Briefly

This is going to be a little off topic but if you'll excuse me I'm going to talk about my underpants for a little bit. I have the worst time trying to find acceptable underwear. Currently my go-to, though still imperfect, choice is Bali's cotton Full Cut Fit. (if I remember the name correctly) They're what some of you like to call "granny panties". And can we talk about that for a minute? I hate that term. It's pejorative. It's age shaming and it's trying to make people feel embarrassed about their clothing choices. Can we just stop it?

But anyway... I don't necessarily want the high waist but if you get a lower waist you get stuck with a higher leg opening in the back and I can't stand that. I don't see how anyone can tolerate having the elastic or the edge of the leg opening going across the the butt cheek instead of underneath it where it belongs. On the other hand, aside from the too high waist I don't really like the Bali fabric. It's a cotton spandex - 10% spandex according to the label but it feels like it has hardly any at all. It also tends to pill or get fuzzy after a few washings. But they are wearable so they're what I generally settle for. I have also tried Bali's Skimp Skamp (TM) and in some ways they are better but the narrow leg elastic is extremely uncomfortable.

The "World's Best Fitting Panty" (TM) has the perfect fabric, a cotton spandex with a nice firm, but not too tight, stretch and the waist on the regular briefs version sits slightly below the natural waistline but they have the too high in the back leg openings which is totally unacceptable to me.

So I recently decided to try something totally different: the so-called "boy short". I had not considered these before because the term "boy short" is very off-putting. I am not a boy and I don't want to wear "boy" anything but, desperation. I tried two different brands so far and even with legs they somehow manage to be too high in the back. I know there are "boy shorts" with longer legs but I don't want longer legs. What I really want is some comfortable cotton spandex underpants with not too high a waistline that completely cover my butt, which is admittedly not small but neither is it huge. It shouldn't be this hard.

By the way, when you search for boy shorts on Amazon a whole lot of unmentionables that I really don't want to mention or ever see again come up in the results - items that are most definitely not boy shorts! Seriously Amazon? You need to fix your search function so that only the stuff we're actually searching for comes up.

I did once try sewing underwear but after three tries I was not able to end up with anything wearable. The main problem, I think was the inability to find the right fabric and elastic. But maybe I will try again someday when I get sufficiently desperate.

Summer's Last Fling?

I feel like I have been working on this dress for a month and that I should have been able to complete three or four dresses in the time it took me to sew just this one but sometimes that's just the way it goes. I'm not going to try to figure out when I started it because it might turn out that I really have been working on it for a month. I have been working on a couple of other projects as well so it's not like I've been lazy but when I take longer than I expect to finish something I can't help feeling like a bit of a slacker. Anyway, here is the tropical print dress, finally.

This is the bodice of Simplicity 1803 and the skirt of Vogue 8811 plus pockets. I eliminated the center front seam because it was totally unnecessary and would not have worked out well at all with this lovely, large floral. I spent most of the time I was working on this feeling angsty about getting the princess seams and the armholes to fit just right. They're not perfect but they're not too bad. I have this idea that I can't let go of that if I could just find the right bra the princess seams would fit perfectly.

I love this dress. The fabric is a lightweight cotton and it feels sort of light and floaty and of course the colors are amazing. Love it! I wish I had sewed it sooner so I would have more summer left in which to wear it. Fortunately, summer is not gone yet. The forecast for this week is for temps in the mid-90s F. So I will get to wear it at least once.

Since it's still so warm and likely to stay that way for another week or two I was tempted to squeeze in one more summer dress (actually still tempted) but, even though I'm not ready to let go of summer yet I am ever so slightly weary of sewing princess seams and bust darts and attaching skirts to bodices and sewing really long hems. (Of course the blouses I will be sewing for fall will have either darts or princess seams too but they're still something different.) I decided to start the orange trousers because they will be needed sooner than long sleeved shirts.

Two New Patterns

Bought these today.

I will almost certainly never make 8244 as shown. Narrow skirts are not my style at all. I bought it for that asymmetrical top detail. The other one, 8166... I'm thinking about fall tunics. I'll probably make changes to that one too. The collar looks uncomfortable. But anyway, there's a good chance I might be trying that one out soon.

Lazy Weeked, Nothing to Report, Sewists Guilt

I spent the entire weekend watching the Star Trek marathon on BBC America. Absolutely no sewing got done and not much of anything else either. I was thinking I would have have the tropical print dress done by last Thursday or Friday but I didn't. Last week I mostly worked on a couple of quilts - the one I have been working on for literally years and the new one I just started which I must get done by Christmas. But a new week has begun and I have all the time in the world. I'm determined to not waste quite so much of it, even though I think, once in a while, we need to just "waste" time and that such time is not really wasted at all. So, actually not all that much guilt.

Template Troubles

The template I was using previously was misbehaving this morning. It refused to load completely, so I'm going to try this one for a while. I like it but I'm afraid most people might consider the background "too busy" so I'm going to look around for more templates and maybe change to something else. Thoughts?