Blog Post 302!

Well it just snuck right past me, the 300 mark, I noticed when I logged in tonight, that this will be my 302nd blog post.  That’s a lot of writing in a year and a half!  And I have to say, even if no one reads it, I love being able to journal about my adventures, and add photos, and then refer back to what I did, how I did it, where I did it, what I was thinking and even occasionally, “What was I thinking?”.  I’ve journaled for years, and there is nothing like being able to look back and see the photos, and links, and follow the trail.  I can’t tell you how often I refer to my own blog for information.

This morning I finished up all the packing, day four of the museum boot camp class, which starts tomorrow, is all packed, frame looms warped, handouts printed, and yarns and fleece gathered.  PowerPoint presentations are all updated, and loaded into the netbook.  I filled a few more orders for books, and then had lunch.  And then there was nothing left on my to do list, except clean the bathrooms.  I did one of them.  The other can wait.  It isn’t my bathroom anyway.  Mine is clean…

It is a good thing that no one is home.  I’ve completely taken over both second floor bedrooms, and the hall, with all the piles of stuff for Day 1,2,3 and 4, and for the six seminars and one workshop for Convergence.  My studio is looking a little barren.

It’s rare that I finish my to do list, and since I started playing last night with the dress I started a year and a half ago, I decided to keep working on that.  We’ve hired a house painter, so there were a lot of interruptions, getting him familiar with hoses and exterior electric outlets, and making decisions on what to do.  I am thrilled beyond belief that someone else is doing this job, it needed it so badly, and since my husband and I are never home, it just wasn’t going to get done.  Besides, it isn’t really a great idea for me to be bounding up ladders 30 feet in the air at 55 years old.  Plus it is air-conditioned in my studio, and it is 98 degrees outside.  🙂 I’d rather be sewing…

So, sew I did!  I took the hunk I cut off the floor length dress, and cut a godet from it, I didn’t use a pattern, just sort of cut it by eye.  Or in other words, I guessed.  I kind of felt my way along here, there are two layers in the skirt part, the chiffony print fabric, and the lining, they have to come together for the zipper, the chiffony fabric can’t support the zipper by itself, especially an invisible one, so I sewed a godet to each back seam, below where the zipper would go.  It took some tweaking to get it to lay perfect, but I’m happy with the result.  And the dress hangs so much better.

I used a bias cut nylon tricot seam finish, which was the perfect solution for this particular fabric.  Originally I had serged the seams, and it was just too much thread for such a fine fabric and the seams puckered a lot.  I reinserted the invisible zipper, and then figured out how to neatly tuck in the tape and finish off the base of the zipper with the lining godet.  I wanted the print fabric and the lining fabric to hang free of each other in the skirt.

I can’t tell you how good it felt to just sit and sew and make something for myself.  Nothing show stopping, nothing award winning, just a simple fun summer dress.  Life is good when it is balanced.  And mine isn’t always so balanced.  I need to try harder to just take some time for me to play with what I love best.  And I can wear my new dress this week to the museum.  Not tomorrow though, we are playing with Kool-Aid and the microwave!

So here is my lovely new dress, started around blog post 20.  And now, 282 blog posts later, it is finished.