house project no.1- taking down shelves

When John and I moved into our new place, we made a list of things we’d like to change.  It went from painting the walls to redoing all the floors- we can dream, right?  I ranked them on cost and priority because I’m nerdy like that, and one of the cheapest and most necessary projects was cleaning up the wall above our built-in entertainment unit.  We can’t paint the living room until we take down the shelves and molding, and we can’t unpack our decorative stuff until we have painted walls to hang photos on.  While it’s nice to have a built-in thing to use for our television and tv-related junk, it’s not nice for our TV to sit 6″ off the ground on a homemade platform.  John and I decided right away that we would rip down the shelves, put our TV on top, and build cabinet doors and shelves for our DVD player and such.  For the first phase, all we needed was a little brute strength, E-Z patch and  hard plastic squeegie thing (one more reason I’ll never be a professional handyman- I never know the real name for anything), spray wall texture and patience.  Cheap, right??  

More info from left to right: 1-The unit when we moved in.  The lovely molding is all over the house, so I’ll be really good at patching after this.  2- Right after John and our good buddy Alex ripped the shelves down.  3- a close-up of the worst of the damage- the boards were glued as well as nailed to the wall.  

4- After we did the first round of E-Z Patch.  5- After I spray textured the smooth parts of the wall and painted to see if it looked good enough.  It didn’t.  I just did the (hopefully) last round of patching tonight!  It would have been passable before, but I like to do things right darnit.  6- 3rd times the charm.  The bottom two colors were too dark and way too aqua for our open space.  I ended up asking the nice guy at Sherwin-Williams to match to an archival cardboard box I keep my wedding dress in.  We went with 50% of that- it’s light aqua in the morning, greyish in the afternoon, and something else entirely in the evening.  So far I love it!  John and I can’t paint the living room ourselves so hopefully we can get someone to come out in the next couple weeks to make it all beautiful.

Besides this nearly-done project, we also took similar molding off of the wall of our dining room, painted our bedroom, and painted the second bedroom I’m using as a workroom/guest room (insane robin’s egg blue).  I like staying busy with housey things.  More soon!

Christory

I don’t have much physical Christy-history because of a house fire that happened when I was 16.  I can remember accidentally knitting a blanket over 6 by 8 feet in size (that first row has lots of tension, doesn’t it?), sewing paper towels together with needle and thread when I was tiny, making some horrible purple denim jeans that split up the bum when I was 13, etc.  Until someone invents a device that will screen cap what I can see inside of my brain, you’ll have to just visualize.  I can remember hand-appliqueing hearts with my mom and grandma for a 3 generation bedquilt that took us from my age 7 to 15 or so to finish.  Pretty amazing to see my hand sewing improve over that span of time… It was beautiful and something I wish I could pass on to my kiddos, but this blog is not about being sappy!  It’s about projects and my ever-present need to create stuff.  

While I still don’t think I’ve solidified my style, I’ve always loved color.  Being the youngest child had some advantages- I convinced my parents to paint the wood paneling in my childhood bedroom pepto bismol pink and LOVED it.  I later convinced them to let me paint my room “blueberry pie”- the darkest, most saturated shade of blurple that has ever existed.  I never got tired of it.  Looking back on it, they were probably just amused by my passionate persuasions and let me do my thing.  

Keeping the love of color in mind, check out some past projects.  They’re my journal as I’ve never been organized enough to write my thoughts down on a regular basis.

From left to right, top to bottom:  this 2′x2′x6″ box made of wood, plexiglass, foil and stained glass.  I glued the glass shards onto the plexi and some of them have fallen off over the years.  Sliced the top of my thumb joint bad enough making this to leave a scar.  Made at age 16.  

Odd yellowy thing made of wood, plaster cloth and plaster, metal mesh, and finished with watered down acrylic paint.  Made my freshman year of college- age 18.  I had fun in the wood shop with lots of these projects.  The white shows through where my cats have wiped their faces.  

