Going on a prom dress hunt...I'm not scared....Well, maybe just a little

My daughter has announced she's going to prom.  She doesn't have a date, but that's not going to stop her.

Why am I scared?  I like to think of myself as thrifty.  I hate to spend a lot of money on something that will only be used once.  Case in point, my wedding dress was under $300 and I thought that was a lot of money.  I liked how we did it last year.  She didn't have any particular style in mind, so we went to a used dress sale, and she was able to find a brand new dress (still had the tags regularly marked at $500) for $30.  Then while we were at Goodwill, we found another dress, that I liked more, for $30.  So for $60 she was able to get a dress for morp (kind of like prom but for the freshman & sophomores) and a dress for prom.

Morp 2014

Prom 2014

This year she's decided to more picky about her dress.  It has to have shoulder straps (nothing halter top or spaghetti straps.  Nothing to low cut in front or back and must be about knee length.  These are all her requirements for the prefect dress, so I really can't complain about modesty.  And it must be alternative, whatever that means.  She showed me one she found online some where, but I've never heard of the site before and was a little leery about buying one online because of some of the horror stories I've heard.  I'm trying to talk her into a cute vintage inspired cocktail dress from J.C Penney's.  If I'm going to spend the money it should be something she could wear again.  We'll see how it goes.

Makin' moonshine in Minnesota and grabbing ass in Iowa

The hubby and I have a new hobby, and not it's not what you're thinking.  It's visiting small independent distilleries and wineries in the region and sampling their products.  It actually started several years ago on a romantic weekend in Wisconsin Dells; where we visited our first winery Wollersheim.  Then a few years later we visited the Amanas in Iowa where we came home with I think 6 or 7 bottles.  But it's just within the last couple years that we've really picked up the pace.  We have hit just about every winery in central Minnesota and many along the Wisconsin border.  In just about every one we've visited, we've brought home at least 1 bottle, usually more.

Panther Distillery 

Friday this week, we took a drive out to Osakis, MN (about a 2 1/2 hour drive) to visit Panther Distillery; the first legal distillery in Minnesota in 154 years.  There we learned the whiskey and bourbon making process, toured the facility and got to sample.

While chatting with our tour guide, she told us about the role Sterns County played in the production and bootlegging of moonshine during prohibition, and how the Catholic church was even teaching people how.  I knew that the Minneapolis/St. Paul area was a haven for gangsters during this time; Al Capone had a hide out in Hayward, WI; but I had no idea ordinary citizens were involved and found it fascinating.

Minnesota law still prohibits distilleries from selling their products to the general public, so we weren't able to buy any spirits there, but I couldn't leave without picking up a copy of Minnesota 13 Stearns County's Wed Wild Prohibition Days.

Then Saturday, we headed south, to Iowa.  Hubby had found Bel-Aire Estates online and with wine names like Happy Ass, Wild Ass and Grab Ass, he just had to go try it out; and it was well worth the trip.  The wines were great, we came home with a bottle of each.  They had an apple wine,  a grape & apple, a peach,  a rhubarb (and I'm not a rhubarb fan but this was good), and a wild grape wine.  All locally gown, except the peaches.


But what do asses have to do with wine; you ask?  They have two donkeys that are kept as pets.  It was 2 degrees with a windchill somewhere below 0 when we visited, so we didn't go see the donkeys, but if you visit the winery in warmer weather you can visit with the donkeys and go for a stroll in the apple orchard.

We also picked up an Iowa Wineries guide, so next year I think we'll be making more trips to Iowa.

If you want to see a list of all the wineries we've visited so far you can find it on my Pinterest board Booze Travels.

The true costs of handmade

 

 http://www.gosocial.co/wedding-dress-on-a-bus/

I've seen articles about this before and thought the dress was beautiful and she looked gorgeous on her wedding day as any bride should, and that's as far as my thought process went.  But then today in my Facebook feed I saw this article again and they were making a big deal about how it only cost her $30.   For her this was a labor of love and she was doing it for herself, if you were to hire her to make this dress for you the cost would be much more.

Some people don't really understand the real costs of handmade.  They think that because the supplies and materials cost X amount the finished product should be X amount.  There's much more that goes in handmade than the materials. Lets look at the true cost of this dress.

