My Latest Project

I figured since I was making all these dresses for the Music Man, I should have something new to wear to the evening performance on April 11. So I hunted around a bit. I already had this fabric, that I got too late to do anything with for Easter (though mine is pink, not green):


So I hunted until I found just the right pattern:


I'm using View B.

This is the first item I made for myself in a long time. I also just got some jersey fabric at only $1.95 a yard to make myself another dress, probably a day dress for work.

A Day of Sewing...

More sewing away for the Music Man. This is much harder than I thought it would be, and I could always resort to premade clothes, but I think the effect will be nicer this way, in the end. I have just over a month to go and I intend to finish this off and see this through!

Here's the craft of the day for everyone! I modified a pattern to make this dress:



I also made this. It needs a lot of work:

Craftiness Update

As I have been neglecting craft month horribly with no projects this week (and just completely throwing nutrition out the window, as you can see in the below post), I thought I'd update on the crafts of the week. They are all sewing related and pictures will be up soon.

They're all for the Music Man:

1.) A dress and blouse for the Zaneeta Shinn character.
2.) A jacket, shirt, and skirt for the Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn character.
3.) A skirt for another one of the characters (it's red, but we don't know who it's for).
4.) An apron for the Mrs. Paroo character.

And much more to come... we have only FOUR Saturdays left. There's lots of work to do!

The Crafts are Calling...

Not to be outdone by nutrition month, the crafts want their place. Today I got all kinds of new scrapbook stuff in the mail and I can't wait to use it! I'm working on the summertime scrapbook and then will move on to the September-December book. Then I've got some other projects in the works.

Some samples from the "summertime" scrapbook (this is page one):



On the sewing front, Music Man has been going well. We've finished off Marian Paroo and are starting up on the others! I can't wait to see everything on stage. More pictures soon...

These Are a Few of My (Current!) Favorite Things...

Whether it be a new book, a new movie or a new activity, here are some things to try out (in absolutely, completely random categories). Note that I say CURRENT because these are the things I keep coming back to right now. There's a big difference between CURRENT and ALL-TIME (though scrapbook and the Harry Potter book probably fall under all-time as well).

Activity: Scrapbooking
My new favorite activity is taking all my pictures and putting them together into fun artsy projects. Makes them much more fun to look at and really narrows down the pictures. I did one last summer of all the pictures taken of one of my classes last year, and currently I'm working on 1.) a summertime scrapbook of all the summer adventures and 2.) a 2007 Year-End Scrapbook of all the events from September-December. Then I will keep going with these. They're time consuming though so don't be shocked if I go months after the event before documenting. It's a learned art, so I think I'm getting there. Here are two page samples:



Soups: Amy's Organic bean-based soups.
I like the minestrone, the lentil, etc. (And for the vegetarian members of the family - there's no meat anywhere in the soups; it's an all-vegetarian company.) This has been an easy way to take lunches to work. (And for the record, I don't like the tomato - I think it's like eating tomato sauce.)

Potential Travel Destination: Greece!
Never been, REALLY want to!

Book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
I know this has been out for six months already, but it's honestly the last book I read straight through without skimming

TV: The Office
I haven't liked a sitcom this much since Friends was on the air! My favorite character by far is Jim, but all the characters are funny and I can't pinpoint which aspect of the show I like the best! Here's just a small part of the interaction between Dwight and Jim:



Movie: Across the Universe
The basic idea is that it's a musical using all Beatles music - and how much of them you recognize depends on how well you know the Beatles, I guess (I didn't realize some of them were Beatles songs but I knew most of them!).



CD: The Music Man Soundtrack
I can't help it - I'm exposed to it A LOT these days! You'd think that would make me sick of it, but it has had the opposite effect for some strange reason...

I'm thinking there should be a theme to March... but I'm stumped as to what the theme should be.

Oh... and SOMEONE'S birthday is in 11 days... I won't say who, but I think you can figure it out...

Anatomy of a Dress, Take Three, Part One

The next part of the Music Man costuming saga. Here's the plan for dress # 3. I haven't really taken too many in progress pictures, being too eager to finish and not knowing where the camera was, but you can see where the project is going.


The bodice of the dress. I thought it was too bland for the stage, which inspired the plan you're about to see.


Using the other bodice option, I cut the pattern and used the other bodice option with the inset, making a - for lack of a better way to describe it - suspender-type effect. This fabric will also be the sleeve cuffs as well as the sash.



The dress, roughly constructed. It's pretty much just pinned together, so it doesn't quite give the look it will once done (not to mention the fact that I'm using a CHAIR as a dressform... I really need to get a real one!).

Newly Discovered Talent

Making cards! Well... technically it's not all that new as I can scrapbook, but it's something I haven't tried and I'm really pleased with the results. This one is a card for a friend from work - all in all I probably spent less than $1.00 on it when you really break down the cost.

Looks like another service that Pig & Pepper can offer someday!