A hand-picked zipper

The pictures are a little blurry since they're from the ipod. My mom helped me finish my lingering purple dress from November and rip out the zipper on my red velvet dress and re-do it. Although, after doing it again on the machine, it still was lumpy and noticeable. So Mom helped me with hand sewing the hem on the puple dress and I finally tried a hand picked zipper.

I thought doing a zipper by hand would be a gigantic PITA, but it turned out to be a piece of cake. You only need to know how to do a pick stitch. I guess I'm a convert; it looks great!!!

It gives you big stitches on the inside, but the zipper is totally secure! Wow!
There's lots of tutorials around for learning this technique- I used the one from Threads here.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas- I'm having a great time in Oregon with my family!

Red Velvet Dress

While cleaning for the arrival of Andrew's family, we put a bunch of stuf in the attic and found a big white, fake Christmas tree! How fun! I bought some ornaments and made Andrew the Grinch help me.

This is my red dress, which I sloppily hemmed on the machine last night and finished this morning. I did not, of course, finish it on time for the work party on Saturday. It's done now, however.

These are parish decorations on the way to work. I desperately wanted my picture with one, and my friends and I look some hilarious pictures. Nothing says Christmas like a giant shrimp and a candy cane!!!

Everyone really liked the dress, and while shoddily made, it is really striking. Due to the red velvet, mainly. It fits perfectly, since it was the second time making up this pattern.

On to the shoddy construction: I steam ironed the velvet, which shockingly didn't ruin it; I seriously f*ed up the zipper and had to rip it out and re-do half of it, which then led to; the back being entirely uneven, as you can see below. Geck. I'll fix it somehow (without doing the zipper again). Oh, and then I hemmed it on the machine, ran out of bobbin thread, threaded it in a different red and then finished it- this morning.

I really like the dress, and I think I like velvet a lot too. I'll do something else in velvet, for sure. I also like the tacky white tree, that was free! Merry Christmas!

Velvet!

Last night I felt inspired to make a dress for the holidays, something red. I went to Jo-Ann with my 40% off coupon in my hand, and I didn't like all of the red fabric; it was too shiny. Or stretchy. Or stiff. Or cheap-looking. A real Goldilocks dilemma here!

The I noticed they had red velvet and I went over to rub it. The 12.99 version felt stiff and cheap, like something you would use for Xmas decorating purposes. The 26.99 version was soft and wonderful and drapey. I bought the latter, since I only needed a yard and a half. With my savings, it will be a beautiful, red, velvet dress for less than 30 bucks. That's why I love sewing!!!

I will be using the same pattern as this dress. I remember thinking I wanted to remake it as a little black dress, but why not a little red dress instead? Yeah! Black is so boring.

I am going to whip it up on Saturday for my work Xmas party, then on Tuesday for the last day of school with my santa hat, and then for the family Xmas on the 26th!

Hopefully, I will have awesome results on Saturday!