Weekend Happenings

It's been a crazy weekend on call, but you know what that means...the boys all go to the beach and I can sew without guilt! (I seem to be the only one feeling guilty about sewing - are the rest of you women sewing in your family room where people can talk to you? Because I'm upstairs and everybody downstairs feels ignored. Plus you notice I said "women" and not "ladies," because Lucas said only old women are referred to as "ladies.")

Anyway, I forgot to tell you that I took a serger class at All About Sewing Saturday afternoon and now know how to operate my mom's Riccar!



I even used it on the bra part of my Mardi Gras dress (yeah, who cares if there were 3 different threads in it from the class - nobody'll see the bra).



Being alone, I sewed on this dress for 6 straight hours. I seriously sat down at one point and when I checked my watch it was 2 hours later! This is what had me stumped for a while. It's a swayback adjustment and I needed 2 full inches out, which made the rest of the skirt seriously crooked. I looked in books and checked PR, then I ALMOST called Robbie K, my sewing buddy in Gulf Shores. (But I figured 8 PM on a Saturday night in Gulf Shores would NOT be a good time to call.)



You can see that my skirt was going to be way off grain, but I finally straighted it up and made the back bodice a little off grain. I know they say to redraw the grain line, but you really have to move the pattern when the skirt is this long. (You can also see that I use whatever's handy to hold my pattern in place while I rotarize - scissors, cell phone, iPad...)



And here's what we ended up with. I call this my Chris Lee pose (google that if you missed the news this weekend).



This boobage is a little too perky, so I may adjust down to something more natural looking.



And I think I'll leave the side seam open to add some walking room...gotta figure out how I'm going to do that - I guess I can serge finish my seam allowance?



The back needs work. A previous reviewer said the back rolled down to reveal the bra so she added a "shelf" of 1" elastic in the seam allowance between dress and bra, but that made mine look a little puckery and it hikes up too much now. I'll address that tomorrow.



And I'll leave you with Drew's monogram on his fleece jacket. He wears this thing all day when he's not in school, even at dinner. God love him!



I also spent 4 hours at the computer this morning getting a case report submitted for publication, and tomorrow I have to prepare a talk I'm giving next week. Plus I have to wear this dress Saturday night, so wish me luck on finishing it, what with the Scout leader's meeting and 3 soccer games we have this week. I refuse to make my mom hem another dress for me - it's time I learned to do it! (Maybe a nice narrow rolled hem on the serger...nobody'll notice!)