What's up, Doc?

I am heading back into the sewing room; but first, I had to take care of a few things that had accumulated.

We had used some random chunks of fabric from the decor room at church for the wedding reception.  They had obviously been used for other things, as there were chocolate spots on them when we pulled them out.  They also had not been cleaned because they were just cut yardage...and the poly-organza type fabric was raveling out like crazy.  So I brought them home, serged the ends and washed them. And, while I had a 3-thread configuration on the serger, I also took care of a couple of other things:

-- a friend had purchased a bit of silky poly print that she wanted to turn into a scarf.  A bit of ripping, a bit of cutting, and a little decorative thread roll-edging and it's done.

--The Princess purchased a lacey floor-length dress that she wore for her 'departure' from the wedding.  She'd wanted me to hem the bottom for her, but I wasn't sure the serger would feed it evenly, since it was a textured melange of lacey bits and managed to talk her into just wearing shoes w/ a bit of heel.  Well, there was an incident with the escalator in the hotel when they arrived and suddenly, well, you can see for yourself, as I'm in the process of trimming off the chewed up bottom:

Once it became a salvage job, I wasn't nearly so nervous about serging it.  I cut off about 7", so it is now a  lacey tea-length dress.  And the serger did just fine...

--And, we have more weddings coming up at church so I brought home a dress that will be worn by one of the other office staff young ladies who is a member of one bridal party; it needed to be shortened about 2".  Poly shantung, straight skirt, poly lining.  Took maybe an hour and a halfish.  And I was astonished to find 5/8" seam allowances used in that dress...I thought that was the mark of a home sewn garment...which this most pointedly was NOT.

Anyway, my chartitable sewing done for the time being, I can focus on my next project(s).

And I had a brainstorm for one of them.  I'm going to use the pattern I just adapted for the MOB dress and 1) change the neckline to bateau and 2) add 3/4 length sleeves.  It's a princess sheath...it's very close to ideally fitted...so, Carolyn, I'm heading over into your 'alter the TNT!' camp; we'll see how it works!

And, you know, there were sales last week.  And the second box of fabric just arrived, so I piled all the 'yardage in' onto the sofa and took a picture:

The two pieces on the right came earlier; the stripe is a cottony-feeling rayon/lycra blend, and  the taupey-looking piece is actually a multicolored houndstooth plaid.  The other four pieces came today (and my living room now has that lovely new-fabric smell...); the white, black and green are cotton/lycra poplins and the spotted piece is one of the 'trendy knits' that have been dispersing themselves around the country for some time now.  I know it's an Animal Not Found in Nature, but the normal print colors of yellow/brown/orange do NOTHING for me; this one is black/grey/red and I will wear it just for fun.  Might even turn it into that popular Burda Style funnel neck shirt really, really soon...

I had a scary moment today; I hit Hancock's Big Pattern sale and came home to enter my new acquisitions in my PatternReview Pattern Catalog; when I entered the Chado/Ralph Rucci dress (Vogue 1239) I was informed that it was already in my stash.  I couldn't believe I'd duplicated it...but it turns out I didn't.  I have a Vogue/ Perry Ellis skirt pattern from something like 1990 that has the same number.  So, yeah, you know you're a SERIOUS pattern stasher when the numbers start to repeat...