Sewing: More Progress on B&W&P Dress

My goal was to sew a dress before summer finished. If I hadn't sewn the zipper in backwards last night, I'd have had something to show yesterday.

B&W&P Dress, mostly finished!

All of the internal seams are bound (yay me!)

Seams so neat!

The hem isn't done, and won't be done before summer's over, since my summer finishes, uh, yesterday. And I need a hook-and-eye thingy. Maybe I'll actually finish it next week. Next week-ish. -Ish. Here's my questions:

1. I think it's a bit long (or I'm a bit short... yeah, probably more likely), and I intend on shortening the hem (or growing me, yeah right) a little. How much should I take it up? AND...
2. I have seam tape for the inside, which will hopefully be inconspicuous. OR I could bind the bottom of the dress with purple satin, like the straps and belt. Which will look better?

The Style Thing

I have some issues with sewing and creating clothing that I would want to wear out of the house. Here are my (larger) problems with sewing totally awesome clothes for myself:

1. Sense of style. I'm pretty boring. I don't wear the latest trends, it's unlikely to find me in frilly blouses or giant pendant necklaces, I don't wear high-heels, purses make me glaze over. I look good in slacks and a button-down shirt, which is what I wear to work, along with the pair of brown or pair of black, sensible flats. Otherwise it's jeans and t-shirts and my faithful hiking boots. I do know if something fits me well, but I've no idea if an outfit looks good or not. I currently favor the stylings of Anthropologie, ModCloth, Banana Republic, and Boden, but I don't have a handle on knowing whether it fits me or not. Have I ever bought anything from any of the above stores? No. Have I drooled over them? Yes. Well, and I'm also kinda cheap and don't want to pay the prices of some of those shops.
   
2. I'm allergic to wool. This means no lovely woolen trousers, tweed jackets, cashmere sweaters, or mohair scarves for me. Yes, there are lined crisply-creased houndstooth pants, but the hems and waistbands are usually still woolen on the inside, leaving a fantastic red ring around my middle and ankles by the end of the day. Even my beloved woolen peacoat will give my neck a rash unless I wear a scarf. I do love a nice pinstriped suit (which tends to be wool).
   
3. Pink. I despise it. It looks fantastic on a lot of people (women and a few men), and even yours truly, but I hate everything that color stands for and represents. I will not wear pink, other than (possibly) a few stripes or dots in an otherwise-other-colored fabric. Basta.
   

While the pink issue is relatively easy to avoid (except some summers when it replaces red), the other two are harder for me to get around. Wool is all over the place in winter, especially with the fashion industry's recent "discovery" of mohair and cashmere. (Side note: If you find non-wool sweaters that are not ribbed turtlenecks, please let me know!) However, there's enough cable sweaters that will layer over shirts (can't anyone make a thick, warm cotton sweater?!) My biggest problem is the style thing.

The fact that I'm calling my issues "the style thing" just shows how clueless I am. Fashion frankly scares me, but yet, I desire it. I want to look more modern and indie and non... uh.... non-obsolete. At the same time, I don't want to look ridiculous or strange. I also don't want to light myself on fire, which actually is a job hazard for me (this is part of the no-frilly-blouses bit). Plus, there's the whole outfit-making-thing. "Accessories" to me means "stuff you don't need" rather than "stuff to make you look better." For me, you take pants + shirt + shoes = outfit. This apparently is a misnomer when you get into that super cool layering thing, which means at least three shirts of different lengths and decorations, plus maybe a vest or a necklace or something else, and have you thought about your hair? I just don't see it.

What are your suggestions/rules for trying new fashion thingies?

Sewing(?): Handsome and Valuable

Here's a thing that was in my box of pins:

It's not actually bent, it's kinda 3-D, about an inch long. I've no idea what it is, nor how it got into the pins. There is a stamp on each side, one says "handsome" and the other says "valuable." What the heck is this?

Sewing, Tutorial: onestringbags

On my introductory blog entries, I mentioned onestringbags, which I found via instructables. These are the best things for avoiding the plastic produce bags at the grocery store and farmer's markets, and super easy to make. I love them. However, here are a few things I've learned by using these things:

Pros: No more plastic bags! Run under faucet to clean Lightweight (doesn't add much to fruit-per-pound totals) Inexpensive People ask where you got them and you get to brag

Cons: Does not work well for berries or very soft fruits Still have to remember them, along with the canvas bags

Eh. Not much you can do about that last one. Anyway.

I realize now that I do them a little differently from the instructable, so here's a tutorial on making my version of onestringbags. The biggest difference is that I fold all of the edges over, just so that there's more layers of tulle and the seams have more to hold onto. I apologize in advance for the poor pictures, but it's hard to photograph pesky delicate light green tulle.

Materials:

• length of tulle (get the stuff that's in the sale bin, probably in some wacky color, but your vegetables won't mind)
• length of string or cording
• thread (time to use the weird scraps!)
• sewing machine

Step 1: Cut the tulle into the size you want. (To keep it slightly more simple, I have a fold on one side edge. This piece is about 20"x36", so the final bag will be about 19"x18"-ish.) Lay the tulle flat. Find the top edge (where the drawstring will be... see mine?), and fold the sides in, about 1/2". Pin a little.

Step 2: Fold the top edge down, over the drawstring. I think the drawstring works better if you give it some space, so I make this fold about 1" to 1.5". Pin the drawstring to the fold, just so it's outta the way when you start sewing.

Step 3: Sew the drawstring in, giving it some space (I give it about an inch). Make sure to tie knots in the ends of the threads. Good knots.

