The glorious satin pillocases.

My boyfriend and I decided that we would post-pone our Valentine's day to  the 18th because it was a weekend. We both work evening shifts from Monday to Friday, and he works afternoons too, so doing anything remotely romantic on the actual day was impossible. I know it is now way past the 18th ... but ... I have no excuse. Laziness. It gets the best of us all sometimes.

Before I started this blog, I had made a pair of yellow satin pillowcases for myself. I'd been on this huge anti-aging spin and read a lot about satin pillowcases being better for your hair and skin because they don't cause sleep lines and don't pull your hair. So I made a pair to match my bedding. They are amazing. They are the softest, most comfortable pillowcases I have ever had the pleasure of using. When I was in Mexico, I missed them greatly. My face missed the satiny smoothness. Coming back to them was glorious. I'm not exaggerating, but I'm probably going overboard on the rave. They are worth it. If you don't have a pair, make them. Or buy them, but they can get expensive.The first time my boyfriend slept over, he raved about them too. I think it's contagious. They're that awesome.

All this was back in January. So why didn't I make a post about them sooner then? Because I was making a pair for him too and wanted to do one comprehensive blog, which I couldn't do until I had given them to him. He reads my blog. So now that he has them on his bed, I can finally get around to blogging about them.

This is one of his. I forgot to take pictures before I handed them over, so I asked him to afterwards. He had the hardest time getting a picture that showed the colour. I think this one turned out pretty well. It's got the pillow in it so you can see how big they are! I didn't do that on purpose. I had never sewn a french-seam before, which is what pillowcases use apparently, and didn't know how much extra fabric to leave... so I left to much. But at least if we upgrade to a king bed ever, they'll fit king pillows. And with a total of four pillowcases that size (my two and his two), it'll be perfect for such a massive bed!

You can kind of see a fold line where the pillow ends inside the case. On mine, I folded that inwards and stitched. I had been following a pattern where the top part was folded so you could see the other side of the fabric, something I didn't realize. The satin fabric I bought for both sets of pillowcases is not reversible. So I stopped following the pattern and kind of left it as is, with a stitch line running along where the fold line is above. I didn't do that for my boyfriend's set, thinking it was a mistake on mine. One that added a nice detail, but still a mistake. I later asked him if he wanted the stitch line or not. He said he kind of liked it with the stitching. When I asked for the pillowcases back to add it in, he said no. He didn't want to give them up. They're totally addictive and totally worth it, and very hard to go without after having used them.

A close up of the opening of the pillowcase. I don't know what it's called, I can't remember, but it's the seam that you fold over and stitch in place, and then fold again and stitch again. A rolled hem? Maybe? I can't remember. But it's an effective way of managing fraying.

The other side of the rolled hem(?). I'm getting better at stitching a straight line! :D  Very proud of myself for that. Still not perfect, but it's getting there slowly.

I also did a non-sewing project as part of his gift. This was more crafty. I made a 52 Reasons Why I Love You deck of cards. Only I made them look old first. I rubbed them with sandpaper, shuffled them a billion times, dipped them in tea, sprinkled them with coffee grounds while wet (twice by the way, once on the front and again on the back), then I took a candle to them. I glued the paper with the reasons on them, after having rubbed them with more coffee grinds.

I bought a hole punch and punched two holes in every card, then tied them with string. 

 Some sample pages. Some ended up more burned than others, which was a nice variation. I also fired some when they were still slightly damp, and the pattern from the flame was different than when the cards were dry. All in all, I think it looks like it was made a hundred years ago and survived until now.

The sweetheart that he is, he made me a card. Not just any card. A pop-up card. I didn't even know you COULD make those! It's adorable. I love it! I don't have a picture, for some reason, but it's a heart-shaped card that says "Will you be my Valentine?", only the 'be' is a pop-up bumble bee! I knew there was a reason I love him. 52 Reasons really, well, 53 after the card. :D

Lack of sewing, but new fabric!

So I didn't actually sew anything new this week. The post I just put up, is from a garment I finished several weeks ago. I didn't sew anything new because I didn't have my sewing machine. I was on vacation ... in Mexico with my amazing boyfriend! It was amazing. Didn't spend much time by the pool or beach, but did lots of day trips out to various archaeological sites and swam with dolphins and visited town. Lots of fun activities!

Here are a few pics of my favourite places, that if you ever have the chance I would say go visit!

We went to Delphinus to swim with the dolphins and it was an unforgettable trip. We did the dolphin push, got to dance with them, heard them sing, kissed them and was kissed in return, etc. It was amazing to experience! This is my favourite pic from the experience, my boyfriend being pushed by two dolphins. He was so happy, we both were!

Coba temple/pyramid. You get to climb up, although there are very few safety precautions it is well worth it. Long climb up, gorgeous views, and terrifying climb down = insane but fun.

Tulum ruins, the walled city where the rich and powerful ancient Mayans lived.  Great archaeological site with the added bonus of a beach you can swim at!

