I’m back from a week of birthday celebration and a weekend of wireless relaxation. And then I spent all day yesterday at the beach with friends. It’s a tough life.
I have a few fun things to post about, including my most recent ikea hack, Eliot’s little bash, and the triathalon trip that Dave and I enjoyed. But first to buy me some time to edit the longer posts I thought I’d throw together the mash-up of instagram photos from my late night sewing last night. If you follow me on instagram or twitter, you got the play-by-play as I worked on this. If you don’t feel free to follow along! (@livefreemiranda)
Around 9:00 pm I began with a few yards of light blue chambray. Over the following three hours I whipped together a simple pattern inspired by this dress, sewed together the piped bodice, attached the skirt, secured the internal elastic casing, marked the button holes, and noticed sweet Milo sleeping nearby on the floor (keeping me company, I think!). Finally, I placed the buttons (using this tape tip from Megan Nielsen) and finished the hem.
This particular dress is custom made for a customer, who is using it as a maternity dress. But I love it so much I’m going to make another just like it for myself. It’s the perfect, easy fitting, comfortable, pulled-together, Little Blue Dress. Light weight for summer, but it will go into fall seamlessly with a cardigan and boots. Sigh. I love chambray. Side story: When I was in elementary school I saw a pile of Chambray shirts at ZCMI and I thought the name was so beautiful I decided I wanted to name a daughter Chambray! It’s in all of my old journals. Sometime over the last 20 years it’s made it’s way off the name list, but made it’s way onto the favorite fabric list. Probably better that way.
More and more I’m excited to wind down and go to bed after I get the boys to sleep. Especially since 6 am became the new 7 am in our house (I have no idea how that happened.) Once in awhile though, those late night sewing hours are really fun, and last night I loved to be able to focus on a project and finish it completely. This dress is the last of my custom orders for several weeks as I take some time off to catch up on my own projects (you know, like making myself a couple dresses…) and enjoy some stress-free family time. We’re even going to squeeze in a couple weeks in Utah. I’m excited to take some time to check back in with myself about how I spend my time and hopefully get organized enough to maintain sanity through the fall, when I’ve got a lot of sewing on my schedule. After that I’m planning on slowing WAY down and sleeping WAY more. We’ll see how that goes. Haha. Maybe wishful thinking, but I’m going to give it a valiant effort!
Have a wonderful summer Tuesday folks. I’ll catch up soon! xo
