single welt pocket: SUCCESS!!

YES! this makes two of the hugest parts of this vest that i now believe i can actually do. i'm not posting about it because i don't know exactly how the collar/lapel part will work in the end, exactly, but i did successfully sew a notched collar yesterday. thank gawd for brigham young! they did not, unfortunately, have a tutorial vid for me on a single welt pocket, though. double-welt (found lots of instruction on that, i'm not sure why the single is so much less common) but my pattern is for a single welt. i did, however, come across a wonderfully illustrated step-by-step here. i made my through it quite well, and it gave me the basic understanding of the construction i needed to go back to the pattern. and look look look!

oh - so, obviously, this is just a test run and these are not the real fabrics. i got the grey so that we could get a sense of what it would actually look like, but it's just turned into a total testing ground anyway, there won't be anything to try on with this fabric. and the white was so i could really see what the different pieces were supposed to be doing.

check it out - a pocket in the middle of the dart - successfully!

a close up. here you can see the things that are off: the seam line at the top is kinda angled, so you can see the white underneath on one side. on the real vest, the white fabric will be the same as the vest, so stuff like that wouldn't show as much. but i'll be working on perfecting the seam, anyway. also, at the lower right corner, you can kind of see how the fabric is pinched up. i overlapped some seams where i shouldn't have (the very thing that is the key to the notched collar, by the way). because of the notched collar experiment, i know how to avoid that in the future.

see? it really opens up and everything!

see how the back of the pocket matches the front of the vest perfectly, so there's no visual disruption when the pocket is opened? yay! oh man, i'm so happy about this.

School of Family Life

yup, that's going to be the answer to the vest woes! so i found some patterns. i ordered them and they looked pretty good. well, looks can be deceiving. actually, the patterns are just fine, i'm sure. if you happen to already know the tips, tricks, and techniques involved in sewing welt pockets and notched collars! if you don't, do not look to a Simplicity pattern for illumination. and trust me, there are tips, tricks, and techniques that you will fail miserably without.

enter brigham young university. i am so not kidding. there is an amazing sewing tutorial series available on their website. clearly it's for a class - or rather, a whole bunch of classes - but the techniques are unbelievably well demonstrated so no syllabus or anything is needed. the first few seconds of my experience had me convinced i was not going to be able to listen to the instructor, who at first sounds like she's either begun to seriously loathe her life or else seriously loathe yours. and then you realize that she's just into sewing and is explaining everything as though it's as obvious as how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. but not in a condescending way, just in an "i do this every day of my life" way. which is kinda what you want in an instructor. plus they never show her face, which i love.

and she has an entire tutorial on... da-da-DA!... THE NOTCHED COLLAR! now, i did not have any idea that this was an incredibly difficult thing to do. on my third failed attempt, i was beginning to suspect that there was something i might not be getting from the pattern instructions. enter faithful google search (i'm now convinced we would not be able to get married without google). any idea how many sewing "instruction" pages there are out there either without illustration or with strange fuzzy pictures and mysterious alien symbols that only someone better at sewing than you would ever be able to decipher, thereby defeating the whole purpose of illustrating a tutorial? i was beginning to despair until the nameless, faceless wonder that is the brigham young sewing instructor entered my life. go figure.

now, i don't imagine that you're going to sit down and watch a two hour notched collar tutorial, but if you ever even want to go back to the basics and learn why your pins should be perpendicular to your cut line instead of parallel with it, a super cool technique for marking dart lines called "tailor's tacks" and other pattern marking transfer methods, or what the hell the point of stay-stitching is, i'd recommend checking it out. And if you ever get around to the notched collars, i have two words for you: The Dot. and if that doesn't mean anything, get thee to the School of Family Life before you make a single cut!

L.A. fashion district

that's where r and i are going next weekend to do a little fabric shopping. or a lot. have i mentioned yet that i sort of hate san diego? gawd, i really do. it's got some amazing weather going for it, and it's a good thing, or else i might have completely lost my mind here already. among the many, many complaints i have about san diego (near "people," at the top of the list) is that it is impossible to buy anything. i am not kidding. i don't know how many times now we've made the pronouncement that we're giving up, that we are just buying absolutely everything online from now on. and yet we keep trying...

there aren't that many fabric stores to choose from, to begin with. not a shocker. so i tried Jo-Ann because, you know, first things first. definitely no lace and no luck with r's wool, either. there's a big ol' place called Discount Fabrics near our neighborhood. funky place, actually. it's in an old theater and is quite huge. but they mostly have upholstery - their apparel selection was limited to about what Jo-Ann carried. no on both our fabric needs. yesterday we made the short journey down to National City to Yardage Town. now that's a fabric store! fabulous! unfortunately, r struck out with all of the wool offerings and though they had a small selection of guipures (which alone is saying something!) - none fell below $80/yard and several went up to $120 and $180.

