Years and years ago, I had this fun (yet rather odd) novelty fabric. I was on a food-themed fabric kick, and decided to make a skirt. This is the fabric I used, along with McCall’s 5330 View B for the pattern. Its got bread, pasta, olive oil, cheese, grapes, and a few other things, with text in Italian. The pattern I decided to use was one I regretted afterwards, as my weight at the time gave me more of a belly than was good to have (is any belly good to have?) and the three box pleats at the front of the skirt accentuated the bulge. It just was not a good fit or a good style, and now that I’ve pulled it out of my closet at my mom’s, I’m also seeing what a fantastically bad job I did at sewing it. :sick:
Tonight I continued on my trek through my old sewing, tearing it almost all the way down, ripping out all the seams except for the center back one because it actually looks okay and I don’t think I’ll need to rip it out to make any real modifications. I did have to rip out the zipper though as I’ll have to re-size the waistband dramatically so it had to come off too.
I tried the skirt on before ripping it apart (but did I take photos of it before? Nope.) and its at least 2 full sizes too big, and those pleats in front are really uneven and just badly done. The plan is to take off about an inch from each edge of front and back at the sides, remove excess fabric from the waistband, cut a second waistband piece to sandwich this piece with and cut interfacing to match for added stability. I’m also going to redo the pleats, but not box pleats- just normal pleats- I don’t know what you would call them, so I can at last make them look good and even without a lot of fuss and bother. Either way, I am hoping to add another wearable skirt to my wardrobe before the weekend is over, though I’m not quite sure what I will wear with it. I do have one black tank top I think.
I also did some work on cleaning up and organizing my craft room Wednesday night. I bought (from Closetmate) a 6 foot shelf with the hanger rod below it and installed it all by myself. I’m especially proud of this because I only screwed it up a little, kind of smashing one of the wall mounts with the hammer, and setting another one about 1/3rd of an inch too low so its not really doing much unless I put some serious weight on the shelf. I’m currently waiting on some file boxes to arrive so I can organize my patterns that are for sale and stack them neatly on the shelf, along with all of my beading and sewing books and catalogs.
As of right now, the shelf has all of my books, but none of the catalogs on it, and that huge pile of clothes on the end of my sewing table are temporarily folded and stacked on the other end of the shelf. I’m hoping to find some plastic hangers for cheap at the thrift store this weekend so I can hang up the clothes I have listed for sale, as well as the clothing that are in various stages of repair or being re-made.
I’ve also spent some time in there doing some dusting and general cleaning, as the window doesn’t seal properly and a lot of dust and dirt ends up all over my beading table’s back edge.
And the best part is I paid an average of $0.40 a piece for them! They are all in pretty good condition, just some cover or dust jacket wear, and they all have some cool patterns in them.
