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Let’s start all over |
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After discovering last week that the coveted pants from Burda July 2010 were not meant to be, I pulled out my entire Burda collection and started sifting through for other flowy pant patterns, but nothing was really to my liking. And then the day before yesterday for no reason, a phrase popped into my head:
“Pants with a bow!”
It kind of stuck in my head and I said it over and over to myself, “pantswithabowpantswithabowpantswithabow…” I’m not sure if this is inspiration or mental deterioration at play, but suffice it to say I became quite fixed on the idea of “pants with a bow.” I drafted them mentally on the way to work yesterday morning, and then on paper yesterday evening (using my pant sloper), and finished off the evening by sewing them up zippy quick. Here’s how they turned out:
Super easy pants! (BTW, I love how a pair of pants that actually fits properly makes me feel so much less short- the inseam on these is a meager 27.5″, and I cut them to wear them with very high heels, so you can imagine how short my actual inseam is. But I look almost sort of tall-ish in these pants when no one is standing next to me!) They have a 2.5″ wide waistband, slightly flared legs, and a side zip. No pockets, no fly, no darts, no cuffs, just simple and clean! Here’s the rear view (kids, cover your eyes!)
(Incidentally, I really don’t care for how not blind my machine-stitched blind hem is compared to when I hem by hand. I almost always hem by hand, but I decided to give it another shot with the machine last night since it was getting late, and really, I might just unpick it and re-hem these by hand.)
And of course, there is the bow. I realize that by adding this bow, I’m reducing the wearability of these pants (you can wear a pair of basic beige pants once a week if you want, but I don’t think you can get away with giant bow crazypants quite as often), but I wanted them. With a bow. And I didn’t want some cop-out detachable bow either. I wanted the bow engineered into the pants. I just made two long tapered sashes which are sort of “inserted” into the waistband about an inch away from the side zip.
Actually, I slashed the outer waistband and inserted the sash so that there are no exposed ends. If anyone is interested, I can show you how to draft the pattern for this- it’s very simple. When the sashes are tied into a bow, it mostly hides the side closure, which is nice.
The fabric is some drapey stone beige wool that I’ve had in my stash for a long time. It’s smooth and kind of spongey and it might be wool crepe, but I don’t really recognize the weave. I think I bought it to make some basic pants a while ago, then wasn’t interested in making beige pants anymore. Recently I pulled it out again and earmarked it for the Vogue 1183 Kay Unger dress, but upon holding it up to myself in the mirror, I realized that the cool beige color does not belong anywhere near my face.
Anyway, that’s it. Some new quick-to-draft and quick-to-sew crazypants for the Selfish Seamstress. Pants with a bow! Pants with a bow! Pants with a bow!
See this gorgeous vintage McCall 3788 pattern that was listed on eBay until yesterday evening? Designed by Givenchy, size 12, Hepburn-esque, miraculously uncut and unused, and one of the holy grail patterns of 1950s vintage pattern lovers?
Oh, I had my eye on it. I’ve loved this gown for years. I was ready to give it a good home. And I wasn’t about to give any of you any ideas. And then some jerk went and did this:
Which one of you metherfeckers was it? $227.50?! Well, I guess it takes at least two people to get a bid up that high, so the question is which oneS of you jerks did this? Huh? ‘Fess up, readers. I know the culprit is out there. Who dares to get in the way of the Selfish Seamstress when she wants something????
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I went ahead and started the sleeves on my Camicia #9 from La Mia Boutique, and look at this travesty!
See the disapproving look I am giving you? I can only assume that this horrible sticky-uppy throwback to 1983 is also the fault of one of you out there. How else could this sleeve have gotten so ugly without some sort of sabotage involved? So what if that’s illogical? I am angry at you today. At ALL OF YOU! Obviously this, like everything else in the world, is NOT MY FAULT. So who did this? Was it Beangirl? She’s the first person who jumps to mind. Whoever it is, you’d better watch yourself, because you do NOT want the Selfish Seamstress for your enemy. (Also, you don’t want her for a friend either because she’s kind of attention hungry and has a number of other annoying habits like referring to herself in the third person and never taking responsibility for her mistakes.)
