Poppies are blooming….

…and blueberries are starting to ripen!

 And the weather finally feels like late spring/summer : )

To that end I’m going to start a short series of ways to work with knits, all started by an inquiry Vicki made on Twitter. “I have the fabric but have yet to tackle swimsuit. Confused about elastic and finishing. Good online ref?”

First up – fabric. I’m going to work with knits of different types to show you what’s possible. I’ve only got the first t-shirt knit project up for this post but it gives you the basics. Next post I’ll use a cotton/lycra knit as well as a 4 way spandex, this should give anyone doing the swimwear challenge plenty of time to experiment!

And why do I do it this way? In a word, elastic sucks. For some uses, like running through casings in a sleeve it’s fine but let me tell you, when you’re making costumes, especially dance wear, that gets worn over and over and over again…like zippers, it’s the first thing to go and a pain in the rear to replace. I made professional dance costumes for years and when a fellow designer showed me this trick it was like the heavens opened up and rainbows came down. I NEVER worried about a leotard again. To this day items I made this way years ago are holding up while items made with the “traditional” elastic method are sad and needing repair. Keep in mind that elastic and chlorine aren’t the best of friends so what do you think is going to be the first thing that gives out in your carefully crafted swimsuit?

Let’s start with your basic t-shirt, the kind that you might get from your place of employment to commemorate some event, or you find a cool design at a thrift store but it would fit Shaquille O’Neill. Regardless of the design they are usually crew necks and I am NOT a crew neck fan! I feel choked and cloaked and that is NOT good. There is nothing worse than a wrinkled shirt at an event. Thankfully as made evident by sites like productspy.co.uk/best-steam-generator-iron-reviews, it’s now easy to own a mobile steamer on the go. The t-shirts I’m using are a standard knit, they stretch one way; around. Nothing fancy : )

To start – Lay t-shirt on table. Put cats outside. I want to make a simple camisole so I pulled out a knit camisole I have that I know fits and just laid it on top, cutting around the edges adding 1/2″. Most knit camisoles I have have some lycra in them so they have more stretch to them than the average t-shirt but adding that 1/2″ seems to work. (The t-shirt I started out with is a Men’s Large.)

You can see what I’ve cut off as well as the shape of the new shirt. Don’t get scissor shy! When in doubt you can cut larger and take in. Do NOT throw out the scraps yet!!

Next cut off the t-shirt hems, making sure you have at least a 1″ strip. Set aside but don’t lose : ) Now cut the underarm sleeve seams open and lay the sleeves flat. Cut off and toss hem, then cut 2 pieces of fabric approximately 2″ wide by 14″ long. You may not be able to get more than one piece out of each sleeve. Once you have your two pieces NOW throw the scraps out.

Top piece is the ‘raw’ piece.

Now fold your strips in half lengthwise and iron. Yes, iron. It just helps. Once you’ve tamed the inevitable curl trim your pieces to 3/4″ to 1″ wide. You don’t need to be EXACT in the width, it can be adjusted as you sew to some degree. I made mine 3/4″ wide.

Each of these pieces is going to finish the neck edges of your shirt. Measure your neck edge from armhole to armhole, my neck edge was 12″. On your strips that you have nicely ironed place a pin 1″ or so from one end. Measure 10″ and place another pin. (The IMPORTANT thing to note here is you want approximately 20% less on the trim piece, a 5:4 ratio.) If you can’t eyeball things then put a pin in the middle. Put a pin in the middle of the front of your shirt neck edge, match your strips’ middle pin and pin strip to shirt. GENTLY stretching the strip, match the end pin to the end of the neck line and pin in place. You are taking 10″ of fabric and pinning it to a 12″ neck edge, the middle pin just helps you distribute the fabric evenly. Carefully stretch the strip and pin it to the neckline, try not to stretch the shirt itself.

Am I clear as mud? It didn’t occur to me while taking photos that it might be nice to see the neck edge pinned. There are some examples of what I am talking about on DoYouSew.com that you can use a reference for this step. I PROMISE I’ll photograph that in the next post! In the meantime, we sew.

