Drowning in Camo

Well folks, I'm going under for a while. My camo gal called last week and the remaining part of our project, which we thought we had 3 months to get done, has to be completly finished in 5 weeks. Oh, and we added one more pant style. Yikes. Nose to the grindstone time.

Oh, and just a note to any would-be bridal clients:

I love you all. You're great. It's such a blast to get to make wedding dresses every day. I try my best to make your dream gown a reality. But.....

I cannot duplicate this dress for $300. Sorry.

Back to the gloves

I'm finally back to the glove post. I must say, they've turned into a show stopper. "OMG, those gloves are divine! Where did you get them?" just seems to follow me down the street. Well, except for my one friend that said they looked like I skinned kermit the frog, but really, ptoeey on her, right?

Now it's off to find the perfect coat fabric to go with these. I sketched a darling coat that my flight attendant was wearing on our flight back home in December. Not the best sketch, I know, but in my defense I had sweaty sleeping kid on one arm and was trying to sketch little bits here and there as she came down the aisle without seeming like a crazed stalker in need of attention from the air marshal.


Her coat was in black wool. Really, not my style. Won't match kermit, either. I need a print that's not completely outrageous, but that is thick and durable enough to be an outer coat layer (thinking about lining it with minky swirl fur). I'm really considering going with a drapery fabric. I've been know to do this before (use drapery fabric for things that are not classified as "drapes"). Not Liesel VonTrapp, so just don't go there! I'll just know it when I see it. You'll be the first to know after that.

Wait, this was about gloves, right?

Did I say it was a sewing post? Maybe I should have more accurately said it was a sewing related post. Someone sewed them. It just wasn't me. I've been up to my eyeballs in camo around here.On this first picture, you can see there is a small piece (about 3/8 inch) between the glove piece and the back hand piece. This really adds to the fitted-ness of these gloves. They allow the hand to have a better ability to stretch the fabric as the fist closes than just one seam would.
On this picture you can see (well, you can see my little heart-breaker in the back...can you tell from this picture that his eyelashes touch his eyebrows?..., just ignore him for the moment) that there are individual pieces that make up the inner finger. These run up and down the inside of each finger with teeny-tiny-made-by-little-glove-fairy seams at the intersection and top of each finger.
Last of all, the most interesting part, the thumb piece. If I were to guess, I'd say there is a little cat's eye shaped dart between the thumb section and the inner glove section.

Thanks for stopping by to visit with me and kermit. We'll give a shout out to miss piggy if she stops by. I'm off to work on Rachael's toille. You'll meet her next week.

I've been tagged ....(and I promise I'll get back to the gloves!)

I've been tagged by Mary Beth at The Stitchery!

O.K. hmmm...5 things you don't know about me. Dang, I already told you about Toad Suck, right? Too bad, that would have been a good one to pull out of a hat.

1) I never sew for myself. Wish I did, but there are dishes in the sink and butts to wipe. Maybe someday!

2) I grew up in a very biblebelt-ish town in the south. Think Footloose. There were parts of my education that were greatly lacking until I went to college. Like?
*I didn't know what homosexuality was. Not 'I didn't quite grasp what was going on'. I had never heard of it. Then I went to a very socially liberal college and lived in a co-ed arts dorm with girls and guys on the same floor. The first time I saw 2 guys kissing, I couldn't figure out what was going on. So my wonderful and very flamingly gay friend Tad gave me my second birds and bees talk.
*I never really wore a bathing suit in front of a boy until my mid 20's (dang, what a waste of some darn good looking legs!)
*My town was (and still is) dry. No alcohol sold what-so-ever. None of my friends drank. None of our parents drank. I was never around alcohol until college. Marijuana, either, for that matter.

3) My husband & I decided to get married 8 days after we met. 15 years later, still the best decision I've made. Worst decision? Not going through with the actual wedding until 1 1/2 years later. Should have done it right away.

4) I'm 34 and still always the youngest. I'm one of the youngest moms I associate with at school. I'm the little kid in the room when I'm together with sewing gals. I'm the youngest of our 'grown up' friends, which all somehow end up being Kevin's age or older (he's 5 yrs older than me). I keep thinking someday that'll change, but I've been thinking that for a long time. It gets old sometimes.

