productive weekend

Well, I managed to fit in quite a bit of sewing along with lots of movie watching and laying around. Daughter took some good naps which afforded me lots of stitching time.

I almost finished a maternity dress. We have a weekend coming up that includes a Friday-night 50th birthday party at a dressy restaurant, a Saturday-afternoon wedding, and a Sunday-midday wedding shower. All events require some sort of dress. I ordered one cute maternity dress on sale from Old Navy a month ago, when I only knew about the wedding shower. Since then the birthday party AND the wedding have cropped up and I find myself in need of additional dresses.

I loathe purchasing maternity clothing, mostly because I don't want to spend money on things that will be worn for so little time. Especially dressy clothes - good for one occasion and that's it. And we all know how much maternity clothes cost. Sheesh. I guess I could go scoping for sales, but with the price of gas what it is, I figured I might as well make one trip to Joann's and sew something. I already had Burda 8096 (I used view B), and embroidered linen fabrics were on sale last week, so on Friday I picked up 2 yards of a pretty chocolate brown and - wonder of wonders - several yards of brown batiste to line it. I must say, Joann's redeemed themselves in my eyes by having brown batiste. What a stroke of luck! I was able to get a pretty good match for the zipper, too, though for some reason there were no 24" zippers in dark brown. Only 22." So the first of my many changes was to mark the pattern 2" higher for the end of the zipper. Not a problem, actually. It worked fine. I already had chocolate brown thread, so the entire cost of this dress was about $20. Not bad for maternity.

Now, I must point out it is not entirely finished. It needs some hand-stitching to close the shoulder seam area because of the way I added the lining, and it is unhemmed because I need my mom to pin it up while I wear it. Also, I will be adding the belt thread loops and a pretty ribbon to create a sort-of empire waist effect (it ties up under the bust). I am thinking a pink or aqua ribbon would be pretty against the brown. So right now it looks like a brown sack. It looks much cuter when worn, and once I get all the finishing touches added, I will try to get a modeled shot.

The front:



Back:



Front lining:



Back lining (needs to be slip-stitched to the zipper tape):



It doesn't look like much yet - and I was also trying to get pictures taken while a certain 3 year old danced around with her camera, because she wanted to take pictures too. So the quality is not so good, but you get the idea. I look forward to showing this when finished.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand, as a reward for getting so much done on the dress, I made a few more blocks. I'm up to 25:


I've got a fever! And the only cure is...more pinwheels!