Homemade

Way back in the day when I first started my blog, one of my first posts was on these chairs that Aaron bought and refinished, and for which I made chair covers.  Well, it's been almost three years and they have finally made their way out of our downstairs office and into our living room.  Since the old green covers clashed with our new couch, it was definitely time for some new covers!  While I was taking off the old ones I couldn't believe they even looked halfway decent - I really tortured those things while I was making them.  This time around things went much smoother and I made much better-fitting cushion covers.  I don't know when it happened, but sometime in the past three years my sewing skills improved!  Yay!

I know- we went with a kinda boring off-white.  We couldn't decide on a fun color, so we just decided to go with a safe neutral and I bought some fun fabrics for future accent pillows. 

So I sewed away this weekend.  It may sound funny, but I love being indoors on a super beautiful day, in my pink sewing room with the warm sun shining in through the windows.  I can appreciate a lovely day just as much as if I were outside.  :)

So much time, and so little to do. (Strike that, reverse it.)

Do you ever have so many things that you want to do, that you sort of end up doing nothing?  Recently I've noticed that I spend a lot of time preparing to do things, and not actually doing them, or once I get started on a project it takes me a while to finish.  This dress for example, took me two weeks to finish - and it was a really easy dress!  Well, it was supposed to be at least.  I took the sleeves off three - yeah, three!- times.  That is like super unheard of in Nicole's world.  Then I re-did the hems on the bottom and sleeves twice. 

I'm really getting good at this patience thing.  I know now that when I rush to finish something just because I want it to be done, it will be mediocre and I'll probably never use it.  Now that I've finished this one, that's two wearable dresses down! 

I Made It!

Lately I've been inspired to try and make my own clothes.  I think it was our trip to a certain antique mall with vintage clothing that got me going.  I saw a pretty little cream and gold shift dress and I fell in love.  I could just envision myself going to my firm's holiday party in it.  I'm on the party planning committee and pretty much the "creative" department for the party, which has an "old hollywood" theme.  It would have been perfect.  The problem:  Well, like I said, it was a pretty "little" dress.  Like three sizes too small.  I didn't even attempt to try it on. (Oh, and thanks to everyone who suggested I just buy it and lose weight!)   Since then I've been feeling the need to find a vintage party dress - and spending time looking at dresses made me realize that I could probably actually make the kind of dresses that I like.  A simple shift dress is all I need in life.  I started thinking about the things I have made in the past, why they didn't work, and what I could have done to make them better.  And my mind opened up. 

This weekend I went to the fabric store to get some patterns and material to practice on.  So this is what I ended up with.  It's a cute little purple tweed work dress that- what do you know - I can actually wear!  And a bonus, it only cost me about $12 to make!  There were a couple of times when something wasn't quite right and, when I normally would have been like "whatever!" and kept going, I stopped and went back to make things perfect.  I still want to find a vintage dress for the holiday party, but I'm very happy with the outcome and proud of myself for actually learning and growing.  I can't wait to make more pieces.