5) I wish I could sing. Can't carry a tune in a bucket, but would give my right eye to just be able to belt it out. (o.k. maybe my right eye is currently a poor gift, it being the one with the shingles and all...you make me sing and I'll think of something!)

o.k. I've got to go. I'll tag 5 people this afternoon when Quentin isn't standing so close to the mouse (he's got a habit of hitting the little red 'x' when I'm not looking and deleting everything I've just typed!)

the 6th, and most important thing you don't know about me....

I have a lump on the roof of my mouth. Think 1/2 of a silly putty egg. I never knew this was not a normal part of the body until my husband found it one day. Things get caught on it and it gets scraped often. One time, about a year into our marraige, a pizza crust scraped it and left a little tiny blister. I was trying to look at it in the mirror when hubby wondered across me. Here's how it went:

hubby: "umm, what are you doing?"
me: "I've got a little blister in my mouth that's driving me nuts"
hubby: "let me see it.....HOLY CRAP IT'S HUGE!!!! HURRY WE HAVE TO GET YOU TO THE HOSPITAL!!!!!!"
me: "uhh...really, it's not that big."
hubby: "IT'S THE BIGGEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!!"
me: "ummm...what's going on? Oh, do you mean the big bump in my mouth? that's always been there."
hubby "let me pop it."

well, I was supposed to tag 5 people, right? Everybody I read has pretty much been tagged! Ummm...I tag: Holly, Diane, Leisel, Gail Marie, and Amie. Ha! I thought of 5 people!

The perfect glove... An actual sewing related post. Hold the applause, please!

I found the perfect pair of gloves. I used to own the perfect pair of gloves, but I lost one of them at a MOPS meeting (yet another thing to add to my list of why I quit MOPS). The perfect pair of gloves just lacks a little something when there is only one.

I found these at Dillards the other day.
I love Dillards beyond words. My personal theory is that it has something to do with the smell. (I say this because in reality, I don't actually buy that much there) Do you know the smell I mean? Every single Dillards on the planet smells exactly the same and they rig those silly swinging doors to work somehow that the smell just hits you full force right in the sniffer the minute you open them. I grew up shopping at the Dillards flagship store in Little Rock. I lived about 1/2 hour north of Little Rock in a town that didn't have any real department stores to speak of (well, there was JCPenney, but it was only big enough to sport 4 parallel parking spaces in front of the store...and does JCP really count for a 'shopping experience'? We only ever bought underwear there) The smell of Dillards takes me back to day long shopping trips with my mom that always included a smothered steak lunch at Frankies and a stop at the end of the day at Baskin Robbins to stuff as much of our booty as we could in one bag so it wouldn't look like we bought so much and a double decker for the trip home.

It's very hard for me to find gloves. First of all I have unusually large hands. How do I know this? Because almost every pair of ready made gloves in existance doesn't fit me. Apparently they sell well and therefor fit someone which would make my hands larger than, well..yours. (I also happen to know that my head is bigger than the mass populace. This was discovered in a millinery class in college. Don


Are you lost here? I'm so stinking mad. Blogger just ate 1/2 this post that took me 1/2 an hour to make. I swear I'm on my way to Wordpress any minute! I'll finish about my gloves later. Jeez.

The line

For those of you that saw me on CNN, FOX NEWS, THE WEATHER CHANNEL, and the local Colorado Springs station being interviewed about the line at Denver International Airport (in which I was standing)...here it is:

I tried to draw arrows with photosuite, but it came out as a .dmsp file and blogger wouldn't upload it. That's the end of my technical expertise.

It actually starts somewhere unknown out in the west terminal (DIA has two terminals, each with maybe 2 dozen airline counters). We were lucky enough to arrive before it headed out in that direction.

What you see down below is the TSA line snaking it's way towards the checkpoint.
It crosses the bridge between the 2 terminals out in the plaza here. Between these two poles is where I was interviewed.
Then it comes down this side of the plaza (the back side of the east terminal)
Then it heads up this hallway and takes a right at the clarinet player.