*le sigh* (to molly and the end of the world: i am stealing that)

r had actually mentioned LA before - i don't know if he said something again yesterday or if i just started looking for stores or what. but i came across several extremely promising stores, and r said again that we should just go. it's only two hours away. so i've been doing my research on LA's 90-block fashion district and reading the store reviews. i've zeroed in on two: B Black & Sons for r's wool, and International Silks & Woolens for my lace (and, i suppose, a backup for r's wool). feast your eyes:

you know, it's worth saying: i started this little blip of a blog because i had a lot of ideas, crafty and otherwise, for our little homegrown wedding. it's been a great place to think out loud, just as it's supposed to be. but i would be over the moon, just the same, if we got married in shorts and sweats in our disheveled living room right here this morning, too. the cats can be our witnesses. in short: we decided to have this whole wedding because we wanted our friends and family there, and our friends and family wanted to be there. and as much as i love these details - they're just that, details. so i'm enjoying the adventures of fabrics and other issues in wedding planning, but i enjoy them 100 times more when it's something r and get to just add to our list of Things We Did Our Way. a list i hope never stops growing...

shawl lapel waistcoat (r's "old-timey" vest)

never thought i'd title a blog post like that! man oh man, dressing for a wedding is a difficult business! holy crap! i thought i had it rough when i changed the style for my dress. turns out the dress i'm so in love with requires "allover guipure lace." and oh my gawd, that stuff runs upwards of $100/yard when you can even find it! now i know why the dress is $2000. holy crap. but i think (i think i think) i've found something suitable. we shall see.

but then there is r's suit. well, waistcoat, to be specific. he found a suit he just loves (and i love it, too) through a custom clothier in portland. of course it would be in portland, everything fabulous in the world is in portland, and that's why we want to move there. but we aren't there, we're in san diego. anyhow, said custom suit (minus the jacket because who needs that?) is appropriately expensive. and this wedding is really all about inexpensiveness.

so a second round of endless internet searching ensued. all the same stuff as for my lace - image search, shopping search, random internet vintage store search, european store search, ebay, etsy, you name it. looks like he's either going to have to get it made in england, cough up the dough for duchess, hope that he can find it in a vintage store somewhere in pdx during our one day there before the wedding, or hope that my sewing skills have magically improved in the ten or so years that i have, ahem, not been sewing:

i found this pattern and i hope it makes some sense to me. what we've figured out is that he likes the collar style of the top one (that's the shawl lapel part, by the by) and the front cut of the lower one. so. do i have magic latent sewing skills just waiting to blossom? hey, you never know. what i learned from making my test dress pattern last week was that i am much more patient with scissors, pins, patterns, and threads than i used to be and that i am much more conscientious of the importance of detail when there's a wedding on the line. so hey, miracles could happen. but i'm still glad we have a weekend in portland in our back pockets, just in case...

and the dress changes again

no pics this time. maybe i don't want to jinx it, maybe i've decided i want something to be a surprise in the end, i don't know. but a and i have planned a total turnaround with the dress. the only thing i will say: it will still be short. i've spent quite a bit of time in the last few months drooling over long vintage dresses, but i've not for a second changed my mind about that.

it's funny, for a girl who never had that big ol' wedding dream, i've really gotten into some of the details of this thing. i think r is... well, not sick of it exactly. he has had a lot of ideas and input about the whole thing - the website, the invites, all of that. and he did pick the park! but i think he's ready to call it good. so the paper details, the dress specifics, etc, i think it's pretty much gonna be up to me and the sisters from here on out. so i hope y'all are ready to do some crafting with me!

pretty paper crafts

when r and i first decided to do this whole wedding thing, M asked if she could assist with decorations by making some kind of a wreath or other wall centerpiece, to which i delightfully consented. she made the most incredible lemon & lime wreath for her own wedding... no, really, with actual lemons and actual limes. amazing. so she was thinking of something like this, but in my fall-sunset-y colors:

last week, i came across these kusudama flowers & balls:

i made a test yesterday and i just love them! i told M i was thinking about making a bunch for the wedding... i'm not really sure where they'll go yet, but i like the idea of having them around for decoration. so, being the super smart lady that she is, my sister pointed out that if they were done in the same papers as the medallion, it would give it a nice, cohesive look and feel. yep, that's why she's in design and i'm in linguistics :)

swizzle sticks

i saw this yesterday as i was wasting yet more time looking at other blogs for wedding ideas, and it popped up again today on once wed. that's ok, i'll repost here anyway. i like this idea! it's simple and small - two requirements for my diy projects - but i think worth the effort.

