It's summer vacation!!!

I cannot begin to tell you the glee with which I am greeting the end of the school year and the beginning of my summer vacation. After decades of working, I can finally appreciate what it will be like to have completely unstructured time, for those few brief months before I start school again mid August.

I was so delighted about it today, that I bought DH a trash can for the garage. Now that's love.

I'm thinking about my fashion illustration class. The instructor claimed she could teach anyone to draw a fashion figure. Here's my sketch the first day of class, and my final project in watercolor, titled "Macy's Sells Hijabs".  HUGE difference. My thanks to Kathleen for all her help!

I am a little disturbed by the implications for women's positive body images, and the effects drawings like this the self esteem of women who think they should look like this.  These are not human body proportions!!! A part of me is sad to have participated in the celebration of unattainability. On the other hand, I learned a lot about figure drawing that would be fairly easy to adapt to more realistic people, and that was my goal in the class; to be able to render human-like figures in more than pencil with clothing that I might want to wear; I think I can do this now.

I'll end this, then, with my happy palette, which would make a splendid fabric, no?

Delavan!

I made Delavan, from Seamwork, as my final exam project for my Intermediate Sewing class.  I bought a year subscription, which gives me one pattern a month, more or less, or downloadable patterns.

Not yet hemmed, but already photobombed.
The green collar really calms it down...

This was the first one I tried to assemble, by taping all the pieces together. It was an unhappy experience... I ended up taping the pieces I wanted to trace to the breakfast bar with blue tape, tracing them, then moving to the next piece; this mostly worked, except ALL the sizes are on the same paper, and it's nearly impossible to find the lines on some of the pieces as they're very close together. But I got it done and made a muslin, then started on the inevitable changes:

• I altered the pattern to move the sleeve edge of the shoulder seam back as it was not positioned correctly on my shoulder.
• Per R's suggestion, I added a bit of a horizontal dart to the back to deal with slightly sloping shoulders.  
• I lengthened it two inches on the body and sleeves. 
• The sleeves were set a little low, so we moved those up a little into the bodice... 

Ut-oh! When I made it up in muslin it looked awful. I think there were issues with the sleeve placement.  In retrospect, when I moved the shoulder back, I didn't adjust the shoulder seam clip on the sleeve. Also, I took so much off the armhole, that the sleeve head was about the same size as the armhole, and it should be slightly larger.

And, when I lengthened the cute short slouchy jacket, it just looked big and slouchy, and I hated it.  I think adding one inch in length would have been plenty...  Anyways, R came up with the idea of making it into a vest instead, as I was starting to run out of time to finish it and was getting paniced. So I changed my fabric plan and used one of the beautiful batiks S had brought me from Indonesia; I swapped out the interfacing to a coordinating green, which reduces the yellow next to my face, and I like it.

Who sez I can't rock yellow!

Specific features of the vest that were learning opportunities for me were:

• Most of the seams are finished with Hong Kong bias binding; Super Fancy!!!  But think through what happens when seams come together before you sew.
• I learned about shawl collars: take them slow and draw the seam allowance on the set in corner seam bit.
• And curved pieces: press seam open before you turn, so you don't get little points on your curves.
• Fitting remains a struggle for me.

And another photo,  because it makes me happy...

In other news:

• My good friends M and B were in town on Sunday, and came to have lunch with us... I made Carne Adovada, some garlickly rice, and a wonderful coleslaw with a lime dressing. Yummy! I made the Adovada the night before, then heated it in the slow cooker while the rice cooker handled the rice; the coleslaw came together quickly in the morning, so I was free to take a short hike with the guys before lunch. So nice to spend time with old friends!
• I am sewing the buttons on a new pajama top, and that'll be done... 
• I continue to knit on the forever skirt, but it's getting longer!  
• I've also picked a travel project for my upcoming trip... I promise to share once it's in progress. 
• And I signed up for a 3 day Anna Zilboorg class next October, so will need to select some yarn from my stash, or dye some...