Me and my boyfriend in front of Chichen Itza. It was amazing. They've renovated two sides of it and left the other two sides in its original condition. I wish we had had more time there but it was a three hour ride away from our resort so time was limited.

This was a beautiful cenote (sinkhole) right beside Chichen Itza that we got to swim in. The waters are crystal clear and the sun streams in from above. It's a little crowded but it's gorgeous and the water is refreshing.

And, an added bonus, I wore my Summer Sun Kaftan Top to Coba!

This picture is from the walk to the temple you can climb. I wore it all day and it was nice and airy and comfortable! Even more pleased with it now! :)

I also got the chance to go to two separate fabric store in Playa del Carmen, which was the nearest city to our resort. We spent what turned out to be a full day exploring the non-tourist parts of the town and tracking down SuperTelas and Assis. The one key word in our search turned out to be 'telas', which means fabric. The day prior we had asked around for fabric stores, but didn't know the word so we pointed at our clothes. That didn't seem to work, but we did learn 'camisa' for shirt that way.

Once we found them, I ended up getting three fabrics at SuperTelas and two at Assis.

Excuse the large amount of other stuff. We put everything we bought onto the dinning table to get a good idea and I took the pictures from there.

The green fabric with Mexico embroidered onto it (450 pesos a meter) I got at Super Telas, along with the green and lace stripped cotton (200 pesos a meter), and the yellow patterned chiffon on the bottom right (also 200 pesos a meter). The other two fabrics, the black and yellow butterfly chiffon (500 pesos a meter) and the purple print for (580 pesos a meter), I bought at Assis. I love them all!

I also got some gorgeously colourful ribbon, i.e. the pile of white, green, gold, and purple in between the green and white stripped fabric and the black butterfly fabric is the ribbon that I bought from Super Telas. It is this gorgeous colourful patterned ribbon, one in white and another in green. I got 10 meters of each at what worked out to about 2 dollars for 3 meters.

And my rough estimate for conversion was 100 pesos = 1 Canadian dollar, but the real rate was more along the lines of 120 pesos = 1 Canadian dollar. So good deals on all the fabric!

I looked up what to expect from Mexican fabric stores before going, and everyone seemed to agree that Assis was much nicer and had a much better selection. I have to disagree completely. In my opinion, as well as my boyfriends, Super Telas was much nicer. It was larger, had a much better selection, less expensive, and the staff were more helpful, even if no one in either store spoke any English. It might be different in different cities and areas, but in Playa del Carmen, Super Telas wins as the nicer of the two options.

Assis had a very small and mostly expensive fabric selection. The two I got at 500-580 pesos a meter were among the cheaper ones, and also among the nicer oddly enough. A lot of the fabric was old and tacky looking. Although they did have an amazing section of everything else.

I got every colour and size of the little shiny flowers! I have no idea what I'll do with them but I couldn't pass them up, they were barely 20 cents each after conversion. What a deal! I also got some of those wooden things you can use to hold straps in place, I have no idea what they're called. I got all sorts of them as they were about 50 cents. I also got some plastic headbands to wrap with ribbon or fabric or whatnot. Also incredibly cheap. All together, these things came to about 10-11 dollars.

I ended up using the fabric to wrap around the more delicate souvenirs I bought on the trip back home so that they would break. Good call too as we ended up making an emergency landing in North Carolina and staying the night! So the fabric helped the souvenirs survive not one plane ride, but two! And we got an extra day of holiday in North Carolina to boot. 

So that concludes my trip to Mexico. Lots of amazing sight seeing, some great adventures, and some excellent fabric and notions.

Simplicity Sewing Pattern Experiment

So this is actually the very first piece I ever finished. There are numerous mistakes in it, but I am nevertheless proud of it, considering how difficult it was to do! I even picked one of those 'Easy to Sew' patterns that Simplicity makes ... let's just say easy it was not. I think I spent more time ripping out stitches and asking questions than I did actually sewing. But it worked out and the pattern of the fabric is such that it hides a lot of the imperfections.

So without further ado, here are the pictures of the finished dress!

I normally wear the dress with a belt just under the bust, but I took these photos on my vacation to Mexico and didn't bring the one I normally wear. It's a bright blue fake leather belt with one of those circular metal hooks that you double the belt back through to hold in place.

The top section of this dress was beyond difficult to make. It's lined so I had to cut lots of fabric, and interfacing for the mid-section. The lining fabric I used was very slippery so getting it to stay put was beyond difficult and the shape was always a bit distorted. I ended up cutting it twice because the first time it was so distorted that it wouldn't have worked. I just found this tutorial though on how to cut slippery fabric to avoid that from A Fashionable Stitch. Wish I had found it sooner! Oh well, it ended up working out. I like the lining. It gives the dress a more fancy-type feel so it was worth it in the end.

I also had a lot of trouble with the back of the dress.