I’m using my overlock. Do you HAVE to use an overlock? No, but it goes MUCH faster. You can do this with a stretch stitch on your machine or even a zig-zag stitch but trust me, if you don’t have an overlock you should seriously consider it : )

Starting at one end I just put the presser foot down and zipped the edging on, took less than 30 seconds and we have this –

NO, it is NOT the same shirt as the above photo! I completely constructed that first shirt before I saw Vicki’s tweet and it occurred to me that someone might want to see my process. That’s ok, I like this one too : )

I had to really adjust the camera settings to get the details here, sorry. I didn’t even think about dark shirts when I started this… Hopefully you CAN see the slight gathering of the neck edge, that is a good thing : ) Because when you put it on a curvy person it hugs to their body, not falls away from it –

You can also see that the strip is longer than the neckline, that gives you something to hang onto. I start at the end of the strip and sew right off the other edge.

Now I trim those edges off : )  Aren’t the hedgehogs cute? I think so. I’m wearing this shirt the next time I see my doctor who keeps telling me that basal cell skin cancer is “no big deal”. Harrumph.

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Just for giggles this is the back.

Another view of the neck edge. When you turn the strip up so it looks all pretty on the outside the seam will go DOWN. You can top stitch this if you want. I didn’t do so on mine.

Overlock the side seams together. You can overlock them together before you put the front and back neck edging pieces on, some people like to handle knits one layer at a time.

Now for the arm edgings and straps –

Same technique as the neck edges. Find the two pieces you cut off the hem and make sure they are 1″ wide. No folding required, that’s why we’re using the hems : ) The arm openings on my shirt just happen to be 12″ so put a pin 1″ from one end, another pin 10″ from that one and pin to each end of armhole (for lack of a better term we’ll just call it the armhole).  My underarm seam is in about the middle so I put a pin in the edging at midway point between the two pins, pinned everything to the shirt and put another couple pins in place to distribute the shirt fabric evenly. Starting at one end of the strip overlock everything together. Yes, you’ll be going over the hem stitching but that’s fine. Overlock down the strip, the strip to the shirt and go right off the edge.

Here comes the only tricky part. Unlike the neck edges that you turned the fabric UP and had the seam go DOWN you’re going to turn the fabric UP and have the seam go UP the same way. Make SURE your edging is wider than your seam! Otherwise 1) your edging is too small or 2) your seam is too wide. You can always re-stitch the seam, cutting it down so it’s even or shorter than the finished edge.

You can iron this if you like because NEXT you’re going to use some cute stitch, stretch or not, to stitch all those layers together from one end to the other. I’ve used a regular zig-zag and a fancier stretch stitch, both work.

You can see my “fancy” stitch here –

Then, just like the pic shows, you’re going to pin the back strap down to the back, turning the tag end under and sewing through all the layers. My straps are about 9″ from front neck edge to back neck edge. Pin your straps with safety pins and try the shirt on. Once you’ve got it the right length stitch through all layers.

And you’re done. Unless you don’t like raw hems. Overlock the hem, turn under an inch and stitch. NOW you’re done : )

  I have to say that I’ve learned several things taking pics for this post – to that end I’m going to do a second post VERY soon using the same technique for finishing off legs for a swimsuit! This time, however, I’ll just make a sample garment and use highly contrasting threads : )

It literally took me half an hour to make this shirt:

And now a BONUS!

Wonder what goes on behind the scenes? Here’s an example:

During most of my photoshoots the dogs are milling around. In this one Chloe (the white one) is looking down at the yard next to me. Romera is right here  (grey head),      ^ looking up at squirrels in the tree.

In this shot her nose is about 1″ from the bottom edge of the photo, here .

Now you can see her ears standing up/out and more of her face….

And here you can see her move RIGHT in the middle, totally focused on the squirrels! This all took place in about 6 seconds. Meanwhile the camera is clicking away and I’m posing, trying to get a decent shot in about 40.

And here they’re just chasing and playing, right on top of my feet. I think Romera was trying to gnaw on the wooden purse while stepping on me : )

Modeling is tough work.

Up next – I take a dress I found in the trash and attempt to make it into something Gatsby-ish. Hint – it doesn’t work out so well and we’re all covered in vintage sequin bits.

I only made 3 new items this week but boy am I tired!