Anyway, someone had better claim responsibility for this mess, or I am going to come to all of your houses and set fire to all of your Burdas.
Yep, Dan is still out of town. You can tell because there is a big pile of old BurdaMags on his side of the bed now. I like to flip through them before I go to sleep sometimes, and now that he’s not here, I see no reason to take them off of the bed at all. That’s right, I curl up with my Burdas at night now. (Hey, there’s that oversharing again!)
Sewing alone time continued yesterday, with the beginnings of Camicia #9 from the May 2010 issue of La Mia Boutique:
Molto bella! That lady sailor looks like she’s having a really good time. I fully expect to be in a similar state of bliss when my shirt is done too. Albeit with less belly on display.
This shirt is loooong. You can see that it’s long on the model, but I mean it is *really* long. And I don’t mean that in a The-Selfish-Seamstress-is-short way, because the Selfish Seamstress is actually quite long waisted (double whammy!) and shirt length usually isn’t much of a problem. Anyway, I basted it all together and it was pretty ridiculous. Wearing it not tucked in would be goofy, and you just can’t tuck that much fabric into your pants. I ended up taking about 5″ off the bottom of it and now it’s looking more normal shirt length. Here’s the current state of things:
In other exciting news, I finally took my rotary cutters (and cutting mat) out for an inaugural spin! More on that later though. As you can see, I’m using bottles of multivitamins as makeshift pattern weights :)
The fabric is some some leftover stretch poplin from Dan’s Belated Valentine shirt. The rotary cutter is making it really easy for me to be super economical with the layout, and it’s possible I may be able to make an entire blouse out of just one measly yard of fabric! We’ll see- I haven’t cut the collar yet. (Don’t worry, I have more of this fabric if I need it.)
I’m considering using a different sleeve than the one the pattern uses, and I’ve still got a ways to go on the shirt. Yesterday in the late afternoon, I decided that since I was by myself, I may as well put the sewing on pause and go out for some single girl Argentine tango dancing.
I stumbled upon this image of a Banana Republic polka dot skirt a couple of nights ago and was tickled at the navy dots with yellow combination. Fortunately for me, I had some fabric in a nearly identical print (though not a nearly identical weight) in my stash.
I downloaded BurdaStyle’s free Twinkle by Wenlan A-Plus A-Line skirt pattern, and was off! Oh, I wish I had a cute yellow cardigan now, but as I do not, I’ll model it with my lemony shoes:
The skirt has a front and back yoke, and a couple of pleats down the front.
The back of the skirt is plain:
I cut the yoke on the bias to mix the dots up a little so it wouldn’t be vertical stripes of dots the whole way up. The fabric is a heavy cotton (I believe the Banana Republic one is a lightweight cotton silk blend.), about the weight of cotton duck, and it’s cut a non-stretch ribbed weave:
I used a vintage white metal zipper on the side and some white rayon lining, leftover from the Guggenheim Coat.
My New Love
Best of all, I have no idea how I remembered this, but I found some navy lace hem tape in my sewing box. I don’t know how I ended up with this, but I’m guessing it was probably in a sack of random notions I found at a thrift shop ten years ago or something. Have you ever used this stuff? I hadn’t until yesterday, and now I am IN LOVE! (That’s right, Dan was away for about 10 hours before I found a new object of devotion and affection.)
I handstitched the lace to the edge of the skirt, and then I did an invisible hem along the edge of the lace, also by hand:
And not only does this make it pretty on the inside, it makes the hem sooooo invisible on the outside!
Look, ma, no hem! The zero-bulk of the lace means that the invisible stitches are really truly invisible and there’s no line where the edge of the fabric is attached. I’m going to be buying a LOT more of this stuff.
