Monday, November 21, 2011

Finishes for ISHW!

Good evening my lovelies!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful weekend.  Over here in Vancouver, we had a fairly decent sunny, but chilly Saturday, perfect for shopping! I had a delightful day with my cousin-in-law scouring fabrics at Dress Sew.  She is the best to have around, with all her interior design and sewing experience!! I felt a little overwhelmed thinking about my sewing projects and what I needed to get for them, but she calmed me down and helped me work out what I needed.  I don't know why, but for whatever reason, I have to visualize, down to the very last detail, how I am going to make something.  Not just the finished product, but the actual motions and procedures of making it.  As she says, I make things more complicated than necessary and just to trust my skills and creativity.  So true!! It's so good to have an amazing friend!!!! After our fabric frenzy, we marched onwards to H & M.  That was a crazy time! The opening of the Versace line had happened that morning, and the store was still filled to the brim with people.  I had tons of things breaking my arm, hot, overdressed, not finding anything I wanted...not good.  I'm not the best shopper, let's leave it at that.  On the other hand, my friend is amazing at shopping.  She is like my sister...knows what she wants, goes through everything, finds what she wants, and tackles it with gusto! I tried on some things and hated how they made my back end look bigger than it actually is.  Pretty in the front, but horrible in the back.  So I left the store with nothing after I felt deflated. As we were walking to the skytrain, I said "Let's go into the Bay! They just opened up a TopShop!" The Bay....I love the Bay.  My Nana shops there and I have many fond memories of her and I shopping there.  So off we go to TopShop, and lo and behold, it's airy, bright, and spacey! I felt invigorated to try on things again!  I grabbed a couple dresses and put them on with renewed vigor!!  The first one was waaay too big ontop and made me look odd.  The second, a Chinese Cheongsam dress, LOVE THEM!, I couldn't get over my hips...sigh.  Then, I tried the most gorgeous teal, blue dress that was quite sassy and it fit beautifully!! Plus it didn't make me look all that bad either! So I got it! Yay for finding a gorgeous dress!
It's a lot shorter and prettier on and in person.  Looks great with some opaque black tights and silver high heels with some bling on the neck and arm!! Can't wait to wear it for my friend's stagette!!

Onto stitching news.  I managed to do a lot more frogging than stitching. My weekend was the International Frogging Weekend! For whatever reason, I made a mistake on two gifts for my friends.  Those Sajou patterns can be tricky and hard to count.  I don't have a program that can make them bigger to print, so I make do with the tiny charts I print out.  Not good though.  I will have to re-look at where I went wrong when I'm not exhausted from teaching/traveling and rethink how I'm going to fix the mistakes I made EARLY on in the pattern.

(Photos are going to be not so good since I took them right now in bad lighting)


Then, after not much luck with stitching, I decided to attack sewing.  As I was re-watching the Youtube video for making a stocking, I realized I bought the wrong kind of batting.  What I need was polyester thin batting, and what I asked for and got from the lady was "thin" quilting batting, which is still pretty big and kind of hard for me to work with.  I was very frustrated with myself for not writing down the correct materials and making things more difficult for myself in the long run.  So I figured, why not just finish my other Estonian snowflake and that cute PSS ornament?!!  It was a lot of fun picking out all the trims for my ornaments!! At least I'm okay with making them now!! The outcome is fairly good, not professional, but good nonetheless.  Then I noticed, hehe, that I actually didn't finish the pattern on the green Estonian snowflake.  See if you can spot the mistake!!  Now I am going to have to keep the ornament instead of gift it like I planned. 





Hopefully by Wednesday, I will have caught up with my blog reading and comments for all the ISHW participants.  Again, I love each and every one of your comments and really want to be good and respond to each one.

Take care and happy stitching!!

Anne

30 comments:

missy-tannenbaum said...

Those ornaments look so pretty, and I love the style of the Sajou patterns you're stitching, too! I don't think I'd ever seen any contemporary stitchings of those, but they're really ornate and classy, too.

Kaisievic said...

Hi Anne, your new dress is gorgeous - such a lovely colour. Some very pretty stitching, too - shame about the frogging. Great post.

Hugs, Kaye xoxox

TammyK said...

Love the color of your dress. Sounded like such a fun shopping day. Great ornaments. Love how u finished them :-)

valerie said...