First up, Monday:

Memorial Day : )

We didn’t do anything picnic-y, it was just a nice day to work in the yard, walk the dogs and finish up my Gertie pants muslin. The pants are Gertie’s pattern Butterick 5895 and they are easy-peasy! What I’m wearing is actually my “muslin” since I found some stretch denim at Discount Fabrics for $2.98 per yard because it had mud on it. Mud washed right out so for less than $5 I got to try the pattern out.

I would STRONGLY recommend making a muslin of these pants. They are high waisted and while I took off almost an inch before I put the waistband on I’m tempted to take off at least another half inch. I also cut a size 18 expecting to take them in a little and ended up taking them in a LOT (like an inch out of each side seam), most likely due to the stretch in my fabric. In the future I’ll cut a 16, fit them and use the flat-tummy underpockets like I did with my Gina pants.

I wasn’t going to do anything fancy to them but ended up top-stitching them in white. The pockets are a little on the small side, a casualty of the fitting process, but still functional. Wouldn’t these be cute with RED top stitching?

The shirt is from the Collar challenge last year. Again, wouldn’t it be cute in white with red top stitching? Yes it would : )

On to Tuesday:

Love my cotton blouses but this is why I have to plan ahead and iron the night before. This also means sneaking into the sewing room so Stuart doesn’t catch on and claim the ironing board as his.

This shirt was part of the shirt challenge last year. It’s one of my favorites : ) Paired with black jeans it made that 50-80 degree day transition easily. I think I keep making these shirts because if I have a lot then I won’t wear out my very favorites. Or at least that’s my justification and I’m sticking to it : )

Wednesday —

Ok, ok, I know what I said about a lot of these shirts but this is NOT the same pattern as the one above! Yes, it has gathers that seem to go into a yoke but this pattern has the back of the shirt incorporate the yoke so there are no separate pieces. Originally they used darts in the front and back but I turned them into pleats like the other shirt. I stitched the buttonholes a little closer than the pattern called for, they wanted 3″ spacing between each but I prefer 2 1/2″. It does NOT have the 3 little darts in each sleeve head that I love so : ( One of my resolutions this year was to incorporate more red/turquoise into my wardrobe and this shirt does that.

*I’d just like to add here that all photos are taken at the END of my day. I’ve been wearing the outfits you’ve seen for 12 hours, have biked three miles in them and already walked the dog…twice. I can see that my white jeans are a tad dirty, ah well : ) I DID brush my hair and reapply my lipstick but that’s it.*

Which brings us to Thursday –

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Thursday was a little chilly, once again there were two sweaters along with my cute tank top. You’ll also notice in my collage I’ve got two photos of Thursday’s outfit:

This is for Vicki, who just found out I’m one of “them”. Yes, I work at Genentech in South San Francisco. This is the sign on our end of campus and the tank top I’m wearing is one of the many company shirts that are given out. This one was to commemorate a big think-tank-like project they did last year. I liked the graphics on it but the only style they ever order are crew neck shirts. I’m not a crew neck shirt fan at all, I’ll slice and dice them every time!

This particular one I cut down, used the scraps for the edging and straps and it took me about half an hour mostly on the serger. I used a technique I use whenever I do underwear, dance leotards and swimsuits, which is NO elastic! Vicki was asking on Twitter earlier about how to use elastic in swimwear so in the next day or two I’ll write up a whole separate post on how I do this. I’ll use another shirt as an example and do a step-by-step set of photos so you can see EXACTLY how to do this and how easy it is.

Really : )

So I took a free cotton t-shirt, made it totally girly and cute and paired it with a 12 dollar pair of pants and long cardigan I bought at H&M years ago.

And finally…the end of the week and the end of the month…

92 degrees. Feel the heat : )

The shirt was one of the first UFO’s I finished last year, it has a nifty underbust corset that matches but it’s in the closet today. The skirt is one I’ve worn before, it’s my one seam, 4 dart, wide elastic for a waistband skirt. I have 2 more ready to stitch up on my sewing table, one in plum, the other in red. I didn’t get to them this month : (

But realistically I DID wear at least one piece of clothing I made at least 5 days a week this month. Took some planning, took some stealth but I did it! One day I may not have to think about it so much but this was definitely a good challenge. Again, the challenge to get photos of everything proved to be the stumbling block but I worked through it.