The Gripe (stop reading here if all you want is the warm, fuzzy side of the skirt story and don’t feel like hearing me complain yet again):
Because The Selfish Seamstress can always find something to grumble about, I do have a gripe with this pattern. I love the style and the fit was great (I made the size 0, and I didn’t edit a thing except to shorten it at the hem). But the pattern was FIFTY-ONE pages. It took more than a tenth of a ream of paper to print out a simple skirt pattern. (If I were to mention this on BurdaStyle, I would undoubtedly be assaulted with a firestorm of “Stop complaining, it’s free, and if you don’t like it, shut up and don’t download it!” type responses. I do love BurdaStyle, but a lot of people there sure seem to love picking fights.) But seriously, it’s not that I’m too lazy to do the work of taping it together or too cheap to buy paper. But I don’t care for the resulting resource waste:
Moreover, the pattern itself uses sooooo much more paper than it has to because the skirt front and back are not drafted on the fold! Instead of creating half of a skirt front and half of a skirt back and instructing the sewer to cut it on the fold, the pattern includes an entire skirt front and an entire skirt back meant to be cut on a single layer of the fabric, even though there’s no reason not to cut it on the fold. Also, the drafting is slightly off so the skirt pieces aren’t quite symmetrical down the center. If one were to use the pattern as drafted, one would actually end up with a less symmetrical end product than if one were to cut it on the fold. I folded them down the middle to figure out why my polka dots weren’t lining up quite right and found this with both pieces:
See how the sides aren’t drafted the same, and the hem isn’t quite symmetrical either? I went back and shaved off the overhang so it was symmetrical and then my dots matched up after that.
I discovered this after also finding that the Sidonie skirt pattern used 26 pieces of paper because they included separate pattern pieces for the skirt and the skirt lining, even though they are exactly the same with the exception of a 1 5/8″ hem allowance on the skirt and a different grain marking.
Each of these patterns used nearly twice as much paper as they should have. I realize that they are patterns intended to appeal to the beginner sewer, and pattern companies assume less and less sewing knowledge as time goes on, and do more and more hand holding with patterns and instructions. But I think even a beginner can handle a very simple concept like cutting on the fold. Are the pattern producers worried that a beginner, confronted with only half of a skirt front pattern and asked to double it in a symmetrical fashion would misunderstand and put zippers on both side seams??
Anyway, this may seem like a petty gripe, but the truth is that task of assembling printed patterns doesn’t annoy me, even if it takes an hour an a half. What bugs me is that the assumption that even the most basic of sewing techniques, such as cutting on the fold, will be too challenging and discouraging for a beginner and the resulting repeated lowering of the bar (do we really have that little faith in people’s abilities and motivation?), combined with unnecessary environmental wastefulness which seems to run so very counter to the reasons why so many of the new generation of home sewers are attracted to making the idea of making their own clothes in the first place.
Oh well, I can’t say I didn’t get a fun skirt out of it :)
Yesterday’s poll was pretty enlightening. If your predictions are correct, things are going to go very sharply downhill in Selfishland while Dan is out of town for the next week. Top predictions were:
Sink full of dirty dishes (158 votes as of this writing)
This is a distinct possibility. Cereal bowls and yogurt spoons mostly probably. Unless I stock up on those drinkable yogurts and eat my cereal by the fistful straight out of the box. Hmm. Good ideas, good ideas. Of course, I haven’t eaten anything yet today so as of now the sink is still empty.
Sharp increase in online fabric shopping as surrogate for love (158 votes)
Possible, but I’m also holding out for a little shopping in Seattle, so it’s possible that some restraint will be practiced. I’m trying to work through some stash this week though, and if I do a good job that may give me the false sense of security that pushes me over the edge into some sort of late-night online fabric shopping spree.
Malnutrition (117 votes)
See “Sink full of dirty dishes” above.
Picking on cat due to unfulfilled need to pick on someone (113 votes)
Never! Baby kittums can do no wrong in my eyes. Don’t be ridiculous.
Blog oversharing resulting from lack of social interaction (112 votes)
Hmm. I would say this is probably unlikely. I think I’m pretty good about keeping personal stuff personal and avoiding the TMI. You never know though- I could get unpredictable because I have my period right now.
