Sew what a week!

This week I got much done in terms of sewing for the dresses.  I NEARLY have the wedding dress done.  I need to make up some pleats for a top embellishment and figure out a place to attach my extra adornments from Korea that one of my Bestie's sent me.  Now for my photo stream and captions.

I started out finishing the embroidery for the dress.  

It is a piece for the front layover

Then after tearing away what I could with my hands for the stabilizer I had to go back and pick out all the little spaces between the petals. I did this with a combination of tweezers, and embroidery scissors because I want it to be perfect

Putting the pieces together visually. 

Then I can think about my next step.

 Pinning my pleats for the top of the skirt to connect to the bodice.  I chose 1" box pleats.  Each box pleat takes 6 inches of fabric to make so that was easy to take it from 120" down to 36".

I took a break from that dress and got in the last of the fabric I needed for making the Singer's Dress in the Band.  

These are the pieces laid out on my work table right before I get to putting it together.

After it is sewn and now I just need to Hem it.

What the heck Let's HEM!

 

My favorite foot for doing a top stitch hem.

The dress is basically done, I need one more final fitting with Bethany and then I can add the zipper.

Back to the wedding dress, It is pinned and prepped but I'm still taking a break because I need to figure out the perfect execution of how to go about sewing it in with elastics and other support since this will be strapless.

It really is coming together!  We've been getting in Wedding presents almost daily now and we are about 23 days out from the wedding!

The Truth: Bigger is not Better- Part 1

Once again Fashion is reminding me with a sledgehammer of distasteful styles that I am smaller then petite.  Not only am I short but my limbs are all too small as well.

Shopping for Fashionable diggs when you are 4'10" and 110 lbs puts me in basically the kids/tweens sections if I were to go to a Macy's.  Which I only frequent when I need some Makeup on the go and sometimes browse the shoes.  Living in probably the most midwest city that is large but not Chicago or Philly I am left to the internets, Urban Outfitters, Express, Antrhopologie, Forever 21 our tiny H&M and Nordstrom with the occasion Sak's visit if I want to drive out to that particular mall.   None of these stores help with the situation for those of us shorter squat but lovely individuals.  For some reason all theses stores seem to think the wider you are then automatically the taller you become.  OH what a cruel Joke.  Majority of the midwest population are not super models ~SURPRISE~  We are in fact normal ladies with short comings and big personalities.    Due to these literal short comings we have to get creative.  A lot of women pay a lot of money for getting their clothes altered.  I have women taking  my pattern drafting classes at CCAD just to learn how to alter their own clothing and hem their pants without it looking wonky.  Lucky for me I sew and pattern draft so I can usually avoid buying a pair of pants, skirt, blouse what have you that can't be altered.  That is still extremely limiting.

If you want quality clothes they are much harder and painstaking to pick apart for alterations because they were made well to begin with.  Clothes made well are made to last and not to be torn apart.  Cheaper clothes can easily be torn apart at all the seams which makes it easy to alter but then usually the fabric quality is so poor it may not last the alterations process.  It's a battle that us short girls just don't win.

My personal creative way to go around all this is with skirts.  I wear skirts and dresses as much as I can because then I never have to worry about pants at all and their lengths.  I hardly wear jeans even.  Oh and the blessing of leggings coming back into style was superb!  Allowing me to wear all my dresses and skirts through the dead cold of winter and still being warm and cozy and sexy.  Alas my skirt days may need to come to an end at least at my new job.  Working at a library that has a very casual dress code and bending, squatting and lifting books is not so attractive in a dress or skirt.  This has made me realize that I need to get back to wear jeans and pants.

Pants are a problem, even the short lengths are too long for me by at least 2-3 inches.  Jeans are also annoying because they actually have shape these days.  They get wider in the knee and skinnier around the "ankle".  So the tapering on these skinny jeans and cigarette jeans just looks funky on me.  I can cut them off and hem them to the right length but then they are too big around my ankle and my shin has extra bagginess as well.  The best fashion solution to all this is getting wide leg pants.  They make you look taller and are easier to hem because you don't have to worry about the shaping like in a skinnier cut.

The Bad and Good by tornangel012 featuring Fremont pants