Fall palette challenge: green cropped jacket

The project that started me off was actually planned before I took this challenge on, but I'm working with it anyway.  It's a simple cropped green jacket, which I made to wear over the very yellow bridesmaid dress that I wore to my dear friends Catharine and Alex's wedding last weekend.  I'll admit, the yellow worried me.  It was a lot of yellow to pull out of the box when the dress arrived, and it's not the best colour on me in general.  So I plotted to make this jacket, which would break up the yellow for at least part of the day, and keep me warmer during the reception.  This ended up being the best part of the plan, as the  yellow wasn't nearly as scary as I feared it would be when put in the context of the entire wedding party.  Plus, I got to wear pretty awesome shoes.

I don't have good close up pictures of it right now, but I only just got my internet back so I'm kind of on an updating spree.  So here's what I have on my phone from the reception!

From Instant Upload

Decorating the happy couple's car: a time honoured tradition.

That's how it looked in the full context of the outfit, and I was pretty happy with it.  It's a wool blend, lined with a cotton that has a dotted weave to it.  It's pretty subtle; I'll have to get some good photos of it.  I'm using more of the same cotton in the Macaron dress I have planned, so you'll get a closer look.  I'm pretty happy with the outcome, overall.  There was only one thing that didn't happen on time.

From 10/4/11

Classy.

I'll be honest, I knew in the back of my head it wasn't done.  A normal person would have taken out the straight pins before wearing it in public.  But we were running from the church to the reception, and I had to get things out of there as quickly as possible, and we were all pretty chilly from standing outside taking photos.  California or no, it gets chilly in October when you're standing around in a strapless dress.  So as a little girl at the wedding complimented my jacket, I said, "Thank you!  I made it myself... you can tell because it isn't finished, and I have pins where my buttons should be."

Thankfully, two of the groom's friends were also stitchers, and they applauded my choice to rock the straight pins.

Overall, I'm a fan.  It's a really easy jacket to make, and while I'd enjoy an industrial press to really flatten those collar seams, it's still a pretty clean look.  And a great length for that dress, which I shall deconstruct and use to pattern another dress in some fabric that is NOT polyester satin.  But that's another project for another day.  And another month.  Right now, I have a costume to finish before New York Comic Con, and then I can dive into the Clover sewalong for Colette.  I'm making them in a lovely charcoal pinstripe, so here's hoping for the best!

New project: Colette Fall Palette Challenge

So, after making as many costumes as I have, in the last year I've decided more and more that I want to try making more of my own clothing.  Fit can be a real issue, and it's easier to fit things to yourself than to expect someone else to fit exactly to your proportions.  Jeans have been giving me nightmares in the last few years- they're always too tight somewhere and too loose somewhere else, so it's time to just say screw it, and try making some of my own.  My first pants will be Colette's Clover pants, as they are doing a sewalong and I can use all the help learning to fit pants as possible.

This is my full palette:


Color by COLOURlovers

I already have a coat from McCall's I'm working on from the green and ivory, and I intend to use the remaining ivory and a navy wool suiting to make a Macaron dress from Colette.  The Clover pants will likely be in the grey, and I have no idea what I'm doing with the red/salmon-ish colour; I just wanted something for contrast in there.  Maybe a top?  Or possibly as an accent colour on a skirt.  We'll see!

I'll be posting progress as I finish things.  There will definitely be updates as this project goes on, though few until I get internet back at my apartment.  That's out until the 7th of October.  However, I'll definitely have a jacket by then, though other real clothing sewing will be curtailed by preparations for New York Comic Con.  I have a looooot of sewing to do before then, so I've got my work cut out for me.  But in any case, I'm looking forward to it. :)

Busy busy busy

See that title? That is why nobody has really heard from me much in the last several weeks.  I'm still alive, but as I have mentioned before, right about now we're in the middle of our final push to finish the movie I've been working on for a year and a half now.

The good news is, I haven't shown up to work in pajamas yet, though when I roll out of bed in the morning the temptation is frequently strong.  I mean, I do have some pretty stylin' PJs, but I can do slightly better for work. 

Things that have changed in my wardrobe: not much.  My birkenstocks are my staple shoes, I've acquired one maxi dress that I really love, and today I am wearing the shortest pair of shorts I have owned in years and I don't think it looks terrible.  Of course, my day has mostly involved hanging around home, and now some sewing, so it's not exactly a rigorous day of getting out and doing things.

As for the curtains I mentioned in my last post?  I gave up after the third time I ordered the fabric, it just didn't come.  Sadness swept over the land, folks.  So I got myself a set of 96" burgundy blackout curtains, and one of them came in the mail today. :/  I am not having the best of luck with curtains- three tries and no luck on the fabric I wanted, and now only half my curtain set is mailed out?  I mean, how do you even do that?  Fortunately, the customer support folks at Overstock.com were very helpful, and will be shipping me the other half of my curtains sometime this week.  Also on its way is a slipcover for my comfy, but rather blah couch.  so, in the next week or so, my living room should look a whole lot better!

I've been sewing a lot lately, which is a good thing.  No new costumes yet, though I need to have one of those done by Friday (ha... ahahaha...), but I did try my hand at making real clothes!  It needs a few fixes, but here's my first attempt:

It's based on the Crepe pattern from Colette, which is my new favourite pattern and sewing site.  They have lots of tutorials, tips, and tricks, as well as a few free patterns.  They've got a set of mini bloomers there I have my eye on making when I can catch a breath, and their pattern shop is just full of so many amazing vintage inspired things, I just want them all. 

Next on the sewing docket: a 1920's flapper style dress.  I'm making it to wear to a party at work next week, and I have all the supplies.  I'm patterning it all myself, which is a first (yikes!).  All I have is a sketch on a post-it, my dress form, and a whole bunch of tailor's marking tools.  I'm working on the muslin tonight. which will probably double as the lining.  So far, I have a skirt, which I am so happy actually fit when I put it on.  Breathe one huge sigh of relief there.  Now I just have to do the top, which shouldn't be too hard.  I say this now, before I've started, of course.  But I do have a fair amount of confidence that I can get a workable muslin done tonight, which means I can get my actual silk cut and potentially even sewn tomorrow.  I did my best to keep it simple, but we'll see how that goes.  At least my accessories are done, and I broke down and got a wig because I realized I have waaay too much hair for a 1920's do.

So that's what I'm up to in the world of clothing lately.  I doubt I'll be back in any sort of regular fashion until sometime in October, after this project has finished, but I'll try to be less absent than I have been.