Manic Pop

Ok, so I'm not necessarily any good at following directions: I'm supposed to wait to post my version of this, but it's been 3 months since it's been made and I've been wearing it around a bit! This skirt is the Jade Skirt by Lisa who is releasing PDF patterns online via her company, Paprika Patterns.   This is the first garment I've ever gotten to pattern-test and the first pattern she is ever releasing! When Max is taking photos, he's always telling me to do the "goofy model poses". I suppose this is an attempt to get me looking more natural in photos since I don't always.   The skirt is made out of a stretch-knit fabric. I chose this stretchy floral - don't ask me what it is exactly because nothing is labeled at the fabric store I go to! I assume it has spandex in it for stretch as it's not a cotton stretch knit. I initially almost thought this floral was kind of ugly, but it grew on me. I also realized just now that it lo...

The last dress of my 5-garment dress collection, designed entirely and made from May to September this year. What a summer it was!   Although the pattern isn't 100% perfect, I'm really excited about the new tricks I got to use on this dress: a scalloped yoke using both this and this tutorial as well as inset square pockets on the front of the dress with a large trim around it.      Ok, forgive me: we shot these in Michigan and I didn't have an iron or steamer on hand. The back got crinkly from the drive in! This dress is only the first go-around of sewing it and I have some minor adjustments to make, as always. In lieu of making a muslin, I usually just jump right into my fashion fabric unless I'm working with something really expensive. These were errant yardages I had in my stash along with some new trim I bought for no reason before deciding to use it on the dress. First thing's first: the single side dart really bothers me. The...

I'm back from Michigan! This will be a really photo-heavy post. We decided on Wednesday to head out since we needed to escape Chicago for a bit. Our neighborhood has mostly been ok (knock on wood) but you know how Chicago is... wild west out here sometimes. Yikes. It's nice to get out in the country!  We set out to my first time at Art Prize which is an art competition held for 2 weeks in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's essentially a vote-your-favorite-piece sort of contest with artists all around the world but many are from Michigan and surrounding Midwestern areas. As the week goes on, voting is limited to a few best and you only get one vote. The first round (which is what we were there for) you can vote people as many times as you want for as many people. The winner gets a $200,000 cash prize and runners up get some money too. I spent a bit of time in Grand Rapids during high school since it was the nearest big city to where I was living for 7 years, Fruit...

It's been a long time since I've done a music post. I'm sure I mentioned that I'm not typically into lots of stuff around now, though I did get pretty into chillwave a couple years back and there are some really great 60s-reminiscent psychedelic bands out there now ( Tame Impala , Temples ). But what I really want to talk about is my current favorite genre (and has been on and off for quite some time) -- Power Pop. From many, I get the eyeroll about mentioning I like power pop as people conjure up sounds in their head that can only be compared to "soft rock" and/or "dad rock". That's too bad though because there's a lot of good stuff their missing out on. Others incorrectly think that "power pop" means large pop acts like Britney Spears or Lady Gaga, but they are sorely mistaken with that notion. So what's considered "power pop"? Power pop is a musical genre that largely draws its inspiration from 60s (surprise!)...

It finally cooled off a bit to take some photos of my fall coat!  Although I had planned on making my own version of the Pierre Cardin one that I so loved, I found this pattern on Burda about a month ago. I figured if it's just for me, why really go through alllll the trouble of making my own coat pattern?  I'm still not 100% thrilled on the back of it (I had some issues with the pointy-ness) but this is as good as it's gonna get. There comes a point on projects where even if you rip it out a few times, you just have to go with it or you'll never get it done. It's good to be meticulous, but don't do it to your detriment. You guys wouldn't believe how hard it is to find coat fabric out there! The fabric I used was a wool melton blend from Fabric.com. I first toured around Joann's to see if they had anything (of course they didn't) but Fabric.com had some nice colors. This wool blend is nice and thick! I was really impressed with the qualit...

It's 98 degrees outside today in Chicago. So instead of showing you my newly-made fall coat (I promise, I will!), I'm going take you on a magical mystery tour of sorts - a journey to today and how all the pieces of your life end up coming together. I ended up watching The Secret the other day even though my dad told me to watch it about 5 years ago, but I could never find it. Or I'd forget. It's gotten me thinking again to how I got to what I'm doing today. It's odd how a bunch of things happen, really. When you're younger, you feel like you're floating around, trying a little bit of everything because you don't really know what you want to do. (Hint: many of us still don't know entirely what we want, but we pick something and just try to reach that goal for the time being.)  I knew I always wanted to live in a big city - NYC was my first pick of course, but mostly because I had family in Connecticut. My mom convinced me to move to Chicago...