Phew!

This weekend is the final weekend for me to get thing planted in the garden. We’re heading into the nineties temperature wise which means the tomatos and squash will be growing like crazy. It also means the blueberries will be ripening : ) My poppy plants are coming to the end of their blooms, now we wait for those seed pods to mature.

I’ve also got new sets of cushions for the outdoor furniture almost done, a bench to make using all recycled parts including the upholstery (lots of pictures I PROMISE so you can make your own!) AND the deck. is. DONE. Hallelujah! It even has evening mood lighting : ) It feels like I’m making so little progress on my 52 things to do in 52 weeks but not for lack of trying. Maybe I can clear a few things off my list this weekend…

And cupcakes. I think we need cupcakes soon.

I finally got the Joan pose down!

Definitely having to learn a whole new skill set when it’s just me and the camera on auto. This is how I ended the week, channeling Joan in my Favorite things outift, and this is how I started the week:

Can we say “Titanic”?

Yes, I FINALLY got to wear parts of my Titanic outfit from last year. The $3 Salvation Army linen blouse has seen quite a bit of wear, so much so that when I found another one I snapped it up so I wouldn’t wear them out so fast. I don’t know about you but I trash the cuffs before anything else.

I used the belt from the jacket for a waist belt and wore the same purple/white shoes I wore to Brittany’s graduation. Because the morning was a little chilly I wore a basic white sweater to work but it was quite nice at the end of the day so Mr. Sweater stayed in my bag. The big hat? In the closet. I can’t imagine it would stay on my head while I rode my bike! Even with ties it is so big it would block my vision so no hat. I’m ok with that but when I look at the above pic I start thinking I look like a Cheesecake Factory waitress (no, they do NOT wear the outfits you see on “Big Bang Theory” and yes, I tried to google that for you but nothing relevant comes up. They wear ALL white!).

  We’re still having this weird weather pattern where it’s cold at the beginning of the week, almost raining, and then by the weekend it’s nice and warm. This particular day, however, was NOT warm. I’ve not only got on a long sleeve sweater as my basic foundation piece but I had 2 more sweaters on over it! I’m only wearing one here but wow! What happened to the mid-80 days??

The skirt is the one I made for the Childhood Challenge last year. I love the skirt, made 2 more from this pattern : ) I probably would have made another couple had it not been shredded by puppy teeth last fall. I did get to wear one of my new-ish bakelite pins, a cornucopia with cherries. Any day with a little bakelite in it is a little better day, which leads me to…

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Bakelite galore!! This was just the SECOND outfit I completed for the Sew Weekly challenges. Again, I love this skirt pattern and again, it was shredded by puppy teeth. This pattern, however, is so easy I can probably pull one off the skirt itself. I never would have thought I would love the yellow/black combination of this so much but I do. So much so that I recently found a piece of black/yellow printed chiffon at JoAnn for something like $2 a yard and I bought a piece for experimentation. I recently joined the Vintage Pattern Lending Library and let me tell you, it’s been an education : ) I have several 30’s day dress patterns now that are just BEGGING to be made up!

 And now for the extra special photo of the week:

Four generations.

Grams insisted : ) I guess because Brittany wasn’t around for Mother’s Day my grandmother wanted a 4 generation photo with her so we obliged. My mom thinks my grandmother has a “list” of things to do before she “goes”. I don’t know what to say about that other than “ok” when she asks. I wore my Joan dress from the latest Mad Men challenge. Right color for the day : )

So that’s my collage for week 4. I have to say I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t been able to add more new things to my wardrobe. I’ve got lots of stuff cut out, just haven’t had much time to actually sew. The real challenge has been to make sure I don’t wear the same things over and over again, plan ahead so I’m not ironing a shirt at 5:30 in the morning and make sure I’ve got enough layers on to go from 50 to 80 degrees in one day.