Big pile of finished sewing projects (107)
Well, this might be a bit optimistic (though to be fair, “Big pile of unfinished projects” wasn’t too far behind in the votes.) But I have decided to work through some stash, as I mentioned a moment ago, and although Dan has only been gone for about an hour an a half, I just finished this Sidonie skirt:
Pardon my bad face day. I didn’t actually make this skirt in 1.5 hours. I started it last night while Dan was packing and finished it this morning. Sidonie is a BurdaStyle pattern which I downloaded back when most of the BurdaStyle patterns were still free. It’s as no-brainer as a lined skirt with a zipper can get. Bias cut with just two back darts.
I used a gorgeous wool remnant that I purchased from Vogue Fabrics in Evanston back in April for $7.50. I had intended to make a skirt with it when I bought it, but I hadn’t thought to do it on the bias (don’t you love a bias plaid wool skirt?). And since I decided in favor of bias last night, I had to do some serious, serious fabric acrobatics to cut this out of a mere 3/4 of a yard. First, I eliminated the back seam and put the zipper on the side (I like this so much, I see no reason to make this with a back seam in the future.) Also I had to eliminate the narrow waistband because I didn’t have a long enough continuous piece of fabric after cutting the front and the back. And finally, I shortened the pattern and made about as narrow a hem as you can possibly make on a fairly heavy wool.
And this fabric- this is REAL wool. I love this stuff. It loves to be ironed aggressively with tons of steam, and it’s gorgeous and cooperative and scratchy and flannelly and so very very scratchy (I know I said it twice)! I don’t know if I could even have stood it if I had been able to add the waistband. The only issue I had with this plaid was that it was somehow slightly warped even though the plaid itself is completely square. I had to really force it to be symmetrical on the bias and despite lots of tugging and grain straightening attempts, the skirt is still ever so slightly lopsided. But I don’t think it’s noticeable to anyone but me.
I was completely obsessive about matching the plaids, as you can see from the photo of the side seam above. I even adjusted the dart placement slightly so that he plaid would be mirrored on either side of each dart:
And I did the zipper by hand, as usual:
As you can also see, I did a little topstitching at the waist for some stability and to mimic the look of the missing waistband.
Instead of using regular lining fabric (I am finding the usual lining fabric linings on my skirts to be increasingly annoying and uncomfortable) I used some very posh, smooth Vera Want knit that I got from Fabric.com some months ago. It was described as “luxe” and it certainly is- it’s got a creamy, cool, weighty feel to it, and I had purchased it with a goddess dress in mind. However, when I received it I found that it had sort of a sickly off-white shade to it, the aesthetic of which reminded me of nothing so much as a … um, are you allowed to say “condom” on a sewing blog? Um. Anyway, it’s turning out to be a wonderfully luxurious and comfortable lining for a heavy, scratchy fabric. (Actually, I just noticed after taking the pictures that the lining is a little bit long and you can see it in that first picture. I guess I’ll have to take another inch off of it.)
Oh, and I’m wearing it with my Minimalist Cowl top, the pattern for which you can download for free.
Okay, I was going to make myself some lunch, but I think I’ll get started on another skirt instead. More later!
The one calming and centering presence in the life of the Selfish Seamstress, Dan, is going out of town tomorrow for a whole week. And you know what happened last time Dan went out of town. Undoubtedly sloth and chaos will be unbridled and entropy will ensue.
(The rainbows are there to taunt Peter, a.k.a. one of the sewing bloggers who is NOT marrying Dan, no matter what scheming he may be up to.)
At the same time, all of the Selfish Seamstress’s normal scheduled evening activities (namely dance classes) are on hiatus until the start of July. And for her, idle feet often mean idle hands. And idle hands… probably don’t feel like cooking dinner for one.
So here is the question. What will become of your Selfish Seamstress over the following weekend and week before she heads off to Seattle? (Thank you for all of your fabric store suggestions, everyone!) Check all that apply, or suggest your own outcomes!
Did I miss anything?
The Selfish Seamstress is heading to Seattle for part of next week to bring her own special brand of attitude problem to the mellow Pacific Northwest. In addition to attending a wedding, picking fights with random people on the street, and irritating waiters by summoning them with the phrase, “Hey you, granola boy, can we get the check here?” she’s hoping to squeeze in a little shopping time. Oh, you know what kind of shopping.
