Darlene

I've refrained from talking about this, mostly because it's incredibly weird.  I have this awesome dress form...seriously. It has twelve different knobs on it that I can turn to make it bigger or smaller, so I can essentially make it any size I want.  Now, down in this basement sewing cave of mine, all I have is this dress form, so naturally, I named it.  Darlene.  Now that we've addressed that, we can move on with this post and you'll know who I'm talking about and this whole thing will be a lot easier :)

Last night I went to Michael's and it was honestly the most stressful experience.  There are so many different beads and pendant and cords in the world, you have no idea.  Basically, after running back and forth through three dangerously overstocked jewelry aisles, I decided on enough to make one piece, which I spent some time on today.  I'm not sure yet if it's a bracelet or a necklace or part of a necklace or just going to be ignored and sit on my desk for the rest of eternity, but it's a start.  Now that I'm more aware of what's available to me, I think I'll go back to the jewelry drawing board and better plan out that portion of this project.

the beginnings of a jewelry attempt

I also made plans yesterday to spend Thursday morning gallivanting around the garment district looking for the elusive dark green jersey that I've been obsessing over.  And another idea for a way to get letters on one of my garments.  And excessive amounts of jewel-y decorative appliqué things for the shoulders of the maxi dress.  All in about three hours, because then I have to be back at school for a dance concert rehearsal. Whew. If you remember, though, some of my other mythical fabrics actually DID exist, so I have hope...

purchased fabrics (check out that plumberry!)

Today, however, I slaved over patterns.  I know you think I'm being melodramatic about this, but it's really that bad, especially when copying over.  Burda does this thing where they just layer a bunch of patterns all onto a sheet, and it's your job to figure out which pattern lines you need and what size you're working with.  And I have a massive stack of Burdas here. And a lot of pattern manipulating to do.  However, I persevered, and got through two of my tops and the harem pants today (those pants are going to haunt me for all eternity...good thing I love them so much).  The one huge reward today was pinning all the pieces for the pants onto Darlene and seeing something finally come together--I'm so excited to get the muslins done!

absurdly tedious pattern-making 

doesn't Darlene look great?!

Keep in mind, that's just pattern paper she's rocking... the actual fabric situation will hang a LOT better, and hopefully look less like a skirt that's had it's hem torn out...

It's all in the process...!