Happy 4th of July

Southern Indiana felt like early spring today. Woke up to a rainy gloomy day with a chill in the air. Made it a perfect day to stay in and sew. With a day off from work I thought I would make great progress on the projects but it was just not in the cards. I did make a quick trip to my local Hancocks to find a perfect color thread for my dress. I ended up purchasing a spool of Metrosene thread. I have never used this brand and it gave my sewing machine fits and it took me almost an hour to get the tension settings right before I felt comfortable with the way the stitches looked.

While I was there I also picked up a wonderful piece of decorator fabric for my messenger bag project. While I don’t normally choose pink fabrics I immediately knew this was the perfect choice. Love the vintage look of the dresses and the wonderful buildings. So much for my idea of finding something with red that would go with my dress. Oh well. Now I want a pale pink polka dot fabric for the lining but didn’t find what I was looking for today. Another great excuse to visit my local Joann’s next.

My next delay came with my iron. I have had my Norelco iron for over 30 years and it has become an old friend but today it let me down. It decided that when you switched to a lower temperature and shut off the steam it would just spit water out every where. I finally drained all of the water out and was able to use it until I can figure out what the problem is or make the plunge and purchase another iron.

Finally started making a little progress and the cats decided that today they wanted to play instead of help. Usually they set quietly on the corner of the table and keep an eye on things but today it was “Wrestle Mania”. Finally they were wore out and decided to take a nap on the couch, of course laying on the fabric that I had stacked there.

I was able to cut out all of the pieces for the dress, including the interfacings. I managed to iron on the interfacings and get the collar created. I have decided to use french seams for the dress. The swiss dotted chambray appears to want to ravel a little and this way it should look as nice on the inside as it does the outside. I did a trial run on the shoulder seams and it should work out great.

Step one : wrong sides together and stitch a 1/4 seam to join pieces:

Step two: Trim seam to 1/8″ :

Step three: Piece right sides together, press and pin :

Step four: Stitch 3/8″ seam which enclosed raw edges :

You end up with a wonderful seam inside and out.

It is the end of the day, time to straighten things up and get ready to go back to work tomorrow. Oh why can’t I be independently wealthy and not have to work. But alas I am not. Tomorrow is Friday and hopefully it doesn’t try to act like a Monday.