So, granola girls, have you got any suggestions for stuffing the Selfish Seamstress’s suitcase? Favorite haunts for the hobby seamstress? Please share – I need to know in order to go there and buy up all the stuff that you wanted for yourselves.
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You always give up |
Check out the Selfish Seamstress Store for haiku goodies- proceeds will be donated to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.
The silver leopard print satin that I used to make the now the destined-for-my-mother’s-closet Drama Queen Jacket (McCall 5487) was actually purchased without a plan in mind. I generally try not to purchase fabric without having a specific garment for it, as I try to keep my stash relatively small (though it has been growing a bit in recent months, to my chagrin.) But in a way, leopard is its own kind of neutral and makes sense for a variety of garments, so there was no doubt that I’d find a use for it. And I guess I did.
But prior to deciding on the jacket I was playing with the fabric in front of the mirror, and I wrapped it around my waist and turned to Dan and said, “How about a pencil skirt?” He looked at me and his eyes lit up and he exclaimed, “Oooh, cute!” And while I’m not generally the type to make an effort to cater to my guy’s taste in matters of dress, the delighted expression on his face sort of sealed the deal. Plus it did look pretty cute as a quasi-skirt. I did all kinds of interesting fabric acrobatics when cutting out the McCall jacket to make sure there would be enough left over for something like this J.Crew skirt ($138 and sold out!):
Don’t worry, I won’t style it like this. I will not tuck a tie into my waistband and I will (probably) brush my hair. Sloppy-from-the-waist-up is a look that models can pull off and make it look intentional and chic. On me, it’d just look, well, sloppy from the waist up :)
One of my prolific sewing-blogging heroes has been whipping up adorable pencil skirts right and left lately and doing plenty of legwork on pattern and style reconnaissance. Unfortunately for me, I don’t have any of those patterns, and I decided that I should just put on my big girl panties and draft one already. I mean really. A pencil skirt is practically a sloper, and I already have one of those. And what’s the point of having taken drafting classes if you can’t be bothered to flex your drafting muscles every so often? But the thought of pulling out the craft paper was somehow so daunting for your very lazy, Selfish Seamstress.
So I went with the easy route:
That’s the high-waisted pencil skirt #138 from Burda’s main collection, I think only available as a download. It was on sale for 99 cents (lots of their downloads are on sale at the moment on the German website – just be sure you’re comfortable navigating the German online ordering system if you want something because I am not going to hold your hand and translate!), and that seemed to be a fair price for some continued laziness. Here’s their finished garment photo:
As you can see, the model and I have practically the same figure, so I think this should work out just fine.
The Selfish Seamstress has decided to take the moral high road and forgive Dan after yesterday’s unfortunate Burda incident. As a gesture of goodwill, I graciously permitted him to take photographs of my newly finished Drama Queen Jacket, McCall 5478 (now out of print) rendered in silvery leopard print duchesse satin.
The lining is some silvery teal slightly iridescent rayon that I discovered in my stash. I think I purchased it in Germany back in 2007 and didn’t even realize I still had some. Awesome. Lining fabrics are one of those things that always seem to be lacking in my stash.
I really loved making up this pattern. The draft is great and the fit was perfect (it’s one of those patterns that have difference pieces for A/B, C, and D cups). All I did was grade it down to a size 4 and do a petite alteration as marked on the pattern, and it was spot on. I omitted the pocket flaps and added two inches to the length, and I also skipped the back tab thingy because I wanted to be able to wear this with a belt.
The back has a pleated vent with an underlay and it makes for a very flattering peplum shape- not too exaggerated as to be silly, but just a little bit of flare:
Oops- I see a loose thread that I need to clip there. The prescribed method of attaching the lining at the hem doesn’t make a lot of sense to me because you’re supposed to stitch it over the pleat underlay, which would essentially render the back vent non-functional. Instead I did an invisible hem on the lining and let it hang free, which I sometimes like to do with my jacket linings anyway.
I did two self fabric covered buttons for closure. I could have done a third one, but given that I wanted to belt it, I decided against it. 
