What Do You Wear To an MRI?

Hi there, how are you? Me, well, its been an interesting ride.

When in doubt, wear red. - Bill Blass (or Coco Chanel)

I made this dress a while ago but I figured, in the spirit of Sew Red October, I would take photos of it now. I love this dress, but not because I think its extremely flattering. Its Simplicity 2369, the third one I've made. The other two were a poly/lycra blend that's much better at not showing all your lumps and bumps but this one is a bamboo rayon. What I love about it is the color, the soft drape-y scrumptious feeling on my skin, and the color. Did I mention I love the color?

But about the title. The last six months since admitting to myself that I needed to take control of my health my life has been full of doctor visits, tests, sleeplessness, exhaustion, and painful epiphanies of how much I really can do in any given day. In there somewhere was having to go for an MRI with contrast. That meant no metal, easy to get to my arm for blood pressure and IV, easy to slip off shoes, and no jewelry. What I'm wearing here is how I'd wear it out, or add a slip and pantyhose for work, but for the MRI I wore flats and left all valuables at home. But anyway, before the MIR I was trying to decide between the three wrap dresses in my closet. And it had to be a wrap dress because I wanted to be able to take my bra off without undressing completely (cause under wires aren't a good thing to wear inside a giant magnet). After much consideration I finally settled on this one. Because RED. It gave me a bit more confidence to get through the day.

I even got multiple compliments from the staff as they liked how comfortable it looked and that it was such a bright color. I decided to tell them I made it and they were suitably impressed, which made my day.

Some Details:
Pattern: Simplicity 2369, size 18 straight up
Fabric: bamboo rayon from Fabric Mart. I bought it the day it went up even at 14.99 a yard because I knew this wouldn't last long. I was right. But its 78 inches wide, I only used 1.75 yards to make this!
Time: about 4 hours give or take
Cost: 20 dollars, which is a steal for a bamboo rayon dress.

So this dress stays in rotation regularly. I have two other colorways of this same fabric (bought ON sale :) ) but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it.  I guess that's all for now.

Super Dress Kawaii!!

Hi!

Hi y'all. Miss me? I know, I've been absent from bloglandia of late but for good reason. I've been trying to get my health in order. If you follow me on the numerous social media sights you might have heard me complain a bit about it. So these photos are to make up for that. And because you knew this wig had to come out again eventually.

#bitchyrestingface

This is Simplicity 2369 and its the third one I've made. I put up a single photo of the first one last summer and never got around to taking more photos. Its view C but with B length dress.  This is the perfect pattern for hourglasses and insane prints. And as it turns out this dress is a serious conversation starter for geeks. If I wear it out for errands its like "OMG, she's one of US and I can talk to her and not sound crazy!".  Which happened to me after this photo session when I ran to the grocery store. Ten minutes after checking out I was still talking to the clerk about Dragon*Con.

somone's gonna get it

I totally used my daughter's room for these photos. I confess I cropped out part of a bed and some dirty clothes. 

This is my pimp hat.

Because everyone needs a purple velvet pimp hat with leopard trim.

More bitchy resting face. 

I'm totally going to use this as my profile picture now.

Stats:
Pattern: Simplicity 2369
Fabric: From fabric.com its an ITY knit I bought a couple years ago for about 2.99 a yard. I used about 2ish so four dollars.
Time: Oh, I dunno. I cut it out in an hour one day and then sewed it up in about three a week or so later. Ok, that's a lie. I spent about four hours one evening trying to get the cover stitch to work on this fabric. It wouldn't. And the next day I couldn't get a double needle to work. This fabric DOES NOT LIKE TOPSTITCHING. Which is also why I  didn't bother hemming it. Fortunately, it ain't raveling.

Who me?

Hope you love it as much as I do! XOXO

Chipmunks, Toothpicks, and a Red Dress

My weekend did not go according to plan. At ALL. I had planned on starting my Kaftan Beach Cover-up but got sidetracked by laundry, teaching kids to clean, taking my daughter to urgent care, making a red dress, and chasing a chipmunk out the second story window. And not in that order.

I guess I'll start with the chipmunk portion of this, because its rather entertaining after the fact. We have four cats and a cat door, and we live quite a ways out of the city. This means that we get all manner of critters brought in as "gifts".  The problem being, some of them are perfectly fine and get dropped in the kids' rooms. I guess because they think the hairless two-feets need hunting lessons? I dunno.  In any case, we thought we had managed to take care of them all, but when I went into Simon's room I found that his hamster food had been ransacked and was all over the floor. I was like "Did you do this Simon?" and he was all "I haven't been here in three days!". Obviously the hamsters were still in their cage.

