Modern Girl, Vintage Style

 When people say 'hair like silk', it's generally meant as a compliment.  As someone with hair like silk, it's a pain in the ass.  It slips through combs and bobby pins almost instantly.  It resists any change to it's shape such as, oh say, curling.  When you do get it to curl, it rebels and turns to frizz and poodle hair before snapping back to straight.  I've been working on convincing my hair to look glamorous and wavy for years.  No exaggeration, years. Keeping it  glamorous I went through all the iterations:  hot rollers, wet sets, curling iron, every product known to humankind that might help my hair hold a wave.  Some did nothing, some did too much, some left my hair a fried mess.  I followed tons of YouTube videos that all had the same general idea:  wet set for stubborn hair, brush out vigorously, magically have amazing vintage hair.  I tried that and had a lot of different disasters.  By trial and error, I f...

 I made it!  I got my outfit done just in the nick of time.  I finished hemming and pressing at 1pm and needed to leave the house at 6pm.  That was a pretty close call but worth it.  My coat came out much nicer than I could have hoped. This is the Swing Coat from Gertie's patreon.  I cut a size 10 and the only modification was skipping the cuffs.  I just hate cuffs, they snag on everything.  The joy of sewing my own clothes is that I could just skip the cuffs.  I finished it off with a hand sewn hem instead. I did screw it up pretty badly at the start.  I got the front facings reversed which made the coat curl open in front.  I was so confused and mad, thinking it was the lining somehow causing my problem.  A search on Facebook revealed others that made the same mistake.  By that point I had the facing in, understitched, and the lining attached.  I spent 3.5 hours ripping the facings back out so I could swap them....

 I've been plugging away at my sewing projects while catching up on everything that I dropped while completing my MBA capstone.  Crazy thing but carpets still get dirty even when you're writing papers, who knew?  And my job still has stuff for me to do.  Still don't have my final grades but at least all of the work is done. I actually get to leave the house this weekend so I'm having a big push to finish an outfit for the occasion.  Because we now live in a world where leaving the house is an occasion.  I will be wildly overdressed as usual and I'm looking forward to it.  My wool pencil skirt came out super cute.  Even the husband likes the way this pattern looks. Still need to hem it but otherwise it's done.  Had to take in the waist and hips by about an inch which is lovely news so far as I'm concerned.  The shaped waistband is flattering on me.  I'll hem it just below the knee which is exciting since I never have skirts that are ...

 I caved and opened my new serger.  At least I waited until after my first paper was done so do I get half credit?  I'll take half credit when there are so few days left in class. Folks, I was not ready for this.  What even is all of this?  I've never even used a serger before, I just wanted a faster and neater way to finish raw edges.  What is this thing? There's four threads coming in.  There's two needles.  I really didn't expect that.  It shipped pre-threaded so I thought I would be able to just sit down and get a feel for it.  First thing that happens is it unthreds.  Well, okay, I'll just rethead that needle, no big deal.  Hm, not working now.  I'll check the quick start guide to make sure everything is where it's supposed to be. 10 steps to thread just one of those four threads?  And everything is so tiny that they include a set of tweezers.  I read that the order is important and since thread 3 has unthre...

 I'm really bad at ordering fabric.  I see something pretty and order it on a whim.  Then I get it and go 'huh, what am I going to do with this?'.  I never order enough.  I also don't sew with pattern fabric much because it's a whole other level of complication.  So of course when I saw some really pretty border print cotton, I ordered just three yards of it.  It arrived, I pre-washed it and thought it would make a pretty wrap around dress from Gertie's Jiffy dress book. I logically know that you can't put a straight border print on the bottom of a curved hem but the connection didn't kick in until I was trying to lay things out.  Ugh.  The fabric went back in the pile and I made my Swirl dress out of a navy blue bed sheet.  Because that's what you do when you have the wrong fabric on hand.   Fitting the Swirl dress will be it's own rant, it was quite an experience but I learned a lot. The fabric kept annoying me because it's s...

 We were supposed to get rain and melt over the weekend.  We didn't, we got more snow with a splash of freezing rain.  Plans to go to the grocery store were replaced by a day spent in my office. I've been putting off some of the more tailored projects on my wish list since I find them intimidating.  I decided to bite the bullet and go for it with my first pencil skirt.  Completely non-stretchy so not the most forgiving project.  I've been practicing on easier projects with the hope that having the basics will give me a fighting chance.  I traced my pattern on tissue paper so the original was safe and then adjusted it to take 2 inches off the length.  Other than that I left it alone.  My dimensions for skirts are pretty normal, just short. And asymmetrical but it's small enough that most people don't notice one hip being higher than the other.  It's nowhere near the chaos of me doing a top with a size 6 shoulder, a size 12 DD bust, and a ...