I Fought and I Conquered...

... my sewing machine.  Which may not seem like a great feat to you, but sewing machines and I are not on good terms.  To give you an idea, the last time I used it, my sewing machine came unthreaded no less than, and probably more than, five times, then tried to eat my fabric.  I had to take my sewing machine apart and cut the fabric out.

I have had a few sewing successes though, notably this.

So I've had this dress since I was probably in elementary school.  The one time I wore it my brother told me it looked like an old lady dress.  And to be honest it's never fit me right.  But I really love the fabric so I just couldn't part with it.  And I finally decided that the easiest thing I could do is make it into a blouse.  (Well the easiest thing that would result in me being able to wear it.  The easiest thing would have been to let it sit for ages and gaze longingly upon it from time to time.)  So I got to work.  I pinned a straight line and stitched it right across.  It was easy.  Too easy.  After trying it on, I realized why.

So yeah, those two sides are supposed to be the same length.  Whoops.

Not ready to throw in the towel, or the dress, I gave it another go.  I pinned, tried it on before stitching, then stitched it once more.  And I succeeded.  And it was easy.  Just easy enough.

Tada!  It's all cute and fitted because there's strings that tie in the back, or in the front.  That's what I call options.

So now I have a bunch of leftover fabric waiting for me to turn it into something, which is pretty exciting.  A sea of infinite possibilities.  Well more like a sink full of finite possibilities, since my sewing skills are at a beginner level.  But this was really exciting because my needle didn't come unthreaded at all and my sewing machine didn't try to eat my fabric!  Maybe it doesn't hate me anymore.  Or maybe it's just trying to give me a false sense of security.

Oh and in case you were wondering, the shirt I'm wearing underneath the blouse is this awesome black tee shirt that I thrifted from Goodwill as a wee freshman in college.  It's got a robot who looks kind of like a fatter shorter Iron Man and he's plucking the petals from a daisy.

Working on My Bucket List: Part One

Some of you have noticed my bucket list.  It's part bucket list and part New Year's resolutions, but I always fail at things if I call them New Year's resolutions, so I refuse to call them that.  Anyway, one of the things I am working on is conquering my fear of my sewing machine.  So far, I managed to make a tee shirt into a pillow.  And that went so smoothly that I decided to kick the challenge level up a notch.  I want to try making things that I will wear on my body.  Because apparently I'm insane.  Because I anticipate probably a few failed attempts, I am not going to start out by buying fabric and trying to make it into a skirt.  I am going to start out by buying a skirt  on eBay that has already been made but is much too large for anyone to probably buy it before the auction is over.  I have picked out a few of these skirts in patterns that I would wear and have placed a maximum bid of $2 on them.  Because there is free shipping and for $2, even if I do mess it up, I'll still get plenty of fabric out of it to use in my jewelry, if nothing else.  So that's my plan: take large skirts with plenty of extra fabric in case I mess up, and turn them into skirts that actually fit me and are cute.  And of course, I'll share whether I succeed or fail.