So we went back to cleaning and I went back into his room just in time to see the chipmunk jump behind the toy box in the middle of the room (don't ask). I'm fairly certain this is the same bugger that's been eluding us for two weeks now, as part of his tail was missing last time, this time it was healed over. I had Felicity stand at the door and Simon over by his book case. And I tried desperately to corner the little bugger with a towel, a feat I repeatedly failed my dexterity role to accomplish. Every time it headed for the door or bookcase the kids would make loud noises and scare it back to the other side of the room. At one point it even went inside Simon's old computer case (empty) and I was all "TECH SUPPORT CHIPMUNK!". That solicited many giggles. So did the fact it jumped right through my legs three times when I had it cornered.  It was about then I noticed it kept jumping up toward the window from other random things on the floor.  This gave me the brilliant idea to open then window (which has no screen) and then herd it that direction. FINALLY it went for the window again, this time jumping from the little guitar amp, then barely over to the desk where it scrabbled for a hold for a second (while I held my breath), and then WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! out the window.  I stuck my head out and saw it land and run back into the woods. There was much cheering and elation on our part. I can't imagine what anyone happening by would have thought of that.

And then this happened. Somehow a toothpick managed to get on the dining room floor and Felicity stepped on it, hard enough it broke through all layers of skin. I didn't realize this until after my MIL and I tried to get out the piece that was stuck in there with a really sharp needle. This was pretty late at night and urgent care was already closed and it wasn't life threatening so we didn't take her to the ER.  We went first thing in the morning. Felicity was a real trooper, even though they had to use double the amount of local anesthetic (250ml!) to numb her foot. Apparently she inherited the "resistant to anesthesia" part of the red hair gene. This is what they cut out:




OUCH!  I  would like to mention that we did bandage it and give her some ibprofun before bed and tried to ease the pain as much as possible. Its unfortunate that the way US healthcare works, even with good insurance, emergency room would have been an 8 hour wait + $1500 or more bill, or she could sleep in her own bed and then just wait a few minutes at the urgent care center and I only have to pay $40. I'm gonna stop before I get on that soap box right now, though, because it gets me emotional. In any case, she went to her Grandmother's after we got back from the UC and got lots of attention and pampering.

Saturday was mostly quiet outside of laundry and cooking (I should do gluten-free cooking posts, maybe). About 3:30 in the afternoon I decided to go ahead and cut out another Simplicity 2369 out of the cayenne red bamboo knit I got from FabricMart. I bought it full price when they first came in and I was so glad I did, because it was the first color to sell out. You can get it in other colors here.

This was a quickie phone photo I took right before bed. I didn't finish until 11pm despite having to be at work at 6am (sewcialists NEVER do that, right?).  I normally can't sleep until about that time on Saturday's anyway, though I'm normally useless after about 8pm. I would not have tried to work on anything new or delicate while that tired. Its a straight size 18 and I only used 3/8 inch seams. Because it was such wide yardage (68"!), I used 1.5 yards of fabric, which puts it at a material cost of about $20 dollars. Four and a half hours from cut to finish, but that's only because I had to re-thread the serger and coverstitch machine twice each, due to order of construction. Remind me to buy more red spools of thread at the next 50% off sale. Though if you look at my start and finish times its much longer than 4.5 hours, but I was also doing laundry.

I'm considering trying out the (american) pant for this pattern. So far its all proving to be well drafted for a Big 4 pattern, so the pant/blouse combo might something super comfy for around the house and errands, without being yoga pants.

So. How'd your weekend go?

Braving the Heat!

Yesterday, since I needed to go downtown to Gail K's for foundation fabrics (batiste, organza, etc), I woke my husband up early and said "Lets go to Fernbank while we're at it! Planetarium is free today!".  Given it was 8am I had to convince him this was a great idea. We ended up having breakfast at the Landmark Diner since the fabric store doesn't open till 10am.  Unfortunately, we missed the first planetarium showing and the next one wasn't until 1:30pm and by noon I was asleep on my feet. That's like midnight for me! I'm getting old.  We promised a trip back another time to the kids. We did get to see the Apollo Six landing pod and Simon was all about that. I mentioned his Grandpa (my Dad) worked at NASA for a while but I can't remember if it was the Voyager (which just left our solar system!!) or the Apollo missions.

