More White Dress & Updates!

Hey dears! Sorry I've gone missing--I hope you've all had a good weekend & such! I'm here with just a few quick updates. Hopefully I'll be posting more handmade things this week, it's been a while.



Hannah & I got some photos of the white dress for the shop, & I finally listed it! I'm so enamored with her photography skills.





Also, I've been featured in a beautiful treasury, so if you want to wander on over, click, & comment, that would be lovely! & hopefully soon I'll be able to show you some things you haven't seen before, haha.

Tea for One

It is simply the most fun to come up with brand new ways to wear something that's generally not so convertible. This dress, for example, is something I never would've normally looked at as being versatile--but it just goes to show you that anything in your wardrobe can surprise you. So I tucked the top part under & tied the sashes, & voila! A new way to wear a dress.



So, it's all fun and fancy photoshoots until someone pulls into the cabin you're near, & you have to awkwardly explain why you have the table & chairs from their porch, and the curtain as a makeshift table cloth, before apologizing & dashing home with jostling, tinkling china in your bag. Ahem. In my defense, I hadn't realized we had guests arriving just then for that cabin!



I need to get more comfortable being around people when I take pictures, though, because I won't always have secluded little forests to pose it. It's just, it's hard enough to get the right shot when you're by yourself with a self-timer--I'd rather not have an audience! Nothing encourages you to wrap things up like a bystander, haha.

I was going for a dreamy quality here, hence the expressions. It's pretty fun to set up a totally random scene--it's kind of, in a way, like playing make believe. & tea parties are just so perfect for a dreamlike aesthetic. We used to have really classy tea parties all the time so I'm pretty partial to them!





top / reconstructed tee | dress (worn as a skirt) / handmade | shoes / vintage, wonderwardrobe.etsy.com



EDIT: I apologize about the photo hosting problems! I'm now switching over to Flickr so I never have to deal with Photobucket again, & I'll work on switching things over this weekend. However, I won't be switching my archives, so it may be a couple weeks before the bandwidth resets itself. I'll get the first few pages done, & this will not happen again! I'm super sorry. What a way to start the weekend!

Turn & Face the Strange

I realized quite recently that I've been home for two months already... & I go back to school in six weeks. Except it's not really "back" since I'm starting all over in a new place, where I don't know anybody. Last semester, I was going to school with my brother, lived a floor above one of my best friends, and already had a "group" and people to spend time with on weekends. I made friends on my floor & with people from my classes as well, but starting out, it was so helpful to have family and dear friends nearby, since everyone in my dorm knew each other already. Some of it was hard at first--cursed shyness!--but for living away from home for the first time, I didn't have it too bad.

Starting over this fall, though, where I honestly don't know anyone, is daunting. I'm excited for my classes (well, most of them), and to be crazy busy, and to meet people & all... I just don't want to do the hard stuff again. I don't want to eat cafeteria food again, or live in a place where I can't really walk places alone at night (though this would come in handy if I had to), or learn my way around a new campus.

Oh, listen to me, complaining. I apologize. I truly am looking forward to the fall, & my new roommate seems nice, but I'm just a little jittery. (Bright side! I'll be nearer to the Twin Cities, sort of... um, shopping? Fabric warehouse? Yes, please!)








shirt / thrifted | dress / vintage, recon'd | belt / target | shoes / modcloth





For a while I really disliked how my hair looked in a beehive 'do, but today, with slight cat-eye make up (which I also never was able to pull off before!), it just kind of worked. So--here's to trying new things!

(Have you been trying new things this summer? Do you have changes coming up that are daunting? Do you work well with change? C'mon, spill!)

Morton Salt Girl

I've mentioned the Morton Salt Girl before (pretty much whenever I talk about yellow dresses)--& I've wanted to take photos dressed like her for ages. When I got this dress in the mail yesterday from Shop Tacky & it was a bit short for my 5'6" frame, I realized that it's an ideal Morton Salt Girl-length!



I really love this dress. Actually unbelievably so. I usually have a whole host of issues with ready-to-wear clothing, but this dress, once I took out the bubble hem to give it 3 extra inches, fits perfectly, is super comfy & light for summer, & is just generally adorable. Isn't the embroidery the perfect touch? My mom has an embroidery machine; I should look into drawing some designs to put on fabric to make dresses equally lovely!





Umbrella - Vintage, Sophie Joe's
Dress - Shop Tacky
Tights - Forever21
Shoes - Modcloth

Patchwork Dress (again!)

Is it cheating to post pictures of a dress you've already seen? Ah, well. Redundant at the least. But these photos are super lovely, so I'll re-show you the dress.





Isn't this fun? I should always have a photographer that I can bribe with custom-made dresses! (Haha, though Hannah was all gung-ho to help me out, dress or no dress!)







