flower bomb

Well hello there everyone! I hope you've all had a great April! Around here we've been truly living up to the old saying "April showers bring May flowers". Well, at least the bit about the showers. The flowers we get all year round. In other words, it's been wet! I can't believe I'm saying this, but... I'm ready for summer. Yes, summer, and all it's triple-digit, 100% humidity, sweaty, stifling, sunburnt, nastiness. Bring. It. On. You northeners can keep your spring (and your bad tacos, but that's a rant for another day)! I'm ready for the heat! Maybe it's because winter was such a joke this year, and I have no patience for this in-between bullshit, but I'm really looking forward to the days when I can throw on a dress and sandals, put my hair up, and sweat. We're almost there. almost. We just need the sun to decide to make an appearance...

And on that note, let me introduce you to this backless beauty! This was my April make for the Mood Sewing Network, and, again, you've probably seen some sneaky peeks on my Instagram all month as I slowly chipped away at it.  I feel a bit weird calling this thing a "shirt" or even a "top" as its open-back, voluminous, apron-style design makes it feel as if I'm wearing nothing at all.  But it does cover the essentials, and after wearing it to work for a whole day I can attest to the fact that those essentials (somehow) stayed covered. Phew. I'll be honest, I wasn't sure if that would be the case. This also isn't the most bra-friendly design, so if the goods did come out, they would be alllll out! But thankfully (for both myself and my unsuspecting coworkers) we good.

Okay, so what is this, you ask? (What? You didn't come to hear the gripping tale of how I did or did not flash the entirety of Galveston Island?) This is Vogue Patterns #1507 made up in some Italian Printed Floral Cotton Batiste from Mood Fabrics online.  I was super super excited to see that Rachel Comey had released a few more patterns for Vogue this season.  Her designs always delight and excite me, and I feel like the resulting garments are truly one-of-a-kind pieces.  This top was my favorite out of the recent bunch (although I also love this dress) so it was the first one I wanted to sink my teeth into.  While I think the plain green version on the pattern envelope is great for seeing this top's interesting style lines and features, in my head I always imagined it in a bright, exuberant print.

This cotton batiste was everything I could have hoped for this make: a large scale, painterly floral print, easy to handle during construction, and light and airy to wear.  The whole top is double layered, so despite the fact this fabric was somewhat sheer, I didn't worry about a lining.  I really love how the print of the underlayer actually peeks through the sheer areas of the top layer. I didn't bother with print matching, or even give much thought to print placement with this make (I may have been print placement-ed out from my last make!) I really love the resulting sporadic feel of the top.  

I took a few indoor shots on my dress form because the gusty winds during my photoshoot were doing this top (and my hair) no favors! Hopefully these help give you a better idea of the lovely intricacies of this design.  I have to say, it was truly a pleasure to work with a pattern where the actual pattern pieces were practically unrecognizable and how it was all going to come together seemed like a mystery.  Often times when I see a garment I have a pretty good visual idea of what the flat pattern pieces will look like, but this one was completely wacky! Definitely a good project for pulling me out of my sewing autopilot! 

That being said, the actual construction really wasn't all that difficult once you figured out what went where.  The trickiest part was that just about every major part of the garment - both the top and bottom layers of the bodice and the sleeves - called for a teeny, tiny 1/8" hem.  And those hems were verrrryyyy loooonnnnng and veerrryyyy cuuurrrrrvyyy. This probably would have been no big deal if I had a rolled hem foot for my machine, but I don't.  I also contemplated doing it all by hand, but I wanted to finish it before June so I followed the instructions.  First I sewed a line of stitching at 1/2" then I used that stitching line as a guide and folded the hem up once, trimmed close to the line of stitching, and folded again at 1/8", edgestitching that in place.  By the time I got to the sleeves I was pretty pro. Or at least there was much less cussing.

The back neckline is finished with a small bias facing and the back yoke edges are bound in bias binding. The instructions had you finish the armholes with bias binding as well but I had run out of red bias tape and actually thought that might be a bit bulky, so I used my serger instead. No regrets.

And here's a closeup of those cursed teeny hems. Honestly this was at least 70% of the sewing! Choosing a thread color for this project was a bit of a head scratcher, because no matter what I went with it was going to be in contrast with the print at some point.  I decided on off-white, however I'm sure an invisible hand-rolled hem would have been the more elegant option.  But I don't think the visible stitching detracts from the finished top at all.

I'm quite happy I chose such a well behaved fabric as cotton batiste for this top, because while it wasn't a difficult sew, a lot of the pattern pieces fall on the bias, and I could see that, coupled with the teeny hems being a real headache in a trickier fabric!

