Chaos continues....

Well, I did finish my bathing suit to match my baby daughter's bathing suit. It turned out great and I was very happy with the results. I still need to take a picture of me in it and write a pattern review. I'll post a picture on my blog later when things aren't so insane.

Right now I'm working on an unexpected project: a top and skirt for a friend of mine to wear to her son's wedding. I think I'm insane because I really don't have time at all to work on this, but so far I'm getting it done. She is tall and was having such trouble finding a great dress for the occasion. As she's a really great friend of mine, I wanted to help out. So we went pattern and fabric shopping and I got to work. These are the patterns she chose:



For the shirt, we're doing the version with the short sleeves and narrow collar. The collar, sleeves, and peplum are all in a cocoa color chiffon to contrast the lighter color crepe fabric of the shirt. For the skirt, we're doing it in the cocoa crepe fabric and we're doing view A without the sash.

The deal was that if my friend Janine doesn't like this outfit, she has to tell me honestly and also not be mad that it didn't turn out the way she wants it. In turn, I have to promise not to be mad if she doesn't like it. Having said that, this is still really nerve-wracking and a lot of pressure. However, I'm happy to do this for a wonderful friend.

It's a whole other ballgame sewing for someone new. It took me quite a while just to figure out how to get clothes fit on me. So working with a new body and all new fitting issues is quite daunting. We tried the top on Janine yesterday and it looks like a good fit, which was a relief. My main concern with this project is getting a proper fit.

Also, I had never worked with chiffon before. While I love the feel of chiffon I absolutely hate sewing it. Really, really, really hate sewing it. Especially hemming it. I tried all the methods suggested out there: narrow hem (both with and without the special rolled hem foot), rolled hem on serger with and without fishline. No matter which I used, it took away the airiness and flow of the chiffon. This was especially the problem with the collar. The collar needs to stay light so it folds and ruffles nicely. So I hit PatternReview and Google some more for research and discovered a hot knife method. Since I'm working with polyester chiffon, I could melt the raw edges of the hems slightly to seal them off and keep them from unraveling. This worked perfectly to keep the fabric nice and light. Then my collar wasn't lining up right and I discovered this is due to chiffon being evil to work with. Also, a mystery spot appeared that I couldn't get off. No clue how it got there. ARGH! So I cut a new collar out and plan to get it put on today.

Once I get past the shirt it'll be smooth sailing. My goal for today is to finish the shirt by tonight. The shirt has more fitting issues and the chiffon is difficult to work with. I'm pretty mad at Vogue right now because when they say "semi-fitted" on the envelope, what they really mean is "not even remotely fitted". The shirt muslin was SO LOOSE on Janine. It made no sense whatsoever. Why pay good money for a pattern if it's wrong?

Ok, now I lost track. A Kim Possible commercial just showed up on tv and my IQ plummeted. So anyway, I'll keep you updated as to my progress for anyone interested in following my insane adventure.

My New Friend

This is my new friend. He's kinda creepy actually. He's pretty big and gave me a surprise the first time I saw him just chillin' on my front porch. I was trying to get a close-up picture of him, but failed due to me being a big baby. I'm not at all squeamish about bugs, but after seeing how fast this spider moves, I had visions of it latching onto my face after annoying it with a flashing camera. It didn't help that when I was trying to take his picture, I could see the glare from his eyes. Yikes! So my husband was kind enough to get closer and get a closer picture for me. As you can see in the photo, our spider is currently consuming a large moth.

I was concerned that the spider may be poisonous so I looked it up and discovered that it's not. You can never be too careful with kids around. Especially since it lives on the front porch. Turns out it's a species (of which there are 100) of fishing spider. So I'll just let him live on the porch rent free. He seems happy hunting.

Also, I discovered a deer tick on my leg yesterday. Not cool. My daughter got Lyme disease from a deer tick and it was awful. She's fine and recovered now thankfully. So now I gotta keep an eye on my leg for the telltale bullseye rash. My yard scares me.

Working on My Swimsuit

Well, I'm chugging along here working on my swimsuit. I'm trying to get it done in time for tomorrow's trip to Hershey Park. My plan is to spend half the day lounging about the water park. The boy shorts are completely done. The top is almost finished. I was sewing like a champ! My baby took a nap and I actually got just about all the sewing done on the top.

I ran into a problem (of course!...grrrr) with the shelf bra. It's not snug around my body. I have no clue why this is, but it probably has something to do with my ridiculously large chest size. I'm really hoping that I can take in the elastic on the lining and that will fix the problem. I'm also getting really annoyed and discouraged at trying to sew anything for myself. It always goes wrong!

I sewed a medium size for the top according to the bust measurement. I'm thinking that what I should have done was sew the smaller size. I don't think my ribcage is a size medium. It's just my silly bust that is.

Overall, I love my swimsuit although there are silly mistakes in there due to not getting any "alone time" to sew and not being able to properly concentrate on things. Trying to sew anything with three kids is pretty much impossible. I have no idea how I get anything done or why I even attempt doing this.

Hopefully, I'll at least get the suit to look decent enough to wear tomorrow.

How Many Inches In A Yard?

36. The answer is 36. Let's see, when would this tidbit of information be important? Oh gee, I dunno, I suppose if you worked at a fabric store this would be something you should know. ARGH! So yeah, with employees like that no wonder Hancock Fabrics had to file Chapter 11. I really need to go check out G Street Fabrics. I wonder if their employees know what a yard is and understand basic fractions.

I'm currently working on this top (Kwik Sew 3378):

I just barely had enough fabric for my shirt after I changed around the way the pattern pieces were laying. Hence my mini-rant about fabric cutting. So whenever I get fabric cut I guess I have to babysit the cutting people by measuring the fabric right there in the store. Sad really.

