I was on the phone the other day with Olinda.

She heard Isabelle say “I far-ted!!” (Isabelle pronounces it just like that).

Olinda asked, “does she always announce when she farts?”

Yes. Yes she does.

Go read cute baby #19, shoes.

I’ve finished my, how to sew from Japanese craft books, series on label-free. And here is the dress:

The only thing I’m not sure about is the belt. You can barely see it because of the pattern on the fabric but I widened it from 2″ to 4″.

Project Notes
Pattern: dress 7 from Japanese craft book ISBN-10: 4579111494 (ISBN-13: 978-4579111497)
Fabric: 100% cotton
Size: enlarged a size 13

Alan’s sister is getting married this weekend and I’m trying to sew myself a dress. I also want to learn how to use my new speedlight but it’s all just too much right now. So instead I’m taking a break and writing about all sorts of things.

So let me start with sharing how spoiled Isabelle is. Or also known as: how I give in because I’m a sucker. I NEED TO STOP! I mentioned a birthday party last week. It was for two of Isabelle’s cousins. Well for one of them we got a Dora doll and a Dora play cell phone. Alan left all the toys in the car so Isabelle wouldn’t see them and want to open them.

Well then I had to move the car and Isabelle saw them and…

Boo me! Good thing she didn’t see the helicopter toy.

So then I had the bright idea of making the birthday girl a dress instead.

But instead of using a pattern I’ve made before and know, I went with something new. It’s an Ottobre Design, Spring 1/2008. It’s the first time trying them. I think we measured Isabelle and she was around 95cm tall. Isabelle’s cousin is a little taller so I went with the 104cm.

But somehow it seems too short even for Isabelle. Wonder if I did something wrong. It’s almost like a shirt, a long shirt. And I did something weird with the zipper. And the fabric. What was I thinking? It was from my stash. It was probably on sale. That’s what I was thinking when I bought it. But the print seems a little young, babyish. So Isabelle ended up wearing it to the party instead. And you can tell it’s too large for her in the shoulder area.

Ok, party talk. Have I told you how much Isabelle likes parties? On the drive over she was doing this little dance, or more like a shoulder only dance, while sitting in the car seat saying, “party! party! party!”

But when we got there she was all shy, clingy, and hiding. She was hiding so much it was like she was trying to burrow into me. It took her a while to warm up. She wouldn’t even go through the play structure things by herself. I ended up crawling through with her.

At first I was scared to. There was a sign that said this high and under. I crept in worrying about how much weight the play structure could handle. But it was fine. There were other parents crawling around in there. And if there was a weight limit I’m sure it would have been listed somewhere. Or more likely, everywhere. I was just being paranoid. Alan said the sign was probably for the tinier play structure.

And I’m so glad I went in, because I really wanted to play! It was so much fun! They had three stories in the play structure and tunnels and slides. I went up to the tip top with Isabelle OVER and OVER to slide down the big fast slide that went round and round. Then there was this bumpy slide where you actually get air when you’re sliding down. We only did that once though because Isabelle wasn’t expecting it and bumped her head.

I really wanted to try the ball pit. I didn’t. Being paranoid again. And not paranoid like Alan: thinking there’s poo in there. He’d keep pointing to dark spots on the balls asking me what they were.

But Isabelle went in.

It was so tall she could barely get out by herself.

Isabelle had so much fun. She didn’t even object too much to the sock requirement.

But no the fun didn’t end there. She got to try a few swings at miniature golf.

And then we went back to their house where Isabelle played for hours. So it’s no surprise that she’s been asking for her cousin Jenna everyday since the party.

“Denna? Where’s Denna?”

Ok. Let me stop typing and get back to my dress.

Secret Agent Josephine is taking a sabbatical from blogging for a month. I totally get that. Last night as I was going through a gazillion photos from the weekend, bemoaning over 1000 unread feeds, moderating Illustration Friday on Flickr, looking at an inbox that was too full, and trying to think of what to write; the internet felt like too much. I thought how much easier it would be to stop blogging.

It’s not that I don’t have anything to say. My mind is fair to bursting with things I want to remember on here. It’s just that I’m feeling bogged down. When my plate gets too full, I get stuck sometimes and don’t know where to start. But if I give it some thought I always realize the other stuff isn’t as important to me. My blogging is because I have a crap memory. How else would I remember the little details like this?