Yeah.

I just said that.

There was a clarinet player hooked up to loud speakers... to help calm nerves, I guess.

It takes a right up ahead and goes to the actual line in the ropes after this, but things started to move quickly at that point and I was too busy trying to listen to instructions and heard my 3 kids to take pictures.

I can't believe we made it through that and past the TSA checkpoint and made our flight in plenty of time. We arrived 3 hours early so that Kevin would have enough time to make it back to the Springs before the storm hit. We made one of the last flights out before they started shutting down (12/28/06, the 2nd blizzard, not the first).

My Christmas list...just in case you need to get me that last minute gift

**Bernina 730E $8000
**Evolve New Wave Serger $2500
**Feet for Evolve $1000
**Other stuff I'm sure I'll need
with these two machines $1000 (better plan for, just to be safe)
**Cameo from Wild Ginger $3000
**Silk Fabric, paint, lace, etc. for my new collection, being launched later this year $1000
**Design-A-Knit Pro version 7 $500
**Some additional do-hickeys to go with my knitting machine (I'll address the fact that I'm going to start knitting with it again in my New Year's Resolution post) $500
**Yarn for knitting ...let go with $500
**Laptop I'll need to work with
all these machines $1200
**Professional shelving for my studio $4000
**New lighting for my studio $1000
**Wood floor for my studio
including installation $750 (just a guess, not for sure about this one)


Really...I'm just a simple girl with simple needs.

By the way, if anyone wants a Pfaff 7550 with tons of additional feet and the users guide, just let me know. Mine is about to get pitched out the window. We are no longer on speaking terms and I can't get quality work done with my current anger level at just seeing it sitting around my studio learing at me. I think it would be "better suited" (a term my sorority used) with a different partener.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas....

My camera battery I dead today, but I did grab a couple pics off the gazette website. They're small but I think you'll get the point. This storm is breath-taking! We've been under Blizzard and Avalanche warnings here since early yesterday morning.

Here's our family Christmas tradition:

We make paper gingerbread men to count the days from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Every year they're different. Most years they have a daily activity on them. When the girls were little, they didn't have things written on them...they "talked" to me and whispered in my ear what the daily activity was. Of course, back then it was so easy. Saying "you get to take a bath today!" would make them squeal with happiness.

The yellow one with the hat is "Jose". He told us he wants to stay and be the one to see Santa come down the chimney (across the room). The red guy next to him is superman. He's mad at the bad guys.

I'm a happy hooker

Don't know if you remember the alpaca sweater I made Kevin last Christmas, but it was frought with problems. First and foremost...it sheds. I know Kevin well enough to know that alone puts it off the "I'll actually wear this" list. Second, there were design issues and the sleeves are just way to long (and grow more when on) and would need re-making anyway.

So...I decided that the yarn was just too expensive and yummy feeling to not just frog the whole thing and do something with it. I started looking for a pattern for myself with the following criteria:

*bulky yarn pattern
*pullover sweater I could wear alone (so I don't have to de-shed a shirt underneath every time I wear it)
*trendy (hard to find in a bulky pattern)
*close fitting (my personal style, I just hate things that are baggy)

I about fell out of my chair when I found this pattern:

It's even in the exact same color as my yarn!

I rock.

Plain and simple.

From my previous experience with this yarn, I'm counting on this working up pretty quickly. So maybe I'll even have it done over Christmas break.






Which is cool, because here's what my mom's getting me for x-mas (including the yarn!) that I want to get started on very soon:

I'm making it in dark lilac alpaca/silk elegance. Yummy.

O.K. so.... (drum roll, please!)....here's my two ACTUAL FINISHED OBJECTS!!!!
That's me trying to figure out how to take a picture of a something on my person. This is about the best picture that came out. The lighting in my studio is horrible and I couldn't quite figure out how to angle the camera right in the mirror, but I think you get a good idea of the sweater. (someone do a tutorial on self picture taking, please!)

It's a mock rib and I really like how the design came out. Also, it's just super soft to wear. The sleeves, which I frogged in the first place because they were too small around, actually came out bigger around than I meant for them to be, but I'm leaving them as is (and, um...don't tell anybody, one sleeve is 1/2 inch longer than the other one!)

