Winter Palette

Jewel Tones

Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Pearl and Fluorite...

I am going to have to make a lot of solid color items because these don't coordinate very well. I really wanted to incorporate colors that I haven't used in my palettes from the other seasons.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Victorian Dress Complete!

No, the hat is not actually part of the costume...

I have finally finished my dress for Rose's Victorian birthday party. This is the most labor intensive project I have ever done but I definitely enjoyed every minute of it! I unintentionally picked a project that forced me to use many new techniques. I have never added trim to anything so that was an adventure, especially in the quantity that this dress required. I also had never made the bunched type overskirt and it to a bit of fiddling to get the folds to look nice. All in all I am pleased with the result.

For this dress I used a heavily modified Vogue 8615 bodice. I used McCall's 4090, View C for the skirt. I just made up the pattern for the bustle/apron thing (I am not really sure what to call the maroon part.) Sorry I don't have a better shot of the details and the apron in the back. I used the pink fabric with the floral print from my stash, so this one counts towards stash busting!

Sunday Strategy # 6

This week:

• The Thanksgiving dress. 

• I am using Vogue 8664 from my stash. 
• Both my main and lining fabrics are from my stash also! 
• Hooray for Stash Busting. 
• Also counts toward 52 Dresses Project. I am not sure what number it is, but I know I am not close to finished.

Last Week Recap:

1. Finish my dress for Rose's birthday party. 
• Blogged here.

       

Sunday Strategy # 5

This week:

1. Finish my dress for Rose's birthday party.

Last Week Recap:

1. Work on my victorian dress for Rose's birthday soiree.
• I made a lot of progress on the dress. Blogged here.
2. Finalize the list of all the gifts I need to make for Christmas.
1. Done and I have made up some of the patterns for the various items I want to craft. I don't want to blog about these projects until after the holidays because a few of the recipients follow my blog.

All in all this was quite a productive week!

Victorian Dress So Far

Rose is having a Victorian Musical Soiree to celebrate her 18th birthday. We are all supposed to come in costume. I am making a beautiful ball gown for myself! I have never done a project that has embellishments on it. I am not sure why I waited so long to try. They add such dimension to the piece.

Here is the basic dress before so you can see the silhouette. I have a 6 hoop underskirt underneath to give the dress volume. The pink fabric is a light weight home dec fabric that was given to me by a lady at a curtain shop in Philadelphia. They just throw all the fabric that people leave there in the trash so the woman loaded up a few trash bags and sent me on my way. This was about 5 years ago and I am still working my way through all of it. This counts towards my Stash Busting and also my 52 Dresses. I am so going to wear this dress after the party!

Front view (and Punkin.)

Back view

Front view with ribbon flowers pinned on. I am not sure I really like the flowers on the skirt. 

What do you think? Is it just to much?

I do like the flowers on the bodice though. Maybe I will just do this part with the embellishments.

The ribbon flowers and scallops around the bottom of the dress. 

Should I add some lace to the bottom hem?

     

Sunday Strategy # 4

This week:

1. Work on my victorian dress for Rose's birthday soiree.
2. Finalize the list of all the gifts I need to make for Christmas.

Last Week Recap:

• Finish our Halloween costumes.
• Blogged here.
• Make Peony. This is my second priority because there is still a lot of work to do for Halloween.
• Scrapped... just no interest in making all the adjustments necessary to make this dress wearable. Maybe I will come back to it in the future.

Halloween Costumes

This year we were Steam Punk Vampire Hunters! I just popped Billy in his ren faire costume and gave him a little stake and a cross. Here are my and Brian's costumes. They came out much better than I thought they would.

Here are some other costumes that people wore to our Halloween bash!

Me with Dr. Who and a vampire.

Me staking some vamps!

Mrs. Annie

Matt and Jen

Casey and Lauren