Successful Fundraiser

I didn't manage to sing in the choir yesterday.

The Teen Girls Clubs (Friends, grades 6 - 8, and Girls Only , Grades 9 - 12) spent all day Saturday in the church kitchen baking cookies.  We baked well over 1,000...we had 500 bags, each of which had 2 - 6 cookies in it (depending upon the size of the cookies and who was bagging them...)

We set up a table in the church lobby/fellowship hall and sold the cookies for a suggested donation of $1/bag to raise funds for a young lady who is in Moldova for a year, working with the Stella's Voice ministry.

At the end of all three services, we had 12 bags of cookies left and I'm pretty sure we cleared about $500 for our missionary.

Then I came home and started doing the backed up laundry, which all has to be done ASAP as we're trying to get out of town to visit our parents.

When I get back, I get to work double hours again to make up for being gone.  Not that the bosses are expecting that, but I'm only part time, so if I don't work I don't get paid.  Not good for the budget.

So, maybe about the middle of August I can slow down a bit and catch my breath. And do some sewing... ;-)

No Singing Voice Today

Somehow, I came home from Girls' Ministry camp with a cold; today is Day 4 and I'm coughing and croaking.  So no choir wardrobe post.

But I did a first pass muslin on the Vogue 1250 dress.  A friend gave me a couple of pieces of black and white knits from her stash for my birthday; I decided I'd whip up the 1250 dress from the poly matte jersey.  I expected something wearable.

Um.  Not so much.

I had some problems with the neckline/shoulder seam intersection; not quite sure what I need to do to fix it.  I see that it is designed to slash to the intersection point on the front; I think in my alterations I assumed that the cowl would wrap around w/o slashing. When I modified the cowl on the Vogue 8669  top; I did NOT need to slash the cowl facing and I tried to make the 1250 work the same way.  So I think my shoulder seam on the facing is at the wrong angle.  I need to work on that...either redraft the facing so the shoulder seam is at the correct angle or redraft the back neck so that it is wide enough that I don't have to slash it.

And my attempted correction on the underarm  to avoid the too-low lingerie flashing some of the reviewers mentioned resulted in an armhole that was downright tight.  I actually had to slash the side seam  open about an inch under the arm just to get enough ease to move (making this attempt an actual not-to-be-worn muslin), but it still felt tight going over the shoulder.  I thought I'd forgotten the square shoulder adjustment, but when I checked the pattern I saw that I did indeed do it. So I'm not sure why the top of the shoulder was pulling so badly.  I may need a hyper square shoulder adjustment here.

But even that wasn't the worst of it. The dress looked AWFUL on me.

Part of the problem may have been that the knit was a kinda beefy jersey in a kinda scratchy polyester and just didn't have the drape necessary to look good, but it emphasized all the bad things that have happened to my body since the Great Hormone Shift a couple of years ago. It wasn't tight anywhere other than the armholes, but it did some weird draping just above my upper abdomen and cupped under my lower tummy. 

It was truly scary.  Ugly.  Bad.

So I think it's going back into the envelope and back into the cabinet.  If I can get myself motivated to lose some weight, I may try it again and work on other issues, but for right now, it Just Isn't Going To Work.  Time to move on.

Sigh.

Choir Wardrobe 07/15/12

I still can't find my yellow top.  It's not really that big of a deal, since I have plenty of coral and gray, but it would be nice to know where it's disappeared to.  I've looked in all the usual lost garment haunts and all of the unusual ones I can think of...no luck yet.

So, I'm just using the alternates.    The Jalie 2919 cardigan, Jalie 2682 v-neck top, aging Gloria Vanderbilt straight leg jeans (the closest I'll come to skinny jeans!) and the yellow plastic jewelry again.

And...a report on a finished project.  This upcoming week is dual camp week. First the annual Massive Youth Group Trip to Florida (last count: we have 17 other churches coming to our camp this year.  Wow.), which my three unmarried offspring will be attending; one as a camper and two as workers/counselors.  Secondary to that, it is the State Girls' Ministry camp, and I actually have five girls who, for one reason or another, didn't go to Youth Camp and who are going with me to the Girls camp.  We all leave bright and early in the morning.

The youth group actually did a pre-check in today and all the kids had to have their luggage in to church this morning; they were loading it up in a HUGE Ryder truck.  So all the packing had to be done before we left the house at 7:30 this morning.

Well, a couple of days ago The Flute Player pulled out her swimsuit and the elastic cracked and broke when she stretched it (well, it IS at least 3 years old...).  So, I figured it was faster to make her a suit than to traipse around town late in the season looking for one that was conservative enough for church camp.  Plus I still had a goodly chunk of nylon/lycra left from the last suit.  However, last time I made a girls' suit; this time, it's a Small in the KS misses' range.  And we needed bra cups.

So, I made a quick trip to Hancock's for bra cups and spent exactly as much on them as the remnant of fabric I had at home for her was worth.  A basic swimsuit is pretty simple; however, I had a time trying to figure out how to arrange the bra cups so that they were even and right and...I sewed them onto the lining backward and had to take them off and do it over.  But I did it while I was doing laundry, and I still think it was easier than shopping. ;-)  However, I finished it about 12:30 this AM and it's already on the truck, so I don't have even a hanger shot.

