Flounces in Color

The best color in the whole world is the one that looks best on you.  

~ Coco Chanel

While I spent the majority of my sewing time last weekend working on Ana's skirt, I did manage to put in a few minutes on the 3 dresses that I am making for the daughters of my friends at work.  

I had already attached the flounce to one dress:  

Last weekend, I got the flounces basted on to the other two dresses.  First, Minnie with her white polka dots on red:  

Second, a teal flounce to accompany teal birdies on a yellow background:  

I just used the natural width of the contrasting fabric and it turned out that my flounces didn't need much gathering - they'd probably look cuter if I had started with a longer length.  

But I'm still pretty happy with them.  :)

Let's see if I can finish up these little cuties over next weekend - fingers crossed!  

Gratuitous Kitten Picture

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

~ William Blake

I never noticed the symmetry in her fur until this pose...  

Christmas Present Unwrapped

The gifts that one receives for giving are so immeasurable 

that it is almost an injustice to receive them.  

~ Rod McKuen

Last Christmas I gave my friends Margarita and her daughter Mariana one-day passes to one of the water parks in Central Florida - Discovery Cove.  They redeemed their passes over the holiday weekend and here are some photos from their adventure:  

Discovery Cove has an aviary, where you can feed the birds.  As you might imagine, this has resulted in VERY friendly birds!  ;)

There is a "coral reef" exhibit where you can swim in (chilly!) salt water with lots of beautiful tropical fish and this "river" for humans only, where you can warm up afterwards:  

The highlight is the 30 minutes or so that you spend in the water getting to know a dolphin.  There are kisses:  

A ride:  

And some belly rubs!  

The dolphins are well trained, but that doesn't mean that they aren't still wild animals - very large, very strong and at least somewhat unpredictable wild animals.  At one point, the dolphin assigned to their group was distracted by another dolphin and the trainers hurried all of the people out of the water while the two dolphins "played" and "flirted" - which I imagine was probably the P.G. rated explanation of what they were actually doing...  ;)

They had a wonderful day!  Some gifts are worth the wait...  :)  

Maybe You Should Sit Down For This...

Leave it to me: I'm always top banana in the shock department.

~ Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's)

Are you ready for a shock?  I have sewn!

Yes, all it takes is an extra long weekend and I can finish all my regular chores AND get into the sewing room!  :)

Oh, and a project deadline doesn't hurt either...  ;)

I was able to make Ana's skirt.  The first step was the waistband - here it is with a 1/2 inch wide elastic around the top:  

There are 10 skirt panels.  They are sewn together along all 11 side seams (to form a circle), before the pleats are put in.  The pleats are stitched closed such that they contain the side seams:  

Here you can see one of the pleats being opened up:  

Given that there are 11 pleats, I realized that if I was off by even a small amount on each one, it could add up to a serious mis-match with the waistband.  So, I only sewed 10 of them:  

Then I lined the skirt up with the waistband and used the mis-match to figure out exactly how large to make the 11th (and last) pleat:  

It worked like a charm!  Here's the finished skirt:  

You can see that I left the elastic hanging - Ana can do the last fitting step of pulling it to the length she wants, stitching the ends together, trimming the excess and closing up the small opening in the waistband.  

I sure hope Ana likes it!  :)

It felt so good to sew again!  It looks like I'm probably going to get a long weekend every week, starting mid-July and continuing through to the end of September - thanks to the upcoming federal government furlough.  Maybe I'll have enough time to put a real dent in my queue!  :)

Measurement Math

If you cannot measure it, you cannot control it.

~ John Grebe

Well, recent events have conspired to disrupt my sewing queue.  As you may remember - and I can barely remember because it's been so long since I've been able to do any sewing! - I was working on clothes for my friends' assorted babies & toddlers, when Ana asked me to try to sew her skirt this weekend.  

The main issue is size.  The smallest size on the pattern is size 4, and Ana is probably a size 0 or maybe -2.    ;)

One good thing - the pattern I'm using has elastic around the waist - greatly easing the challenge of fitting!  (Another good thing - it can worn at just about any level between the waist and the hips.)  