Oh I hate clothes shopping too! It can feel very defeating sometimes but look, you found a beautiful new dress. I just adore the color!

And your ornies came out lovely. I just love them!

Lesleyanne said...

Your dress is gorgeous. Sorry to hear you had a visit from the frogs. Love your ornies especially the yuletide finish.

Pauline said...

I love that dress! what a beautyful colour....it,s mine too!
And your stichings looks great!

cucki said...

hi, your new dress is very stunning..
beautiful stitching..love you lovely ornies..so sorry that naughty froggie visited you..
love for you xx

Valentina said...

I love the Sajou, those letters are really elegant!

Margaret said...

I do see the problem with the green snowflake. Oh well. One more for you, right? Nice stitching though -- love the PSS finish. And the Sajou letters are pretty. Pretty dress too!

Annie said...

It's nice to have a personal shopper. Your really scored a gorgeous dress!

Your finishes look great to me. I never scour stitched items looking for teeny mistakes. I'm a big picture type!

You can always enlarge your images in MS-Paint.. you don't need any special software. Let me know if you need any help with that.

carol said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Carol said...

Wow, Anne--that is a lovely dress! I haven't sewed a dress since the 70s (when you weren't even born!!) when I made a couple for my little sisters...

So sorry the frog has been making his presence known at your house!! I can see how those Sajou letters could be hard to get just right. You can try to right click on them, hit copy, paste them into Microsoft Word, use the toolbar to crop them, and then resize them (works for me :)...

Pretty ornaments--not sure I see the problem with the green one? Do you think the recipient would notice? Hope that frog stays away for a bit :)

Agi said...

I just found Sajou letters a few weeks ago, and they do look beautiful! I love the ones you started to stitch.

Joysze said...

Annie, Annie!!! Did you have time to sleep at all? LOL!! Holy moly girl, that's a lot done!!

I tried to spot the mistake, I did, but I can't find it. I love the Yuletide hanger, it's most delish!!

Gorgeous dress!! I wanna see a pic of you in it. ;)

rosey175 said...

Lovin' the Yuletide finish! I do see the mistake on the snowflake but wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't told me to look, ahaha! I love the look of all your old books too.

Rowyn said...

Woo! Love that dress.

Great ornies... Yuletide is super cute.

Sally said...

Gorgeous ornaments. I do love your Yuletide finish. I must try and get that one stitched soon.

I love your dress!! What a gorgeous colour.

Marcy said...

Never admit to a mistake -- that's just the way you planned it ;)

♥ Nia said...

Lovely ornaments :)

Kate said...

Beautiful dress and fantastic finishes! Congratulations!!

Unknown said...

Congrats on the lovely finishes! No mistake caught my eye...

Lynn said...

Your dress is gorgeous!! I just love that colour!
Sorry about the frogs. They can be pesky little things for sure.
I haven't been able to spot the problem with your ornament.

Jo who can't think of a clever nickname said...

Love your ornament finishing (and the dress)

Like Annie I use Paint to print out charts as you can make them any size you like.

Julie said...

Wow,you have been busy :).
Love the dress, DD bought an off the shoulder one same colour in the summer.Or rather i bought ,she wore ;).
Great job in making up yuletide.And i cannot find any mistake on the flakes.

EvalinaMaria said...

Oh, my lord! That's quite a weekend. I love your dress and would love to see a picture of you in that dress. Lovely ornaments, congrats on the finishes! I spotted mistake but I had to look hard, is not noticeable that much.

sana said...

Lovely ornaments! Dress is very beautiful design! Gorgeous!!!

Siobhán said...

Oooh, sassy dress! Very pretty. I love the color.

Your finishing is fantastic!! Love your Sajou letters, too.

Pumpkin said...

Sweet! Teal is one color I've never really worn. I bet you'll look smashing though ;o)

Oh no :o( That rots when you run into problems like that. At least not all was lost and you got some things done! Love the ornies. I can see the mistake but if you didn't say anything, I probably would have even noticed.

Dani - tkdchick said...

Oooh that's a gorgeous dress! I love it!

Sorry to hear you had a rough time with your stitching and finishing! Hopefully next time you work on your projects it'll go better

Maureen said...

great dress, gorgeous colour. Love the snowflakes but for the life of me can see no mistake