Monday, February 16, 2009

Kreativ Blogger

It's a good thing this award is called 'Kreativ' and not 'Frequent' or I'd never get it. Thanks to Ann Smith and Sewuptight for nominating me, sorry it took so long for me to acknowledge the honor!

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I finally finished up my sewing for hire projects a couple weeks ago and breathed a huge sigh of relief. I made 17 dresses in January, and 5 more in November/December from the same design, in 4 different sizes and 4 colors. I ended up customizing almost all of them, either different hem lengths or morphed sizes. Everyone has been thrilled with them so far, but I'm a little sewed out and my shoulder/elbow is still recovering from all the pressing! But I somehow managed to eek out one for myself after I finished all of them, this is the navy color. The fabric is organic merino interlock from Near Sea Naturals.


The dress has a stand up collar, split cuffs, and side waist ruching. Pretty simple to put together, but the effect is flattering, even if I do say so myself. :-)

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I have been searching for buttons for my Burberry trench coat for weeks, and finally lucked out at Joann's (!) yesterday. On Saturday I made a trip to Stonemountain Fabrics in Berkeley CA, and didn't like anything they had, even from an entire wall of buttons. There were some packaged Dill buttons I liked, but they didn't have enough of them. The Joann's I stopped at had just restocked, and I found these thick, shiny, glossy 4 hole La Modes in 3 sizes and bought them right away. I managed to get the collar attached, with hanging chain, and start on the hems.



I made some practice buttonholes, and decided I like the keyhole style on my machine. I'm having a hard time figuring out where the buttons go though, I thought trenches were supposed to button right over left or left over right? The BWOF instructions only call for buttonholes on the right side, not the left. And it calls for 2 'inside buttons', whatever that means. I'm going to have to take a look at a real trench to figure it out. I'm still looking for a belt buckle, but I think I found some nice leather ones here. My local cobbler can put eyelets in for me.