And I did have a bit of fabric arrive from a sale last week and a friend gave me a couple of pieces from her stash as a birthday gift; I think I'm actually going to do another variation of that Jalie cardigan again from one of the new arrivals.

After camp. ;-)

Why not...

I've been crazy working this week trying to make up for the time I took off last week; next week is the girls' ministries camp so I'll be crazy working the next week again to make up hours I'm off at camp.  Ah, the joys of the part-time job...

But The Flute Player is in need of a new swimsuit for youth camp next week (they're going to the beach...I'm not...) so part of our errand running today included a trip to Hancock's to pick up some cups to insert in a new swimsuit for her, which I can make in much less time than it would take to find one at a store.

Turns out Hancock's has McCall's patterns on sale this week, so I went ahead and purchased the dress pattern that is the darling of the internet at the moment...McCall's 6559 .  There are, at this moment, 34 reviews  for it already on PR. 

Will I make it for me?  Um, the jury is out on it at the moment, but I thought I would go ahead and get it, since I was there...

PJ's for for the Flute Player

So, church youth camp is coming up next week and The Flute Player did not have suitable PJ's.  I got the note-printed knit from one of Ann's significant sales, and used my modified Loes Hinse City Dress pattern for the top and the good' ol' Burda No-Side-Seam pants for the britches and...happy musical daughter.  The only fly in the ointment was that she has grown more than I realized and the pants are very nearly too snug.

But they'll do.

Incidentally, I cut out a second pair of the Burda pants in my size; PJ bottoms for me, from what was left of the note fabric too.  Working on a fuschia tank top for the top...literally made from scraps...to go with 'em.  I'm going to camp next week, too, although it's not the same one.

I put different colored ribbons in the backs of the pants so we can not only tell the front from the back easily, but tell whose is whose...

Choir Wardrobe 070812

Yup.  It's the Adri jacket.  With the near-matching Vogue 2925 shell top underneath.

And a yellow crinkly cotton scarf from Wal-Mart.

And Lee bootcuts.

Coral, yellow and gray.  Only I skipped the gray this week. ;-)

The frizzy hair is starting to get to me.  Maybe it's time for a haircut.

Adri jacket done

Twelve teeny mitered corners later, and I have a jacket.  Actually, it's more of an overshirt than a jacket, but for summer choir wear it'll be just about perfect.  Once I decide I can live with the inevitable linen creases. ;-).

I finally decided to skip the bias binding on the neckline; if I'd had the time and the inclination I could've made some samples and figured out a way to miter a binding-meets-hem corner, but the linen was stable and pressed very nicely so I decided to just turn the seam under and go.  Here's a detail shot of the collar/neckline/mitered corners; you can click to make it big enough to actually see.

This will probably show up in tomorrow's choir wardrobe post.

Mitering Away

I'm making good progress on the Adri jacket.  It's really a simple thing to put together EXCEPT...all the seam allowances are pressed open, then they are turned under and topstitched.

Except for the neckline seam, which has a single fold bias binding over it.

And I'm fussy when it comes to points that show like that, so I'm doing little bitty mitered corners.

Counting the front lapel, there are 12 mitered corners.

Except I can't figure out how to miter that front lapel corner.  It's a double turned 5/8" on the front edge, and the single fold bias binding on the  neckline edge.

I have Linda Lee's little booklet on miters, which covers several different corner arrangements, but bound edge meeting hemmed edge is not one of them.

I may skip the binding and just fold under the neckline seam, too.

Pondering that while I do the other 10 corners....

Choir Wardrobe Jul 1, 2012

...the 'Egg on Face' Edition...

And, of course, all email history has been deleted so I can't go back and try to figure out what happened.

However, somewhere in the last 6 weeks I was convinced that the colors for July had changed from coral, yellow and gray to coral, yellow and oatmeal.

So yesterday, My Sweet Baboo and I happened to have an errand to the far side of town, over in the Coldwater Creek neck of the woods.  I had a partially used CWC gift card, and I decided I needed something oatmeal.  So we scooted around to the fancy schmancy shopping center where the store is located, and I thought I did pretty good...picking up a jacket, a lace trimmed t shirt (both oatmeal) and a necklace and some complimentary earrings on a pretty decent sale.

But I didn't mean to wear any of the new stuff right away; no I had a plan for this morning.  The only problem was that I could NOT find the yellow top that was a crucial part of today's plan.  Anywhere.  So I had to make a plan B, quick, which was the new oatmeal jacket, knit CWC bootcuts, and a top from about 4 years back, the tankish  top from Vogue 2925, fashioned in a coral modal/lycra knit. With the yellow plastic beads, it looked ok.


Until I got to church and saw that most everyone had on shades of gray with their coral and yellow.  Um, oopsie.  I stayed in the middle of the pack today. ;-).

But it's ok; oatmeal is really the new white, as white does bad things to the lighting and the shaders in the AV room have asked us to please avoid white.  So I'll be wearing it, I'm sure.

Just not for the rest of this month.

Now, where is that missing yellow top....

Postscript...the heat wave has finally arrived in Alabama.  This is  up on the north-facing front porch, on which the sun does not shine until late in the evening.  So, yup, 98 in the coolest spot outside...