Saturday, June 30, 2007

like i said, i'm no good at this

so my life has been consumed by various forms of insanity, along with my general apathy towards being current with this sort of stuff. my draping 1 teacher has gravely underestmiated me, and instead of turning in one simple dress for the final in two weeks, he's going to get a complicated dress, a bolero jacket, a blouse, a skirt, another dress, and maybe a pair of pants if i get that far. needless to say.....i have a lot of free time and i'm a little shit sometimes. i like challenges though. i started turning bowls on the lathe at work last week and i've made two so far. its funny to see people try to understand why a fashion major who would wear heels and a dress every day if she could would be in a face mask and a canvas apron with a gigantic chisel in hand. my first bowl is this chunky thing with 1" thick walls but i put all my little sewing machine bits that were floating around my apartment in it and its made my life easier. so my second bowl was a little more skilled, even getting a rare aproval from dustin, and i put all my pins in it. i've got about 10 blanks now, so i guess i'll spend my mindless days of august in the fairly unglamourous state of wood turning. so i finally finished that damned knitty pattern too. it looked pretty cute on thursday when i wore it to class but i'm still undecided about the whole elastic band thing the pattern calls for.

so here's some shit i've done recently. i'll hopefully have some pics of my draping exstravaganza soon

here's the first dress i made with annabell, she was most helpful. it was really weird wearing a dress that was essentially strapless considering that's not some thing i have the luxury of finding that will fit me properly
and this is a dress i threw together in all of 20 minutes. its just a simple shift dress made of jersey topstitched with white thread and then pin tucked horizonatlly. i thought about doing two verticle pin tucks, but i ran out of time since i was making it before school
this i think came from being pissed off at american apparel's raised prices. its a knit i bought in london. the sleeves are kimono and gathered at the cuff. there's a big long sash at the waist that can be tied all over the place and the edges are just serged. i think i'm waiting till fall to wear this onethis one's defintely my favorite of the stuff i've made recently. its plaid dupioni silk. the side front and backs are on the bias and there's a red sash around the waist that on closer inspection is a polyester with ginko leaves as the pattern. i've had that red fabric for years and i finally got to use a bit. its super cute and i'm going to wear it tomorrow to the taste of chicago

Thursday, June 07, 2007

yes yes i've been so damned busy...or just apathetic that i haven't really found a reason to write anything. i've actually sewed a few dresses, so once my appartment gets cleaned enough for me to not be mortified to have it as a background for my pics, i'll put up some stuff. i got my dress form today, and i'm really happy to throw that damned adjustable crap from joann's in the closet. i threw on one dress just to check how it looks and i think like anything i make now will look fantastic compared to how it looked on that stupid plastic piece of crap. yeah it was nice....when i was making a prom dress in high school. speaking of prom dresses, i got bored in draping today and drew up a sketch of like the world's ugliest prom dress. its all tight in the bodice and then it gets below the knee and POOF, as in like 5 layers of POOF. and we're talkin taffeta here too. it makes me shudder just to think of it, but now i'm really tempted to make it as my draping final.

as for my knitting work, i'm still working on that damned knitty belle epoch pattern. for the love of god it is taking forever. but two days ago i got Unexpected Knits, and i'm getting that ADD itch to start a new project. i kinda felt like the stereotypical response to a "mindblowing" experience because after reading the book i felt like my entire view of knitting had been drastically altered. i'm thinkin i'll stop by loopy yarns tomorrow and pick up something. what i think i really enjoyed about the book was that the author (i'm too lazy right now to play steeplechase across my appartment to go look up her name) didn't so much give patterns for everything, instead she explained the technique and showed various garments and pieces she had made from said technique. It was more like, i'll show you how to do it and then you have to go the rest of the way yourself, which i definitely love way more than monotonously reading a pattern. speaking of patterns, once i get my appartment cleaned up i'll take some pics of my end of the semester knitting work