analog me

Virtual Sewing

What do you find more likely to make you actually get something done: great inspiring ideas--or time on your hands, a need for escapism, panic even?

Right around the New Year I cut out a new dress. I t was on one of those days when I wanted an excuse to clear everybody else's junk off the dining room table, claim it as my own, and then barricade myself in my room to sew. Then I got that amazing sewing book with so many mind-boggling concepts. I have been sitting around with my nose in it making bodices, slashed and spread. I have mentally cut and tucked and gathered. The skirts I have flared and pleated and godeted. . . amazing, I tell you. Plastrons? Oh yeah,  I have mentally sewed about 6 of those. . .

Somehow, now the thought of getting back to sew some real seams seems a bit like drudgery after working on a virtual wardrobe that's been perfectly executed. This is how a fine imagination combined with a good source of inspiration can lead a person astray. . . 

Anyway, this weekend I VOW to get back to sewing this.

The pattern looks like the late 70's or even very early 80's (right before shoulders exploded to the proportions of steroid-swallowing football players) and the fabric is most definitely from that era.

It's sort of pretty in an ugly sort of way. I always get sucked into the fabrics from pattern illustrations and this pretty perfectly matches that dress the witchy looking babe in the center is sporting.

It never was my ambition to sew from this era, but somehow, I think this could be very wearable.

So this is going to be my re-entry to sewing for 2012!

Umm, am I seriously deluded? Maybe this is horribly ugly. 

Buried Treasure: Part II

The Book Trader is a pretty tame name for a strange store in our area that seems to be the owner's bizarre combination of used books, taxidermy, collectibles, erotica, and fortune telling apparati all crammed into the smallest possible space and priced to make enough money for the owner to acquire more stuffed animals and phrenology supplies. (Yup, even the Yelp reviews make entertaining reading)

I went in here once about ten years ago and vowed to never return when I turned around in one of the tiny aisles and found myself nose-to-nose with a molting stuffed squirrel. 

So when my husband said he wanted to check it out I said "No you don't, it's scary." He said it looked interesting. Then I remembered that the last time I was there I had a four-year-old who almost destroyed a curio stand full of statues made out of dried frogs posed in human-like poses. The place could be interesting sans preschooler and I would be prepared for the squirrel this time.

the squirell was gone but the place is still semi-horrifying and overpriced. I thought that the right person could probably find a treasure in there if they spent the next five years looking for it. But I didn't see myself as that person.

Until I hit the crafts section. What did that aging cloth-bound book spine in the quilting section say? "Modern Pattern Design"? Hmm, I managed to reach across the artificial owl without getting old chicken feathers stuck to my arm, and pulled out something promising looking.

Modern Pattern Design by Harriet Pepin

Probably crap, I thought and then cracked it open to this:

A treasure for the sewing geek with vintage pattern-making aspirations!

Mine all mine! I inwardly cackled and then looked around nervously imagining that another sewing geek with vintage pattern-making aspirations was lurking behind the stuffed elephant foot ready to wrestle it away from me. I was safe! and although 15.00 dollars seemed like a lot for someone on austerity measures to spend on an old book, there was no way I was parting with this baby. 

Looking at it I thought that some of this looked a bit familiar and now I see that it used to be up on a vintage sewing site and you can still find some here. 

Now all I can think about is plastrons, godets and swagger silhouettes.

My resolutions to sew useful clothes are coming under attack.

In fact, I don't quite remember my resolutions, wasn't there something about a swagger coat?

A bodice sloper? Didn't I vow to draft one?

I'm sure I said something about godets!

New Years resolution: eschew distractions, set my own challenges

I have been cogitating on my New Years's Resolutions, formulating my thoughts, for some time.

One great thing about the internet is that I see and read so many outrageously enviable things that inspire me. I tend to read what others are doing, saying, making and then think, "I want to do that too!" Often that's a good impulse that makes me to expand my thinking.

And sometimes it's a bad thing. I join challenges that distract me from my true course. I make things I don't need. I say, "Me too!" when I should really be thinking about what I want and need to do.

It looks like my near future is filled with economic insecurity. My eldest son will go to college (GULP) and jobs are up in the air. This year I need to set goals for myself that will help me and my family keep to our path. So my resolution is to stop distracting myself with endless possibilities, stop jumping into challenges that don't really expand me in ways I need right now and to instead examine where I want to be and put my energy there. Also, I need to save money, so my projects are going to all be about using what I have right now.

Of course, I'm going to keep sewing and making stuff and yakking about it, because that keeps me going. I am always inspired by the Me Made Months because that is a challenge that has truly transformed me. I want to continue doing more designing and I want to immerse myself in color, because that's just what I'm feeling like right now.

So, I Sigrid, am going to set my own challenges for myself this year and I will put my shoulder behind them (even if I want to run off and sew all the new patterns in the Collette pattern book I got for Christmas). 

And I'm going to find that camera battery I sem seem to have mislaid. (Oh yeah, I am going to do a double spell check too!)

Year in Review

Thanks to the heads up from Mizz Kalkatroonaa, I'm giving Thinglink a test drive for the Analog Me Clothes I Made 2011 Year in Review. (If you hover over the individual images, you can link back to all the original posts.)

