The “Polka Dot Madness” outfit and a bonus : )

Polka dots galore!

The Facts

Fabric: Cotton print from stash
Pattern: Simplicity 5059 & online tutorial
Year: Contemporary
Notions: 5 buttons from stash
Time to complete: 2 hours
First worn: January 2012
Wear again? yes!

Total Cost: Free…plus $5 for the waist cincher

I bought this pattern somewhere around 2005/6 thinking it would be a cute work-shirt. Then I changed jobs and wore a uniform of sorts everyday so this fell down….down….down….the stack. About a year and a half ago, while researching some online corset patterns I came across a tutorial written by a woman in Finland (!) for an underbust corset/waist cincher. It took me about 30 minutes at lunch to draft it to fit MY measurements and then I hopped off BART on my way home from work and went to a little fabric store in the Mission and found my fav – polka dots. Shocker huh? Went home, cut it out, did a basic fitting and then….

A year later, I pull the cincher out of the back of the closet and say “Oh yeah…but I need something to wear with it”. I’m an outfit girl – so I plowed through the first dozen or so boxes of patterns and here’s an old friend – cute collar, sleeve choices, fitted body, PERFECT! I cut it out, even went to my girlfriends house to stitch it up, got it to the point it just needed button loops, hems and… it sat : (

OK, this is why I wanted to do this whole Sew Weekly thing. Clear out this traffic jam of good intentions!

Suck it in and up!

This turned out to be a VERY good week to finish this up! This kind of sewing isn’t hard, just precise. You need to pay attention and I needed something to pay attention to. It probably took me half an hour to finish up the shirt (not precise sewing!) and then about six hours to finish up the waist cincher. I was able to combine my last weeks last-minute run into Stone Mountain Daughter with a stop at L’acis for grommets. It did take me about an hour to cut, round the ends and dip in tipping fluid the 24 bones in that sucker. I suppose had Ashton kitty not grabbed one of the finished bones and run off with it (we still haven’t found it) then I might have finished up a day before.

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This week was just “one” of those weeks – from the Susan G Komen mess to a friends’ 13 year-old-daughter being scheduled for her second brain surgery in 9 months to the McDonald’s gaffe – by the time Saturday rolled around I had some frustrations to work out. What better way than pound the living crap out of some small pieces of metal with a hammer? HAH! Take that!! Hint – when it starts to get dark, its time to stop : )

What’s up?

So with my plethora of polka dots you can barely see the collar but it’s there. I love the fact that the buttons have loops instead of holes and the sleeves are cut as part of the top. Here’s the other problem with letting something sit this long – it’s now too big : ) Yes, my resolution to get into shape and lose weight is starting to work. So the whole thing, which fit a year ago, is now too big. I’ll get over it. And just so you don’t think that for one week I gave up my beloved red OR cherries–

The lining : )

This is the lining (she says giggling like a teenager). I gave up NEITHER red nor cherries!

Nice kitty…

I need to thank my lovely daughter, Brittany, for taking time out of her painting project at school to keep taking my pics. It was her idea to use the lion here and the art installation with the tree with the boxed leaves above. I have come to look at the weekly OMG_do-we-have-to-take-pictures-of-me-AGAIN part of this as an acting exercise. This week I’m channeling a suburban sewing dominatrix : ) Take THAT, grommets, get in line, lining!

AND NOW THE BONUS – I actually had TWO corset-y projects laying about, desperately needing finishing. This is a sneak peek at one of my little side projects that I finished up this week as well:

My “Ariel” corset

I had made the body of the corset but needed to finish inserting the busk (center front closure), all the boning, do the top and bottom finish work and grommets. My actual costs on this were only for the interlining and lining since the top is made entirely from SCRAPS from various projects. While not a hoarder (yet) I did run a costume shop for years. At some point I had an idea to do a crazy quilt with all silk scraps, so I saved a few pieces here and there and this is one of the projects I made with them. I did buy the sea horse charms ($5 for 20) and the octopus ($1) after re-reading “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. One day, when this is done, I’ll be able to go to a Steampunk event in fine style, and there will be an entire outfit with skirt, blouse, jacket and hat.

All those grommets : )

For this week, just being able to pound in all those grommets was good enough. Let’s do more UFO’s, this was GOOoooooooD!

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