The article says she worked on this dress during her 1 hour commute.  I'm assuming that's 1 hour each way so that gives her 2 hours a day to work on it 5 days a week.  That's 10 hours a week.  You'd expect to pay her for her time.  Minimum wage  being around $10/hour we'll use that figure.

If she worked 10 hours a week for $10/hour that's $100 a week.  It took her 5 months.  10 hours a week for 5 months is 200 hours.  There would be fittings, which would take at least 1-2 hours each.  With a minimum of 3 fittings, we'll average it out to 1.5 hours for each fitting, so that's another 4.5 hours of work.   200 hours crocheting + 4.5 hours fitting.  We're now up to 204.5 hours at $10/hour; that's $2045 + $30 materials.  Total cost $2075.

That's still not a bad price for a wedding dress, much less a custom handmade wedding dress,  but that's quite a bit more than the $30 they said she spent; and that's a conservative price because I'm not taking in to account how much time she spent planning and designing, and I'm sure she put in more than the 200 hours she spent riding the bus.

When you look at handmade items whether it's at a craft show or a boutique and think to yourself "That's so overpriced, I can get it at Target or Walmart for less than half"; think about the time that was spent working on it, the craftsmanship of the work, the skill level of the artist, and the fact that you're buying something unique, not mass produced, directly from the person who made it.

Prom 2014

My daughter and her boyfriend went to prom a few weeks ago.  I guess you could say I was living

vicariously though her since I never when to prom.  I was just as excited about everything as she was, from finding the dress, to dreaming about how romantic it was going to be.  Yes, I guess you could say I still have some Disney princess fantasies about how things are suppose to be.  

I didn't get to go to the reception hall to take pictures of the actual prom, but I did get to play photographer before hand.  There was a real photographer there to take pictures of each couple, but my daughter decided his prices were outside of their budget, and she wanted more than just the standard prom pose.  I don't think I did to bad.

The mysteries of pant fitting - I'm starting to get it

It's taken me about a year of trial and error, multiple muslins, and several drafts and re-drafts, but I finally have a pattern I'm happy with.  I came close last winter, I had a pattern that fit, but I wasn't completely happy with.  The biggest issue with that pattern was the double darts I had to put in the waist.  My ultimate goal is to make jeans, and since I can't find a jean pattern in my size that I like, I have to start from scratch.  I know how to turn a standard trouser pattern to a jean pattern, but I wasn't sure it could be done with the double dart pattern without completely messing it up.

This winter, I've been working with a couple different patterns, trying to narrow the waist, while still leaving room for my hips with not so great results.  Then I pulled out my Surefit kit again and decided to follow the drafting directions exactly, unlike last winter when I tried taking some of the ease out, and found out very quickly I need to add it back in and had to make so many other changes, that it wasn't the same pattern in the end.

The result from this newest re-draft?  Close, I liked the fit in the waist and didn't think the legs were to wide, but they still needed some work.  The problem, drag lines in the back and the hem pulling up on the inseam. 

 

I tried adding to the inseam, like I did last year.  Didn't work.  I tried taking a wedge out of the side seam, as directed to do in the Surefit instruction book.  Didn't make a difference.  I was at a loss as to what to do next, so I turned to my friends at Pattern Review. Right away it was suggested that they were hanging off grain.  But I had already double checked the pattern and the pants, and in both cases the grain line was straight.  So what was causing them to hang on my body off grain? 

 I needed more room in the hip.  More hip room meant a bigger waistline, so I was very reluctant to make this change because I thought I was going to end up with the dreaded double darts again.  But then it was explained to me that it wouldn't necessarily change the waist, because what I added to the hip, I'd take out of the center.  

What I needed to do was similar to a knock knee adjustment, but higher in the torso.  I needed to cut the pattern from side seam to center, shift the upper portion toward the side seam, redraw the grain line and true up the seams.  This maintained the original portions of the pattern, but added more room in the hip and subtracted from the center.  To figure out how much I needed to shift, I had my husband hold a yard stick straight up & down from my knee and measure how much the grain line on the pants veered off at the low hip.  He measured the front to be off by 1/2" and the back, well some where between 2 & 3 inches.  It was different on each leg.  This left me scratching my head.  I didn't think I could shift one leg more than the other, so I decided to start with an inch.