I’ve seen a few people style this jacket with a turtleneck, and the envelope itself has the model wearing a turtleneck under this, but I don’t think I could work that look. With this dramatic open portrait collar, a big swath of fabric underneath wouldn’t work on me. Plus, I like putting my clavicle on display.
Oh, I got bitten by a mosquito while we were outside. Yes I know I’m not supposed to scratch it, thanks mom.
Final verdict on this one? Nuh-uh. Elizabeth recently wrote a very thoughtful and interest post about “wadders” and learning from sewing mistakes. And it got me thinking about the various ways in which a project might not work out. This is one of them. From an engineering standpoint, this jacket is a success. It came together well, and it fits great. But cute as I think it is, it’s just wrong for me. As soon as I put it on for Dan to see, he made a face and said, “It’s a little, um… mature for you. It looks like something your mom would wear.” Ordinarily I would have responded to this by ignoring him for days, and opening my mouth only to say, “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you,” in response to his queries about why I was upset. But the truth is that Dan said exactly the same things that I was thinking when I was making it and trying it on in the process. It’s just not right on me.
Ultimately, this jacket feels costumey when I wear it, like a poodle skirt or leisure suit. I can’t see myself wearing it- certainly not to work or out to dinner or to a wedding. Women in their 30s don’t wear dressy suits to weddings, they wear dresses. I also tried it with skinny jeans and tall, high-heeled cordovan boots, and it doesn’t dress down enough either because it’s satin. I could rock this at some sort of vintage-themed cocktail party, but how often does that happen? For any actual real-life events it’s just a bit too wealthy Park Avenue dowager. Maybe in 10 years, we’ll see.
But Dan (and I) are right about one thing- it would look terrific on my mom. She could wear it over a black sheath to a wedding and be a knockout. So I guess she’ll be getting another something in the mail along with her Swallowtail Shawl!
Don’t worry though – I plan to make this great jacket pattern up in a more sedate fabric so that I can wear it to work, and I’ve got plenty more of the leopard fabric earmarked for a hot pencil skirt that I will keep.
I guess I should have seen this coming in light of yesterday’s discovery of the 50-foot tall Burda Professor. Dan arrived home a little while ago from his trip abroad to get me the July 2010 Burda issue, and as soon as he got in the door I pried it out of his bag with my selfish little hands, looking desperately for the coveted pants that I’ve been lusting after and…
… of course. It’s the one pattern in there for the extra tall girls. Burda sizes 72-88. Duh, how did I not see that one coming? The model is a freakin’ Amazon. (Though to be fair, I have seen issues of Burda in which they used the same model for both the tall girls garment and the petite girls garment, so you can’t necessarily guess based on the model.)
Needless to say, I was mad. “Can’t you do ANYTHING right?!” I screamed at Dan. “You get your sorry butt back to Frankfurt and YOU. FIX. THIS.” But after I punched a hole through the wall and calmed down some, I decided that it wasn’t worth sending him back because he’d probably just return with some lame excuse about having checked every newsstand in Germany and how all the Burdas were the same. Which would mean even more days with no one to cook dinner for me, and still no viable pants pattern. So I sent him off to the bedroom to think about what he did.**
I’m not sure what my plan of action is now. I may just try to draft a similar pair of pants myself. Going from a pant pattern designed for extra tall ladies and editing it for my sub-petite inseam is probably asking for trouble, given all of the weird pulling and sagging issues that can occur when you start messing with the crotch/hip/tooshie area of an existing pants pattern. I don’t know.
The Selfish Seamstress is just going to ponder why nothing ever seems to go her way while eating some of the cookies and chocolate Dan brought back for her from Europe. Poor, poor Selfish Seamstress.
** It is also possible that Dan may have just wandered into the bedroom himself and passed out from jetlag. It’s unclear.
Hi Readers.
I assume that most of you are here because you have some interest in sewing and found your way here at some point via something else sewing-related, like BurdaStyle or Pattern Review or another sewing or crafting blog. And I also suspect that there is a teeny tiny handful of lurkers who have little interest in sewing but are personal friends and acquaintances and who have managed to find my blog and are spying in hopes of discovering something that they can use against me.