Anyways, she gave me the (circumference) measurement representing the line (somewhere between her waist and hips) where she wants the top of the skirt to sit.  I added 3 inches for ease and the side seam allowances, then divided that in half and used that number to modify the skirt yoke:  

You can see below how I just folded the pattern along the sides to get the length I wanted - happily, the yoke pattern is a perfect rectangle!  

Next up, the skirt panels - there are TEN!!!!!  Yikes!  

Anyways, I took the amount that I had reduced the yoke pattern piece and divided it by 5 to figure out how much to reduce each skirt panel.  Then I divided that number by 2 and reduced each side of the panel by that amount.  

Again the sewing gods were smiling on me, because the skirt panel pattern piece is symmetrical.  

As with the yoke pattern piece, folding in the sides of the skirt panel pattern piece worked, with the minor exception that I had to make a small snip where the pattern flares, to allow it to lay flat when folded back.  

Finally, just to make sure everything would be okay, I worked the math backwards - I measured the width of the side panel and figured out how wide it would be after I assembled the 5 panels:  

It turned out that it didn't work out exactly right the first time.  Thank goodness I checked!  Luckily, I still had the pleat size to work with!  The pleat width in the pattern was 3.5 inches - I played with the number in Excel and found that a pleat width of 3.25 will get me pretty close to having the yoke and the assembled skirt panels match in width.  

Phew!  

As I read back over this post, I see that some reference to good fortune occurs 5 times!  If you are going to try to sew something long distance - without being able to take measurements yourself or do any fitting - you aren't going to get a better pattern than this!  ;)

Now that I've got the numbers all worked out, it's time to cut!  Yay!  Actual sewing is occurring!  :)

Teaching English with Norman Rockwell

I paint life as I would like it to be.  

~ Normal Rockwell

One of the best investments I've made for my ESL class is a set of 11 x 17 inch reproduction prints by Norman Rockwell on scouting.  I use these images for all kinds of language activities in class - speaking, listening comprehension, grammar lessons, you name it...  

They are perfect in so many ways - full of concrete, every day objects and relationships - each is different, and yet there is enough overlap that I can pull a set of 3 or 4 images that have a lot in common.  

This summer, I am using the images to get my students to generate language and to reiterate two key grammar concepts that we have been studying all year - constructing negative sentences and questions.  

First, I break the class into groups of 3-4 students and give each group an image.  Then I ask each group to generate a series of positive statements about their image.  

Once the positive statements have been generated, we reconvene as a class and practice turning them into negative statements and/or questions.  

Here are some examples that my students generated last week, based on the two pictures above:

Image #1

There is a dog.

The boy is on top of the chair.

The man has exercise equipment.

The boy's pants are blue.  

Image #2

The boy is carrying two big bags.

Father wishes luck to the boy.

Mother says goodbye to the boy.  

The dog is happy.  

I'll leave it as an exercise to my readers to turn those positive statements into negative statements and questions...  ;)

It Never Rains...

Bring in ideas and entertain them royally, 

for one of them may be the king.  

~ Mark Van Doren

I've had this beautiful, pink, cotton pinstripe in my stash for a couple of years - just waiting for the right pattern to come along:  

Then, yesterday, I get my Burda Style magazine in the mail and find - not one - but THREE patterns that are all clamoring to be made up in a beautiful, pink, cotton pinstripe!  

One contender is this shirt dress.  The only thing I worry about is the vertical darts on either side of the center front - I'm not sure how well they'll work with the pinstripes...  

Another possibility in the dress category is this wrap-around summer sun dress.  The fabric is the perfect weight and I think I could keep the pinstripes lined up - although I do like the design shown here of a solid bodice and flowers in the skirt.  

Finally there is a blouse with a mandarin collar.  Unlike the model in this image, I don't really think it's a "prissy" shirt and would wear it buttoned up.  ;)

Why do ideas keep coming to the party alone, instead of bringing some free time with them?   ;)