It didn't work, or at least I thought so.  What it actually ended up doing was throwing the grain off all the more.  It was suggested on Pattern Review that I lay this pattern over last winter's pattern with the gain lines matched and to see what's going wrong.

Right away it was almost apparent.  I still needed more room in the hip.  Using last winter's pattern I added a little extra to my current pattern.

This straightened out the back, but the front was still a little off and a little tight in the tummy. So I added the 1/2" to the center front that I took out when I shifted them.  It turned out to be a little to much.  The waist was a little to big and I had a little to much fabric in the tummy.  I started to remove from the center front in small increments. Just a 1/4" did the trick.

I'm beginning to realize that when I need to add or remove width from a pattern, it's the center seam I should be adjusting.  All this time I've been trying to take room out of the side seams, and throwing the hip lines off.  If I have time before I go back to work this spring, I'll revisit the Connie Crawford pattern I tried earlier and try adjusting the center and front princess seams to get a decent fit.

Breaking the fitting rules

If I sew something for myself and I'm happy with the way it looks and the way it fits, who cares about the rules?  I'm talking about wrinkles and drag lines that come from a not so perfect fit, especially on pants.  The general goal in the sewing world is to have a garment with no wrinkles or drag lines.   Pants are always going to have some wrinkles from the way you're standing, sitting, or moving, and really who stands with their legs apart and butt sticking out, as has been suggested to get rid of the inner thigh wrinkles.  I have full thighs, that's just how I'm built, when I walk I'm going to get some wrinkles in that area.

I also have wide hips, and another rule I'm having trouble following is that pants must hang smoothly from the widest part of the body.  If I followed this rule I'd have very wide legs.  While I don't mind a wide leg jean, I do want some tapering to the ankle.  I'm not talking skinny jean shaping, but I also don't want a 40" opening at the ankle either.  While I was looking through one of my fitting books, I noticed a woman with a body shape similar to mine, who took a pattern that fit her everywhere else but the hips.  She adjusted the pattern to fit her hips, while still maintaining the rest of the pattern.  In her case, the pants come out from the waist to cover her hips and then come back in under the hip to fit the rest of her leg, and it looks ok.

Since I started this fitting journey last winter, I've been looking at pants on other people.  I'm assuming most people are wearing ready to wear, and I have never run into anybody commenting about the wrinkles under the butt, or the drag lines from the hip, or how the pant leg doesn't fall smoothy from the widest part of the body.  Most people don't notice unless it's very poor fitting. 

Looking at ready to wear on other people, made me realize, as long as I like the way it looks when I put it on it's good enough, and I'm the only one who I need to please.  If I follow all the rules, and end up with a garment that I'm not happy with; then what was the point of sewing it?

Edited:  You can't throw all the fitting rules out the window, as evidenced by the last pair of pants I made.  They're not bad, but they're not great either. 

Meet Minion Dave

My 16 year old daughter hasn't out grown Disney movies.  She loves Despicable Me, and she really loves the minions, so when I saw this pattern I knew I had to make one for her.

This was a fun little project and a nice break from the garment sewing I've been doing.  From start to finish only took a few hours.

The pattern called for felt scraps for the pieces, but since I don't work in felt I didn't have any.  I didn't want to spend to much so I thought Walmart would be my best bet.  Unfortunately Walmart only had felt in black and brown.  I could of bought a pack of felt squares, but in order to get the colors I needed, I'd have buy two different packages and then what was I going to do with the rest it?  I chose to substitute fleece instead, and bought 1/4 of a yard of black, blue, grey, & white.  There's still enough there to make 3 or 4 minions.  While the fleece worked, I'm not so sure I'd buy fleece from Walmart again, it's very thin and I'm worried about it stretching out of shape.  For the stuffing I cut open 2 pillows that I had made her years ago that she was done with and reused the stuffing.  He's a little lumpy, but she doesn't care, she loves her minion and named him Dave.  Since I have fabric left over she wants me to make another one who she plans on naming Phil.

When my son saw this he put in a request for a pillow in his Minecraft character's likeness.