Another day, another dress

Yesterday I finished up Simplicity 3833 – one of Simplicity’s vintage 1960s dresses. I love this pattern a lot. Empire waistlines are a great look on me, and the way this dress is designed to skim the rest of the body does kind things for my . . . shall we say lumpier areas. It's got two very deep darts that start almost by the waist and angle up into nearly the center bust area (hard to see those darts in the picture, I know).

I made this from a cotton/silk waffle weave I got from Fabric Mart. Originally I was going to make a shirt from it but it seemed a little too crisp for that. The crispness works well with the lines of the dress and helps the dress hang better. I will say that pressing this stuff was painful, because if I let the iron get too hot, the fabric would get shiny. So I used a pressing cloth all the way through.

I did line the dress; the waffle weave fabric would have been slightly see-through and I’d like to wear this dress to work. I should add that I do not own nor do I want to own any slips, so lining the dress was the better option.

Here's a close up of the fabric so you can better see the texture.

A success

I figured I should post one of my sewing successes. This is Simplicity 2215, a Cynthia Rowley pattern. Fortunately, I read the reviews before I started so I knew going into this that there was a lot of ease. In fact, there was so much ease that I cut a size smaller than my measurements indicate I need, and still ended up taking in the dress about an inch all the way around, and also bringing the waist seam up about an inch.

I chose not to make button holes; there’s an invisible zipper on the left side seam so I didn’t need the buttons to actually work.

I got the fabric in Boston about a year before we left. I’d made a top out of it and loved the look and feel so much that I went back and bought them out of the rest of it. It's a cotton gauze-ish material with enough weight to it that I didn't need to line the dress. Matching the plaid was a nightmare as it's a crazy one way plaid. I did well to get the rows matched across the bodice front. Fortunately it's a busy enough plaid that the non-matching seams are almost unnoticeable.

I don't think I'd make this dress again. While it's great for summer casual days, the way it fits is not how I generally prefer my clothes and it's not enough of a winner in terms of design to go to the trouble to alter the fit. But hey, it's done, it's cute and that's good enough for me.

Need some sewing advice

I've asked on a sewing forum, I've mentioned to some other friends and I'm asking here. I've just about finished version 2 of the dress that melted all over the iron two weeks ago. I've run into problems that are (once again) entirely self inflicted. This time it's because the fabric I chose is a little stiffer than it should be for the lines of the dress. You can see what it should look like at this link here.

Here's what I'm dealing with:

Front view

Side view

Yes, I could use a pin or brooch to sort of collect that fabric in the front but that's not the solution I'd prefer. I really want to have it drape in a cowl the way it's designed to. So any ideas? I'm considering getting a chain weight a la Chanel and hand-stitching it in the lining of the cowl but boy, that will make washing the dress quite difficult.

Got any ideas?

A new neighbor

We have a grill out on the patio, but in all honesty we haven't used it this summer. It's just been out there collecting dust on the top and leaves underneath. Now it's also become part of the anchoring for a spider's web.

Our spider is no teensy, weensy spider crawling up the water spout. No, he's pretty big, easily half dollar size, not one you'd want to run into in the dark. The other day, a locust/cicada blundered into his web and it was good bye bug.

Seeing this spider makes me think of my older son who as a little boy and even into his teen years was utterly terrified of spiders. If he even thought for a moment that he'd seen one, he'd run shrieking out of the room. Once he got stuck in his bedroom on his bed because he'd spotted a spider but didn't know where it got off to.

So this picture is for him:

Multipurpose cat

See?

Hamper cat*

Lap cat

*Pay no  attention to the dirty clothes in the hamper. Please. 

PS This is my 1000th post. Wow I'm awfully long winded.

The way things were

Ben, me and Jordan

My timing on life transitions has always been a bit off. I got married incredibly young and had both my children within a couple of years. I’ve always been ahead of the curve for child-oriented milestones. I was 27 when my older child entered first grade, 29 for the younger one, and 39 and 41 respectively for their high school graduations.

Getting divorced in my mid-thirties had an unintended side effect of pushing me into the mostly empty nest phase way ahead of schedule. My ex believed, and I mostly agreed with him, that the boys should be with him. He had a stable job, plus he could be the male role model we both felt they needed. So in spite of my very strong wishes to the contrary, my children didn’t live with me.

Let me tell you, it’s really odd to be a woman, a mother in your mid 30s and not have your children living with you. I experienced a lot of judgment (I must have been a bad mother to “lose” my children or no, maybe I was an unloving, selfish mother who “gave away” her children), I wrote endless bad poetry about how wretched that felt, I questioned my role in life, my identity and my worth because my children lived with their dad.

(They did both end up back with me but that’s not the point. I went through that transition and felt every awful bit of it.)

Now I have friends going through similar big life transitions – divorces, kids moving out, or entering high school or junior high or first grade. I watch them go through the same feelings I did and I’m oddly reassured that what I felt was quite normal.

And I want to tell them what they’re feeling is normal. That yes, you do wonder who and what you are when your children no longer need you 24/7. You wonder if you don’t exist for your children, well then what do you exist for? And how do you fill the time when you don’t need to cook and clean and clean and cook and do endless loads of laundry and drive them around or loan them the car. What do you do?

If they asked, I would tell them to feel their feelings but don’t get stuck there. That’s a dangerous place to be stuck, squarely in the middle of a big “I’m useless” mud puddle. I’d ask them what they did before they had children, who were they then? Because they are still those women today only even more so. After all, they’ve given birth and raised those kids and no one goes through that process unchanged. I’d say the changing is good, the transition – while painful – is also good even if they can’t see it now. And I’d tell them that they will be needed in far different ways as their children move to adulthood, ways they can’t imagine now (or at least I couldn’t), and that being needed by your adult children is even more amazing than raising the helpless babies, getting through the toddler years, and even better than the high school years (which I personally loved).

Maybe it's a plateau

Do cats hit dieting plateaus also? That's the only explanation I have for the cats' current weights.

• Eddie: 17.4 (same from end of July, down .4 from two weeks ago)
• Wally: 14.8 (UP .3 from the end of July and worse yet, up .4 from two weeks ago)
• Chloe: 11.6 (same story, up .2 from the end of July and two weeks ago)

So cats are whining for no good reason other than they don't like the new dry food.