Fit wise I'm fairly pleased with how this turned out.  There was, frustratingly, no finished garment measurements printed anywhere on this pattern so I had no idea how much ease was built in.  I decided to play it safe and go down only one size since I find, in general, Big 4 patterns tend to go crazy on the ease, with the occasional exception of these Vogue designer patterns, which sometimes actually have spot on measurements. I figured if I went down one size I could counteract any built in ease, but that the top was also voluminous enough that if there wasn't a whole lot of ease built in it would probably still fit me anyway.

In retrospect I think anyone making this top could probably safely go down two sizes.  I find the shoulders to be quite wide, even on me and I have good, wide, linebacker shoulders.  From an engineering standpoint the shoulders are really the only thing holding this top on the body, so if you've got narrow shoulders you might find yourself with a garment that simply doesn't stay on.  I would also suggest reinforcing the front neckline with some staystitching or even some light interfacing or organza to help prevent it from stretching out during construction. The instructions don't call for this, but that's my two cents for anyone thinking of making this up in the future.

As I mentioned, I wore this top to work yesterday and felt like a total superstar! It felt so unique and special, and as I was getting ready at the gym in the morning (yes, I shower at the gym most days - glamorous, I know) women kept sending their friends in to see my outfit.  Not that I base the success of a make on how many compliments I get on it, but it's always really nice when other people like your work as much as you do.  

I'd really like to make a pair of black linen tap shorts to pair with this little topper for the ultimate breezy ensemble once the dog days of summer really hit. Nothing like pairing a little volume on the top with some long legs on the bottom! 

Obviously my wardrobe planning is all about summer.  What about you guys? Anyone else ready for a heat wave?

xx

the girl from ipanema

the colors of this outfit make me feel very tropical! where's my umbrella drink??

i worked on this blouse veerrry verrry slowly over my blog break. its my third (and final) of the rachel comey patterns i bought back in october, v1170. i'm not really sure why i didn't buy the fourth pattern from her that was available at the time. i think its because i really don't have much use for dresses in all reality. and also because those crazy style lines got totally lost on me in the leopard print. looking at it again, i actually think its quite cute. much more so than the new one - which is a bit unfortunate - but who knows! maybe that one will grow on me too! weirder things have happened...

this is another fabric from tessuti that i bought a while back. its a silk habutai called summer in italy and it was like sewing with butterfly wings. no seriously! this stuff seriously is so delicate and has no weight at all that i'd be holding it in my hands and i seriously couldn't feel it!  its very sheer, and very beautiful, i think. all the edges are  painstakingly hand rolled - which was no small feat because those sleeve ties are veeery curvy! i'll admit that my curved hand rolled hem started out pretty frightful - but by the last tie i got it looking pretty neat. the front of this blouse is cut on the bias, which added an extra element of delicate flimsiness! i was actually thinking of doing a post on my tips for working with extra delicate fabric like this - would anyone be interested?

i'm not going to sugar coat this - this is a bit of a strange blouse. i know a lot of you are on the fence about these rachel comey patterns, and i do understand why. this one was my least favorite of the bunch. its just a bit awkward to wear. there's a lot of fabric in odd places - like the armpits. actually the fullness of this top is controlled by gathers in the underarm which i find a bit strange. i actually played around trying to put pleats and gathers in other areas to reign in some of the fabric but it just made it worse. this top works best the way it was designed.

that being said - i'm actually quite surprised how much i like the way it looks in the pictures! maybe it was just worse in my head? if any of you were tinkering with the idea of sewing this blouse up, here are a few of my tips:

• use a very very flimsy, drapey, droopy fabric (like my beautiful silk habutai!!). when i made my muslin of this top out of cotton it was really truly ugly. like, really. no exaggeration. a fabric with any stiffness will make the drapey bits stand away from your body in a really unflattering way. if silk scares you, something like a cotton voile would work too.
• follow the gathering guides precisely for the underarm gathers. too much gathering and you won't be able to tie your sleeves. too little gathering and you get weirdly saggy armpits. and not in like a cool, dolman sleeve way. trust me.
• fyi - this blouse is loose and boxy. making it from a sheer drapey fabric helps it seem not as much so. but regardless of that, it looks best tucked in.

just some views of the back button placket and the hand rolled hem - which will never see the light of day **sniff**

this top will probably not get a ton of wear. not because i don't like it, because i really do think its a pretty blouse (and it looks great with this oddly colored anthropologie skirt i've had forever and had no idea what to pair it with!) but because its actually very very delicate. between the sheer fabric and the hand sewing i'm a bit afraid that this blouse might not hold up too well with too many washes and wears. so it'll just get paraded out for the more special occasions! no harm with that...

