I didn’t include this as part of my original pledge, but I’m trying to see I can go the entire month without repeating outfits.  I’ve made it so far, but barely and only because I’ve made a couple dresses during the month.

Here are my week 3 outfits.

Sunday, May 22

I think you can start to see a trend here.  Sunday’s are my lazy days.  I often do go out to brunch or something, but this month so far, we haven’t been.

On to the bad work bathroom selfies for the week.

Monday, May 23

Greenstyle Laurel cut at the shorter length with RTW leggings.

Tuesday, May 24

Today I’m wearing my second Ottobre Optic Flowers dress I raised the waistline piece about an inch and I think it sits better than the first one.  Although, my preference would be for it to be even higher.  But then it wouldn’t be a dropped waist dress anymore.  Lol.

Wednesday, May 25

This is another Lady Skater that I made at the end of last year.

Thursday, May 26

This is a Seamwork Mesa that I wasn’t pleased with.  But since I’ve lost a little weight, I think it looks better on me now.  But I still probably won’t be making anymore of these.

Friday, May 27

Saturay, May 28

Saturday we went up to Port Moody, BC to watch my daughter’s lacrosse game.   She’s been playing goalie since she was little and Canada has women’s indoor lacrosse leagues that we don’t have here in the states, at least not in Washington.  She was playing in the upper age division because their goalie got a concussion and is out for the rest of the season.  She had 36 shots on her goal and didn’t let a single one in.  She told me afterwards that no one thought they would win against this team and the captain was preparing her for a horrible loss.  But her team won 3-0.

This photo was taken at a sushi restaurant my husband and I went to before the game.  Not the best photo of my outfit, but in all the excitement I forgot to have him take more.  I’m wearing black RTW leggings that you can’t see, with a Love Notions Laundry Day Tee that I made with a white and black pinstripe fabric that I dyed purple.

Hits

1. Pride Dress.  I’m so proud of how this dress turned out.  I decided to do it at the last minute and had no idea how it would work out.  I’m very proud of it and I got so many compliments on it at the Seattle Pride Parade.
   
2. New Year’s Blue Velvet Dress.  I think the fabric is beautiful and with the full lining it just feels nice and weighty, like some of the more high end RTW dresses I’ve owned throughout the years.  I’m very pleased with how it turned out and how it looks on me.
   
3. Seahawks Superbowl Dress.  This was also a dress that I decided to do fairly last minute to show off my Hawks pride at the Superbowl.  I have worn it to work several times on Blue Friday and it’s usually a hit.
   

4. Rainbow Ethnic Chevron Lady Skater.  (Unblogged)  I’ve been buying the monthly Knitfix bag from Girl Charlee for a while now and this was one of the fabrics I got way back in May of last year.  I only have a couple patterns I can make with 2 yards of fabric, one of which is the Kitschy Coo Lady Skater, one of my TNT patterns.  This dress is one of my favorites to wear because the fabric is just so pretty!  I ended up scoring some more of the fabric and even made a matching GreenStyle Laurelette for my niece.
   
5. Seahawks Mojave.  This didn’t necessarily fit me the best of all my me-makes in 2015, but I just love the way it came out.  I would like to devise a way to make this pattern more wearable for everyday use.
   

Misses

1. Seamwork Moji. (unblogged). I’m not blaming the pattern on these.  I modified the pattern because I thought they would be too narrow for my thunder thighs.  So I’m not 100% sure if that’s what caused the problem or what.  But the fit is just terrible.  This was the first pair of pants I attempted to make, so I may be able to make this pattern with with some fit adjustments.
   
2. Dahlia. (unblogged). I didn’t even finish this dress.  Since I was making a muslin, I used some random fabric I had purchased decades ago for some weird idea of a pants suit I was going to make.  This dress just doesn’t fit well and it looks weird on my body.  I suppose at some point I’ll finish it and see what I can do to make it work.
   
3. Seamwork Mesa. (unblogged)  I should have known that this silhouette was just not going to work on my body.  And the unfortunate placing of that green smile leaf right on the bottom of my tummy really didn’t help things.  In this photo, the lining and the outer fabric are hemmed together and so there’s a wrinkle.  I’ve since ripped that out so I can hem the two layers separately, but it’s still in my “to finish” pile because I just know I’ll never really wear it.
   
4. 40s Tea Dress. I love the idea of this dress.  And I love the way it looks in some of the photos.  But it’s a fit disaster.  And the hem is horrible, but the dress is too short to just redo.  The neckline facings flip up and the sleeves are just weird.  Overall, I will likely never wear it again, which is a shame since the fabric is just so pretty and a great color on me.
   
5. Dr. Who Dress. This dress just didn’t turn out like I had envisioned.  It looks like pajamas and I swear I cut the pieces so they should have matched in the front waist seam, but it didn’t and it drives me insane.  I aquired a wide blue TARDIS stretchy belt after my blog post was written, and it does cover up the annoying waist seam and so I will wear this dress to conventions and whatnot.  But overall, I’m not pleased with how it turned out.
   