we'll be providing alcohol so it would be a reasonable thing to do. i think it would be a fun way to incorporate all the colors i've been thinking of - sort of autumn sunset... reds, oranges, that sort of thing. except i wouldn't use the alphabet stickers, that just seems like kind of a pain and not something guests would really pay attention to, anyway. instead, i'd just keep a couple of sharpie pens lying around for people to just write their names on the tag. so for you sisters reading this, expect* to be put to work a few days before the wedding!

*ever notice that 'except' and 'expect' have all the same letters in virtually all the same places? i wrote 'except' first and it took me a long while to figure out what looked wrong...

something other than dresses

i've been focused on the dress because that's one of the last, you know, really big details to be covered. and as far as any kind of ambiance or decoration, the park itself pretty much takes care of that. but having finally been there and seen it, i've been thinking more about that, too. sister m wants to make some paper medallions to hang up, and i'm planning on some farolitos and maybe white gourds with candles inside or something. but beyond that and a handful of flowers, there isn't much that needs to be done. but apparently i have become a sucker for white fabric draped over wooden structures. look how sweet!

i think the contrast and the simplicity is just perfect. i also think i could do without the big straw wreath in both cases, too, though. now if only i could come up with huge swaths of white fabric to drape about the park shelter... i have a feeling it's going to be mostly limited to the tablecloths, though. seriously. where does one find that much fabric for cheap!?

back from oregon!

ok, so it's not that exciting following this blog. but now that i'm back in san diego and not running around eugene, i'll try to be better about posting between now and the wedding. that's what i was running all around eugene for - planning this long-distance hasn't really been difficult, but there were a lot of details to finalize once we were actually there. for instance, i hadn't seen the park where we're getting married yet! (i love it)

more dress stuff. the fitting went quite well, though there are some changes that will need to be made. basically, the measurements were just right but the style of the dress wasn't totally floating my boat. it was just meant to be a good gauge of size, so i'm not worried. but i did some pattern hunting and i've come across this - which is rather different from what i've posted before:

it's weird because it's similar in some ways... it definitely has that whole mod style going for it. but i'm realizing that a) i kind of like the sleeveless and b) i think the reason i like this one and the delphine manivet from the previous post so much is that they both have something sort of *interesting* going on, something to look at. while i'm not nuts about this button/bow weirdness, i can imagine something that would normally be totally unlike me - having a big ol' flower there, instead. the thing is, this is an actual pattern that i could buy and send to A. the size is wrong, but she's good at that sort of thing. and this event is, uh, less than 8 weeks away now. holy carp.

dress, part 2

next week i'll be able to try on the dress that sister a is making for me (have i mentioned yet how awesome my sisters are?) and i can't wait! she mentioned that she wasn't crazy about the way the collar was turning out - the original design i liked had a mock turtleneck. so i've been kind of poking about for other ideas. i thought a scoop neck or boatneck or something might work, but i'm absolutely terrible at envisioning those kinds of things and needed an actual picture to see how it would look with the length and shape of the dress. so in my searches i came across a post with a photo of this dress. took some digging to find out the details, but it is the 'alistere' by delphine manivet. no idea who that is. a designer, apparently. and this dress is $2,000!!! but i heart it to death.

it's incredibly similar in style (to my untrained, unfashionable eye) to the one a is making for me. at least, it's similar to the photo of the dress i asked her to make. same basic shape, and this one is exactly the length i'm looking for. and lo and behold, no mock turtleneck. the neckline is fantastico, no? i'm also super digging the 3/4 length sleeves and suggested to a that we keep that in mind as an option.

sidenote: i'm also extremely happy i found this photo because of the shoes. i have a pair of shoes i was planning to wear, they're pretty standard ivory-ish heels with a peep-toe. but lately, as i've been overdosing on wedding blogs, i've been noticing all these unbelievably fabulous shoes in red and blue, etc. i started to wonder if i shouldn't rethink my shoe choice. i may still, you never know, but this photo has me pretty convinced that i've made the right choice. i really like the continuity of the white. hopefully photos of the fitting will come next week!