to get the fit i wanted any other way. (blah darts. -____-) i assume the crazy fit in the back is cause men are all weird freaks. that's really the only way i can account for it, cause vogue usually has pretty good fit in their patterns. (better than any of the other pattern companies anyway.) even after i took all this in a had a persistent bubble right at the base of my neck. on my second mock up i think i ended up taking in a good two inches right above my shoulder blades.



if you look really closely you can see all my crappy sewing! i decided to baste these seams because it would go faster (and it was a mock up and it's always smarter to baste mockups). as such, all my seams started pulling apart almost immediately, and i had to resew the ends of most of them before i hemmed the edges. the shoulder seams at the neck are still pulling apart because it's hemmed differently. one side is topstiched (you can see it) and the other side is pulling apart. hooray for zoe's terrible sewing habits! @_@ i need to fix the collar too, because i left out a piece (lazy) and the collar isn't secured to anything, allowing it to unfold at the neckline. i also was hoping to avoid the puckering from the elastic at the bottom, but c'est la vie, i knew that would happen if i put in elastic.

i still really want a pale purple skirt to go with it though. maybe with a grey underskirt instead of white. hmmm and if i constructed the whole skirt before i dyed it, i could dye one layer light purple and one layer light grey and they'd probably blend into each other about the amount i want. wooo, dyeing is fun. :) for reference:

i like belts! (you've done this to me karla) belts are coooooool. i suspect i'll make the skirt out of white muslin, and then dye it to the appropriate colors. i want something lightweight and lovely and flowy. i was thinking of a guaze-y fabric over thin muslin, but really, plain muslin is what i have so plain muslin is what it's gonna be. i think i'd like to put a band of some sort of trim along the inside bottom of the skirt, but i'm not really sure yet (i'll probably decide that after everything is finished).

i also (time allowing - i doubt i'll be able to do it, cause i'm SLOW) would like to make a little wrap thing for my slightly-larger-than-three-months-ago stomach area. any guesses? spider web! i want the clasp to be a spider. it's a very ambitious project, at least in terms of how quickly i work.

the top and bottom loops are where it connects to whatever else i'm wearing. i want to make the spider out of something silver with a garnet as the body, and the web out of single strands of black yarn. terribly, even excessively ambitious? probably, but i can dream about it. :)

i worked on three projects this afternoon. this is why i don't ever finish anything. :P i made part of a pattern for a skirt, experimented with making spider webs, and continued to put together an afgan. i even did some math homework.

in other news, i'm tired of 10 week quarters. i consistently lose interest at 8 weeks. at the start of this week i had officially exceeded my attention span.

in other other news, migraines suck.

the end.

also, some pictures. they involve screen shots of a video i made a little while ago, so yes, the quality is terrible.

my first challenge with this skirt is using what i have to make what i want. i don't have much suitable fabric with me, and it isn't particularly easy for me to acquire more. interestingly though, i don't really have a clear idea in my head of what i want. i think i may have even more than one skirt swimming through my brain, pretending to be all the same skirt (this happens to me frequently and i find it distracting). i have pretty clear ideas on shape, accents and the overall style, but color and fabric choices are still far beyond me. i now have several sheets of paper each with a different design for skirt or top in  a pile on my desk. originally i thought i had narrowed it down to one choice, but i wonder now if i didn't manage to convince myself afterall, and am now meandering aimlessly through a muddy soup of skirts. (that was not a very effective metaphor. i apologize.)

while putting away the sewing stuff i just brought over from chatsworth i found this great failed dress that is light pink, sort of lightweight cotton, and ruched just the tiniest bit. my first thought was 'this will be great for my skirt! it's absolutely perfect!' and my second thought was 'huh? i'm not sure this was what i wanted at all...' now i am wondering just which skirt i thougth it was perfect for. i still have all my other fabric to go through though, so this could (probably will) get even more crazy. i'm rather excited.

sadly my choices for tops are nearly as diverse as for skirts. i had a concrete plan for what i wanted, but no way to execute it. cutting my losses, i came up with a new plan that i conveniently liked quite as much. almost as soon as i developed it (with patterns to begin the mockup even), i found a pattern that could possibly work for my original plan. now i'm back to the beginning, wondering which is more practical, and more likely to actually happen. i think, assuming i have the time, i'll make a mockup for both, and not make any decisions until i see each of them on me. at this point i don't really know that either will work in any case.