 

The two red arrows on the bottom of the picture show were the mid section bands attach at the zipper. Uneven. The sides have the same issue. They're all slightly different widths. Thankfully I used such a busilly patterned fabric because it camouflages it somewhat. Because the bands are uneven, the two back top parts are uneven too. One is slightly longer than the other, so instead of sitting straight upwards of the zipper it pulls apart. I have no idea how to fix it. I might put in some hook and eyes along the edge to hold it together but I'm worried it'll just make puckers all along and look horrible.

The button at the very top that is kind of hard to see as it's behind the fabric, is poorly done. I followed the directions of the pattern: make a loop with some thread and attach it to one side equal to the side where the button is. Pulling the button through the thread loop is really hard to manage. I always have to get my boyfriend to do it for me. So I'm limited to wearing this dress when he's around. I might replace that with a hook and eye too. Make it easier to put on.

The most frustrating part of this dress however, was the zipper. It wasn't difficult once I figured it out, but it was frustrating because of this:

I didn't realize you had to sew it on with the fabric up so that the foot wouldn't get stuck on the zipper. So the thread bubbled up and made a huge mess. Instead of spending the time to undo it, I figured in my newbie genius that if I sewed over it again, it would tamp down the bubbles and make it look presentable. Ha. Yeah right. Did not happen. It made it worse. So I had to undo all of it. Took a grand total of 4 hours. 

So after that was over and I sewed it back in properly, I figure I will never make that mistake again with a zipper!

After that was all finished, I tried it on and it was huge. Humongous. Way to big. I didn't want to undo all the stitches and trim off some of the fabric and then re-stitch (i.e., re-sew the entire damn thing). Instead I pinned the sides together following my shape and carefully took off the dress, turned it inside out while keeping track of where the pins were and sewed along the line they made, then cut off the excess fabric. A good inch and a half on either side! I didn't go all the way down the skirt. Instead I slowly slopped outwards until about mid-thigh where I met the edge of the fabric. That way I kept the full skirt but made the top a bit smaller for a better fit.

I also learned how to put on bias tape with this project. I used it to hem all along the bottom of the skirt.

The stitching isn't completely straight but I've been getting better with that. The more practice the better right? And I've never been the one who can sit there with a practice batch and keep practicing until it's perfect and then go into making the fun stuff. I always jump right in and learn along the way.

I also learned how to put in gathers. I had to gather the front bust line of both the outer fabric and the lining and then stitch it in place. I don't have a close up picture but it turned out really well. I did it a few times before I was happy with the final product. Thankfully I only basted them in until I was happy and then stitched them in. Easier to undo!

So that is technically the first dress I made, even if it's not the first thing I posted onto here. :D

Summer Sun Kaftan Top

So I wrote out an entire post over the weekend, right after my last post, and Blogger decided it wasn't going to save it. Well, it saved the first paragraph or so, which is better than nothing. But still! I tried rewriting it then but the same thing happened. So I gave up and figured I'd try again later. I did try again, on Monday, and the same thing happened. I didn't touch it on Tuesday and now that it's Thursday I'm really hoping this works cause it's getting beyond frustrating.

My wifi hasn't been working that well and I've been using an ethernet cable to get any semblance of internet. But last night the new modem came and it works fine now! Maybe that was why Blogger wasn't letting me post? If so, I hope it works now! *As soon as I took out the physical picture of the original top, I could post ... So it had something to do with that, somehow.*

Alright, onto the sewing project! This one is a little more ambitious than the last one. It's The Sew Convert's The Sunny Resort Blousetutorial that was a guest post on Grosgrain. I loved this kaftan top. I'm not ahuge fan of the full Kaftan dress, it's too boxy and shapeless for my liking.But a kaftan top with a belt is perfect. And the little details on it are gorgeous. Here's her version. (I'm putting it in a link as Blogger won't let me post the picture ...)

And here's mine:

I kept the yellow colour cause I love yellow. One of my all time favourite colors (there are a few). There are differences though. I used extra wide double fold bias tape around the sleeves to make the white more pronounced, and I made a sash to go with itinstead of a belt. I liked the more feminine look of a sash, especially in the sheer yellow chiffon the top is made out of. The biggest difference between mine and hers is that I lined mine, because the fabric I wanted to use was so very see through and I didn't want to have to bother with an undershirt. 

I used a light satin the colour of fresh butter for the lining. I like how it pops out every now and then through the sleeves as you move around during the day. And I have a thing for flowers so the lace I found is beyond perfect. I can't say enough good things about this top, I love it so much!

Quite possibly the thing I am most proud of though are the button holes I put in for the sash. I have never sewn in button holes before. I was terrified I'd find a way to ruin the top. I was this close to deciding to not put them in and just wear it as it was, with no sash or belt. I am so very glad I decided NOT to do that. I read through my sewing machine manual (for the first time) and found out that I had everything I needed to make the button holes. So I took some extra fabric and did some test runs.

I had to adjust the tension, as the two sides were uneven. But after that was worked out they turned out perfectly! I used the darker thread at first so I could see what I was doing better than I would have with the matching thread, but I upgraded to the yellow pretty quickly.

All in all, I am beyond pleased with how this top turned out. :D  Now if Blogger will just let me post it ....