Monday, August 29, 2011

If Burda gives you lemons

make Sorbetto with them.

I wanted to deal with the remains of my BWOF 9/11 #132 dress before it became a crumpled silk UFO taunting me from the floor of my sewing room - or worse, a crumpled silk sleeping mat for Lily, no longer taunting me because it's full of cat hair. 

What can make you feel almost as good as a successful sewing project?  Taking scissors to an unsuccessful one. 

I cut off that unfortunate upper portion and threw it out.  That left the lower section, and once cut along the side seams, I had a very large piece of fabric for the front, and a reasonbly-sized piece for the back. 

What to do with those pieces?  I looked through a few patterns, but most of the ones that appealed wouldn't work with the fabric (either the size or the print), so I reached for the Colette Sorbetto pieces which were still on the table from the other week. 

I guess there's a point to being a slob.

When I made this pattern a week or so ago, I thought it was a quick, easy, cute top, and now I can add one more positive to this list:

It's a quick, easy, cute top that saves me from having to look at this failure of a dress crumpled on the sewing room floor

Take that, Burda.  It may not be the dress - or even a dress - but it's a wearable, finished garment and I can now put the Burda dress behind me.

Hurricane update:  I really thought with the weather we were going to have this weekend, I'd get a ton of sewing done.  Not so; I got about as much sewing done as we got hurricane weather.  (I'm glad about the weather - this is one of the times when I was happy the weathermen were wrong - but sad about the sewing).

Philly got about 6" of rain, which is less than we got two weeks ago.  The winds were rough but nothing the house couldn't handle, and for the first time in many, many years, we took on no water.  It's comforting, knowing that the house is finally just about watertight. 

For anyone who's curious, the chickens made it through the storm just fine - it was, after all, less water than they've had several times since moving into the back yard.  In what turned out to be an excess of caution, we took a fashionable blue tarp, some bungee cords and a few bricks, and made sure that the girls were as close to protected as we could manage.  All that did was keep them relatively dark all day yesterday, and so they laid no eggs, but at least they were dry. 

Tomorrow is a vacation day for me, though I'm not sure now what we're going to do with it.  Originally it was supposed to be a shore day but I think the shore's still closed, and even if it's not, most of the roads between here and there probably are.  So maybe it'll just be a vacation at home day, sleeping late, cleaning up some debris outside, . . . getting a little bit of sewing done?

Hope you all made it through the storm unscathed, and got more sewing done than I did. 

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

You saved that lovely fabric...good job! Of course we are curious about the chickens.

Nancy K said...

Great save. It's a lovely, wearable top and you got to use at least some of the fabric, which is beautiful.

Andrea said...

Glad to hear everyone on your end is safe and sound. Can't wait to see the top in person. We're fine as well, but my mother still has no electricity till Sunday, Sept. 4th and I've been on hold with PSE&G for an hour waiting. I'm still waiting as I'm typing this.

Elaray said...

Great save! Great top!

Eugenia said...

Great job on saving your lovely fabric - the top looks beautiful and, as you say, you can put the Burda dress behind you! Glad you got through the storm ok, enjoy your vacation day.

Rose said...

You are bringing lots of good news. I'm glad to hear that the dress (now top), the house, and the chickens are fine! You ended up with a great top.

Becky said...

I'm laughing because the Sorbetto I made last week was also a result of chopping up an unsuccessful Burda project! And glad to hear that you and the chickens made it through the storm all right--things went a lot more smoothly here in Delaware than we'd been told they would too.

The Slapdash Sewist said...

Nice save! it really is lovely fabric.

gwensews said...

Well, you have a very pretty top. Who needs a dress anyway? Take THAT, Burda!

Cennetta said...

Great save, Karen. Some of the Burda magazine garments aren't the best for wearing outside of the photo shoot. Your top is pretty darn cute.