Sewcialists, We Have A Winner!

Thanks to everyone who visited the jury blogs to cast your vote. We had a total of 191 votes. That's wonderful! I know it doesn't mean we had 191 individuals voting but it's still nice to see that a lot of you voted multiple times. We appreciate you taking the time.

Thanks to Make Magazine the winner will get:

• A 1 year subscription to Make magazine generously offered by our official sponsor Make

Thanks to individual donors (this is not coming from Make: Magazine), the winner will also receive:

• A $100 cash prize
• A custom ipad sleeve

I know you want to know who won. I am glad it was so hard for all of you to decide. That is a good thing to tell these awesome designers! They did such a good job it was hard for all of you to choose.

And the winner is?!

JOOST!

GO Make Your Emblem Here!

1st Runner up: Anne

2nd Runner up: Sabina

A big congratulations to Joost* and all designers for their hard work.

What are you going to do with our new Sewcialists logo? First, head over to Joost's site and choose your colors. I totally did this already. You should see the new logo on my upper right hand of the blog. Click on it and you'll go to our sewcialists.org site. There's some background ideas kicking around with what we would like to do there to make it a social site. Stay Tuned!

Now, what to do with your customized logo? Well, some ideas:

• Put it on your blog
• Make an iron-on transfer and iron it on a t-shirt or a tote
• Sketch it on your Trapper Keeper (do these still exist?)
• Stencil it on your sewing machine.
• Make Stickers!

What shall you do with our shiny new logo?

*Joost asked that we donate the money to a charity. We decided on Boston and Bindis, which you may have heard about from Madam Oona. If you feel like it, its a worthy cause.

This 'n' That

I'm not really sure where to start this post. Its a mish-mash of personal stuff that's vaguely related to sewing. More like it falls under the category of "domesticity".  I threw a fit of epic proportion in the last month due to the lack of consistent help around the house. We're slowly working on a system of shared responsibility that works.

 This was my long weekend week, but it felt short because the first two days were taken up by a day of liquid diet and then my colonoscopy. So two days of very much unpleasantness. I now have visual confirmation of diverticulosis and we're still waiting on biopsy results. Here's hoping for a clean report.  The doctor said he is quite sure that I do not have celiac disease, and that I might be gluten sensitive after I told him cutting back seems to help. And I have a life of no red meat and high fiber diet to look forward to. Not that hard for me.

Vogue 8701 Skirt Hanging Out

However, after those two days, Friday turned out to be an extremely productive day in the sewing arena. I managed to a large amount of prep work and I now have a pile of things to sew. About five, I think? Hopefully this weekend I'll have the sewing machines smoking, after I sleep in on Thursday.  This included cutting out a black version of the Candy Plaid dress and sewing up the skirt to hang during the week so I don't have to wait to hem it later. This is a rayon/wool gabardine blend (but drapes like crepe?) from Fabric Mart.

I also ordered the Laurel from Colette Patterns and started working on some ideas for the contest. This was one of them:

Please disregard the mess behind the dress form.

This was a drape approximate to the silhouette I hope the Laurel will provide once I change the darts to French ones. I have several pieces in my stash that could be just the right size for this. I do hope I can make this pattern work for me. I have many ideas and it would be easy for work wear. Win/Win

Other things I did this weekend included make laundry detergent, and re-arrange the linen closet so that it doesn't look like someone just shoved everything in there haphazardly. Out of this I now have a pile of mismatched/worn out sheets ready to be used for muslin or costuming. I also recovered my ironing board in fabric that makes me smile.

Fabric came to me from Mother's stash.

Oh! And I bought some water repellent cotton drill from Fabricmart to make the new Sewaholic trench coat pattern. I requested to have a copy put on hold at the local fabric shop when they come in. This stuff is beefy and will give me an excuse to break out Mom's Viking (beefy/viking... get it?). 

If I have the energy during my work days, I may cut out another Tiramisu in a lovely lavender rayon knit in my stash. My thinking on this is that I won't have to change thread after sewing up my lavender TNT blouse. Its all about efficiency.  And I have a muslin of Gertie's pencil skirt cut out. That one should be a fairly easy fit and sew.

Then I may be ready to tackle pants (trousers). Felicity wants the yellow jeans I promised her, too. And some super simple curtains for Simon's room. AND, I still have a friend's RTW jacket that I offered to repair oh... months ago.

So that's all that is on my plate. What have y'all got going? Sewing or otherwise, I want to know! Make me feel like I'm not the only one with crazy busy work load, please?