I've lost my mind....again

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a great holiday full of loved ones and indulgences. I know my holiday hangover has certainly set-in, hopefully it's not too bad for everyone else.

My whirlwind of holiday craziness resulted in a couple insane ideas. The first of which is I've joined Goodbye Valentino's Ready to Wear fast again this year. While Sarah herself is not 100% committed to the fast this year (see her blog for details why), I've joined up with many others in swearing off buying retail for 2015.

Hopefully I have enough time between school, work, and homework to keep myself clothed!

One thing that may be tricky is I'm taking a 120% course load this semester....and I'm still toying with the idea of adding 1 more class to my already very full schedule. A few people are trying to talk me out of my crazy tree, so we'll see if their attempts to keep me sane work. But the idea of learning to work with leather is just so tempting, and the Leather Apparel Design class is what is currently missing from my schedule. Let's just ay I'm still thinking very seriously about this...

Speaking of school, I made this super pretty dress last semester. I didn't design it, it's one we were assigned for our construction class, but I love how it turned out!

When we were assigned this dress and given the pattern, I thought it was pretty hideous. But with the right fabric, it ended up as a cute wiggle dress! Once I get the final measurements of the dress (I haven't had a chance to get the final measurements yet), I'll be posting this for sale in my etsy shop soon! As much as I wish I fit into our sample sizes, alas, I do not.

Is anyone else jumping in and taking the RTW Fast pledge?

xo
Andi

WIP Wednesday

The semester is finally over! This one was a rough one, and after an arduous journey, my school chums and I all made it through!

Congratulations everyone! We're one semester away from graduation!

Today's WIP Wednesday is slightly different, in that it's not about crafting but about this:

 

I've been plotting this piece for ages, and decided that this winter break was the perfect time to get it started. Can't wait to get it done!

 

I'll be posting soon about some of the projects I completed during the semester :D

 

xxx

Andi

What a Tweet!

This weekend, I took the Husbeast on a little adventure for our anniversary. I combined his love of boats, Toronto, craft beer, and me, and took him on the Indie Boat Hop Craft Beer cruise. We cruised around the Toronto harbour, sampling "beers only available at sea". There wasn't a bad brew on offer. It's such a shame we won't be able to get these one-off beers again.

When planning this little adventure, it occurred to me that I should have a new dress for the occasion. It was for our anniversary after all! So I dove into my stash, and made myself a cute little birdie dress.

This is yet another version of New Look 6557. This pattern is so well used by me (I've made it at least 6 times now) that the tissue is starting to get destroyed! I'll have to do something to preserve the pattern ASAP.

I find I've been wearing way too many circle skirts for the last little while, so it is super nice to wear something that's just a simple flared skirt. Also, let's be honest, it's much less likely that a Marilyn moment will happen on board the ship should a gust of wind blow up off the lake.

Two dresses made by me were on board!

Nothing major to report about the construction. Because I've made it so many times, I could cut and sew this in my sleep. It's super fast and easy. The only thing I changed is I added a lining to the skirt so it won't cling when I wear tights.
We have another cruise coming up in a couple weeks, Tease on the Seas, a burlesque boat cruise with a dress code theme of Naughty Nautical. I'll have to come up with something cute for that soon!

What a month!

Wow! This month sure has been busy! It flew by in a flash! Hence the radio silence (sorry about that!)

I've been doing a shit ton of sewing, 95% of which has not been for me. I am interning this summer with Victory Patterns, which is super fun! I've been madly sewing away with Kristiann, helping her with a super secret project, so I can't really elaborate more on that ;)

I also decided to use the skully fabric I posted about previously to make a dress for the bride for the backyard wedding party I attended yesterday. And I'm so glad I did!

I essentially had free reign to do whatever I wanted for this dress, so I decided to have some fun with it. I wanted to make sure the dress was light and comfortable, for what could potentially be a super hot day. Luckily, the weather cooperated and was absolutely perfect, no rain or super heat/humidity!

I opted for a fitted, v-neck bodice, with a full circle skirt for maximum twirling potential and girliness. She sure loved making that thing twirl!

And had a lot of fun wearing it!

At the end of what ended up being an 11 hour party, she was still comfortable, so I think I can deem this dress a huge success! And I'm glad that it's not "bridal", so she can wear it again, and again, and again.

Look at how happy she is!

Congratulations again, S&R!

No Pants Summer Has Officialy Begun!

And I nearly forgot about it! Thankfully, Haizle gave me a reminder the day before we started. Otherwise, it would have been pants for a day spent at the park. Instead, I fished this dress out of my closet, gave it a quick hem, and voila! An old dress was given new life :D

I made this dress a few years ago, and always felt it was too long, so it just languished in my closet. I feel like it will end up coming out to play a lot more often now.

I've been busy busy all of May, with 6 day weeks, so I haven't had as much time to make things as I'd like, but I did manage to bang out 3 dresses. I finished 2 more for my etsy shop:

I'm obscenely in love with that crab fabric

And a dress for me!

I used Simplicity 2886 for this dress. This is the third time I've used this pattern, and I gotta say, every time I make this dress, I like it less and less. I changed the neckline to give it a proper scoop, as the pattern is actually a weird almost-scoop-but-almost-v-neckline. It does a weird gape-y thing at the armholes, which would have been a simple fix had I remembered that it does that. Oh well.

I also added a little more flare to the skirt. There's actually nothing wrong with the skirt as it was, I just like really flowy skirts.

All in all, the dress is okay. It's wearable and has pockets, but I'm wishing I had saved this fabric for something else. I had been waiting for the perfect project to use it for, and this just wasn't it. C'est la vie.

maybe I should try to hunt more of this down

Is anyone else out there playing along for NO PANTS SUMMER?