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Don’t get me wrong- a nice long weekend in the mountains with the parents and the in-laws is nothing to complain about. But if anyone can find something to complain about, it’s the Selfish Seamstress. After all, lovely wildflower hikes, spectacular waterfalls, and paddling out into the middle of a turquoise glacial lake can’t compare to freakin’ sewing the second sleeve onto Camicia No. 9 and being done with it already!
Fortunately I managed to sneak in a tiny bit of sewing time before bed last night. Ta-da! Here is Camicia #9 from the May 2010 issue of La Mia Boutique:
Although it looks as though I’m making my usual “Elaine Can’t Model for Squat” face, this time I was actually watching a hawk that was circling my balcony.
Here it is, shown with my new-and-already-beloved Vogue 1051 alice + olivia pants:
You may recall Camicia No. 9 from some time back, when I got annoyed with the crazy sleeves, and then put it aside for a while after getting distracted by other projects. As you can see, I abandoned the sleeves that LMB intended and replaced them with sleeve variation A from McCall’s 6035. From a design perspective, I think this sleeve harmonizes nicely with the ruching at the front bust of Camicia No. 9.
I’ve been getting a ton of mileage out of the 3 meters of plum poplin that I bought several months ago- from Dan’s Valentine shirt to the Burda tux dress, and now Camicia No. 9. The Selfish Seamstress prides herself on her mad economical pattern layout skills. In fact, the Selfish Seamstress prides herself on pretty much everything. Did I mention that I finally trimmed my nails this weekend? Go me. Anyway, there’s probably even enough poplin left for a dainty sleeveless top. But at this point, the first chill of autumn is in the air and as you can perhaps tell, and I’m already all over my “back to school” autumn sewing.
How about you? Are you starting up on autumn sewing yet? Or still stuck on summer? Oooh, or in the southern hemisphere, gearing up for spring sewing?
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.
My body has no idea what time it is. The time change caused me to lose an entire day, and the near round-the-clock Finnish sunlight is also throwing me. I don’t know if I slept an entire day or haven’t slept in a day and a half. All I know is that it doesn’t matter. Why? Because of this sweet haul (Please pardon the cameraphone photos):
Whoo-hoo! Patrones 291 , May La Mia Boutique, June Burda, and the Spring/Summer Ottobre. (I refrained from buying the May Burda, Burda Easy Fashion, Diana, Verena, ONLine, and Filati. See? That’s what we call restraint, kids.)
First up, LMB. Sometimes LMB is a little too out there for me, but this issue has lots of stuff that I like:
Ottobre is never really my style, but I really like this top:
And this pretty vintage-inspired coat:
And you’ll notice that they also have a feature which is based on American classic cinema, with that “can’t put your finger on it but something’s not quite right” flavor of awkwardness that comes from a not-quite-native fluency in American pop culture. Above we have our good friends Giles Davis and Minnie Holiday in “Rue de Jazz” featuring the “Silky Smooths!”
And the timeless Suri Loren in “A Trip to Remember”:
And of course, who could forget Gerry Cooper’s and Marjorie Kelly’s star turns in the sultry classic, “Orchard of Passion”?? Only ol’ Gerry could make holding a peach look so steamy:
But the definite star of the bunch is Patrones. I was a little disappointed at first to find that I had arrived in time for one of Patrones’s “Fiesta” issues. Although the clothes are usually pretty, my need for evening dresses is low and my desire to sew them is even lower, so I usually don’t have much use for the (often slim) Fiesta issues. But wow, check out some of these lovelies, which could easily be adapted into less formal fabrics for knockout office wear or dinner out:
Love it!
As for Burda, I think we’ve done a thorough job covering the June issue. But I wanted to share with you a terrifying tidbit in the July preview that almost escaped my notice. Remember when I revisited a pair of Burda issues from 1981? I prophesied that the trend of belted athletic shorts would reappear in this year’s July issue. Well, it turns out I was mistaken- the frightening 1981 trend that is returning just in time for July is…
Sleeve ruffles. ACK!!!
I would say it’s going to give me nightmares, except that I think my jetlag will keep me wide awake. Miss you guys!
You may recall that the last thing I did before closing my laptop prior to takeoff as I set off on my trip to Switzerland was to post a question about where to go to find good sewing stuff here. As it turns out, I managed to make a new acquisition before even landing at my destination. This, my dear readers, is surely a trait of a very skilled Selfish Seamstress- the ability to sniff out the slightest opportunity to add to her stash. How does one do this? Simple. The answer is “stopover in Frankfurt.” Oh yes, I had just a slim 55 minutes in which to go through a ridiculously congested excuse for a line at passport control, navigate miles and miles of airport corridor made ten times more convoluted because of construction, and go through security yet again with both body scanning and bag searching despite the fact that I didn’t have a crochet hook this time. Even so, I managed to snag the November issue of La Mia Boutique:
LMB is a bit of a dangerous magazine for me because it’s a hard one to find, and often I mistake the joy of discovering it with enthusiasm for the actual content. In actually I’ve only ever made or wanted to make one garment from LMB. But when I’m in Europe where one can actually find sewing magazines if one knows where and when to look, I tend to get a little bit crazy and buy them without considering whether I’d really make anything from them, simply because when I stumble upon an issue, it feels like such a rare treat. Ugh. (Last time I was here, I even bought an issue of Ottobre. Why?? I know I never want to make anything from Ottobre.)
I did succumb to LMB (but to give some much-craved credit to my self control, I held back on Rebecca, Verena, Diana, and Burda), and there are one or two nice basics I think I might like to make:
Sorry for the bad pictures. The first garment is the fitted white shirt with big French cuffs (not the trouser/wrestling singlet combo), and the second is a cute coat with big pockets and topstitching. Here are the technical drawings so you can see better:
Nothing super interesting, but I’ve been wanting a fitted basic shirt pattern, and I think coat would look cute in cream cashmere with a belt. And that’s probably it for me and this issue. But I do have one question about the magazine. Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to do the model’s hair and lipstick like this???
*Shudder*
The Selfish Seamstress 