It was, in fact, done on time—finished before last Friday night, so I could wear it for graduation. (Honestly I'm not sure why I picked that event, since I was wearing my graduation robes/gown/thing most of the time.) I have now worn it twice and have Thoughts on its construction and ideas for future projects. I also finally have adequate photos.

( Many, many photos! )

And despite all the fitting issues, I'm already contemplating tackling pants. I may sew a few blouses before I get there, though...



This entry was originally posted at http://carrie-ironhorse.dreamwidth.org/11929.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I don't have all the photos I would like of the graduation dress yet, so you'll have to make do with this. It's a dress I made over two years ago. I had made it with the intention of wearing it to Hawaii on family vacation. When I got there, I decided it looked silly on me, and I never wore it. (Two major factors went into this: I wear dresses infrequently, so I was unused to the sight, and I probably needed a haircut. My hair length has oddly enormous effects on my self-image.) So I stuffed it in a closet for two years, occasionally contemplated selling it, and mostly forgot about it. Until last week, when I needed something fancy-ish and rediscovered this! (Important factor: I just got a haircut.)

( Pictures within... )

This entry was originally posted at http://carrie-ironhorse.dreamwidth.org/11533.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

For FO Friday I have only this: I am finally a college grad. Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies and Bachelor of Arts in Chinese. I feel relieved to be done, a little bit sad for what I'm leaving, a little bit anxious for the future. Mostly I want to sleep for a week and then deal with everything else.

The graduation dress got done as well and I have another project to share but I'll save those for next week. 

This entry was originally posted at http://carrie-ironhorse.dreamwidth.org/11453.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

It's finals week, and I think I have managed to get in over my head even more than is usual for this time of semester. Why oh why did I decide to craft so many projects, ON A DEADLINE? On top of finals! Auuugh. I'm graduating on Friday and while I am, and should be, excited, I'm more stressed about getting everything done.

The list:

•  Final paper, due tomorrow at midnight, for my "Pop Culture of South Asia" class. 2K words, I have not one word written. Also note that I'm writing this post instead of working on it. I still have over 24 hours! What could possibly go wrong?
• Final exam to study for, Thursday morning. Not too worried about this, but I do need to review my notes for an hour or so.
• The Damned Graduation Dress. I'm stitching the lining in right now, by hand. I chose entirely the wrong fabric for lining and yet am stubbornly sticking with it—it's extremely lightweight silk habotai which I dyed at the same time I dyed the center panel fabric. It's too light, slightly transparent, and slippery as all hell, but I dyed it and it's silk, and I won't put a poly lining in a silk sleeveless dress, and now it's too late to get anything else. And I paid for it already. (See also: sunk cost fallacy.)
• My mom's kitchen towels. Now fortunately these are due on Monday (her birthday) and could potentially be pushed back to Sunday (mother's day) if needed, but then I'd have to buy something for her birthday or figure something else out. I only have 8 inches of the first towel woven, and once they're woven they'll have to be hemmed and washed and pressed.
• Socks for my grandma. She's coming tomorrow and they won't be done yet. I think as long as they get done before she leaves, next Tuesday, I'll be okay.
• Stuff I have coming up, that will take mental and physical energy (both in prep and during) which cannot be devoted to the above: picking up my grandma tomorrow, spinning group (maybe? if I have a decent amount of my paper done), Phi Beta Kappa initiation on Thursday, big university graduation ceremony Friday morning, college graduation ceremony Friday evening, informal horse show on Saturday morning (my first!), graduation party Saturday evening, horseback riding lessons on Sunday.

I'm tired just thinking about it. I'm having a really hard time motivating myself for the paper. I've done well on all of my previous papers for this class but I've also felt that they were terrible while writing them, which is never fun. Why can't I just fuck around on the internet and wind up with my paper magically written? (By me. I realize there are ways I could do this and end up with a paper that's not by me, and that's not really the goal.) *sigh* This entry was originally posted at http://carrie-ironhorse.dreamwidth.org/11067.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Yesterday was the last day of class of the semester—(and of my current college career, eeee! I'm feeling both excited and weird. Sleeping in this morning was nice though)—so I was a little distracted from posting. But I do have a new WIP this week! Technically I have two, but I didn't photograph the other one. It's not very visually exciting.

So! On the loom, FINALLY, is a warp for kitchen towels for my favorite mother. She likes white and red, and I just worked out an interesting goose-eye twill draft to go with that. Honestly the warp is not one of my favorites. It's got the most ends I've ever worked with in a single warp—395—and they liked to stick together, so threading the heddles was awful and irritating. (The yarn is 22/2 Cottolin.) I feel a lot better now that it's ready to weave, though. My ebil plan is to weave off one towel, pull it off the loom and use it as my "sample" (and keep it for myself, bwahaha), then fix the two threading errors I found, then weave off the next three for my mom. She'll never know!