Alan’s younger sister got married on the weekend. We’ve known for months that Isabelle would be a flower girl. What we didn’t know was whether she would actually walk down the aisle without us.

Well the rehearsal was on Friday night. She was supposed to walk with her cousin. The backup plan was to have the other three kids walk alone if she did not walk. Well Isabelle would NOT walk.

We practiced a few times and came to the conclusion that neither of us could be with Isabelle in the back. We both had to be up front while she was walking so she would be coming towards the both of us.

I imagined tears and crying when we left her but Isabelle did wonderfully. She stayed in back with her cousins. When it was her turn, she walked down the aisle with her cousin, AND she even smiled!! Then when she got close enough she ran the last bit towards us. I was so proud of her.

Have I ever mentioned that Isabelle has big feet? That’s not surprising because she’s a tall girl. When we first got her flower dress and shoes, Isabelle wouldn’t fit the size 8 shoes. She has bigger feet than her cousin Jenna who just turned five. I think Jenna’s shoes were an 8.5. Isabelle, my giant baby, ended up with a size 9.5 shoe. And we were still worried they wouldn’t be comfortable so after the ceremony Isabelle and I changed into nice comfortable pink Converse shoes.

I’m so glad I decided to bring the Converse. I’m not good with heels. My feet were already uncomfortable after the ceremony and pictures. The Converse may have looked weird with my dress but you try chasing a two year old around on the grass wearing heels. I think we were the only two girls with tennis shoes on at the reception.

And speaking of the reception…they had a candy buffet! CANDY!!

Isabelle is a picky eater. She takes after daddy. And when we’re out she’s too busy enjoying the sights. At a party she will rarely eat. So it’s no surprise that, at the wedding reception, she turned down mostly everything. No chicken dinner. No bread. No carrots and celery sticks. No olives. And just one single bite of cheese.

But candy? That’s a different story. Cake? Candy? Cookies? Yes. To all of them. All the time. In fact, she’s standing next to me, right now, looking at the above picture saying, “pops? chocolate lollipops?”

I can’t tell you how many pictures I have of her near the candy buffet.

And what’s that in her hand?

Could it be a freaking big giant Pixy Stix full of sugar? Why yes, yes it is.

More pictures from the wedding here. And sorry, no pictures of the beautiful bride and groom since I don’t know how they’d feel having their pictures on the internet.

One of the things I love about sewing is that with some fabric and some work…

I end up with something that is original and can’t be bought in a store anywhere.

This is the dress I wore to the wedding last weekend. I was originally thinking about some Amy Butler fabric, lotus tree peony in lime. But I ended up with some Michael Miller because I had a coupon for the fabric store. It’s mirror ball dots in bamboo color. It looks fancier than a regular cotton because the dots are metallic shiny.

And I just have to show the shoes that I started out with. I’m not into shoes. Alan would tell you differently but he’s a guy with what…2 pairs of shoes?? I don’t know any designer labels. In fact I usually get my shoes from Target. But I had to show them because I think they work perfectly with this 50s style dress. Did shoes from the 50′s even look like this? I don’t know. But that’s how I imagine they would look.

And going along with the 50s vibe I insisted on wearing a petticoat with it. Even though Olinda liked how it looked without. And even though Alan said it was too fluffy, which oh my gawd it was. Sitting in the pew at the church I felt like a big marshmallow taking up too much space. But I liked it. I felt like I was playing dress up.

Looking at the pictures I wonder if I chose the wrong size to make? Fitting is something I’m learning more about as I sew more. See the bunching in the front under the crisscross ties? I don’t think that’s right. But no biggie. I mean I didn’t even notice until right now.

Now onto some sewing talk. And oh boy there’s going to be a lot of it.

I did run into some snags while making it. The biggest one was not related to the directions or anything like that. It was more along the lines of I’m a klutz.

I knocked over my hot iron for a second. It didn’t land on any tender body parts. No, nothing like that. And it didn’t even fall off of anything. It just fell over onto the sole plate. What’s wrong with that you say? Well at the time, I had strategically placed it on my computer chair so I’d have more room on my ironing board. And for that one second of contact with the hot metal it melted black fuzzy material onto the iron.