My absolute favorite shoes, too.

Anywho, I wore my newly finished Simplicity 2369 wrap dress (don't worry, I brought a change of sensible shoes) and despite it being a poly blend of some sort it was not bad even in the 100F weather. I tried to get good photos but most off them weren't even rescueable with photoshop.  This photo is just to prove I actually finished it.  Oh, bonus!  The lady that rang me up at Gail K's recognized the fabric, as I bought it there, and complimented me on the dress. That made me happy. :)

Later I'll have updates on the other projects and my husband the fabric enabler. I know right, who'dathunk?

In Which I use ALL the Machines!

Ok, first up, all give-a-ways are now closed!  I shall be rolling for the winners this weekend.  Also up for this weekend? Trying to finish the last of my knits that I cut out over a month ago, making my kids' beach outfits, and oh.. I dunno,  taking photos of all the outfits somewhere in there.

I might just pack all the un-blogged items  and take the photos at Jekyll Island, but that might be considered blogger cruelty.  HAHAHA.  Seriously, make this vacation get here or I might be on the news for all the wrong reasons. *ahem* Anyway.  So what's on my sewing table? Well, for starters, this:

These do not belong to my machine.

 See those little green bobbins?  Cute right? They go to my Mom's Viking (not pictured yet) and its a great machine, except I can't get it to wind a bobbin worth a tinker's damn. All the nicely wound bobbins in that box were done by Mom herself.  The one sticking up overfull and wonky?  Yeah... my attempt.  I've read the instructions multiple times and its just not working, and its not like I have an afterlife directory.  "Hello, Peter, yes please connect me to my Mom, I have an urgent sewing matter."   And quiji boards and seances are right out of the question too, so I had the brilliant idea to try and use my Brother to wind the bobbin.

On the left side of the ring, Brother! On the right, Singer overlocker!  Wadded fabric in the middle is one of four current projects. I'm a multi-tasker.

Small problem... they don't fit on the Brother bobbin winder.   Well crap. I know, I'll buy a Sidewinder!!  New problem... you have to get the DELUXE version for them to fit Viking bobbins. Which costs $66 instead of $26 dollars.  I think its a conspiracy against vikings. I mean the sewing machine, not my ancestral history.  Nobody pisses off those kind of Vikings, but I digress.  The whole reason I was going to use Mom's machine in the first place is because I just had it serviced and mine needs to go in the shop for some TLC.  Plan C, hook my machine back up and take over the kitchen table with the Bernina cover stitch machine.

Its a craigs list table. One day when I don't have  two dirt vortex catastrophe machines living in my house I'll invest in nicer furniture. And new flooring. 

Yes, I used all three machines. I'm just a few illegal immigrants short of a sweat shop. *badumdum TISSS*   So for those of you asking, no I'm not giving up the old serger because I've discovered having both is very convenient.  I have finally gotten the hang of making the cover stitch work on this machine, mostly.  You do have to fiddle with tension settings when changing fabrics.  The vaguely Asian looking knit below is being used to make Simplicity 2369 view A. The photo is the back side of the knit, its black and red on the correct side and a very yummy feeling microfiber knit. Unfortunately, its probably a polyester of some sort and won't breath well. Bad for outdoors in our insanely hot and humid weather, great for work.

Cutting knits is fun!

The reason for the cover stitch machine was to finish the hems on another dress from Vogue 8679. The hem turned out lovely, but the photo is really dark.

I then went to do a finishing stitch on the Simplicity dress front wrap piece and sewed it  wrong, not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES.  Coverstich seam ripping will make you want to rip your own hair out.  The fourth time was passable and I said "to hell with that" and left it.  No photo, at this point my son was awake, playing video games (his natural state) and asked "Are you yelling at me?"
"No, I'm yelling at inanimate objects".
"Oh good, glad to see you are feeling better",  (its been a bad couple of weeks) he says.  So yelling at inanimate objects is considered an improvement over the last few weeks.  This is why I need a real vacation, ya'll.  I'll also accept care packages of chocolate and vodka cocktails. But not molotov cocktails, those are illegal and make the postal workers crankier than me.

So, anyone else have seam ripping nightmares to share?? What's your favorite cocktail?