Closet Finished!

With all the drama in the kitchen, I never got around to posting about my closet progress. It is finished! And I have unpacked ALL the clothes! 

I thought I remembered downsizing my square dance clothes before I packed them up originally, but I clearly still have way too many. That bottom rod is crammed full and I'm worried there is too much weight on there. I will definitely need to disassemble some of the skirts to make quilts, or start dancing again. =)

I scored 5 large tubs of plastic hangers in rainbow colors off craigslist so I actually
managed to hang all the shirts/blouses on color-coordinated hangers. LOL

I'd forgotten about some of my really beautiful medieval costumes. I definitely need to try them on and see if they'll fit me again.

Mostly Finished

I slipped away from my schoolwork today to finish up this skirt. Though, now that it's assembled, I've realized it's a bit short. I usually go for 20" square dance skirts and this one is 19". Oh well. I may look through my lace and see if I have something appropriate to add at the hemline, but I probably will just leave it as is.My favorite panel: Dragon!Now I just need to make Jeff ties for both skirts so we can wear them. I dug around and found the extra fabric, so I just need to do it. Most of the time tends to be re-threading my serger repeatedly with different colors and numbers of needles. It would have been much smarter to sew the ties together when I assembled the skirts, then it would not have added any additional re-threading time.

I hope to get them done this weekend, if I can get through my heavy load of school work. (Midterms start next week and the teachers are piling it on.)

A Day of Sewing

For a nice change, I actually managed to get caught up in my classes by yesterday evening, so I got to spend today doing non-school activities. Woo hoo! And for a rare change, I didn't just fritter away the day watching Netflix or goofing off in Facebook applications.

Maybe I should have spent the day sorting and packing and cleaning, but I instead spent the day finishing an old sewing project. Since my sewing room is likely to get packed up and put into storage during the remodel, I'd like to finish at least some of the projects I have in the works.

With February 14 quickly approaching, I figured I'd better get this square dance skirt done. Last spring, after I finished this square dance skirt the first time, I didn't like how gathered the pieced panels looked because the hearts were lost in the gathers, so I actually disassembled the skirt and removed three gores. Now I could have just cut out the gores—ruffle and all—but I didn't think the top ruffle was full enough, so I took it off first. I carefully removed it to reuse it because I didn't have more fabric. And then I hand-gathered the ruffle this time, rather than using the sewing machine ruffler, and sewed it back on.

So, my pieced heart square dance skirt is finished just in time for Valentine's Day. I'm still not entirely pleased with it, but I think it is good enough. I do still need to make a matching tie for Jeff. I'm hoping I can find some of that fabric leftover, but it wasn't packed up with the skirt.And since I was on a roll, I also pulled out the funky dragon skirt I started last spring. I finished sewing it together and put the rolled edge on the hemline, but I didn't quite get this one done. It still needs a waistband, but I ran out of gas before I finished. Since it will probably only take me about an hour, I'm hoping I'll talk myself into finishing it later this week.

Sleeping Today!

We didn't plan it, but today turned into mostly a day of sleeping. I've been so tired this week, that Jeff was sweet enough to get up when the dog woke up, before 8AM, and let me sleep in. I was very surprised when I woke up and saw that it was 10:45! I can't remember the last time I slept in that late. Granted we did get to bed later than midnight due to a late dance last night, but that's late!

Then, once I was up and about, Jeff went back to bed! And he slept three hours! I sewed while he was sleeping and got my skirt nearly assembled. I decided to make piping and put it between the gores. (What a pain dealing with piping in a gathered seam!) I also made some pretty funky ruffles because I was trying to use as much of the fabric as I could! Here's the skirt as it is tonight. I'll finish it tomorrow.










Last night, Jeff and I went to a square dance with a live band. It was awesome! We had such a good time. And I'm doing much better at being able to dance the whole night. I only sat out one square the whole evening and we also managed a few of the round dances. My father and stepmother and aunt were all there plus a couple of friends. It is nice to see family on the floor.

Today's Sewing Project

Another square dance skirt. I know I don't need more, but I just got this idea of what I wanted to do and I could hardly help myself from starting another.

I have this absolutely beautiful fabric made by Rose & Hubble. The fabric is called "The Magic of King Arthur" and I've been saving it for just the perfect project! But I bought it nearly ten years ago, and there it is, still on my shelf. Of course, while a square dance skirt isn't exactly the "perfect project," I will at least get to see and enjoy the fabric once in a while. Not just pull it off the shelf occasionally and dream about what I can use it for.

It was pretty hard to start cutting, but here are my gores! I just love the gore with the dragon! I'm excited to wear this one, though unfortunately it won't be tonight. I'm not that fast.

Finished—Maybe

I spent all day finishing my square dance skirt. But, as I was concerned about, the gathering didn't work too well. You sort of lose the hearts in the gathers.

I'm debating about whether I pull the skirt apart and try taking out two gores and see if it's still full enough. It would also look better with a fuller petticoat, but they're in storage... I may have to break down and get more square dance clothes from storage. I just don't know where I'll put them when I'm not wearing them...

Though, the best part of my sewing day was I got to remember how great it is to sew ruffles with my serger and sewing machine. I got to use my ruffle foot and rolled edge on my serger, and I got to use my ruffler and double needle on my sewing machine; it was awesome!

2/3rds Done!

Just 4 panels left! These are going together pretty fast.
I hope they still look OK once I gather up the waist. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

This is a pretty fun project. I've always loved making square dance clothes!

I have class again tonight so this won't get done today. Gotta spend this afternoon working out and then reading my Contracts textbook.

Jeff has a meditation class tonight.

Pieced Gore Finished

I decided to go to storage this morning. I figured I would spend more time fretting about whether I had the gore the right size than just driving to storage. I think I was probably right. Though, it turns out, my piece was pretty close to the right size for what I wanted to make.

This was pretty fun. Now I just need to make 11 more!

My Latest Sewing Project

With us square dancing again, I've been thinking it would be fun to make a new skirt. Then while I was hanging out this weekend, this idea came to me. I'm planning to piece it like a quilt. I think I'll need to make at least a dozen of these two-gore panels. I'm also planning to add a strip of purple between the finished heart panels to separate the hearts. I suspect this project will go together much faster than a quilt!


I'm still working on getting the gore pattern right, so I haven't started it yet. All my square dance patterns are in storage, so I'm trying to decide if it's worth the trip to go pick them up. A gore is not very hard to design, but you do need to make sure you have enough of them to make a full circle. Here are the fabrics I've chosen.

This is the blouse I plan to wear with it. It's always good to wear a purple blouse on a holiday when everybody else is wearing red!

Okay, it's too late for this Valentine's Day, but I'll be all set for next year!

Happy Valentine's Day

Jeff and I are enjoying a quiet weekend at home. We would go out this weekend, but we're expecting restaurants are too busy to make it worth the hassle. We'll have to go out later in the week. =)

This evening Jeff and I went to another square dance; a valentine's dance. Most of our square dance clothes are packed in storage, so we went by this afternoon and picked up a box of holiday skirts. I wished I had another blouse and shirt set tonight, but we just don't have the closet space to unpack more of these clothes. Oh well.

We're doing pretty well at the Plus-level square dancing, but our round dancing is just too rusty. I want to look around for a round dance class so we can relearn Phase 3 and 4 round dancing.

Jeff and Shasta got new safety gear for their night-time scootering. I know I feel better now that they're wearing this when they go out at so late at night.

Tomorrow we have a hot date to play Pandemic; Jeff's new favorite board game.