Slowly, but surely

Before this year is over, I might actually have a wearable wardrobe (which is a little bit redundant because, if your wardrobe isn’t wearable, it can hardly be classified as a wardrobe)! The week leading up to Christmas, I made another blouse using the same pattern as I did for this one. I had already worked out all the tricky fitting issues with the first go-round, which made this time stress-free. And that’s a nice way to sew.

I’ve had this aqua cotton for a couple of years, intended for this purpose, but, as is the story with a lot of my fabric purchases, its incarnation into something wearable was postponed due to pregnancies and subsequent baby weight. The interfacing I used on the collar and cuffs is a little heavier than what I usually use (they were out of the stuff I like), but I think it actually works ok for this weight of fabric. I also like the subtle stripes and dots design woven into the fabric. It keeps it from looking too plain and, worked up into a shirt, looks pretty sharp.

Just like with the first blouse I made, I really took my time putting this one together. There’s a part of me that impatiently wants to churn out a garment as fast as I can. But this older, wiser me is beginning to learn that I’ll be much happier in the end if I’m very methodical in the construction process. My self-imposed deadline on this shirt was Christmas Eve so that I would have something decent to wear to church. I sewed on the buttons Saturday afternoon and was able to wear it that evening. There were no photo ops then, hence the lag time between the finished product and this post.

Incidentally, that skirt was the first thing I made after we moved back from France. It was a happy accident that the plaid of the ruffle lined up with that on the skirt because I barely knew what I was doing back then. My zipper insertion was faulty at best, but it’s still wearable. So wear it I shall. I’m thinking this outfit could use a belt for some interest, though.

It was a little cold out there today!

The hole in my wardrobe

My wardrobe is all kinds of pathetic. Having three children in the space of four years does dreadful things to a body and to add insult to injury, said small children can do a pretty number on whatever clothing you do manage to  squeeze into. With the exception of the items I’ve made this year, nearly everything else in my closet needs replaced. Stretched out, spit up on, smeared with spaghetti sauce hands… the list goes on. I’ve decided that I’m tired of looking like a schlump. Just because I have three small children, doesn’t mean I need to look like a hobo. Now that the baby is nearing his second birthday, I feel like we’re emerging from the worst of their destructive tendencies towards my clothing. This is when they start trashing their own clothes. (As long as I keep dressing them in $1 pillowcases from the thrift store, they can have at it and my blood pressure won’t spike.)

With the knowledge that my wardrobe needs a complete overhaul, I had to identify the most glaring deficiency, and that turned out to be tops. Inventory reveals:

• A few t-shirts from my pre-pregnancy days. While I can physically wear these shirts, they’re only slightly less indecent than if I had gone out with nothing at all.
• One sheer blouse that I bought purposely long to hide my post-partum belly right after Granota (baby #2) was born because I needed something for a Christmas event. I could probably salvage this one by shortening it, but I think I’ve decided that I don’t actually like this one enough to go to the trouble.
• A blouse that I sewed back before I realized that I need to make a long torso adjustment on just about everything. It barely hits at my hips, so the slightest arm movement and whoop! I’m Britney Spears.
• Four kind of/ok t-shirts that have to pretend they’re “nice” shirts.

Clearly, this is a problem. I have a few skirts and no real viable options to pair with them. I dug around in a sackful of fabric that I bought long, long ago and found a nice lightweight blue cotton with textured ovals. I used Butterick 4609 — just a nice, basic button-up shirt.

I’m awfully proud of how this one turned out. Since the fabric is semi-sheer, I really took my time. I enclosed all my seams, so it looks just as good on the inside as it does on the outside. Then, when all I had left to do was buttonholes and buttons, my sewing machine died. Yes, I know there is a way to do buttonholes by hand, but there was no way I was going to ruin my perfect shirt by trying out a technique I had never used before. I got my machine back a couple weeks ago and finally got the buttonholes in and just sewed on all the buttons (ten!) this weekend. Today I got to wear a decent-looking shirt! It’s a happy day.

Just a little bright out

Is that a nice collar or what?

Darts! And some wrinkles.