AWOL BWOFs

Remember how optimistic I was last week that I'd get all kinds of BWOF sewing done this week while I had a few days off? Yeah. No sewing has been done since Monday morning. Family stress, for one- I just had absolutely zero desire to sew anything at all. And I've been plowing away at another project for a while, which kind of consumed me this week. And will for months, really... I've been studying to take one of those 6 hour professional exams, and although it's on a topic I love (internt security, which I'm sure is incredibly dry to most folks!) the study guides kind of deep fry my creativity if I spend too long with them. Here is one of my study guides, sitting on top of the poor pattern pieces for bwof 02-2009-129.

Here, I'll share some of the insanity from some sample test questions:

What type of cryptographic attack rendered Double DES no more effective than standard DES encryption?

Which one of the following network attacks takes advantage of weakness in the fragment reassembly functionality of the TCP/IP protocol stack?

Lots of fun, no?

the second blue dress

First, here is my niece in her blue dress:


I had forgotten that kids in diapers have baggy bottoms- and the drop waist kind of gets "caught" on the diaper! Funny looking, indeed. The dress is actually not quite as big as I thought it was going to be, but she had a few tshirts on underneath.

And this morning I finished up Kate's matching dress. I held off putting any velvet ribbon on it so that it could be machine washed. Instead I found a satin ribbon bow tacked up on my bulletin board, so I stitched that onto the dress. You can't really see it, but I added a few small gathers in the skirt directly under the bow.

one blue dress

This is a super 80s style kids dress pattern from my pattern stash. (The copyright date on my copy is 1987.) I thought it was kind of cute as a drop waist dress, so I made up view B for Ana. Here's the envelope:



Here is the dress for Anabear:



I added a back neck facing to make it easier to construct and avoid any hand sewing. The collar and the fold back front facing were interfaced with a light weft interfacing. That collar was a HUGE pain. It wasn't drafted terribly well, so it was very finicky clipping and stretching to attach it smoothly. Now that it's on, it doesn't really lie very flat- hopefully that's just a hanger problem and it will be better on Ana. I cut a size 2, but it looks like it's going to be a bit on the big size, as I guess is standard for big 4 toddler size patterns.

ribbons

Two shades of blue velvet ribbon and some eyelet lace, from Daytona.

I was going to sew something for myself from the new Feb 2009 BWOF, really, but these kind of caught my eye. They go really nicely with a blue paisley print that I have (the one that contributed the trim on the bottom of my polar bear PJ pants), so I think I need to whip up two small blue dresses with pretty velvet trim first...

enough winter

from parons
Originally uploaded by wck

See that stripey material? It's bathing suit material! Clearly I've had about enough of 20F and freezing days and snow. I made a bunch of Kwik Sew bathing suits last summer... wonder if I should pull out the pattern and make a new one, then hang it up on the wall as a "summer may one day return" reminder? ;-)

Blue

An article on New York Times today: "Need a Creative Boost? Find the Blue Room"

Hmmm.... my sewing loft room is a bright blue. I've long thought that I wanted to paint it white, but the amount of work involved in stripping of the blue and repainting it has kept me from bothering. Add in that the smell of paint (even supposedly low fume, environmentally friendly ones) is a migraine trigger for me, so I'd have to stay out for a week or two and pay someone else to paint it, and the blue has stayed put so far. So I thought this was interesting article- definitely more incentive to keep being lazy about repainting, for sure.

Superbowl sewing

I love the little south facing dormer window nook that my sewing machine is in. At this time of year, I get a lot of direct sunlight pouring, warming up the corner and making for some wonderful sewing light.





This morning I made up another dress for Kate to wear to school. I bought about a yard of this pink butterfly print at JoAnns because it screamed Kate to me. The sleeves and skirt band are from some black seersucker that I bought almost 2 years ago at Gorgeous Fabrics - actually my first order ever from there. I made myself a skirt from it back then, and I've been using the rest here and there.



I had a ladybug button left over from Ana's dress, so I stitched it onto the front band. That pink trim is just a teensy scrap of flannel backed satin that I fished out of the "doll clothes" scrap basket.



This pattern is extremely similiar to Simplicity 9497, which I made for Kate this summer. Same high yoke and gathered skirt and collar (although I omitted the collar on this version of 7667):