this was the final make from my spring wardrobe. i'm pretty excited to get started on my summer wardrobe - especially since the humidity decided to set in today! hello texas summer! come on in, stay awhile (i know you will)...

xx

27

happy birthday to me

i live in a tree

my na-ame is sallie

happy birthday to me!

yeah ok. my birthday was actually yesterday. i was too busy doing birthday stuff to blog. sometimes its gotta take a back seat, ya know? and here is my birthday dress!! don't you just wanna eat that floral print from tessuti?? i do. uh oh. sallie. don't eat the dress...

and look at that!! a smile! it must be a birthday miracle...

i wore this dress to a lovely wedding this past weekend for some truly lovely people. i don't know when it happened - but give me a pretty dress, a pretty wedding, pretty people, and a pretty good helping of champagne and i turn into one big old sentimental fool!

the wedding was really wonderful. it was out near kyle, tx. if that means anything to you then you're golden. i'm pretty geographically challenged even in the best scenarios so i kept stopping in the middle of admiring the beautiful landscape and saying "wait! just where the hell are we??!?" it didn't help that i couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone either. at first i was told i was somewhere in between houston and austin. then austin and san antonio. then i was basically outside of austin.

so that place - somewhere near-ish austin. in the region of texas... it was damn beautiful! we spent the weekend camping and then spruced ourselves up for the wedding and danced the night away! sunday was my birthday which was spent driving back to galveston and taking a looong loooonnngggg nap!

i had wanted to take these pictures out where we were camping (wherever that was...) because it was just so freaking idyllic what with the wildflowers and the bluebells and herds of caribbean goats... no really. i actually had a rather unnerving incident with a ram where he stared me down pretty intensely - on my birthday!!! (did i mention my birthday was yesterday??) this is important because i'm an aries - the ram!!! do you think he recognized me as one of his own??!?

oh yeah, but i didn't because, you know, i got caught up with celebrating. so you just get regular old galveston pictures.

oh yeah - so this dress! rachel comey for vogue patterns (v1209) made up in a tessuti silk.

well! i'm very glad a made a muslin. i did all the things i said i was going to do in my muslin post: i cut a bigger size, i let the bias hang, i added 2 inches of length and la-dee-da-dee-dee... all was going fine and dandy. until i got to the lining. lordy.

i mean really anytime i try and sew on a deadline i'm basically asking for some 2am drama rama. and thats what i got. i don't know what the deal was with this pattern. its cute as a button - don't get me wrong - but its a funky funky pattern. i'm usually one to own up to my own mistakes, but i really don't think this was my fault! i cut the lining the same size i cut my dress, and the dress without the lining fit great. so after installing the lining i go to try it on and... so tight!! like. child size tight. like it would not budge below my armpits.

i'm still not sure what the deal was - i didn't do anything wrong!! anyway i had a sad little breakdown in the wee hours of the morning where i weighed what seemed like my only two choices. either cut the lining out of the dress entirely (my fashion fabric is totally opaque - so it didn't really need a lining) or unpick the seams and see what that does. i decided to go for the latter. so i unpicked all my pretty french seams and re-sewed them at 1/4 inch. the lining fits - and comfortably - but the silk fabric is now a bit delicate. i think at some point the lining will need to be replaced - but i'm going to wait till i bust a seam to do that...

oh! and perhaps you're wondering how that zipper inserted into the bias seams worked out?

what zipper?!?!? muahahahhahahaha!!! that invisible zipper is invisible ya'll!!! okay well maybe not entirely invisible - but its very neat and there's no funny buckling of fabric. sunni's tutorial did me right. oh so right.

i wore my dress with my leather jacket when the night got a little bit chilly. they look good together. almost like they were made for each other (wink!)

and because i can... here's a lovey-dovey photobooth set for you from the wedding. whoever started doing photobooths at weddings was a genius.

well i'm off to stretch out the birthday goodness for a few more hours/days/weeks!!

xx

lets make this official

okay. i've been meaning to do this for awhile but i've had trouble getting my butt in gear. i found it pretty helpful to make a plan when i started sewing for fall - even though, in the end, i didn't really stick to that plan too well (ahem.) but regardless of my fickleness and the fact that i grossly overestimated my sewing productivity (ahem!) i still think its helpful to make a plan, make it public, and try and stick by it as much as possible. having a plan helps me buy fabric and budget my time. and this time i majorly scaled back what i want to sew so i don't overwhelm myself and feel like a failure because i didn't reach my goals (who me?!).