I’m also quite happy that Miss Crayola Creepy has extended the deadline for the Gatsby challenge to June 4. I have a vintage dress that is falling apart that I would love to turn into something Gatsby-ish. Not my favorite era for someone with my boobage but I’d really like to see what I can come up with considering I pulled the dress from the trash. And I’m still futsing over my Lee challenge : )

So much to do…

When we last met I had lost this dress : ( And then I found it : ) I don’t know how big this pic is on your screen but maybe you can see I’m holding the program from Brittany’s commencement?

She’s the one in the red hair smiling with thumbs up : )

And here we are after her ceremony, just after we took our “bent twig” photo.

What is a bent twig?

“Any current Mills student related to a Mills alumna. The term comes from the quote by Alexander Pope: “’Tis education forms the common mind; just
as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.’ “

I’m not usually a big fan of commencements. I would have skipped my own if I didn’t get the traditional “You will attend because I’ve waited for YEARS for this!” lecture. I now see what my mother meant and yes, she is *almost* always right.

Part of my reluctance in attending these things are the speeches that I never seemed to have a connection to/with. I remember suffering through high school speeches while sitting in blinding afternoon sun (yawn) and don’t even remember who spoke at my own college commencement but I DO remember being very happy I was done!

Brittany’s ceremony featured Holly Gordon, the woman who helped produce the award winning documentary “Girl Rising“. Her message, which you can see in a podcast here, boils down to this “Just do SOMETHING”. She told stories of her own travels, how she got her start and even though her journey has not been what you might think of as a “straight” line it was what was necessary to get to where she is today.

That’s what she wanted to tell everyone that day. Take chances, take a trip, take on something that may not seem to be in your path because your path may change. One thing is almost certain and that is life isn’t linear.

If you click on the link it should bring up a page with 7 webcasts – Graduate Student Speaker Steven Drouin was GOOD. And at the very bottom is an 18 second clip showing the students “flinging” their tubes full of pieces of tissue paper in their class color of red, with some gold and white thrown in for good measure : ) I have a handfull of tissue pieces in a bag in my drawer that in 30 years my grandkids will pull out and ask about…I hope.

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 I wore my dad’s mother’s high school graduation pin on my dress. I can’t help but think she would have been as proud as I am of my daughter and this was my way of taking my grandmother with me. The dress I wore she would have LOVED because of the purple but the other reason I wore it is because purple was my class color when I graduated. And because of the purple and the amount of walking I did I decided to wear my new purple velvet shoes:

Of course I took these pictures somewhat after the fact and someone had to check things out:

Then she moved right into the middle of the action:

And the she flopped down on the deck as if it was all too much to bear : )

While perusing the Mills facebook page I came across this picture of my daughter, who was sitting about 30 feet away from me. Because I’m an alumna I was able to march to the ceremony with the rest of the alumae who attended. They gave us caps and gowns and had us line up in order of our class year (one woman said “We’re getting closer to the front!”), and handed me a banner with my year on it that I made back when I was pregnant with Brittany! When the other women found out I actually had my daughter graduating they made sure, when she was in line to get her diploma, to cheer! Did I cry? Yep.

Lined up…

The site they use for graduation is where the Costume shop I lived in many years ago used to reside. Now they have an area they plant with an “M” and surround it by the graduating class color.

This journey, for both my daughter and myself, has not been linear. But it has brought us here today which is exactly where we both should be : )

I decided, with the very busy weekend we have coming up that I would do a mid-week post so I didn’t get overwhelmed. My daughter is graduating from Mills College this Saturday!

This week has been weird, weird, weird weather-wise. We started out in the upper eighties so cotton was in order. I wore my “Quilt” outfit and it was perfect.

Tuesday was blustery but warm-ish so my St. Patrick’s blouse was in order. I’m back in jeans while it’s windy : ) I got tired of fighting my skirts a la Marilyn in “The Seven Year Itch” on my bike and at BART. It’s also tough this time of year because it can be 57 degrees in the city in the morning but 86 when I get home. It’s all about layers…

Wednesday was shopping day!

Brittany needed sandals to wear for the ceremony along with a correct bra for her dress so we met in the city to shop. I HAD to check out the Fiesta display at Macy’s to see if they had any special pieces to add to my collection (they didn’t!) and then we hit the shoe section. Imagine shoes as far as the eyes can see…

And neon vinyl.

