Tidy Up Sunday

Current Mood : Oddly happy with m'self...

Today was one of those lazy, slow Sundays everyone enjoys. The kind of day that’s sunny and bright, and only 101 degrees, but you’re glad for the air conditioning anyway. I really wasn’t in the mood to start another project, and going out to spray-paint Puma-dude just wasn’t gonna happen. It’s too humid, and some of the hipsters upstairs decided to break a few beer bottles in the breezeway last night. (sigh)

I woke up from a dream where I was choking, and was trying to get Beloved Hubby’s attention, to the reality that I was coughing and gasping, and Beloved was trying to pull me out of the nest of pillows I’d burrowed under. Bizarre.

After breakfast, I didn’t really have anything planned, and just wasn’t into sewing that A-line dress again. Instead, I decided to maintain the Arena, since it’d gotten messy from all the sewing. Cleaned the sewing area first, and ditched the two dresses that didn’t fit, but I wasn’t sure what I’d do with Effort #3, which fit but wasn’t as good as #4. Hated to toss it, but I didn’t need two of the same dress, either. So it got put aside for later. Needed a closure, too.

Snipped what I wanted from Roller Maze Ghoulia and Frankie’s boxes, and tossed the rest. That filled my little wastebasket, so out it went, bundled up with the bathroom and bedroom trash.

From there, I cleaned up a small pile of fabrics that had spawned by my Arena, leftovers from boxing up the VA fabric donations. These were the small bits too tiny to make the right size of bags, not enough to donate, but too big to toss. Wasn’t sure what to do with them, though. I had some fake silver-tone raw silk to play with, and ended up cutting out another A-line dress from the scraps of it, which left maybe enough to make a skirt much like the one that came in the Toralei ‘movie date’ fashion. Tiny and tight !

Bundled up the remaining scraps, including more of that cream piece I’ve been using. It used to be an Izod shirt – I still have the logo-embroidered pocket. The sleeve I’ve been cutting from was getting down to the bits and strings, but there was just enough to make a simple pair of Tarja-pattern pants. Easy-peasy, with no fussy fitting necessary. I even put in a snap closure just to keep in practice hand-sewing those things. I’ve gotten sewing a pair of simple pants like Tarja’s down to less than a half hour, especially since there’s only two pieces, and I’ve gotten really good at hemming the top, instead of using a waistband. I even tried a fake fly this time, but it was a bit too short. And it’s covered anyway, because…

Just to be cute, I put the #3 dress on as a tunic to go with the pants, and I liked the look of it. Folded it under a bit, and it looked better a bit shorter, since it didn’t have to be a dress. Tore out the back seam and bottom hem, and resewed it about a 3/8ths-inch shorter, and added Velcro ™ to make it a full-open back. It used to drive me crazy when Barbie’s Mattel blouses had both a seam and closure – especially when the seam was less than an inch long. For me, it’s easier to dress a doll with a full open back, it just slides over her arms. Most of the time my dolls’ hair snagged on Velcro ™, it was because it got caught due to wiggling around with a back seam. I could keep it pulled away with an open back. But that may be due to my own clumsiness !

Read a bit, took a nap, avoided the pile of dishes. Yup. I had a good Sunday. Hope yours was quiet and relaxing, too – if that’s what you wanted !  .