This, too, is listed! Go have a peek? Oh! & become a fan of my new facebook page!

Now, off to clean cabins. Glamorous!

Sailor Girl Dress

Well hey, Sailor!

It's finally here! Ain't it pretty? I love this dress. It was worth the three movies of handsewing the bias tape, & I learned loads in the making of it, so it's all good!



Want to hear all the little details? Okay. It's made from a sheet (Recycled! Upcycled! Thrifty! Yeah!), has a scoop back & a little heart cutout, bias tape along the neck & arms, piping at the waist, buttons in the front, a circle skirt, and horsehair braid on the inside hem for volume. Whew!



The horsehair braid was actually really simple to do. I'd bought it back in the beginning of June because it was one of my summer goals to try it on a project, & I'm pretty pleased with the result! I think it would be more fun to use yards and yards of it on something like chiffon so you just have pools of that lovely shaping, but that's something to keep in mind for the future.



Oh, & guess what else? It's for sale! I finally listed something in my brand new shop. I'll be putting some other things up over the next few days, & hopefully will continue to steadily for the rest of summer (fingers crossed!). This brings my summer collection up to 5/20, including the scrappy tank I posted below. I'll get there yet!

All photographs by Hannah of Videre Photography.

Tattered Tank

My friend Hannah (a fantastic photographer) and I went out this evening to get some super cool photos that I can't wait to show you, but they're unedited right now, so here's a little something in the meantime.



This is a top I made today, after looking through my fabric shelves & coming across some bamboo I'd forgotten I had. It's that 95/5 bamboo/lycra blend that I adore so much, & it's a dream to wear. I made a scrap-embellished tank last fall, and intended to do a whole bunch more but then never got around to it! So I dove right in & am super pleased with the result.





It's pretty basic, but my favorite part are the scraps climbing over the shoulder. You can't see it so well, but it's a piece of chiffon that has a vine print, & I melted all around the print and then stitched along with the pattern.



Hope the end of your week is super lovely.

Graduation Party

Things have been pretty sparse around here (understatement!) & I owe you an apology! I hadn't realized how hectic prepping for my graduation party would be, and between that, work, & cramming sewing in, I never got a chance to show you the rest of the Sailor Girl dress! It's coming, I promise.

In the meantime, let me show you what I mean when I say I've been busy! These are the only photos I have from my party, I was too busy talking with people to take any afterward. Most of the desserts couldn't be made in advance, so we spent Thursday & Friday working hard on the treats (and my mom also made the delicious pork & rolls for sandwiches!) for the party at 3:30 on Friday.





Buttercream-chocolate cupcakes, meringue chocolate-dipped cupcakes, chocolate truffle tarts, lime custards, blueberry cheesecakes, and macarons. There were also berry-chocolate mousse chocolate boxes, white chocolate mousse in chocolate cups, and home made frozen desserts: raspberry lime sorbet, mint chip ice cream, strawberry gelato, and vanilla gelato.

It was delicious. :)



Eduardo, one of the dapper party guests, enjoyed himself immensely. I made the flower for his hat. (Real people came too, I promise!)


The winner of the Vest Giveaway was Erin! Congratulations! I'll be in contact with you shortly. (Winner was chosen using the number generator at random.org.) I'm hoping to do another giveaway soon, so stay tuned!

Sneak Peak: Sailor Girl!

This has taken far too long, as I tried out a bunch of new things while doing it & there was oodles of handsewing, but I'm thinking it's worth it. Hopefully. :)

Happy Independence Day!

Well of course I dressed patriotically!



General silliness + new shoes!



I'm off to a campfire tonight (& scanning the lake for other people's fireworks)... hope your 4th is wonderful!

Vest Giveaway

Enter to win this vest!

Details:



If you don't feel like watching the video, here are the quick rules:

-Become a follower of this blog (if you aren't already, & if you are, I do so adore you!)
-Leave a comment below, letting me know what your favorite thing to do on a hot summer day is

& that's it! Make sure I can contact you via email through your profile or by leaving your email address in the comment, and unfortunately, I can only ship to U.S. addresses. The winner will be chosen using a random number generator, & will be announced on Sunday, July 11th. The contest runs from now until Saturday the 10th at 11:59pm Central time!

Good luck, dearies!

Inspiration Wednesday: LOOKBOOK Favorites

For some reason, I chose to do a project in a way that involves a lot of hand sewing. As in, several movies worth. My fingers are kind of sore. But anyway, I've been stitching away all evening (& it looks great, and is somehow worth it, if you were wondering), and totally blanked on posting this. Here are some lovely looks from lookbook.nu, some newer, some very old.

Alright. Back to sewing for me!