Cal Trans orange neon vinyl. Just say no. I made her try them on just because. We laughed. Then we bought some pretty shoes : ) She took me to Uniqlo, sort of like a Japanese H & M.

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The stairs LIGHT up and change colors! We quickly took this photo just like the rest of the tourists : ) The mannequins you see on the left side of the photo turn in unison and there are a couple dozen of them. Very avant garde. I wore the top from my 40’s outfit with my Target red sweater and polka dotty shoes. It was VERY windy out! I will admit that it was a chilly ride home which explains why I bundled up Thursday…

The red wool sweater was a $3 thrift store find and the plaid coat was from the Twin jackets post I did last October. Jeans again and it was windy AND rainy AND some random guy decided to dance on the BART tracks during the morning commute so it took twice as long as usual to get to work. At least I was bundled and comfy during my wait!

I finally decided to wear my Grandma Bertha dress to the graduation. Because I’m an alum I get to sit in a special section and get breakfast ahead of time. Once the ceremony is over Brittany and I will take an official “bent twig” portrait. When a relative graduates they are called “bent twigs” and the moment captured on film. I figure we worked hard for this and I’m getting that picture! The purple/green dress would have been perfect!

Notice how I said “would have been”? Went to pull the dress out tonight and no dress to be found. It must be with the blue Joan dress that is AWOL as well. Either we’ve been hit by a thief that has a fondness for vintage-style clothing or I’ve had a pretty good brain fart and they are somewhere very safe. Both Jim and I have looked in ALL our closets (all 4 of them!) and can’t find either dress. I’m not sure if I’ve got anything else quite appropriate for a spring graduation in the sun on a large grassy meadow. I’m also not sure if I’ve got time to make anything since I need to be in Oakland at 8 am in 36 hours!

Time to panic yet?

The week in pictures : )

I actually made it all seven days but the day seven pic…I’ll save that for the end. There’s a few new pieces here and some “old” so to make it easy we’ll go one day at a time. The one I’m MOST excited about was actually my Tuesday outfit and since the inspiration photo is just too cool we’ll start there.

This remarkable woman is in Finland! She did a blog similar to my tablesetting blog only she did a different vintage outfit, with very few repeats, for 365 days. You read that right, a different outfit every day for a year. Amazeballs. I think it took me three days to read each and every post because of course I discovered her after she was done. She still posts on a blog called Fintage, along with a few other women, who are *just* amazing. If I try to describe the delights on those pages I’ll not do it justice so to cut to the chase you can go here to see the rest of the post about this outfit and here to start with the most recent post. If you have ANY interest in the 30’s to 50’s GO, just GO. Now.

Tuesday:

I have been looking for a green/purple polka dot fabric for MONTHS. Haven’t found one I like. Last trip to Stone Mountain I found the blue/green polka dot I finally bought for this blouse. I liked it so even thought it wasn’t “perfect” it was good enough. If I ever do find my green/purple then I’ll have two awesome blouses : )

The linen skirt is from the same 30’s pattern as my Pomegranate outfit. I tapered the skirt a little and put the slit in the center back. Silly thing took me a whopping hour and a half. The sweater isn’t quite the same as the inspiration shot but here’s the deal – it’s cashmere. It was $2. I had several sweaters in my stash (for making Katwise coats!) but none were big enough for me to make into a cardigan. It took two of us looking at this sweater to discover a small green stain on the right sleeve. For $2 I’m ok with something that took me 10 minutes to find. I have no cha-cha belt…yet…but I will : ) I do have a cool pin:

Lucite “feathers” with a stylized bakelite fleur de lis. Or so I think. It was a mega deal at the flea market a few months ago over which my mother raised her eyebrows. I knew it would find a place. The earrings are vintage but so painful I wore them for photos only.

Monday:

Still one of my favorite all time shirts, I made this last year and call it my “Fiesta” shirt since the print is all the colors of the original Fiesta ware. The sweater was a Target find and I decided on jeans because it was in the low-50’s at 5:30 am. While I love my skirts it can be tough to psych yourself up to get on a bike at 6 am in one : )

Wednesday:

This actually IS my Pomegranate skirt! I made the blouse this week, finished it Tuesday night. Because the weather was still being temperamental I not only wore my purple sweater over it but a long, heavy black one as well. There is a belt there, it’s the same linen as the skirt with a black bakelite buckle but amazingly the sweater is such a good match to the skirt it’s all a little hard to see!