I'm hoping to get this shirt done soon as I even have a skirt I just made to go with it. The skirt is mostly done, just need to hem it. It'll be exciting to have something to wear that actually fits since I lost 20 lbs. I must admit I haven't been as productive due to my new laptop. I've been relishing having a computer that isn't slow, so I've been playing Half Life 2 on there. If all goes well today and I can find some time, I'm hoping to get my shirt sewn. My goal is to have my outfit done in time for church on Sunday. I just hope I sew the shirt right. I have no luck with clothing for me.

My Mother's Day Weekend

It was awesome! My husband Tim worked so hard to make the weekend absolutely perfect for me and he succeeded. He started off the weekend by fixing our pond waterfall for me and improving our vegetable garden.

On Saturday Tim and our girls presented me with my mother's day gift:


A NEW LAPTOP!!! WOW! I didn't realize I did a good enough job to get THAT present! Boy was I shocked. It's fast, powerful, and even has some cool extras like a webcam, full number pad (important for accountants...hehe), and sweet lightning design. Now the lightning design was picked out by Tim and our two girls. Although if my oldest had her way 100% my laptop would now be covered in cute flowers. It's a decal that my husband put on my computer. It took him 20 minutes to get it on there. He's an extremely patient man, by the way. He did such a great job that the design looks painted on. He got the decal from Decalgirl. Funny enough, when I first opened my present and saw it was a laptop, the first thing I thought about was getting the purple lightning decal from Decalgirl.com. Then I pull out the laptop and there it is: my decal already on there! So now for the first time I have the fastest most powerful computer in the house. My prior laptop was ancient and dying, so this laptop is amazing to me.

On Sunday morning I woke up to breakfast in bed. It's definitely confusing waking up and being offered breakfast on a tray. I loved it! Then we go to church where my husband had another surprise. This time it was for all the moms at church. Tim had purchased roses and had a kid at church hand a rose out to each mother there. Later of course, we went out to a nice dinner with his mother and family as well.

It was a wonderful weekend. I'm still kinda in shock from it all. I love my family so much and to see how much trouble they went through this weekend because they love me was so touching.

My only worry now is Father's Day. Mother's Day is a tough act to follow! What in the world do I do for Father's Day?!

Baby Swimsuit

I just finished my baby swimsuit about a half hour ago. Yeah, it takes me about that long just to upload photos and type a simple post. It's complete chaos around here. One cat is chewing on my while another just threw my scanner on the floor, so I'm rather annoyed with cats at the moment. Scanner still works--way to go, Canon!

So anyway, the second attempt went much better. The main thing was I just needed to slow myself down a lot. I fall into the trap of rushing things but to be fair, I really don't have much time at all to sew. So I'm constantly trying to be as efficient as possible so I can get things done. I decided not to change the elastic width to 1/4". In thinking about it I figured there is no way Kwik Sew is wrong, it must be me. And of course it was. There's not much wiggle room with folding the edges over though, so make sure you're really careful about keeping the edges where they should be while sewing.

The swimsuit looks absolutely gorgeous. My one issue with it is the straps are rather long. If you look here at the pattern photo, you'll notice they look long and loose there too. It's the same mine looks. The bodice is too low because of the loose straps. I'm not sure at the moment if I want to shorten the straps or not. My daughter will be five months old on the 12th and the pattern does state that size XS is for 3-6 months. Also, babies grow pretty quickly in such short amounts of time. So I think I'll hold off on altering anything for now. We go to the waterpark on May 30th, so I'll check the straps again later before we go for the fit. The ruffles on this suit are just TOO CUTE!!

Now, I'm preparing to sew a swimsuit for myself. I'll be sewing Kwik Sew 2868. I'll be using the same material I used for the baby swimsuit so we match. It'll be so cute! I've been exercising so I'll be ready to wear my new swimsuit. I was 145 lbs and now I'm down to 125 lbs. I've got more work to go, but hey, I'm getting there.

Epic Fail

This picture does a much better job summarizing my progress with my baby daughter's swimsuit than any of my words could.

My first attempt at the baby swimsuit failed. Big time. It really annoys me and puts me in a bad mood for most of the day when that happens.

For whatever reason my brain mixed up the torso and height measurements. So then I sewed a size small, which makes no sense because it says "6-12 months" right there next to it!! DUH! My daughter isn't quite 5 months old yet. I was supposed to sew the extra small size for 3-6 months.

So I figured well, I'll just keep going with it since I got this far, then just give the swimsuit to someone with a bigger baby girl. Yeah. Right. That's when I discovered that the straps weren't quite working right. I couldn't fold enough of the fabric over the elastic. I think the elastic should be 1/4" not 3/8" like what the pattern suggests. I'm going to try 1/4" with this next attempt. Good thing I ended up ordering a little extra from Spandex House and also that they give generous cuts. I had enough fabric to attempt this the second time and still enough left over for my bathing suit. Oh, and just to note, it takes FOREVER to sew ruffles on a swimsuit. You wouldn't think so, but it does. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! And I have to do this. All. Over. Again.

Since it's the day after I can kind of see just a little bit of the humor in this. I'll see more of the humor once I actually have a functional cute swimsuit for my baby. At any given moment anymore I'm pretty much half-asleep when sewing. It's also hard to concentrate with everything going on.

I'm actually satisfied to get the amount of sewing done that I do achieve. Hopefully this next attempt will go better. I can't work on it at the moment which is a shame since my older daughters are playing happily and the baby is napping. I'm half-blind because my glasses lens popped out and I'm wearing contacts because I can't locate a screw for my glasses lens. I can't see things up close with contacts. This screen is blurry right now and forget seeing the stitching while I'm sewing.