Monday, February 23, 2009

My mostly non-sewing weekend

I shouldn't say that - I am moving along, although slowly, on the #115 jacket from February BWOF. Ever have one of those projects that you start because you need a particular piece for your wardrobe, but you just really can't get excited about making it? That's how I felt when I started this jacket. I'm using a really lovely dark olive green linen with some lycra that I think I got from Kashi a few years ago. I love the fabric; I like the jacket pattern; I need light jackets in my office in the summer because the AC can get freaking ARCTIC; and there was enough fabric for a jacket and a skirt. So how could I not be in love the project?

Don't ask me, but I wasn't. Cut it on Thursday. Okay, so I'm not always excited at the cutting out phase. Did darts, shoulder seams, sleeves on Friday. Bleh. Saturday, I interfaced the facings, collar, pocket flaps. Yawn. Yesterday, the day of not enough time for sewing, I did the side seams and inserted the sleeves (hooray for raglan sleeve insertion), did a whole bunch of topstitching on the seams, and tried the jacket on for the first time. Evelyn's been wearing its pieces up until then, and Ev looks good in almost anything.

Except I'm thinking this might look better on me. Hmmm. Little flickers of sewing excitement here.
Had to stop because Mario and I had cheapo tickets to the Philadelphia Opera Company's production of Turandot which was (a) fabulous and (b) very inspirational. The costumes were amazing. Apparently the sets and costumes were borrowed from the Dallas Opera Co.'s production, and from what I saw, they were well worth the lending. I would like it if our budget ran to something other than partially-obstructed, next-to-last row under the ceiling amphitheatre seats, but it doesn't right now, and I'm okay with it. We paid $10 for our seats, and got 2 hours of amazing music, costumes, sets and the experience of seeing Turandot in the middle of a crowd that gave a standing ovation to the young tenor for kicking major operatic butt on Nessun Dorma. Which has been repeating in my head ever since.
This was my second time going to the Academy of Music to see a Puccini opera. (I'll admit, my operatic tastes run mostly to Puccini, maybe with La Traviata thrown in), but finding out this past week that you can actually get to attend something like this for $10, even with the crappy seat location, made my Sunday. It's not often you can go out and do ANYTHING worthwhile anymore for $10, much less get to take in an experience like that.

And then we came home and watched the Oscars, and I got to drool at some gowns and laugh at some others, and I pinned my facing to the jacket, pinned the pocket flaps together, and all of a sudden decided that I'm really liking the result. Go figure.

3 comments:

-E said...

I'm with you on the oscars fashion (miley! who would've thunk it!)

Soooooooooooooo, what did you wear to the opera? Do people still deck out for it? (or is that only the Friday night set?)

I kept looking at the first picture on your blog going "where do I know that from?" when I realized it's on billboards all over the city :)

neighbourhood.gal said...

Good! It's nice when something turns around like that, isn't it?

Kat said...

Ah...you just needed a little visual inspiration! Now get going so we can see that jacket :) .