And here's the lace shrug. I'm thinking about turning this in to Knitty.com as it is entirely my own design. We'll see if I get around to figuring out how to do that. You can't see the lace really well in these pictures, but there's a ruffle lace that goes all the way around the neck and back and a different lace at the sleeve openings, more of a flat leave patterned lace.


Ooo, with the poor picture quality, you can't even see how bad my eye looks! It's my right eye where the shingles are (yes...still) and the inner part of the "white" is really all red. Oh, and I think I need a haircut.

My Superhero

I just this minute walked into my kitchen from putting the girls bed and found this. He's 4. That's really just all the explanation you need.

Also, just to prove I have been sewing:These are Quentin's beloved "Flash Poe-jammas". When he was 2, we were out of clean pajamas one night and just had these in the back of the drawer. They were at one point hand-me-downs somebody had given me when Olivia, our oldest, was a toddler. Both girls wore them only occasionally when they were 2. When we found out we were having Quentin I pulled out everything of the girls that could be saved back for a boy. That amounted to a few white socks without ruffles and an old Toad Suck t-shirt and these pajamas. (Um, o.k. are you back from the Toad Suck site now? That's a real site. It's the annual festival in my hometown. No kidding. Just let me know if you need a t-shirt this year.)

Anyway, on the night in question, Quentin absolutely would not put these on because they were not super hero related and in his world clothing options consisted (and still do!) of 1) super-hero, or 2) naked. So DH convinced him that they were "flash" pjs. He's worn them for nearly 2 years now and they are coming apart at the seams (as well as about 3 inches shy of his wrists and ankles). I gave it a good shot at mending the very large hole in the knee, but it just really didn't work.

Luckily, I found these at Hanna Andersson:
They are #2 on his Christmas list, second only behind the Batman Sword with a button.

on the mend

My eye, henceforth known as "stupideye", is somewhat on the mend. So back to regular life I go! My eye dr. says that he's never heard of someone my age having shingles in the eye. I always was the trend setter!

Rumer has it I'm not sewing much lately. At least that's what I've heard. I did decide to "do a little straitening up" in my studio before I get started with all the camo. Didn't want the camo to have little bits of dupioni and beads, etc. stuck to it. Well, "a little bit of straitening up" turned into... I decided to re-arrange the entire room. I would attach pictures, but it would make you wince! It's not pretty.

In the interest of sewing vicariously, here's some of the blogs I seem to keep going back to:

Behind the seams I have serious machine envy of Gigi!
Hooks and needles Love her sense of personal style, makes me think about wearing something other than jeans!
KayBee's unique blog
Pins and needles
The sewing divas

and then, really who's day wouldn't be complete without The fashion incubator?

I've probably got about 25 other blogs in my folder, but don't visit them as often. These are the ones that make me wish I'd have thought seriously about having children in my teenage years instead of waiting until my late 20's. Really, if I didn't spend so much time wiping butts, I might could sew like these gals, too!

My house exploded, and other interesting 'tails

That's the theory I'm going with. (that the house exploded)

This is a current picture of my "dining" room. We don't "dine". So it's really a catch-all room: computer, bookshelves, piano, etc. ...Except right now it's holding mounds and stacks and piles of all the stuff I'm trying to sell on ebay. Want some fleece? go on over to Ebay my user id is alisabenay. This is all that remains of my line of fleece art-t0-wear that I tried my hand at last year. Cute stuff, but I just couldn't go to the trade shows to sell it with 3 little kids and I missed working on my bridal wear.

Anyway, there won't be much to blog about sewing wise in the coming weeks. December and January will be devoted to working on the hunting wear project and b/c it's propietary, I won't be posting any public pictures. Also, I'll be selling off all things not nailed down on Ebay!


This is the other 'tails of interest. Ponytails that is. It was for "crazy hair day" at my daughter's school.


Oh, and one last thing. DH (on the right) just interviewed Afif Safieh, the Palestinian Ambassador a few weeks ago. You can read about it here.

Shingles

That's what I've been doing for the past couple of weeks.

