Sewn-day

I finally got a little time to sew today. It's been a looong time since I really sewed - not counting buttons or putting the hem back in a pair of pants. I mean sewed.

First off, remember this? Aruba Waves? When last we saw it we'd decided it need a gecko. Not the insurance selling kind, but an Aruban gecko. I looked high and low on the 'net for an applique that I liked to no avail. Most were cartoonish, some were just ugly. None were right. Well, as it turned out I had the right one all along. He was hanging out in my closet on a tee shirt that I bought in (wait for it....) ARUBA! My BFF and I went down there a few years ago and I bought this shirt. Don't know why other than the adorable gecko and it's purple. I'm not really a tee-shirt girl but I'm a sucker for anything purple. So a little work later I had this: I basted on a layer of washaway stabilizer and then zig-zagged around the edges. Trimmed off the extra and there you have it. Cute as a gecko, eh? I mean as cute as they can be since lizards are probably the least cute of the animal kingdom. But I got the shirt out the closet where it hung because I couldn't bear to toss it and now I'm ready to quit this. And speaking of quilting - this little exercise taught me the wisdom of free-motion. Turning this puppy around and around to get the right angle was rather painful (literally a couple of times with some long sharp pins).

And I've had an obsession with Mondo's skirt form Project Runway since he won the Jackie O contest. Well as luck would have it (a good thing, this time, really) I actually had the fabric in my stash from FabricMart - yep, sure about that, they put tags on their fabric. And I was pretty sure I could find a pattern somewhere in my Burda collection (they don't get a link because they don't think that English speaking readers deserve a website). I was right - from February 2010, I found this one: (apparently, even the French don't get line drawings from past issues, anymore). You'll have to look at your own copy for now, I suppose. #124 - it's a petite sized pattern which does ok for my lower half. And I got a decent start. Actually got a little further than this, but this was where I took the picture to show you the godlet/insert at the waist: I have some black piping from my NYC shopping trip that I'm going to put in the front walking slits. It's solid black, very flexible and has a cord wrapping the cording. Narrower than the stuff you buy at Hancock's and much prettier. You can click on the photo I linked to and see it if you just can't stand it. I can make my own piping, but this was really pretty stuff.

And to do a bit of follow-up, we'll be moving the eastern side of Washington, near the Oregon border. We lived in western Washington for 2 years about 20 years ago - it's weird going back. But we loved it out there, so that part's ok.