Another Simple Top and August Angst

This is the other piece of fabric that I bought at the same time as this and I did the same thing with it except with a V-neck this time. (Headless shot this time because I'm feeling too lazy this morning to take 50 photos so I can maybe get one in which I'm not making a weird face.)

I love it. Like the other one, it is so comfortable.

Oh, by the way, did you want to see progress on the house? We now have floor joists, including the front porch.

It feels like things are moving along faster lately. It's starting to feel like we might actually manage to finish this crazy project.

* * * * *

This is that time of year when I go, "Nooooooo! It can't be August already! I'm not ready for summer to be over!" I like warm weather, I love wearing cool, breezy summer dresses. I haven't sewn as many dresses for myself this year as I had planned to. One reason is that I sewed a lot for my granddaughter and that's great. It's so fun to have a little girl to sew for. But there are other reasons. My closet is full! So far I can always manage to stuff one more dress or blouse or tunic into it but it's so hard to find anything in it I keep wearing the same half dozen dresses.

This summer has been weird. It was hot for a little while but we have also had a lot of days that are almost like fall. And then there's our air conditioner situation. Late last summer our central AC stopped cooling. I wanted to get it fixed one more time but my husband said no, let's just get three window air conditioners and we can donate them after we move into the new house. They work okay but they're very inconsistent. Sometimes it's 78F so I turn it down just one degree then half an hour later it will be 72F, which feels very cold to me. So I haven't been wearing my dresses as much this year, which makes me sad and not very motivated to make more.

The spare room where my cutting table is didn't get one of the air conditioners so most days it's too hot to be in except very early in the morning so I haven't been cutting as much. And that's just purely a matter of motivation. I do wake up early and I could force myself to stop wasting time in the morning and get to the cutting before it gets too hot but the main thing is the lack of motivation to make more dresses that I probably won't wear much if at all.

I did take a few things to Goodwill about a month ago. While I was going through the closet to find things I could get rid of I found a blouse that I thought I had taken to Goodwill years ago. Now the logical thing to do would have been to add it to the things going to Goodwill this time since I didn't even know I still had it but I was so surprised and happy to find it. I have actually thought about it a few times and wished I hadn't given it away so to find that I hadn't... Well, of course I kept it.

My closet in the new house will be twice as big but no doubt I will over-fill that one within a year. [sigh]

Too Precious

In Felicia's blog post and in the comments there is mention of fabric that is "too precious" to use and finished garments that are too precious to wear. I rarely have the former but sometimes do have the latter. So I thought I would share a few of my "too precious" garments.

I don't think I ever blogged these first two. The color in these pictures is awful, especially the first one. It has been raining so I couldn't take pics outside. The ceiling light has CFLs that are supposed to mimic the color of incandescents and they ordinarily seem pretty close but in pictures they really throw off the color. But anyway...

This fabric features several of my favorite things: music, tea, and roses and the colors are fantastic - a sort of faded red-orange, peachy pink, ivory, with little touches of sea green. The complicated print has opera posters, fragments of musical scores, writing that I can't make out (possibly poetry? Or is it love letters?) roses, and the words "Tea for Two". I absolutely love it and I only wear it about once a year.

This next one is both beautiful and sentimental for me.

I bought this gorgeous fabric about six years ago and sewed it almost right away. I knew my mom would love it too and I was looking forward to showing it off to her but I didn't get the chance. Now? It doesn't really make me all that sad anymore but I still don't wear it except maybe once a year mainly because the fabric is just too gorgeous. I sort of wish I had used a different pattern. This one is okay. It used to be my favorite shirt pattern but not so much anymore.

Here's one that I made and blogged about last summer

Since it's still relatively new I'm not really sure if it's going to be "too precious" but I'm leaning that way. When it gets warmer though I am going to try to wear it and all of these too precious things more often. Here's one more in the category of "might be too precious," originally blogged about here.

What is it that makes something too precious to wear? It's love and fear. Really, really loving a garment and fearing that something terrible will happen to it. Besides just simply knowing that the more I wear them the sooner they will wear out, I have visions of clothing disasters involving barbecue sauce or blueberry pie filling. I worry that I will be in an accident and they will have to cut my clothes off of me, which is silly because in that case I would have a lot more to worry about than just my clothes but that's where my mind goes. But I have all these other clothes that I wear every week, that I have worn dozens of times without ever having anything at all happen to them so why worry? Why not enjoy the clothes I love the most. I'm going to try. I really am. I keep telling myself that but maybe this year...

Huh... That's Odd

A little background for those not familiar with Blogger: Blogger has a lame little stats thing that is more annoying than helpful. Mine usually shows that I have fewer than 10 pageviews on most days, often fewer than 5. On days when I actually post something that goes up to between 15 and 20, occasionally slightly higher. Well, today I sign in and see that yesterday I had 77 pageviews! Strangely, that is equally as disheartening as it is exciting.

I have an embarrassing little confession: I crave attention like a small child. Or a puppy. But I am afraid to do anything to actually attract attention because I'm afraid I will come off as needy (which I guess I am in a way) or as a creepy stalker. So, more than three times as as many pageviews as I normally get on a good day. (And pageviews don't really tell you much. That could be just 7 people viewing an average of 10 pages each (Yes, I know my math is wrong.) which is only one of the reasons the thing is annoying.) But anyway, the reasons it was a little disheartening to see are, 1, that I got no comments that day and 2, my last post was just complaining about not being able to find underwear that I like. (So the lack of comments might be a good thing?) I really hope someone scrolled down far enough to see the last dress I posted.

Oh well, I'd best move on before I start sounding any more needy. I'm also just really curious as to the reason for the sudden upsurge in pageviews. (and possibly actual visitors?) Who were those visitors and where did they come from?

* * *

It seems like ages since I posted pictures but I have been sewing. I made the orange trousers I mentioned before but they came out too large. I don't know how that happened since I used the same pattern that I have successfully used a dozen or more times. I can fix them but I really hate taking things apart.

I am currently working on an early fall blouse - fall colors but short sleeved for the warm early fall weather. It shouldn't be too long until I have that one finished.

I have mostly been working on a quilt that I really want to get done by Christmas so other sewing is coming along more slowly even though I have a dozen things I want to sew and get done right now. The change of seasons is always inspiring. Even though I didn't want summer to end, didn't want to stop sewing breezy summer dresses, I suddenly find myself interested in sewing fall things.

What's In a Name?

I had an epiphany yesterday. Well, not really; I just like the word "epiphany" and this seemed like a good excuse to use it.

When I first decided to start a sewing blog I wanted the word "sew" in the title but it seemed like all the good sewing blog titles were already taken so after much thought I settled on "And Sew It Goes". I actually sort of like it. It's not bad for something I settled on and I was satisfied with it but yesterday I thought of something that is both more meaningful and more "me".

I enjoy attention and praise as much as anyone. In fact, sometimes I think I might crave attention a little too much. But, to be honest, I do get a little tired of non-sewing people always being SO AMAZED that I sew. Yes, it is nice to be able to impress people but I feel like a bit of a fraud - like I'm getting praise that I don't deserve. Sewing is really no more impressive than a lot of other things people routinely do, such as driving in a large city, using computers, baking cookies, or keeping house plants alive. (The first and last of those are more difficult for me than sewing.)

I don't have much patience with people who say they would love to learn to sew but they "can't" or "could never learn". Look - for most of the history of civilization not sewing was not an option for most women. The only women who could get away with not sewing were those who were wealthy enough to pay someone else to do it for them, so anyone with two functional hands can learn to sew. Now if you really don't want to or "don't have time" that's fine. That's disappointing but I can accept that. Just don't act like sewing is some kind of strange superpower. It's not.

I must admit that I do have a selfish motive for wanting more people to learn to sew. The more people there are who sew the more local fabric stores there will be, but seriously, I don't expect everyone to know how to sew and if people are impressed that's cool too, just not so much over-the-top, OMG-you-have-superpowers impressed.

So anyway, sorry for getting preachy. I know the people who really need that sermon will never see it. Anyone who comes here will most likely be someone who already sews or who is seriously interested. I just wanted to explain the name change and why this one is more ME.

Just a Quickie

Take a look at these hand painted raincoats by Susan Pitt. The one in the last three photos is my favorite. I also like the notion of a garment being positive energy that you wear. I think a lot of the clothes I make for myself fit that bill. I really do feel good, even more energetic, wearing them.

Change of Seasons

My closet is only about five and half feet long and it has a narrow door that makes it difficult to reach the ends. Only about two and half feet of it is easy to reach. I have to play contortionist to reach the rest. The only good thing about it is that it's all mine. My husband has his own, identical closet so I don't have to share. Five and half feet is not enough closet space for a woman, especially one who sews. Once or twice a year I do take a few things out and take it to Goodwill but I keep putting more in than I take out.

After nearly two decades of living with this closet, not sure I could stuff one more garment into it, this past spring I decided to buy one of those big plastic storage containers for my off season clothes. I stuffed it full of sweaters and jackets and flannel shirts and put it in the closet in the spare bedroom which, as my mother-in-law used to say of a small outbuilding she had, "You could hide an elephant in there." It was hard. I felt like I was sending my beloved mostly-made-by-me clothes into a black hole. What would happen to them? I need them all to be in my closet where I know they're safe.

October has been lovely, almost like summer, but the last few days have been cold. Well, not really cold but definitely time to face the fact that summer is over. So today I got out the winter stuff and put my summer dresses in the storage container and into the black hole spare bedroom closet. It was really terribly hard to do. It felt like I was saying goodbye to my lovelies indefinitely even though I know that's not true. I might have to go visit them every day for a while. But my comfy cozy flannels are back, which is good, because I'm going to be needing them but I'm going to miss my dresses and summer.

Slow Projects and Intermittent Blogger's Guilt

I hate it when I don't post anything here for more than a week but I suppose that's the nature of sewing blogging. Whenever you finish a project, that's when you blog and if you don't finish anything for a week or two...

I feel like I need to come up with an idea for a weekly blog series but, 1, I haven't thought of anything that would be either entertaining or informative and 2, I'm afraid I would have trouble being consistent. Actually I do have what I think is a pretty good idea for a limited series - just three or four posts. I'm going to take some pictures and search for some old pictures and start that soon(ish)

For the past two (going on three I think) weeks I have been working on a Granville shirt. It's actually going well, so I don't know why I'm not getting it done faster. I have been doing one little step at a time and then stopping and sometimes I go back to it the next day and sometimes it ends up being two days. There are so many things I want to get done, I'm tempted to put it aside for a while and start something else but I have always had this fear of not finishing things. I feel like have to finish each thing before I move on to the next.

So, what are you working on? Do you do one thing at time or do you work on multiple projects at once? How do you motivate yourself when you feel stuck?

Too old? Or old enough?

I don't remember if I said this before or just thought it and never said it. We go through phases of age appropriateness. First, when we are little, our mothers dress us in adorable little things and we're fine with it. I was more than fine with it. I loved all the cute bright colored, lacy, ruffly things my mom made for me. Then we go to school and suddenly that's "baby stuff". We are Too Old to dress that way. What we consider that we are too old to wear changes over the years but overall the Too Old phase lasts well into adulthood as we feel we must look a certain way in order to be taken seriously. Eventually, if we are lucky, we realize that we never stopped liking the bright colors and cute prints we used to wear when we were little and that life is too short to dress to please other people. We are not too old to wear brightly colored novelty prints; we are Old Enough.

I already decided a few years ago that I have reached the Old Enough phase but sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I have this internal battle between Too Old" and Old Enough. For example, I desperately want this Laurel Burch fabric but my Inner Stuffy Person keeps telling me, "You're way too old for Laurel Burch." My Inner Five-Year-Old and my Inner Old Lady are trying to gang up on her but Inner Stuffy Person is pretty stubborn. I'm really hoping that Inner Five-Year-Old and Inner Old Lady win though.

* * * * *

I do have some finished sewing to show off and I will really try to get around to it this week. Yes, I actually do still sew, not just buy fabric and patterns.

Still Here, Still Sewing

No, I haven't abandoned this blog. And there's a little voice inside saying, "Are you kidding? No one would care if you never posted anything ever again. It's your destiny in life to be unpopular and ignored." But of course I do get a comment once in a while and they always make my day.

Anyway, since I posted last I have had one sewing FAIL and one sewing WIN. I will try to photograph the win in the next few days and post it. The fail? Well, I've always appreciated that so many sewing bloggers are willing to put their failures out there for others to learn from so, maybe, but I want to let it sit for a while and see if I can come up with a fix and then I will post both the fail and the fix.

We went on a short vacation and then I didn't feel well for a few days so it's been over a week since I've done any sewing at all. Now I'm trying to decide what to make next - always a tough decision. As usual, I've been looking through the stash for the next project and every piece of fabric I see I think, "Yes, this, soon. But not right now. Right now I want to make something else." So, I'm getting very anxious to be sewing again but it might be a couple of days before I actually start something.

Stories About My Mother

Today is my mother's birthday. She would have been 82 years old today. Strangely, that doesn't seem all that old to me now. Oh... it's old but not old. It seems only as old as 62 seemed to me, oh, maybe 10 or 15 years ago. But I won't waste time talking about the unfairness of life and its shortness. (She lived to be 78)

I think I was four years old. Mom found a picture of a dress in a catalog. It was brown if I remember right. The skirt was solid brown and the bodice was gingham and it had an unusual double pocket - a solid brown pocket centered on top of a larger gingham pocket. Mom happened to have a small piece of turquoise gingham and an even smaller piece of solid yellow fabric. She proposed making for me a dress inspired by the dress in the catalog. But there was a catch. It would have to be the opposite to the dress in the catalog: gingham skirt and solid top and of course a gingham pocket on top of a larger solid pocket.

Well, this was simply unacceptable to my four-year-old self. I whined, I argued, I pouted, I argued some more and pouted some more. I can't explain it now except to say, "I was four," and it just seemed very, very wrong and the fact that there wasn't enough solid fabric to do it "right" was irrelevant. I guess I thought that my mom could do anything. She went ahead and made the dress the only way she could, gingham skirt and solid top, and once I saw it completed I liked it. I actually thought about making an adult version of this dress for myself - exactly like the one my mom made- just because she would have gotten a kick out of it but I never could find the exact right gingham.

Fast forward about six years. I was ten. We had found this great looking bright lime green pin dot fabric with a border of large pink flowers with orange centers. Mom was going to make a typical dress with a gathered skirt with the flower border around the bottom. But I had an idea. I wanted her to make a plain, straight dress, what she called a "shift", with the flowers going up and down the front, to one side. I got the feeling she thought it was a radical idea. She was not really hesitant. It was more like the idea caught her by surprise and she needed to think about it for a bit.

She did make the dress according my suggestion and we both loved it. I think of it as my first design idea, though it probably wasn't really. I have been picking out fabric and matching it to patterns for as long as I can remember so it's likely that I also had some original ideas earlier. Now... now I'm still getting ideas, making them happen, and I still never make anything without wishing I could show it off to my mom.

I had hoped to find photos of the these two dresses but I couldn't find any good ones. If I ever do I will update this.

Still Here, Still Sewing

I hate to go more than a week without posting anything so here I am even though I have nothing new to show off and nothing much to say. I am working on a little sun dress for my granddaughter but I can't finish it until this weekend when she's here.

I started on the shoes yesterday. Well, I cut them out at least. It's funny... this is something I have wanted to do for a long time but now that I have a pattern and all the materials I feel curiously reluctant to actually get started. But I will do it! I would like to say that I will have some handmade shoes to show off by the end of the week but if I say it it won't happen so I'm not saying it. These first ones are going to be just house slippers, using the sewable soling and some scraps of fabric that I already had.

It has been cold lately and I am seriously impatient for hot weather to finally get here so I can wear my summer dresses. I've got the three new ones that I've only worn for part of a day each. This weather actually sort of puts a damper on my sewing mood, at least for the kind of things that would normally be seasonally appropriate.

So Much to Sew

This time of year I always feel a bit overwhelmed by all the things I want to sew. I have a dozen things that absolutely must be "the next thing." Oh, what to sew? What to sew? Should I sew this awesome new fabric that I just recently purchased or should I go into the deep stash? Or do I work on some of those garments that need altering or refashioning? (always so hard to do when there are wonderful new things to sew)

Actually, first, I need to fix a problem on the last dress I made. I would have had another new dress to show off yesterday but it needs a little tweaking. Then, I must make something for the granddaughter. She's growing so fast, as they always do. But before I even start that I'm already looking ahead to the next thing. What next? What next?

Seeing Blue... and Yellow and a Lot of other Colors

I posted this on my other blog then thought, even though it's not directly about sewing, it is related. Every time we choose fabric we are thinking about color.