No...not shingling my roof.

I've had shingles.

IN MY EYE.

Have you ever heard of that? How seriously dumb.

I did get lots of vicodin, however. Oh, and I've lost 10 pounds in the last 2 weeks. I've pretty much just been laying around on the couch letting everybody wait on my hand and foot due to the nausea, dizziness, and general extreme pain my eye. One day, I even had to have Zoe (6 years old) tuck in Quentin (4 years old) for his nap because I just couldn't make it up the stairs. It was pretty sweet, actually.

No, I did not take pictures. Sorry, you'll just have to imagine. I'm still a little sensitive to light and tired as all get out, but otherwise on the mend.

Back to the hunting project. Maybe I'll actually get that done one of these days.

Um...yeah, that's my living room in the background (and Quentin on the couch sucking his thumb). After I got this thing pressed, on the dress form, wrapped up mummie style in my king size bed sheet, and got her downtown...I made it back to pick up Zoe from kindergarten with one minute to spare. So...the pics were taken in a hurry, but I know you guys have been dying to see it, so here it is!
There's a tiny bit of wobbly fit at the top of the bust area. I would kill to get my hands on someone who has several years experience making corsets to mentor me. I'm totally self taught and there are things that just don't always work for me, the area being the most troublesome.
The four areas where I printed words say "fashion", "haute couture", "chic", and "modiste"
Again, some areas of stress I would like to learn how to eliminate, a corset should look like you've been shelacked (sp?) into into it.
My favorite part (the back view) !


I think you get a really good feel here for the print. The swirls and letters were batiked with Batik EZ from Crafters Pick, then I used yellow and green in Jacaurd Dye-Na-Flo, then went back after that was dry and added small areas of teal and burgandy. Then washed out the Batik EZ with warm water, let it dry and stamped Jacaurd Luminere in Burgandy and Gold.

I also dyed the silk dupioni under the skirt bright orange, then dyed the silk organza burgandy and treated them as one fabric. It gives a nice shimmery effect to have the 2 contrasting colors.

Yeah, that didn't take 4 days or anything. But seriously, when I saw the final result it made me squeal. It's so cool to look at something like that and say "I MADE that!"

"Coming of Age"

That's the title of my piece for the Past, Present, and Future show for FAC Modern. There were quite of bit of "modifications" made, as I put this entire dress together in 5 days. The flowers over the shoulder, the tulle on the skirt, the shrug....all bit the dust. I am actually very happy with the print. On Monday, I had just white fabric. By Thursday, I had dyed and printed every color you see on this dress. It's all 100% silk. I made it to fit my model and she's not quite the same size as my dress form, so I'm not entirely pleased with the way the fit looks on the dress form, but I'll live. As soon as we're able to do the photo shoot, I'll have those pics up as well (had to cancel that Friday due to the snow)



Update, I've tried to upload these pics for about 20 minutes and blogger just won't do it, gotta run to Quentin's paint class, I'll try again later this afternoon!

It's blizzarding!

We're in the middle of a 'blizzard watch'. I took these pictures a few hours ago, it's been going strong since then as well. It's hard to tell right now if it's snowing, or just blowing around.

Oh, and here's a bonus picture of the peak taken a couple of days ago while waiting to pick up my daughter from school. People travel from all over the world to see what I get to see every day. I love it here!

To sew or not to sew.....

O.K. well, it's more like, should I sew some more?

I've been invited to submit an art peice to FAC MOD, our local Modern Arts Museum for their first annual Holiday show. It's such an honor to be invited, but I just don't know if I've got the time. The peice has to be submitted by Oct. 30th. Here's my sketch, if I do it:

O.K., this was a lightning fast concept sketch, now that I look at it, I'm thinking you probably can't tell anything about what I'm thinking. The top would be silk with batik and stamping in purple, orange, burnt umber to look something like this in print. Then the skirt would be layers of tulle with snippets of other tulle going from darker to lighter up the full skirt. There is also a victorian style drape across the top of the skirt, gathered in the back with huge tulle gathered flowers. Remember, this is an art peice.