Step 4: Put the side edges together. Pin the sides together, keeping that 1/2" fold on each outside face (it's sooo much easier to sew through four layers of tulle than just two). The edges might be a little messy and it may not lie quite flat, but it won't matter when you stuff the bag full of apples.

Step 5: See the layers? Good.

Step 6: Fold up the bottom. No need to keep the sides separate anymore, and it doesn't hurt to have something more than just twisted threads holding your plums inside. Pin it all!

Step 7: Sew the edges. Tie knots in the threads!

Step 8: Overhand knot to tie the drawstring. Now, go to the farmer's market and get stuff (ooh, I think peaches are in season...)

Preserving Someone Else's Harvest

Here's the first round of pretties: strawberry-raspberry preserves and apricot jam.

As mentioned before, I live for the summer farmer's markets. There's two stands in particular that we always visit first, before running through the rest of the booths. One booth is a berry farm (current produce is blackberries, blueberries, and end-of-season raspberries), and the other is a great family farm that's known for its cherries, apples, peppers and squash, but they also have some stone fruit, eggplant, melons...

The problem with going to the farmer's markets before breakfast is that I get a lot of fruit. Far more than I can eat, even in my mid-summer fruit bonanza. I'm not sure why it's sooooo cool to buy an entire flat of raspberries, but it is. It just is. Maybe it's because you actually know what to do with several pounds of delicate summer goodness. Or you have a household of teenage boys (do they eat fruit, or just eat in general?)

I've wanted to try canning for a while, but I don't think of it as something you get into casually. You need the jars and the timei to make the stuff and the giant boiling water pots and... well, then you also need someone to eat the stuff. My mom never canned, but I remember Grandma's red wine jelly every winter. The grocery store down the street was closing, so the jars were 25% off... opportunity knocked!

Sewing: Progress B&W&P dress

A large part of why this blog is called "Jerryrigging" is that I often just figure out ways of making things work the way I want them to. My grandfather said that jigsaw puzzles are pretty easy if using a hammer. My ways might be the "proper" ways of doing things, or I've found a cool way of doing things and am pretty proud of myself until I discover that I've inadvertently re-invented some really old technique.

For example, when I was little, I got a bag of super swirly, shiny marbles, with a shooter and everything. I pulled out maroon craft felt and, with looping stitches, crafted my own drawstring bag. Then, in order to protect my marbles from my brother's (obviously inferior) marbles, I took some more grey drawstring-string and sewed it onto the bag... my name in cursive! My mom was pretty impressed. To me it just made sense: after all, I wanted my name on the bag, and printing wouldn't work because it would be too many little pieces of string. Then Mom told me that couching was pretty advanced, so I should show it to my needlepoint-master grandma.

Now, take this dress I'm currently working on (hereon dubbed the Black and White and Purple Dress, because I'm feeling uncreative, and it's sorta like the punchline to a bad 3rd grade joke). It's the first time I've worked with slippery fabric of any kind, fairly translucent fabric, and slightly stretchy fabric. And I don't like the ribbon straps that they suggest, so I'm using strips of satin. And the translucent fabric means the whole thing has to be lined as well as the seams bound so that they don't show through. AND I wanted the fabric pattern to go against the grain because I like it more vertical-ish than horizontal-ish. So. What kinds of precautions have I taken? Basically none. Probably a dumb thing (or several dumb things) to do, but it'll be a learning experience. And learning experiences are always good, right?

The one smart thing I did do was ask a coworker how to manage the seams so that they wouldn't show through the fabric and lining. I have packages and packages of twill tape that have (so far!) worked wonders on the arm hole seams. This middle bodice seam, however, is a little trying:

Oooh, that's fairly unattractive!

In the center there, where the two sides overlap, there's six to ten layers of fabric at a time, mostly because of the satin ribbon bits. However, it is holding, and is certainly better than trying to merely zigzag that mess!

The parts I'm currently more proud of include the straps. The pattern (New Look #6557, view A) requests lengths of ribbon for the halter top ties. I'm not much of a ribbon girl, so I just cut lengths of purple satin and sewed them up. Not the most even of stitching jobs, but I think it's within my tolerance levels (ask me again later, and it might be the bane of my existence). Anyway, here's the front of the bodice, basically done:

Strings without strings!

So now it's on to the back pieces, then the skirt. I'm not the fastest sewer in the world (and it's mostly as a treat for cleaning part of the house), so this may take a little while. Unless I procrastinate from cleaning the house...

Complaints: Pink

Pink.

Word association time: what does pink make you think of? Gumdrops. Frosting. Flowers. Little girls. Frills. Princess. (Hey, there's royal purple, but no royal pink.) Feminine. Valentine's Day. It's subjugation time! Little boys do not wear pink without people wondering about their later choices in life, and most men equally avoid the color in clothing. Men don't like pink; they like women wearing pink (or any other color). There's a pink aisle in toy stores filled with dollies and dress-up clothing, which, frankly, scares me.

What a silly word. It's not stately or dignified: it's fluffy and frivolous. There's no substance behind pink, no threat of damage nor promise of carry-through. The word even sounds like it possesses the strength of a cooked noodle and the vitality of laboratory fruit fly.

It's not even a real color. I mean, it's not part of the rainbow (there's no pink in ROY G BIV). Really, it's technically "light red," white added to crimson pigments. People will try to fool you by giving it an alias, like magenta or carnation or bubblegum or salmon or raspberry (who wants to eat raspberries that color?!). Don't be fooled. Some languages don't have a single word for pink, while Russian has a further distinction of "light blue" from regular blue.

Don't get me wrong, pink can do good, like gay pride and breast cancer awareness.

I hate pink.

P.S. This website of color names is fascinating!