So, looking back to last winter I see that I was mostly tweaking my very own designs (the skirts) or adaptions of the free Lydia pattern.

The cream colored tops and the gathered front skirt have become staples. The plaid skirt is very pretty but reminds me of sad times so I have never worn it again. The cowls require a sort of sartorial commitment that I rarely feel up to. Plus, I am really sick of brown clothes. Looking at this, I remember I want to get back to designing more of my own patterns. I really need to make a PDF of the skirt pattern, if I can figure out how to do that with some free software. Any ideas? I really love it when people take off with my ideas and make something even better than what I could ever envision (like this too.)

When I started sewing again a few years ago I was mostly refashioning. That was a much smaller focus in 2011, partly because I wasn't so happy with a lot of the results, and partly because I want to have more control over my sewing projects from start to finish. Here are last year's refashions.

The Pillow Case Sorbetto became a summer staple, and I wore the blue dress several times and felt great in it. The pillow sham skirt is so silly I only wore it 1-2 times, but how can I part with that print ? Am I going to have to cycle it back into a sewing machine cover ? The grey sweater is dowdy and depressing and the green thing never fit well, but they are both cashmere, so they are doomed to be chopped up again for re-refashioning. I already turned the grey sweater into a good hat.

Colette Patterns inspired my favorite garments of the year. The Orangey Ginger might be my favorite creation of the year and the black and white batiste top was my most worn summer shirt. The blue wool flannel skirt is warm, drapey, comfortable and looks great—a winter instant classic that is already covered with cat hair. By the way, these were all made with really great quality fabrics I thrifted. I probably spent about 10.00 on all the fabric. They also all owe a lot to quality notions, like ribbon, trims, good lining fabrics, hem lace and good thread so I probably spent an equal amount on notions. The Sorbetto patern was free and the skirt pattern a bargain at 16.00.

Some Surprisingly Sucessfull Things. I thought I would only wear the Chicken Dress to the State Fair, but I actually wore it several times--most memorably to a Imelda Mae show. (Oh, that woman can sing AND dress!) The plaid skirt is great fun to wear on a fall day and the blue pants are actually pretty good looking considering they have an elastic waist (they were the most expensive garment of the year— I probably spent as much on that linen as on all the other fabric combined.)

 From the Land of the Unblogged, and something I should have left unblogged.

I had such big ideas for styling the Difficult Top and Crazy Skirt,  so they were doomed to be left in the Land of the Unblogged. I love them both, but they are not easy to wear-- perhaps a bit too dress-up for me. The printed skirt was a success and needed a better photo venue than the alley but it got cold and life went on. . . I couldn't blog those scarves I made from about 20 different sweaters because I sold the design to Interweave Stitch. That was my first foray into selling a design! Lastly, I sorta wish I hadn't blogged my jamies.

 

I am knitting less. I used to always try to have a knitting project in progress so I could work on it in the car or while I am waiting for something else to happen. But I am just not that great at multitasking. Over time, I found that I was either ignoring people or making weird knits due to knitting while distracted. This is about all I made this year.

Hmm, Quite a mish-mash, but there are definitely some trends. My style seems to be out there mixed with conservative. The color palette is brightening up, which makes me very happy to see. The Colette patterns made the most sucessful clothes, but I am really glad that I pushed myself to draft so many clothes that were wearable. A vintage theme is evident, but my favorite era appears to be the 1970's.

 

It's been a long year and I'm glad it's over. Thanks for hanging out with me Y'alls!

 

An Unusual Christmas Day

 

To be honest, I didn't think that touring a sapphire mine on Christmas Day sounded very appealing. In fact, as we descended into the pitch dark mine shaft in a growling, diesel fume-belching, dirt-hauling machine, I panicked. Looking back, I saw the entrance and light get smaller and farther away and said, "I need to get out."

I figured I could just walk back out and wait in the light for everyone else to get out. Luckily, one of my cousins and an old-timer miner, Lou, got out with me and basically forced me to walk in. So we let the machine go ahead and then walked on in with just some flashlights to push back the black. At first, all I noticed was that we were going hundreds of feet underground into a damp, dark, dirty, dank, silent hole in the earth. You know that sort of sinking feeling of going into whatever black hole it is that you are looking down? That's sort of what I felt like. And then the miner started pointing out the vein that holds the sapphires.

There were whole caves lined with crystals.

And, just think, if it were not for our flashlights, this

would just be total darkness. Lou showed me some big carboard boxes hidden behind a crystal dome and told me that he had enough explosives there to blow up a small sized city. That made me smile.

The smell of the earth was actually clean and fresh. And there was a snow white, fluffy fungus that looked so delicate growing on the mine shaft floor.

A whole underground world right there under me feet—like an inverted reality. I have been through these mountains so many times before, but never imagined all this existing underneath my feet—and it is actually incredibly beautiful.

In a way, it's a lot how this year has been.  Sometimes, looking down into the darkness, I have thought just get me out of here. But then, you go on, someone takes your arm points out something, you look a little more closely and think, Hey, this is beautiful too.

And then walking out, the light is so bright. (That's my handsome husband.) 

I think we might have a new family tradition. Thanks Lou, you were a great guide.

HAPPY NEW YEAR !