so here you have it - my official "to sew" list for spring 2012:

i'm pretty proud to say that i've already made some good headway on this one. i decided to draft the pattern myself because i couldn't find one exactly like what i had in mind. fast forward 5 muslins and countless sleeve drafts later and i now have something i'm pretty happy with! i think i'm ready to cut into my leather (might even take that fun little task on tonight) and do some practice sewing on some leather scraps just to get a feel for it. i also wrote myself out some sewing instructions. does anyone else do this? i find it supremely helpful when i decide to "wing" a garment - writing it out makes my brain think through the construction and i'm able to catch mistakes before i make them! (most of the time).

march is my birthday month! woohoo! this year i'll actually be attending the wedding of some dear, beautiful people my birthday weekend so i wanted something that i could wear to the wedding, and also something a little special as a present to myself! we have a few weddings coming up, so i'm hoping this dress will be my "go-to" spring/summer special occasion dress. it'll be nice to give my bombshell dress a break, which was my fall/winter special occasion "go-to". i bought this rachel comey for vogue pattern back in the fall and i was waiting to make it until i found the perfect fabric. i always envisioned it in a floral print, but none really tickled my fancy - that is until i came across this silk print on tessuti and had to wipe the drool off my keyboard! it'll be a bit loud, but i think the dress can handle it. one of my goals this spring is to incorporate more prints so... here we go!

p.s. did ya'll see this lady's version of this dress? she said she had a hard time with it, but hot damn! girl looks good...

another rachel comey pattern! i wasn't lying when i said i practically bought them all! these patterns have been languishing in my drawer for too long (a whole 6 months!?!? told you i'm not much of a hoarder...) and they're far too pretty to just look at. i think for this pattern, and the dress pattern above, a muslin will be key. they seem like the sort of garments that could turn ugly real fast if they don't fit you just so. i plan to make this one out of another pretty tessuti silk print. the print is abstract and washy and the colors are just soo summery! it'll be a pretty sheer top, but that doesn't really bother me (give me a nude bra and i'm good to go - modesty was never my forte!)

and thats it!! is that too stingy of a sewing list?? lets just say these are my priorities. i've also been knocking a couple other ideas around in the back of my mind as well...

we'll call these the icing on the cake! i've wanted a white silk blouse for... about ever! haha! i've waffled back and forth between "buy it/make it" so many times i've lost count. so here it is - it officially made a "to make" list! a think a bright punchy pink chiffon midi skirt would be the most wonderful garment to sail into summer with! plus, i plan on making a simple gathered drindl skirt which will be my project for when i've burnt myself out on all this pattern drafting. and the pale pink jeans? what can i say... i've got an itch to jump on the colored-jeans-trend-bandwagon! unfortunately i seem to be obnoxiously picky about the color and can't seem to find a fabric that satisfies me so i'm thinking maybe i have to dye some white denim? blech. that doesn't sound fun. lets just say this one is a bit low on the priorities!!

well, my lovelies, there you have it! written in stone! in playdough stone. in extremely malleable stone... i feel like i can handle this list. although to be honest, i plan on doing the bulk of this sewing this month...gah! march 8th?!?! better get to it!

xx

for your viewing pleasure: shoe + art

so since i already spilled the beans on my rachel comey obsession i thought i'd just ride this lovefest for a bit longer. while the clothes set my heart a-pitter-pattering, my devotion is really to the shoes.

a fellow comey lover once told me that rachel studied sculpture before she began designing clothes. this struck a major chord with me, and also made total sense. her designs are incredibly sculptural - with just the right combination of toughness, timelessness, elegance and awkwardness. perhaps not the combination most people would look for in a shoe, but for me they possess something just slightly off which makes me want to keep looking at them. if ever i could make a case for adding a bit of artistry to an outfit it is in ones choice of footwear. basically i'm saying, quit being a pansy and put some sculptures on your feet!

after a trip to the philadelphia museum of art this past summer (seriously one of my favorite musuems, and its not just my philly pride thats talking...) i came away with brancusi on the brain. constantine brancusi was never one of my favorite artists. its always amazing to me when you can look at something you've seen a million times, read about and studied, and yet all of a sudden its like you're seeing it with fresh eyes. this is what happened with brancusi. its like a light went on and something i had always glossed over came into focus. i just can't get over those forms (i know... nerd alert...)

perhaps its a bit of a stretch to make a connection between rachel comey shoes and brancusi sculptures - but i don't think so. the restrained palette, the references to classicism, the elegance and awkwardness...the stacking!

all rachel comey shoes via solestruck, brancusi images via the pma, here, and here.

xx