I didn’t notice until I went to iron my dress and black gunk got onto the dress. Huh…maybe that’s why it’s a good idea to use a press cloth. Luckily for me I was ironing on the inside so it doesn’t show. But then my flow of sewing got totally interrupted while I tried to clean off my iron!

The other snags were pattern related. Just small things. Like when I decided to topstitch the top piece to the lining. Nowhere in the directions does it actually say to do that. But the drawings look like they’re topstitched so I decided to do it. But I only did it in the neckline area. I got that far and then decided it wasn’t supposed to be topstitched so didn’t do the armholes. It’s not really noticeable and it doesn’t look bad or anything but I just don’t know what I was supposed to do there.

*Update – Rachel left a comment below with a tutorial on understitching. It’s exactly what needed to be done here.*

Another snag came with the ties. They didn’t seem long enough to tie a bow with, just a knot. So I decided to lengthen them. Also in the directions they aren’t backed or faced with anything, it’s just hemmed. I thought I’d like to finish it with a backing in the same fabric. But you can see that didn’t happen:

Lengthening and backing the tie was a bad idea because my fabric seemed to have shrunk like mad in the wash. Maybe because I washed the hell out it? The original pattern piece for the tie wouldn’t even fit on the fabric. I needed every inch of the 45 inches and with the shrinkage, it just wasn’t there.

So, I decided to cut about ten inches off of the tie and get the rest of the length plus extra on a different piece of the fabric. But there was no different piece of the fabric. There wasn’t enough, though I had bought extra fabric. There wasn’t even enough to back it. So I couldn’t even extend it without having the seam show. So, my ties actually ended up even shorter!

And then I ended up short on fabric for the last skirt panel. I ended up with a divot about 2 inches into the hem line. Luckily I’m not tall so that came off with no problem. See, that’s why it’s a good idea to lay out all your pieces before cutting. I would have seen immediately with my changes that I was short on fabric.

The last snag was the directions for the hem. I found them confusing. I ended up doing it my way because the directions were like…WHAT?? See:

Try on dress. Mark hem. Trim lower edge to within 5/8″ of marking.

To hem lower edge, stitch 1/2″ from raw edge.

Turn in and press edge alongside stitching. Trim very close to stitching.

Turn in again along trimmed edge. Stitch in place.

What? Doesn’t that leave just 1/8″ to sew up the hem to where you marked it?? That’s teensy.

Well at least two things worked out exactly as I imagined.

One of them being the zipper. All my regular zippers look wonky. I haven’t gotten the knack of putting one in neatly. It’s the zipper pull that throws me off. I didn’t want to ruin the dress with one of my ugly zippers so instead I put in an invisible zipper. I used this tutorial and it came out great. And I like that it looks cleaner, no stitch lines.

The other thing, an even hem. You know, one that accommodates the butt!! I never realized that skirts and dresses should have a hem that’s level with the floor. In fact some of my favorite store bought skirts are longer in front and shorter in back just because of the butt. Not like I have a crazy big butt or anything. I have a normal average size butt. I think it’s the skirts. So I’m so happy this dress has an even hem, not short from behind because of the behind.

Wow! Did you make it all the way to the end? Ok how about a sewing related drawing.

Yes, I drove Alan crazy trying to hem the dress. He was throwing numbers at me that were going over my head. I knew exactly what I wanted: the hem even all the way around from the floor up. But I made it more difficult because I didn’t want the petticoat showing. And he was trying to explain how come it wouldn’t work. Even now I cannot explain to you what he was trying to tell me, just to say I didn’t have enough fabric somewhere. I don’t know. I still don’t get it.

Ok now I’m done with all the sewing talk. Just one more thing about this dress. Would I make it again? I don’t know. It is lovely but it’s not a simple throw on dress. There’s snaps and hooks, a zipper, and a tie. Too complicated for me. I like to wear things that don’t feel like I’m being strapped into them. It was perfect for a wedding but it’s not really an everyday kind of dress for me.

Project details
Pattern: Butterick B4919
Fabric: Cotton – Michael Miller, Mirror Ball Dot, bamboo color
Size: 20