And back at the sewing machine.
The heat wave didn't exactly break, it just sagged down in a corner, exhausted from its own effort at trying to fry us all. But the other night it was cool enough to get into the workroom for a couple of hours, and damn, but that felt GOOD! It felt so good, I made a knit dress
and a skirt.
Obviously during the time I was unable to sew, I was not going stitch-free. I can't; the heat made me crazy enough, but taking all forms of needlework away from me isn't wise.
So I started embroidering again. Mario's spaceship reminded me how much I enjoyed it once upon a time, and after PR Weekend I ordered Diana Rupp's book,
Embroider Everything Workshop, which, if you're just starting out or need a refresher (as I certainly did) is a great book. I'll do a full review soon if anyone's interested.
I decided to make an embroidered denim skirt. We have jeans day every Friday now, and I don't do jeans in the summer and I'm tired of hearing that they finally relented and gave us jeans day, and hey, where's your denim? This skirt is basically intended to say, "It's denim, get over it."
I found a nice remnant on the shelf, eyeballed it, decided it was enough to make a skirt and cut it in half. I chose a design from
Embroider Everything and transferred it to the denim and started stitching last weekend. It was over 100 degrees on Saturday and I spent it in front of the fan, stitching a few miles of split stitch, satin stitch, leaf stitch and conquering the dreaded French knot.
Of course, being me, I got only so far before I decided to change the pattern. The book's design is much more folk-art-tulips and I decided that wasn't the direction I wanted to go, so I used the stems and leaves and then changed the blossoms. I stitched most of Saturday, in between runs to check on the chicken-cooling-system and emergency tomato watering, and I finished on Sunday.
Wednesday night, when I got to spend that quality time with my machine, it occurred to me there really might not be enough denim to make a skirt. Thankfully my panic was for nothing; there was just enough for the skirt and the yokes. I got most of the skirt constructed Wednesday night and did the facings and hem last night.
I also managed to knock out a quickie knit dress that I wore to work on Thursday. No photos of it on me, because I forgot. So here it is on Evelyn, and it's one of those times where I can say in all honesty it looks better on me than on her. But you get the idea.
It's KwikSew 3036, the kimono sleeve t-shirt that I just made, lengthened into a dress. Fabric from Metro Textiles, PR Weekend 2012. Nothing complicated, but like I said above, damn, it felt good to get back to it.