Pivot-Done!

Pivot is done, and She Who Is Pregnant With Twins says it is her favorite dress of all. I spent the day at her house, babysitting her while The Daddy Of Little Girls put the last coat of paint on the twins' bedroom. The baby beds and furniture will arrive very, very soon.....

The Princess wasn't in the mood for pictures today, so I'll get photos of her in Doritos and Pivot later. Meanwhile, Pivot and I took a break during nap time and hung out on the front porch a while. See?

I need to trim a few threads, don't I? The hot pink sash really pulls it all together. Here's a back shot, with little dark pink buttons:

And a close up of the back bodice and bow:





This Little Dress makes me happy. Comments?

I have the fish dress figured out, now I just need to find the right fabric...in the meantime I'm working on the pattern for another idea that's burning a hole inside my head.

So many ideas.

Drat. I have to work tomorrow.

Still Pivoting

Here's a picture of Pivot basking in the sunshine. It's a beautiful day today. Absolutely perfect for finishing up a Little Dress...





For the bodice I ended up cutting 10 more circles, for a grand total of 50 so far. More satin stitching to come.

I have two more ideas in my head, and I'm still practicing drawing little fishies...still working on that idea.

We're thinking Pivot may need a big sash and bow--hot pink, maybe?

On the Twin Watch, She Who Is Pregnant With Twins has hit the 29 week mark, had a really good report on a detailed ultrasound earlier this week, and is still in bed eating ice cream and resting well--growing and growing and growing two little babies......

Stay tuned.

I Was Really Bored

Well, if a person can be both bored and excited at the same time, I was. I was excited to finally finish stitching down every single circle of the skirt on Pivot. And I was even more excited to start satin stitching around the circles. Until I actually started doing it, that is.

Although I started with 20 circles for the skirt, the Sadist (you know, the designer of this design) cut out 20 more, for a grand total of about 40 circles on the skirt! That I had to sew down! And then he expected me to satin stitch around each and every one of them!

So I did. And I liked it. A lot. See?




This took 3 hours. Slow. Painstakingly slow.

But worth it, don't you think?

I need to trim out the waist area and decide how to finish off the bottom of the skirt. I'm thinking I will put in a full lining and satin stitch around the bottom edge of the hem.

I think it's very interesting the way the pink satin stitching makes each individual fabric "pop". Look at the un-satin stitched photo in the previous post and you will see what I mean. Strange, isn't it?

Just a little design note here: before I started sewing all this together it occured to me that it would be easier to make the fabric first. By that I mean that I could have just sewn the circles together and then cut out the skirt. But The Sadist wanted the circle shape on the hemline, so I did it his way. And he was right.

Comments?

The Circle Skirt

Thanks for the comments on Doritos. One comment in particular from a lurker (hi there!) made me realize that I had been meaning to write about circle skirts in general. She suggested that I rotate the skirt on Doritos and place the black section at the center front and back. A very good idea, that. At some point I plan to try it out.

Below you can see a page from Helen Joseph-Armstrong, Patternmaking for Fashion Design, which is probably one of the best books I have ever bought. If you are the least bit interested in design and pattern drafting, buy it. It's fascinating to read and makes it all look so easy. One day I'm gonna chuck the J-O-B and devote six months to this book. Seriously.

Anyway, back to the suggestion about rotating the skirt. The grainline of the skirt determines where the fullness falls into folds. I think of this as puddling. If you study the drawing below, you will see what I'm trying to describe:


This is pretty much one of those things that has to be decided before you cut out your skirt. In my case I wanted the straight grain at the center front and back and cut my pattern accordingly. But, since it is a circle, I could rotate it.

If you study the grainlines in the drawing you can also see that Number 2 is a fabric pig, and Number 3 is such a hog it would probably require piecing to cut out the complete circle. Number 1 (the one I did) uses the least amount of fabric, which is dandy, since I wanted my skirt to fall into the folds as diagrammed.

Now on to Pivot. Here in the South everyone has a pivot. The rest of the country probably calls them Licensed Ground Water Dispensing and Pumping Devices, but we call them pivots. Because that's what they do--go around and around in circles.

See the circles? Pivot. Yes, my mind is weird. But obviously so are the minds of my children. Number One son actually designed this dress. I guess he thought if he came up with something so complicated, and mind-boggling, and totally bias, that I would go away.

Instead, I decided to try it. And I made him help, since it was his idea. We started out with 20 circles of fabric from one of the quilt totes. After drawing circle after circle, it occured to us to use the mouse pad as a pattern.

Then we laid the circles out and pinned them to a base foundation (yes, another circle skirt) and used one gazillion pins to pin it together:



You have no idea how much fun all this pinning was. Nor how aggravating.

Now to sew the thing together. Whew.

Doritos-Done!

Warning!

Wild Fabric Ahead!

Here's the front of Doritos:





And here's the back, hanging from the arm of a Random Teenager:






A little detail shot:






And you know I had to take this shot, didn't cha?




The orange is very orange. I used orange buttons on the black triangles and black buttons on the orange triangles.

From cutting out to finish--4 hours. Big smile.

And now I'm working on a new design that I've named Pivot. Yes, it's a Southern thing....