The shirt is cute but slippery. I dug out some sale poly I bought at Joann’s months ago, I like the colors but it drove me NUTS all day long! The collar and facing on the right side never seemed to work well, I spent the whole day futsing and tugging and vowed when I got home I was throwing it on the mannequin and figuring out WHAT was up once and for all. I actually changed out of the skirt to walk Chloe, pulling on a pair of jeans and suddenly…all was well. WTH??? I have no idea. I put the skirt on to do photos and we’re all funky again. I was too tired to try to figure out the dynamics of skirt/shirt but did find some moderate amusement in the whole situation.

Thursday:

New skirt, old sweater, new purse. The skirt is Dia de los Muertos cards : )

The sweater is another $2 cashmere that I remodeled for the Black and White challenge last year. I found this fabric at Stone Mountain & Daughter a few months ago and snagged the last 3 yards : ) Originally I wanted the color version of this but they had run out : ( I used the skirt pattern from Vogue 8811 and made SURE to match the print where I had to piece it at the bottom as well as down the side seams.

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The purse came from the Alameda Flea market a couple of months ago. Again, my mother thought I was a little crazy buying it but I bought it from the original owner (who had used it in the 60’s) and on the inside it says “The Original Box Bag by Collins of Texas. Hand decorated for You! copyright 1966 enid collins” Did I mention that it’s wood? It’s wood.

Friday:

My Kazz top : ) Black jeans. Easy peasy. We went from rain in the morning to 78 degrees in the afternoon. We’re calling the weather menopausal since it’s going from hot to cold to hot again.

Saturday:

I LOVE this dress. I made it for the Make-this-Look challenge last year and when it came time to get dressed to go to my mother’s house for a Mother’s Day brunch on Saturday this screamed “wear me!”.

My aunt came up to see my grandmother so it was decided to celebrate all the Moms in the family a day early. I was still staining and working on the deck-that-won’t-be-finished (you can see my dirty knee in the picture) so I threw this on and jammed over for lunch.

My youngest sister, Erica, is on the left with Grams in the middle. It’s pretty awesome that she’s chugging along the way she is. She’s a little frail physically now but mentally she is ALL THERE. Not bad for 93 1/2 : )

Four generations here : ) My niece is on my grandmother’s right (in front of me), and my sister and mother are on her left. My own daughter was off camping this weekend. She finished up her classes last week, turned in her final projects and is DONE with her bachelor’s degree work! She graduates officially next Saturday and I can’t tell you how proud I am : ) In a few weeks she leaves for her summer hiking experience (from the Oregon border back to the Bay Area!) but there will be plenty of time later to talk about that.

All in all a pretty festive week, eh? But there is one more…

This is how I REALLY dress on the weekends : ) I did a cheesy mock sexy pose since I’m in just about the least sexy outfit possible. The shirt sort of fits into the MeMadeMay parameters – I got it at the swap last fall (free) and then had the image screened on right there. One of Brittany’s friends has a silk screen business so whenever they do the swap Raquel brings 5 or 6 screens that you can choose from. This one is her version of a scantron:

“Homey Grown” is the name of the business : ) They also have a screen that prints the images of a nickel and a dime for the 510 area code. If you didn’t get it for a few seconds don’t feel bad, no one does : ) But then you do and you’re in the “know”.

So there’s my secret – I spend 5 days a week in cute clothes and the weekends in funky t-shirts and boxers. (These are my favorites, they have skulls on them.) Stacey and Clinton would be appalled. The animals still love me.

Because this post is so long I’ll post mid-week with more Cake in a Mug recipes and maybe, just maybe, the deck will be done. Here’s a sneak preview;

The staining is done, the bench has been re-painted and I pulled out the cushions. You see the stuff all over it? Squirrels. They mock me and throw all kinds of “stuff” on the new deck and furniture, sort of a two steps forward, one step back sort of deal. Sigh…so close and yet so far.