Love a Long Weekend

This weekend I:
- went to the farmer's market
- had a long-ish run
- made iced tea (twice!)
- painted my toes "gunmetal" from Sally Hansen
- made Strawberry and Cinnamon Basil Popsicles
- watered my plants (often)
- got inspired to lift some weights. Should be inspired more often. Ouch.
- finished listening to "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" on audiobook
- sewed. A lot.



This is the second thing I made. The first will wait for another post. I am absolutely thrilled with how it turned out. It was directly inspired by this dress Melissa made. When I saw this dress, I had one of those "gasp-step-back" reactions that happens occasionally when you find something that you absolutely adore. I loved the stripes, the pockets, and especially the way the bias-cut sides meant the stripes made as very flattering V with the princess seams. And the princess seams which work very well for my body type. The pattern is Simplicity 2591, and it fits reasonably well. Of course, liking something and fitting it to flatter are two different things, but this worked out just fine. The only thing I would change is to make the neckline smaller and the armholes a bit higher and narrower.
It's made from a cotton/poly blend in a white and grey stripe. It does actually make your eyes swim a bit in florescent light, as it appears to do in these pictures, though 98% of the time this is not an issue. To have fully copied Melissa, I would have needed a wider stripe, but we work with what we have. I followed the pattern exactly except for two things, both born of necessity. I did not interface the neckline facing. If I make it again, I will, but I had very, very little interfacing to begin with and I managed to cut two left back pieces instead of a left and a right back piece. Having no desire to go to the store, I ditched it. I also inserted an invisible zipper instead of doing a lapped zipper. It was so easy and painless, I may never use a lapped zipper again! Seriously. I have all this anxiety about zippers because I've never managed to do a lapped zipper that didn't look like an intermediate home sewer put it in, so I bit the bullet and brought out the invisible zipper foot. I'm so glad I did. No more anxiety! Plus, it just looks better.

Though there are a number of pieces to this pattern, it is not particularly difficult to sew. The handwork at the end took nearly as long as the machine work did. That is a hand-sewn hem my friends, and though it looks... um... unprofessional from the inside (apparently, it takes some higher form of education than I possess to iron in a straight line), it looks great on the outside! Next time I might try using hem tape instead of double folding the hem. There will be a next time, no doubt.