Weekend Pendants

Tree Pendants and Lucite beads from Fusion Beads, green pendant from Stockholm, and bird pendant from Firewood Bead Company in Burien.

It was a boring Saturday and I went out to Fusion to get some chain for the Stockholm pendant and I come back with that and more. So I put them all on some chain (and some hemp cord for the first one), made a bracelet/earring set out of the Lucite and boredom was solved.

I'll have to learn to take better pictures :-)

Auction Dress

Vintage Pattern plus handmade ruffle

You may remember back in August, my post involving an embroidered shirt for an employee charity auction at work. Well, we are doing it again! I failed to mention post-auction that my shirt sold for $75, so I'm hoping to bring in that much this time. The proceeds again are going to Youth in Focus.

Don't worry, the the dress has darts, that's what those weird folds are in the front. I should have had the dressform model (I am in no mood for that tonight). The contrast fabric & buttons are made with navy blue pin-dot fabric, not sure if the photo shows that.

This seems to be my patternmaking starting point. I also used this pattern for my ruffle dress last summer. Really easy dress and the $3-a-yard polyester fabric from Joann looks pretty good when it's sewn up (minus the small iron-burn on the front, but let's keep quiet about that).
[EDIT: My conscience got to me and I ripped out the front and replaced it. The dress looks a billion times better burn-free.]

Speaking of irons, how about another birthday present hint?

[EDIT: Well, no one bid on the dress, so do you know what that means? It's mine!

People did bid otherwise. We ended up raising around $2300 for Youth in Focus.]

Birthday Present Hint

I've been meaning to share my new favorite blog, Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing. I think the name explains itself. My favorite post so far is the one about custom-made belts, which 90% of vintage (sorry, mom, Pre-1980's) patterns tell you to get done to finish a dress. I really want to look at that catalog. Ahem, read the title of this post and then re-read that last sentence ;-)