(She might know that I'm weaving for her, though. My loom lives not at my apartment but in her basement. It has a very nice nook there, but it's not terribly helpful for keeping things like this a secret.)



I'm also knitting some worsted-weight socks for my grandma, who is coming out for my graduation next week, but like I said, they're not terribly visually interesting, at least not on the needles.

This entry was originally posted at http://carrie-ironhorse.dreamwidth.org/10930.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Woo, I actually have an FO to share! I finished and blocked my Haruni (Ravelry link). I love it. It's so pretty with the leaf borders and the tonal colorway. Those kinds of blues are perfectly suited to me and they are my favorite colors. I knit the pattern straight, not adding or subtracting anything; it turned out surprisingly big. I knit it in Knitpicks' Stroll Tonal sock yarn in the colorway "Blue Yonder."

( Photos! )

This entry was originally posted at http://carrie-ironhorse.dreamwidth.org/10688.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

 Not much going on this week—it's getting close to finals and I've been writing a lot of papers, alas. I have less than a week of class remaining in my current college career and all I can think of is how tired I am. Blah.

Sewing: at the moment this is my main focus. I really want to get this dress done by graduation. I might have to put in a lot of hours during finals week, but I only have two exams, plus one paper, due then, so I should have time. (A couple of my classes end before finals week.) I'm presently working on catchstitching the seam allowances of all the seams. I'm hoping to get the zipper in and start working on the lining by the end of the weekend.



You can't see it too well, but that's the innards of my bodice. You can see the silk organza underlining (all written on!) and the catch-stitched seam allowances. I still have the skirt to do.
This entry was originally posted at http://carrie-ironhorse.dreamwidth.org/10375.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Yesterday my cousin and I went to check out a little fabric shop in town, Yellow Bird Fabrics. Fantastic little store. It also happened to coincide with my registering for another Craftsy class, "Sew Retro: The Starlet Suit Jacket" (classes are 50% off this week!). Less because I'm into vintage or vintage-inspired patterns and more because I want to learn to make jackets. I had this idea that I wanted an eggplant-purple jacket because I love purple (almost as much as I love blue!) but casually perusing a few online fabric shops did not turn up anything quite right. However, at Yellow Bird I found a wool suiting in exactly the right shade of purple! Also some slate-blue linen/rayon that I bought to make pants.



The print on the left is a poly charmeuse I got at Joann today. I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it, but could never quite convince myself it wasn't too much for a blouse. I think it'll make a fantastic jacket lining, though. Overall I'm quite pleased (though I spent quite a bit more than I planned to!)
This entry was originally posted at http://carrie-ironhorse.dreamwidth.org/10216.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Okay, so, I have 2 weeks of classes left and then finals. First of all, lots of assignments due, therefore stress. Second of all, it's spring! So I want to be outside and stuff. Third, I'll be graduating soon, eep! And I'm so swamped by "I can't wait for this semester to be over" because of 1 and 2 that I can't appreciate that I'll be moving on to something else. I'm sure I'll probably freak out the day after graduation, or something. I did after high school graduation.

Stuff I have been working on! Other than school, of which there has been a lot. Mostly the graduation dress.

( Pictures )

This entry was originally posted at http://carrie-ironhorse.dreamwidth.org/9756.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

 Went to Joann today to hit up their Simplicity pattern sale. Apparently I'm back on a sewing kick; I've recently decided that once school's out and I'm full-time job searching, I'm also going to sew myself some nice office-appropriate clothes, in the hopes that I will have a chance to wear them in an actual job. I'm still working on the graduation dress, too. So:

S 1881—I plan to make the halter view, but I'll have to adjust the pattern to use woven fabric because it's drafted for knits.
S 2305 — love the sleeve, neckline, belt, curved hem, all that.
S 2860— pants are good. I like pants. I like them better than skirts. This pattern is labeled "amazing fit" (and though the last pair I made from an "amazing fit" pattern did not fit at all, let alone amazingly, that was 100% user error. And by error I mean "rushing things, not taking or trusting measurements, and not reading fit directions.)
S 2512— I like the interesting tie/belt detail on this.

Also I got a bunch of new machine needles, a thimble (hand-basting my graduation dress is poking holes in my finger), and a zipper for the graduation dress.


This entry was originally posted at http://carrie-ironhorse.dreamwidth.org/9724.html. Please comment there using OpenID.