Following this week’s sewing theme, this evening I set to work on creating my first sloper!

Jason came over and helped me get down all my measurements properly — thank goodness he did too, because it seems there are many more tricky measurements to take than I had initially anticipated! Center back to shoulder point and shoulder to shoulder proved especially difficult to measure.

With all the numbers taken down and double-checked (and corrected :P), I’m finally able to draft fitted slopers for myself!

For my first, I started with the bodice-front sloper. It took me only about an hour to make, and that was really only because of a grave mistake I made with the dart on my first attempt. All in all, the process was pretty painless, though not without a few bumps along the way :)

I still have to draft the bodice-back sloper and then cut both the front and back out on muslin (or in my case, some vile blue cotton cloth I have from a quilt I made in 2000). I need to fit these first trials on to my body (another Jason visit, I expect) and correct the slopers where necessary… then repeat the process. THEN I will have fitted bodice-front and -back slopers for myself.

I am so proud! Maddie seems to like it too.

This process is so fulfilling — learning and creating, math and design… my brain is happily full :)

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Tags: art, creativity, fashion, maddie, sewing

Thank you to those of you who informed me that the RSS subscription and email subscription links weren’t working. The problem has now been fixed!

To make up for my mistake, here are some cute pictures of my cat.

Maddie, my pretty kitty <3

More photos after the jump »
Keep reading…

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I’ve been searching for something to write about all day, but I find my thoughts are scattered and pointed and nothing interesting or poignant bubbles to the surface that calls for me to write about it. So I will write about my thoughts in the jumbled fashion as they are, instead :P

I spent all of today doing things that Must Be Done Or Else, and though many of those things ended up being fun (finishing the cover design for our next book!), I found myself fantasizing all day long about the things I wish I could have done today instead.

• I finally had an idea for this white dress of mine that I never wear. The dress is slightly shiny because the fabric is like 70% polyester, and all that white and shine really takes away from the prettiness of the dress (read: it looks tacky). Today I thought of adding a large cutout of lace to splash over one side (covering nearly half the bodice and hip), stitched on by hand around the edges and in-between. I think it will make the dress look more subdued… maybe a black or gray lace.

• I think I will add a trellace to the back of the star jasmine on the deck. The original plan to have it wind around the railing looks wrong :/

• I’m really itching to get to work on the “Maddie is…” collage because I want to have a 4×6 sample of the collection before putting anything on etsy. I really want to start selling personalized collage art (thank you, those of you who’ve encouraged me!) and I need different-sized samples to put in the store. I think I already have enough cutouts for it, but I need time to put it together…

• There’s this leather jacket of mine that looks really, really 90′s… so I really can’t wear it unless I’m feeling balsy. I’d like to crazy it up a bit so that the shape (and decade it matches) isn’t so glaringly obvious. There was a pic of Ke$ha in one of the magazines I get in the mail (Bazaar? Elle?) where she’s wearing a coat exactly like I want to do. I just need to figure out how to stud – or use my gemmagic :P And I need to find some nifty patches.

The list of Someday goes on, with many many more things – website redesigns, photojournaling, scrapbooking, about a dozen more dresses – but these are the ideas of today.

It’s not that I don’t have time. It’s really not! It’s just that I spend a lot of my time on even more projects and work than that, and there’s nothing for it. I won’t take anything off my plate, I can’t go any faster (not sanely, anyway), and I can’t stop having ideas, either! It’s such a ridiculous thing to whine about, but I wish I had 4 of me! Then, maybe someday, I could do everything.

For now, I just have to keep piling up my ideas. :/

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Tags: art, cat pictures, fashion, gardening, maddie