Happy New Year!

And Emmy's Christmas dress!
Happy New Year's Eve, everyone!  Hope you all have fun doing whatever you'll be doing tonight.  I'm going to my sisters' and will be eating way too much food and likely drinking way too much champagne.  Cheers!
Here are the photos of Emmylou's Christmas Dress, to close out 2011.  I LOVE this dress!  She did too - it was adorable.  Are there pictures of her in it?  Of course not.  :/

I got her this little snowman brooch... isn't it darling? :)

Mad happy with my improving zipper skillz.

So there it is!  What do you think!?  She wore it with ivory tights and black patent Mary Janes (of course, right?) and a little black rosette in her hair.  Ridiculously cute. :)
For reference again the skirt and bodice are Butterick 4718, and the StayPuft Marshmallow sleeves are from Simplicity 2674.  And there is a boat load of tulle - I basted it to the skirt(s) and then serged it to the bodice as one happy skirt/tulle unit.  And the sequin belt is jacked off a store-bought dress. :)
I hope you all have a wonderful and safe weekend, and a great start to 2012!  I am SUPER looking forward to a new year!  Love to all!

Christmas Dress Progress

Hello, and happy weekend!
Thought I'd pop in and show you the progress I've made on Emmy's dress!  Behold!

So cute!  :D

The giant sleeves aren't as bad as I thought... I still have to hem them & put in the elastic though, so the poof factor may still go up.

WHOLE buncha tulle!

I used ribbon to hem the skirts, and I like how that worked out.  The skirts have a very hoopy look.  Adorbs.

Gold neck binding - how festive!  :D
All I have left is finishing the sleeves and putting in a zipper!  Yay!And I think a skinny patent leather belt is in order, no?  And I'm on the hunt for the perfect holly berry corsage. :) 

Have a good weekend everyone!

Oh Hi, Blog!

 
Hello friends of yore!  How is everyone!? I'm a little stunned that it's been over a month since I last posted.  Geesh!  Thanks everyone for sticking around, and I'm sorry you've had to look at that depressing satellite map for a month!Want to know what I've been up to?  Come! In no particular order, here's what I've been doing.

• I made this log thing after Snowmegeddon.

Actually, I shouldn't say "I" made it... Here's a brief tutorial:



FIRST: throw yourself a big, freak snowstorm party before a single leaf has fallen off of any tree.  Make sure you have at least 14 inches of the wettest, heaviest snow you can muster, so that you're sure to kill/maim as many trees as possible - for optimal log selection.

SECOND (not pictured): take a chainsaw to the poor fallen bubs, and pick yourself out a nice log.

THIRD: ask Handsome Husband to get out the power tools & drill holes for you.  Tea lights are a convenient inch and a half wide, so get your significant other one of these (below) for Christmas, and you can carve tea light holes into every horizontal surface in your house.  :)

Lastly, spark'er up and enjoy!  Cute, non?  :)

• I ran my first 5k!

Yay!!  Now, I've only been running for a few short months, although I used to run a lot like, a decade ago.  Me and my male BFF did pretty good!  Meaning, we didn't come in last and second to last!  :D  We're planning on running a lot more races in the near future!

I love running because I have ridiculous amounts of mental energy that spill over into the jitters (ADHD much?), and I just feel this incredible need to go flying out the door.  It's especially good for me when I have no time to sew and be creative - that energy needs to get out somehow, and I can bump out a few miles in the time it takes me to trace out a pattern!
  

• Emmy had squash.  And liked it.

A lot.

• My in-laws came to visit!  It was a wonderful week!  We went and chopped down a Christmas tree & then dressed it all up, took a leisurely drive through Bright Nights, and Emmy got to really reacquaint herself with her Nali's (Navajo for grandparent).  It was lovely!  :)

♥

• I have been sewing!  But since all I'm sewing right now is Christmas presents, I can't post about them until after the holiday!  Bummer!  (that's going under the assumption that my family still reads my blog... :)

BUT!  I am also making Emmy's Christmas dress, and being fairly certain that she does not read my blog, I can show you!

It's just in pieces right now, but I can show you what I'm working with.

This is the original inspiration:

Source: zulily.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Gorgeous, right?

So I'm doing a frankenpattern mash-up to make something similar.  I'm using this pattern for the skirt & bodice.



B4718

 The skirt will be in shiny red satin and a textured (dupioni-ish) green satin, and the bodice & sleeves are in ivory stretch velvet.  I'm using the 3/4 sleeves from this pattern:

 

S2674

But my stretch velvet is like... really stiff.  I'm pretty bummed about that and I don't know how the fabric will handle all that volume in the sleeve.  Emmy's going to look like a linebacker, and I've come to a place where I'm ok with that.  There's just no time, people.

• Suggested to Emmy that maybe she oughta help out and make her own dress.





Don't touch my thread tension, kid.

No dice, she wants to quilt. :)

• Been spending a lot of time with that sweet little one above, and a lot less time internetting.  My Reader has been at 1000+ for weeks, and to be honest, I couldn't care less.  There are a lot of blogs I love to read and be inspired by, but there are also a lot that are - for me - just time consuming and inspiration-sapping.  Do not want.  So now my evenings involve a lot of singing and dancing, and very little farting around on the computer.  I still hit Pinterest pretty hard though.  ;)  

Kokopelli training



But I think with a much-needed time management overhaul, I can once again become a more-than-once-a-month blogger.

Stay tuned for the finished Christmas dress, will you?

And if you made it through this whole post then you get TEN interweb points!!  Woo!

Love to all!