Highlights (non-sewing)

1. I went to the Superbowl!  Dream achieved!
   
2. I painted my house purple!!!  Another dream achieved!!
   
3. Awesome new job.  I have a job where I’m appreciated and it’s been very low stress so far.  Plus, it has some really nice benefits.
4. I was able to walk out of a miserable job. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but overall, I was made to cry at work multiple times, I would dread going to work every day and tried to find an excuse to call in sick as often as I could.  It was good to be able to literally just clean out my desk and walk out one day.
5. Much improved sewing.  I’ve definitely improved my sewing skills this past year.  I’ve been sewing most of my life, but I didn’t really sew very often until the last couple of years.  And in 2015, I probably made more items than I had in my entire sewing career up until then. 

Reflections

In no particular order:

• I’ve been feeling unsatisfied in my current career path.  It’s been building up for a while and I had some unpleasantness at my previous employer this past year that led me to up and quit without something else lined up.  I was lucky and was able to work out a deal where I got a little something out of my quitting, and I knew I would find something before I was in trouble financially.  But it was the first time I was unemployed that I wasn’t extremely worried about finding a new job and I was able to just enjoy not working.  I got quite a bit of sewing done during this time, which led me to wonder if it’s time for me to make some sort of career change in which I can use and improve my sewing skills as part of my daily life.  I don’t have any solid plans at this time, but I’ve been trying to brainstorm on how to make something like this work and I’ve got a few ideas banging around that I hope to get fleshed out in the next couple years.
• I need to do something about my sewing space.  Right now I’ve pretty much permanently taken over the dining room table with my pattern cutting materials.  But it’s frustrating for the other members of my household.  So my husband and I have been talking about some options to give me a space where I can have a large table dedicated to cutting.  Hopefully we’ll get something worked out and implemented in 2016.
• I enjoy the little extra details in sewing projects.  I haven’t done many things yet, except for using some of my decorative stitching on my Seahawks Mojave and my Ottobre Optic Flowers wearable muslin.  I need to figure out the little touches that make me extra proud of my garments.
• I find that I tend to be happy with a pattern if it fits my body and doesn’t look bad on me.  But I’ve noticed a few things that I’ve been letting slip by, like fabric pooling at my lower back and creases along the side my bust and I should focus more on really noticing these issues and fixing them on my patterns.
• I’m completely addicted to buying fabric.  I buy fabrics on sale that I like, without any real plan on what to do with it.  As a result, my fabric stash has gotten completely out of control this past year.  I should be more mindful of what fabrics I purchase and only purchase fabrics with a specific project in mind or fabrics that I absolutely fall in love with and I know I would be sad to not get.

Goals

I haven’t been posting much.  Mainly I think it’s because I haven’t gotten much chance to get some good photos, which is also evident ink
I had some vacation time to burn before the end of the year and my company takes a holiday break, so I’ve had the last 2 weeks off.  I started out strong, sewing 3 new dresses in the first 2 days.  But then my husband and I started watching Orphan Black and we binge watched the heck out of that.

 

I really like my blue polka dotted Laurel.  So I made a couple more.

The first one I used the seashells and seahorses fabric that I dyed purple a while back.  It’s a thicker cotton knit, where the blue and white polka dots was a soft, drapey rayon lycra blend.  So I was curious how that cowl neck would do.

I just didn’t like how it draped in this fabric, so I took it out and put in just a neck band instead.

I like it way better this way.  I’ve worn it a couple times.

But, I’ve been thinking I need a shorter version of this dress.  So my next version uses the shorter length of the pattern.  Well, I should have known better.  I’m pretty tall and the shorter version was several inches shorter.  So yeah, I now have a very lovely tunic.  I don’t have any action shots though.  Just on my dress form.

I love this fabric and I’m sad that I don’t have a wearable dress out of it.  But it does look cute with leggings, which is how I wore it to the Pink Martini concert.  Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get any photos.

I’m sure there will be more versions of this dress coming in the future too.

I found some adorable Dr. Who fabric from Aqua Splash Customs.

I bought a couple yards with the intention of making a lady skater out of it.  I made it, but I’m not super happy with it.

I think it looks a little like pajamas instead of a cute dress to wear to work.  I shouldn’t have made the entire thing out of that fabric.  I think I would have been better off only using it as an accent.

I didn’t really have enough fabric to do proper pattern matching either and its bugging me.  I thought I had cut the front to match up better, but apparently not.

I’ll still wear it like it is, especially to PAX, but I’d like to try to figure out a way to make it less annoying to me.  If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them.  I have some more of the blue I used for the neck and arm bands, but I don’t have much.  Although, it’s the blue I bought at JoAnn’s for my Pride dress, so they likely still have it.

Thoughts?

I’ve been wanting to start a new blog for a while.  I’ve never been a super active blogger, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon.  But I want a place where I can post my thoughts and photos of my sewing projects so that I can easily go back and see what I’ve accomplished and remember thoughts I had on things I’ve made or modified.  So far I’ve only been posting about them on Facebook and it’s difficult to go back and find all my past sewing posts.  So this is my attempt at resolving that problem.

Over the next couple of days I’m hoping to post about some of my past projects with as many photos as I can gather together.