As it turns out, there is also one personal friend lurker who has (to the best of my knowledge) little interest in sewing and has managed to find my blog, and is now passing some good stuff my way to show to you. Hi, Steve! Thanks for the link!
Check out what Steve found- awesome illustrations by Hong Kong-based artist John Woo of Star Wars characters wearing designer clothes. No joke. Like Darth Vader in Band of Outsiders!
Or a scout trooper in Viktor & Rolf!
The whole collection is called He Wears It, and I’m not sure if the prints are available for purchase. But wow, what great sewing room decor they would make for! [Full disclosure: The Selfish Seamstress is a Star Wars nerd. The Empire Strikes Back is her all-time favorite movie. Largely because of the AT-AT battle scenes on Hoth. What. Shut up.]
First of all, the technical drawings are now online for the 7.2010 BurdaMag. And the issue is continuing to look very good.
Better still, they’ve got some new images for the finished garments, and that “Campus Style” feature just keeps getting better and better. By which I mean taller and taller. Remember the image from the early preview from last week in which we all had a good chuckle about the tall hot professor surrounded by her preppy elfin male students? Why, Professor Burda, you’re beautiful!
Well, it would appear that in the final cut, Professor Burda has only grown more towering!
Those young men barely reach the big floppy bow of her pristine white blouse. She’s got to be about 7 feet tall here, right? As a professor herself, the Selfish Seamstress can say that this is not what she looks like when chatting with her students. Then again, she doesn’t teach Advanced Barbershop Quartet courses like Professor Burda apparently does.
I hope we see more of Professor Burda in the future though- maybe next time she’ll be doing something like this:
And with an unusual figure like that, you know she’s got to be sewing for herself.
As I mentioned previously, I sent Dan off to Frankfurt to pick up a copy of the July 2010 Burda for me. And as I alluded to in yesterday’s poetry, this leaves your Selfish Seamstress in the position of being at home with no one to cook supper for her. Hrrmph. That Dan can be so inconsiderate sometimes. What about me? WHERE’S MY DINNER?
The silver lining in all of this negligence and inconvenience is that it’s left me a little more time to sew in the evening. Since I’m not wasting time sitting down to dinner and using precious seconds grunting one-word replies to his pleasant conversation, I’m making good progress on my leopard jacket. No, not that leopard jacket which is still hanging unfinished. Instead I wanted to do some absolutely mindless sewing. (Not that the first leopard jacket is terribly complicated, but I don’t feel like doing the fiddly work of transferring my fit alterations back onto the pattern so I can cut an identical underlining. Whew, my attention is wandering just typing about it.)
So here’s a sneak peek at my latest low-effort, high-drama project. It’s not finished yet, but it’s assembled enough to bear a strong resemblance to what it will look like when it’s finished.
With Dan out of town (again, what about *my* needs?), and Sasa giving her usual “But I have paws and also I’m sleeping” excuse, I’m back to taking slightly fuzzy photos of myself in the bathroom mirror.
The jacket is made of my silvery leopard print duchesse satin impulse buy from which I wanted to make something va-va-voom-y. I’m not sure if you can tell from this angle, but it does have a little smidge of va-va-voom to it. I think I like it so far- the cut is fantastic and the fit is spot on right out of the envelope (after I graded down a size). My only concern is that it’s a wee bit on the cougar-y side. Not cougar print, but cougar lady. I’m not sure if the garment reads more “vintage-shop-funky-chic” or more “maybe-my-nephew-has-some-cute-friends-at-college.” I don’t mean to say that I think I look like a cougar in it, but perhaps like I filched something out of a cougar’s closet :) Anyway, it just needs some finishing at this point, after which I’ll show it to you in detail (once Dan is back to do my photo-taking bidding), and you can tell me thumbs up or thumbs down on the final product.
Oh, and I actually *did* cook myself a proper supper last night. As for washing the dishes used to make and consume said supper, surely that can wait until Dan gets back. He’ll need something to occupy his time when the jetlag keeps him up. See how I’m always thinking of him?
The Selfish Seamstress 