Sorry y'all....

I've been so busy lately.  I don't know when on earth I'll get around to doing more sewing or blogging anything of interest.  I'm beginning to think that it might be better to rename this blog "Life of a College Student", as I'd have much more to write about, and complain about.  But I don't think it would be very interesting, so forget about that.  I'm pretty sure you'd rather hear about one of my silly dress-up parties than my Philosophy class.  I know I would!  But anyways, I am slowly working on writing a more interesting blog post, so bear with me!

Giveaways!

Thanks to my friend Savories of Life, I heard about some great giveaways!  And now I'm following some great blogs!  The first giveaway is by Royal Daughters of the King.  They have stationary (isn't it lovely?):

                           

Rings (I just love the first one!):

                            
                            

plus earrings, purses, a magazine subscription, a book, and a cute tea cup candle!

                             

To enter the giveaway, head over to their site at Royal Daughters of the King Giveaway, blog about their giveaway, and leave a comment on their post with a link to your post!  Giveaway ends September 29.



The next giveaways are by Blessings Every Minute of My Life.  She's having a giveaway week, and just a couple of the giveaways so far are these earrings (which look like they could pass for historically accurate coral earrings of the Civil War and Victorian period!  I'm going to have to buy a pair if I don't win them!):

                             

This ring (which looks Victorian as well.)

                                 
To enter her giveaways, follow her blog at http://blessingseveryminuteofmylife.blogspot.com  and let her know you're following!  She also has other options to get more entries into each giveaway!


I hope y'all head over, enter the giveaways, and then visit the wonderful Etsy stores that are sponsoring them!

Broken sewing machine

Just when a rainy day came along, with no homework to be done, my sewing machine decided to break.  It's an ancient machine, at least 20 years old, and about every other time I sew on it something goes wrong.  The tension is always getting messed up, or it's timing is off so it's breaking needles left and right, or it chews up the fabric.  Now the feed dog broke, so in order to sew, I have to pull, actually pull not guide, the fabric through.  Not good, especially since I have to work with some stretchy knit fabric.  So now, I either need to fix the machine, or go buy a new one.  And even if I do fix it, a new one is going to be needed soon.  So here's three cheers for sewing machine shopping!

80's Sleeve Makeover

Sorry everybody.  I know I don't post very often, I've been so busy lately.  But I am finally getting around to posting today.  I have a confession to make: I made an impulse buy last month.  I'm not normally that way; when confronted with college expenses, and no job (until last month. Thank you, Lord for providing!), it really makes me think twice before buying anything.  But I saw this dress.  It was white and black.  Normally I don't like white and black, but I liked this dress for some reason.  It had a slight empire waist, princess seaming on the skirt and gathers on the bodice, was floor length and fit perfectly.  Like no-alterations-needed-on-the-fit perfectly.

(Ignore the flower pot above my head!)

The only problem was that this dress had horrid 80's elbow length puffed sleeves (sorry, I don't have any "before" photos).  I fixed the problem by cutting off about 3 inches of fabric and pleating the pouffy-ness into a binding of satin ribbon.  It was so easy, and took maybe a half-hour, even with hand sewing the binding.  Here's the finished product:

Aren't those sleeve cute?

Front view:  I really like the lace at the waistline.

I think I know what I'm wearing to the Vintage Ball this December!  

Pride and Prejudice

You are allowed to be shocked, but I just turned 18 and I had not seen Pride and Prejudice until a couple weeks ago!  And to make matters worse, I just watched Emma and Sense and Sensibility within the past couple of months for the first time and I haven't read any of the Jane Austen books!  *gasp! Homeschooled and not read Jane Austen!*  But anyways.....I have see them now, and they definitely rank among my favorite movies, as well as North and South (even though it's not a Jane Austen, the story line is almost identical to Pride and Prejudice)  So far, I've only seen the newer version of Pride and Prejudice although I would like to see the older one done by the BBC.  I seriously love that movie.  I laugh till my sides ache at Mrs. Bennett, and grin my ears off when when Jane accepts Mr. Bingley's proposal.  But I've got a problem.  I'm so much like Elizabeth Bennett and Margaret Hale (N&S).  And I'm scared that I'm going to have some proud guy fall in love with me and I'm going to hate him at first and that is so terribly unromantic....but at the same time, even though they do have their faults, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Thornton are terribly handsome and have some really good qualities.  Ok, so now I'm wondering where my Mr. Darcy is.

Earthquake???

This post is to personally confirm that Virginia had an earthquake.  By now, y'all have heard it on the news a million times, but I just had to say it anyways.  It is the buzz here right now.  My Facebook news feed is covered with "Was that an earthquake?" and other like posts.  The first words out of my classmates' lips today was "Where were you when the earthquake hit?"  And my friends from California are rightfully laughing at us.  But let me just say that I would have never expected Eagle Rock, Virginia to ever, EVER, have a quake.  I don't think anyone else did either.  And I think that is why it is so scary for us East Coasters.  It's not supposed to happen here!!!  And now we're scared it's going to happen again.  I know God's in control of everything, but I do not want to feel the ground moving under my feet again.

18th Century Cloak

Yesterday my friend Sarah came over, bringing several yards of plaid wool fabric for a cloak.  She didn't have time to help me sew it, so she drew a diagram of the general shape of the pieces.  More or less, it's one panel of fabric however long you want the cloak to be, plus two quarter-circles of a radius the same length sewn on each side of the panel.  The hood is a rectangle with a corner cut off or rounded.  Pleats are on the back of the hood. The back panel is cut in a slight curve (very slight) and then pleated to match the bottom of the hood and then sewn to the hood.

I lined the hood with flannel and hope to eventually line the entire cloak.  For pleats, I did knife pleats.  I am going to get a nice clasp to close the front, but until then, I'm using a straight pin to fasten it, and may just put ties from the same fabric on.  And the best part is that it only took one afternoon to sew the whole thing! Here's a few pictures of the finished product:

The back of the cloak

Showing off the hood and lining.

As you can see, I was wearing jeans in these pictures, and the cloak looks really cute with them!  I think I'm going to wear it proudly to college this fall!