Ottobre!

Well, I received three sewing magazines this week in my mailbox, which was SO wonderful given that wedding + work + life in general have been crazy. I was not super impressed with this month's BWOF. That deeply saddens me, because circa 2008 I was head over heels in love with tons of outfits in every issue. However, I also received issues of Ottobre- one womens and one kids. I've just flipped through so far, but it seems pretty nice. Hmm... my BWOF is up for renewal this summer, and I may change to Ottobre or Knipmode instead. I know they are more expensive, but if I'm not making anything from BWOF, it's not worth saving money on patterns I won't really use.

In other news, our wedding invites are *mailed*. Finally. I had a whole adventure creating and shipping them. I ended up letterpressing the invite and RSVP card by myself at a letterpress studio over in Williamsburg. They came out SO beautiful. Here's a sneak peek at the card, with the amazing texture inbetween the ship's rigging in the ship in the bottle.



Was I crazy for letterpressing them? Yes. Was I crazy for chosing a square shape, which meant we paid extra postage? Yes. Did I end up at Staples at 9 AM on Sunday morning, buying a paper cutter to trim 1/8" inch off the invites because they wouldn't quite fit in the envelopes? Yes. Did I stamp all my rsvp postcards, only to find out that the postage rate was going up 1 cent on Monday? Yes. So. They are mailed though, and guests are beginning to tell us that they're appearing in their mailboxes, which is the important part!

For the curious, our paper was Crane Lettra 110, and I printed my plates at Boxcar Press. I wrote about my letterpress class back in November in a quiet weekend.

I was at my doctor's office the other day, and he gave me some advice I'm going to be taking to heart in the coming weeks. I haven't talked much about it, but I've suffered from migraines since I was in first grade. They kind of come and go, and the last three years have been particularly bad. I try to stay grounded, but dealing with severe migraines, with a fiance who is away on his ship most of the time, and wedding planning, plus my job has been... interesting. I've been cycling through various medications over the last year, and my current doctor has been godsend because he agrees with me that medication should not be your front line preventive care.

He was just married last year and so at this visit we were again talking about avoiding migraines on the big day. He said, "You have to ration out your emotional reaction and your glucose intake that week." Which cracked me up, but it's so true. (Yes, as you can tell from that, plummeting blood sugar is a big trigger for me). But especially when you get invested in projects like "Let's letterpress the invites!" or "Let's sew a wedding dress!" it can be hard not to let the projects ups and downs keep you from an even keel.

What do you think, when you put a lot of effort into a huge handmade project, do you feel that setbacks effect you deeply? Is the awesome result in the end worth putting weeks into one complicated project, or do you like smaller ones?

So how is that wedding dress sewing going here? I'm coming along on fitting, and I hope I'll have some great trial version photos to show here this weekend. As a reminder, this what the lace top will look like:



and here is the skirt & under-the-lace-top bodice: