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.

Brief Summer Review and Thinking About Fall

As I have said before, I don't like being tied to a sewing plan but I do find it useful to have a list of maybes, then if I don't have anything I'm especially excited about sewing next I can just pick something from the list. I had 20 fabrics on my list, as updated in June (I called it a plan at the time but it wasn't really a plan.) Of those, I have sewed 12. That would not be good if it had been a plan but okay for a list, and considering that I also sewed several things not on the list.

Of course, summer is not over yet and I might still get around to one or two more but I'm going to sew the tropical print next. I would have started it already but I decided to work on a quilt top and go ahead and get that done instead of piddling around with it for the next six months.

I'm a summer person and I hate to think about summer being over. And it's not over yet. We still have at least another month of warm weather here but I have, almost involuntarily, started thinking about fall sewing. Here are a few things that are on my mind.

These are two pairs of fabrics that go together. The pattern has contrasting collar cuffs and placket. The local quilt shop always has a bunch of two yard cuts of fabric. They're not really bargain priced and sometimes it's hard to think of what to do with just two yards but for some reason they're fun to buy. That's what the fabric on the top left in the photo was. It took me quite a while to decide on what I wanted to do with it. I was originally thinking something for summer but as soon as I started thinking about fall this completely clicked and I think this might be my first fall thing. The piece on the top right I've had for two or three years and was always going to use this pattern but I originally had a different purple fabric that I settled on and wasn't satisfied with to go with it. But then last week I found this tie-dye purple and it's almost exactly what I had in mind in the first place. So, yay! I'm ready to go on these and just need buttons.

This second photo is all cotton knits that I got at the Hancock Fabrics going out of business sale. At first I was thinking t-shirts but it seems a little too thick for t-shirts and I have enough of those anyway so now the plan is for cardigans. I already have an orange (RTW) cardigan so the orange might stay in the stash for a long, long time. I'm thinking I'll start with the green, which is more gorgeous than it looks in the picture. It's a really green green, almost like a John Deere green or the green crayon in a box of eight crayons only prettier. The pink is not a very useful color for fall so it can wait until late winter or early spring.

The last two are stretch twill, originally both destined to be trousers but the blue is not as stretchy as I like, in fact, it's hardly stretchy at all. How they can get away with calling this stuff a stretch fabric is beyond me. But it's still a nice, non-stretch fabric and I already have another idea for it, which I won't reveal yet. The orange is nicely stretchy though and I will go ahead with my original plan for it even though orange trousers in my size are a little scary.

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.