I am alive!

So my netbook is finally on my mom's wifi, so I can post pictures, but I have been having so much fun making things that I haven't taken many pictures!!!

I made a skirt for my mom, that I will have to get her to model for me, a skirt for my little sister to wear in Disneyland, a skirt for Emmie to wear in Disneyland, a pair of shorts for Isaac to wear in Disneyland, and a camera case for Miss Emmie since she just celebrated her birthday on Saturday.

We took the kids for a one hour trail ride on Sunday, so I will leave you with a picture from that as opposed to being a totally useless blog post with no visuals at all!

Checking in from my Mom's house!

I am having a great time at my mom's house, I am spending time catching up, enjoying the warm weather, and doing a tiny bit of sewing.

I have repaired my littlest Sister's shirt hem, cut my other sister's pants into Capri pants, added elastic to the back of another pair of pants, hemmed my brother in-laws pants, made an American girl doll dress from the cut off scraps of my Sister's Capri pants, and embroidered the name and birthdate of a baby in my mom's church onto a receiving blanket edge.

I am going to get the wi-fi code from my mom for her computer, so I can use my netbook online, so I can add some pictures of the shibori t-shirts I am teaching my sister's how to make tomorrow.

In Arizona!

So I am posting from my iPhone for the first time, so please bare with me! I am in AZ for the next little while, having flown in to see my family for my Sister's birthday. Next week Paul and the kids join us for a Disney trip, and fun family reunion stuff.

I can't seem to upload pictures from my iPhone, but when I get on my netbook I will try to put some project pictures up!

A new swimsuit for Me!

So I always have a hard time finding a swimsuit, I am busty, but thin-ish and I want to be cute, but also a mom (ie I need to play and move and stop my kids from drowning themselves, while in my suit - not pose in an adorable but impractical one)

About 3 months ago, a traveling J Crew sample sale came through town; it was nuts, you were handed garbage bags as you came through the door, and you had to wade through boxes of stuff to find anything in your size (my husband did find his favorite light weight coat in the perfect fit  while we were there which is no mean feat since he is thin with monkey arms.)  Anyway, I found some swim wear for $3 a piece, that although I couldn't try it on, I decided it was a good bet for only $6. I didn't think the green one would fit my bust, but I figured that I have sisters if it didn't, and the blue one didn't have bottoms, but being a small with an extra large bust, it seemed too good to pass up, and how hard can it be to match something to navy blue anyway?

It turns out it is very hard to match the right shade of navy in swim-wear, and my behind is too big for most bikini style bottoms because in order to get it to fit my hips, there is a serious wedgie or crack issue or they are cut so low my stomach would hang out. Grrrrrrrrrr designers need to learn about real bodies for sure. (I was also right, although the bottom fit me with the green suit, the top was waaaaaay to skimpy for me.)

Then suddenly I got a brain storm........ 1.5 suits I can't use, can become 1 suit I can use! I took the green suit and cut it as high in the waist as I could before the dip in the back of the suit started. I just used my ruler to draw a straight line matching the height of the hips. 

sorry it loaded sideways for some reason

I then took silicone elastic and fit it to my waist and sewed it in at the top, I used my sewing machine with a stretch stitch rather then my serger because I didn't have the right olive green in cone form. I then folded the top over and used a matching zig zag stitch to top stitch the waist since the legs were already done that way.  I decided that I liked the vintage feel to the top (and now there was a vintage feel with the high waist on the bottoms) so in order to tie in the navy blue, I bought 4 navy buttons with anchors on them to sew to the front like nautical sailors pants.   (sort of like this vintage style suit here)

I used the straps from the green suit to make a little sailors bow for the top, and then I decided to fill in the front in order to minimize some of the cleavage, and because it looked sailor-ish too.

I then used my embroidery machine to add little crossed nautical flags at the bottom!

So here is the finished product, I won't be modeling it for you because I would hate to contribute to any swimsuit clad photographs of myself to the internet (you never know if my husband might want to become a senator or something later, I would hate to be scandalous or something.........)

I think it actually turned out pretty cutely, I am happy with the fit of everything now, and I am happy to have only paid $6 plus $2 in buttons for my new suit.

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Ode to Anthropologie

In case you haven't noticed, I really like Anthropologie. I don't love their prices, but as a 30 something, I like that they make clothes that are age appropriate and interesting. (I find that most stores either want me to dress like I am a teenager or an older lady!)

Anyway I have made a few knock off things from Anthro, (I do buy from them too sometimes) since I enjoy their aesthetic a lot, but find that my height (5'9") and bust size (30F) is a problem with fitting into their clothes.

Today I am showing a quick knock off I did a few months ago for $6 which was the cost of the lace I used, since I already owned the tank top.

I really liked the Maryam tank from Anthropologie, I only saw it online though after the store was no longer selling it, so although the original price was quite high, I couldn't buy it even if I wanted too.

I really enjoy the feminine touch a tank like this adds to any outfit, I wear tanks a lot too in order to raise necklines (when you are busty any cleavage looks like you are trying to be a porn star and I am a mom thankyouverymuch!) and to lengthen hems (I don't bare my midriff for ANYONE!)


Anyway, I ordered some lace off of etsy, I'm not going to say who through because I didn't have a great experience with them, so I don't want to advertise for them, but I also don't want to hurt their business either by telling people to stay away from them in case I was a fluke.  I got 3 yards of 9" lace from them (after more then a month! That is an insane amount of time considering they advertised a week) Anyway........ I then cut enough length off one end to fill the neckline with the hem (I just cut the rest of the lace away) and then I cut the remainder of the length in half. I cut one of the halves in half lengthwise, so I now had a 4.5 inch wide piece and a 9 inch wide piece, and a little neck piece.

After sewing the one piece into the neck of my tank, I then overlapped the other two pieces and put two rows of basting stitches in at the top, and gathered the fullness into the same size as the hem in my tank top plus seam allowance. I then sewed the lace into a tube, and sewed it to the bottom of the tank with my serger, (although you could use a stretch stitch on a regular machine if you don't have a serger.) I un-picked the hem of my tank, but you could probably cut it off just as easily, I just didn't want to loose length. I then top stitched with my coverstitch machine over the top of the hem, in order for it to lay flat (twin needles in a sewing machine will to the same thing)

Anyway, here is the finished product since you braved that boring and picture-less description of what I did.

And here it is with a sweater over the top, I would usually not wear a sweater this short on me since I would tend to look boxy, but with the sweet lace hem I think your eye is drawn down into the length rather then the width of my body.

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