* * *

Researchers believe that we were not able to see the color blue before we had a word for it. This seems totally bizarre to me and I think, "That can't possibly be true," but there is some fairly convincing evidence. On the other hand, if we couldn't see blue before we had a word for it why did we ever need to invent a word for it? But if it is true, it makes one wonder what we are not seeing now because we don't have a word for it. It also brings up a number of other intriguing questions. Do people who have some kind of language difficulty also have difficulty seeing colors? And what do toddlers see before they learn the names of colors? Does having different names for similar colors - azure, turquoise, sapphire, cobalt - help us to see those colors?

Here's something else color related: a a test to determine if you are a tetrachromat. I guess you could say my result was "inconclusive"? The first time I looked at the multi-color bar I saw 33 colors. I immediately tried again to check myself and saw only 31. That was a couple of days ago. I did it again a few minutes ago and saw 34 colors. Seeing more than 32 colors in the test makes you a tetrachromat.

Interestingly, the article says that tetrachromats are irritated by yellow. I love yellow - either bright yellow or a soft, buttery yellow; I'm not terribly fond of the more greeny yellows. So maybe I'm really not seeing that many colors? Or maybe I'm just different? Or maybe the article is wrong. I am strongly opposed to the notion that people who are physically the same in some way necessarily have the same likes and dislikes.

* * *

So, what about you? Are there any tetrachromats out there? What are your favorite colors? What colors do you hate? (whether you're a tetrachomat, trichromat, or dichromat)

Is The Top of "The Hill" Closer Than You Think?

Where would we all be without strangers on the Internet to tell us how to dress? Here is yet another list of Things Women Should Stop Wearing After Age 30. What's really funny about this list is that on a good many of the items the author says that no one of any age should wear them, and I have to agree with some of these but this list was supposed to be specific to women over 30.

From my perspective (way over 30) 30 seems like a strangely young cut-off age for most of the items in the list. Graphic tees? Really? She lost me right there. I sew most of my clothes of course but graphic tees are the one kind of RTW item that I wear often. And "bedazzled anything"? I don't wear a lot of rhinestones and sequins and glitter myself but it seems crazy weird to suggest that a woman should suddenly give up sparkle the day she turns 30. And the weirdest of all? American Eagle jeans. Really? Why? Someone explain this to me please. I could understand if it was low-riders but the ones in the picture are not.

I believe in freedom of choice and everyone minding their own business so I would like to say that age doesn't matter and we can all wear anything we like at any age but, realistically, I'm not sure I could stand by that absolutely. What we wear is a personal choice and what looks good varies from person to person, based not only on age and body type but also things like grace and dignity and other intangibles. It's too complex a matter for simple lists. But please keep making lists. They're so much fun to ridicule.

If It Turns Out Right, It's Not Wrong

My mother taught me how to sew on a button when I was seven years old. Other than that I didn't really receive any sewing instructions from her. She told me that she had taught herself to sew. That was the way she learned best - on her own, without anyone looking over her shoulder. I suppose if I had asked how to do something she would have tried to show me but I never did. I always just assumed that one day I would simply start sewing and that's exactly how it happened.

Everything I knew about sewing before I started reading sewing blogs, I learned from watching my mom, from reading the instructions that come with patterns, and just experimenting. But I learned on the Internet that I've been doing some things wrong. For example, I had never heard of such a thing as "making a muslin". The closest I've ever come to that was using cheap fabric the first time I used a complicated-looking pattern but always with the intention of making something that I would wear. But generally, I don't even do that. I have always just plunged right in with the good fabric that I love. I never had a problem doing it that way but in the past decade or so I've started to be more careful because as I've gotten older some parts of me have expanded more than other parts which makes getting a good fit a little more complicated than it used to be.

On the other hand, there are some things I do that I thought were my own invention, and felt quite clever about, until I started reading sewing blogs and found out that nearly everyone else does that too. Still, I feel shy about showing how I do things. I imagine people out there thinking, "That is so wrong! That is so stupid! She doesn't know how to do it right," with superior smirks on their faces. Because we never really get over childhood peer pressure do we?

So that's why my tag line says "successfully doing it wrong since the 1970s". Because I do it "wrong" sometimes and "wrong" works for me, so it's not wrong.