My con list is a mile long: not enough time, will have to push back the hunting patterns, don't have the money to buy the materials needed, too much on my plate right now (Daisy scouts, Arbonne, etc.), and on and on and on.

The pro list is just this: It's FAC MOD. Really, what kind of nut would pass that up?

Lest you think the cobbler's kids are shod...

I never do our mending. I put it in a box under the sewing cabinet and think I'll get to it when I get a break in my schedule. My "schedule" being the few hours of sewing time I eek out between every other blooming thing going on while trying to raise 3 kids under the age of 8 and keeping our domain from being declared a natural disaster area. So I just walk around telling people I make couture bridal gowns hoping they don't look down and see that my pants legs are 2 inches too long. Here's something I wrote recently about said pants and thought it would be good to list here as well:

"ON BENDED (RIGHT) KNEE I COME"

These are the right knees of my jeans. Only the right, never the left. You figure it out, I've got too many fish to fry to contemplate the deeper meaning of one-sided holey britches. (Quite frankly, I've had enough of "one-sided holy" anything to last a lifetime.) I have 2 more pair in the same condition that would have made this picture, I'm sure, more compelling, but they went AWOL for the photo shoot. Swallowed up in the belly of the house monster (you know you have one, too) there to live until it sees something so vile and disgusting it will regurgitate them in a most inexplicable place. I expect that to be by the end of the week based on the condition of my kitchen counter as we speak.

I apparently spend quite of bit of time on my hands and knees. Make no assumptions about my piety, as I certainly make no assumptions about yours (and, I might add, love you just the same). It's more likely from washing the kitchen floor with 409 and a rag as yet another incident of "oops, sorry mommy, I may or may not have just placed an entire gallon of orange juice somewhere other than my 8 ounce Dora cup" is going to make my socks stick to the floor and I'll be stuck in the kitchen forever (which is my second worst nightmare) if I don't get this cleaned up. I would buy more jeans, but the size on the tag needed to adequately cover my back porch frightens me almost as much as the house monster.

New pics of Arika!

I just love to see great pics of my brides! These just came from Arika this week and look really awesome. I've got them together in a photo collage, but can't figure out how to post it here. They'll be up on the new webpage in a couple of weeks, I'll link to it when it's up.

Picture this

**Update** you can see better pics of Brooke here


I'm having trouble getting my clients to give me their pictures. Does this happen to other people? It's just frustrating to need a picture of the client actually in the dress in order to get a good quality photo for my portfolio and not be able to get that. They all say they will get it to me as soon as possible. ....Then I get nothing. I'm going to start charging a picture deposit included with the initial deposit. Fully refundable when I get the pictures. I'll let you know how that goes. I'll be ready to go live with my new webpage (online business card) in about 3 weeks and REALLY need my pictures. We'll see what I get.

On to better things.

My garment is up on the American Sewing Guild site. I'm the 3rd and 4th pictures on the top line.

I finished Brooke's dress:

In the end, I think 2 things bother me about this dress (and by the way, please tell me I'm not the only person who says there is something wrong with every single thing I've ever made).

1st) I think the seams in the self could have stood to have been opened just 1/8th on each seam. The stress around the waist is not from ill fit. I'm pretty certain it's from the outer fabric just not being big enough to stretch around the foundation.

2nd) I used coutil for the foundation. I really thing in hind sight that it's just a bit too heavy handed for this satin. Brooke was on a very tight budget and ended up using the Casa satin from Joann's. I think it's just a bit too thin to sustain coutil underneath.

3rd) (yeah, I know, I said two things....) The puckering over the butt area happened because Brooke ended up wanting a mermaid style dress, when originally it started out as a traditional shape, much fuller over the hips. I would have planned the inner workings differently if I had fully understood what she was looking for (she wasn't being fussy or anything, she just saw how she wanted it different after she has seen the dress on herself).

Other than that, I've been doing alterations lately. I DON'T DO ALTERATIONS. Except...people I know keep asking me if I can do just this one thing.....and I really need the cash.

I start on my hunting wear line pattern work next week. (it's not my line, I've just been hired to do the patternwork). I'm really ready to move on to something other than ripping out seams. Did I ever tell you that I don't do alterations?