Neutral colored screenprint made from a series of poorly proportioned illustrations.  My original concept was interesting, I swear.  4′ square stretched onto a homemade wood frame.

another 4″ square silkscreen, but this one is a 3 color repeat.  I still really like this color combo.  Both age 20 or 21.

Creepy face (supposed to be my own) made in sculpture class in high school, age 16.  I painted it later and made it even creepier.  The paper wig was made from printer paper edges that I couldn’t bear to throw away at my first job.  

Hand dyed cotton canopy hanging over my old queen sized bed- if I had to guess I’d say that thing is 100″ wide by 20′ long.  I always try projects that are gigantic and overwhelming!  It’s a multicolored spiral at the center, batik in the messiest sense of the word.  My friend Reade and I dyed all sorts of things one summer and ironed out the wax with leftover paper from the nutrition store where he worked.

queen sized rainbow spiral quilt.  I hand dyed this fabric as well.  I didn’t bother with proper piecing techniques; I roughly and impatiently appliqued the spiral segments directly to the batting in some places.  The back is a solid hand dyed (more subdued) blurple.  I’m glad I’ve grown out of the blurple phase.  The quilt was machine quilted at my mom’s shop.

Hope you enjoyed following me on my journey back in time!  I never really finished talking about the wedding projects but I have more fun things to talk about now.  John and I are settling into our first place and there are tons of home projects to do.  I’m sure you’ll be able to read soon about knocking down ugly molding, making cabinet doors, retiling the bathrooms, etc.

Liz’s wedding dress

My coworker and friend Liz asked if I could make her wedding dress earlier this year.  As this was in the middle of my wedding planning I told her that I could start on her gown in the middle of August for her October wedding, and she said that she could wait!  I like a challenge and she knew exactly what she wanted.  

Luckily, Liz is very close to sample size so I was able to work off my college blocks.  The fitting process was pretty easy, then we drove up to LA with her mom and bought some really beautiful embroidered silk chiffon.  I used the same fabric I used for my dress for the under layer and the lining.  After one last minute batch of alterations due to wedding-stress-shrinkage, we were good to go!

The dress has a deep V with a little tiny cap sleeve, a band around the waist and a slight mermaid silhouette with front and back godets for fullness.  I hid the invisible zip on the side because I don’t like how most wedding dresses open up at center back.  Instead the back had a mostly decorative keyhole button and loop.

first sample

second fitting, work in progress

fitting in my tiny kitchen

cutting the godets

closeup of two layers and godets

work in progress

neckline

back view

one point underbustle

closeup

the week before the wedding

happy!

sassy with the red shoes

back view

before the ceremony

before the ceremony

the dark points are the bustle loop and ties

one last look before the ceremony

introducing andy and liz!

I can’t explain why my photos are rotating themselves because when I uploaded them, they were correct. Same goes for the big photo… maybe I can fix it later when I have more patience.  Professional photos taken by Alvaro Quiala.

recap part 2: wedding dress

I am very glad I made my own dress for my wedding.  As far as I can tell it wasn’t even more stressful to make it than buy a dress after hearing about poor quality and fitting horror stories from a couple friends this summer.  At least I had no one else but myself to get mad at if it turned out poorly.  I was comfortable and a good temperature all night, and I’m glad I didn’t do a train… just not my thing.  Here are a few photos and comments in order of the gallery.

1. Tadaaaaa- my completed wedding dress laying out on the hotel room bed, waiting for me to put it on.

2. A close up of the layers- it looks so fluffy!

3. A full shot- Although it fit great I still felt the need to hitch it up every once in a while, just to check.

4. The pretty side.

5. The not-as-pretty side- there’s a zipper hiding in there somewhere. 

MIA, but for a good reason!

So John and I have been married for over two months now.  Since the big day, we went to Mexico, went to Dallas to be in one of my favorite people’s weddings, re-organized the kitchen, cleaned up random wedding mess, worked, and got back into the swing of cooking at home and going to the gym.  Then I went to Asia, finished season deadlines at work, and finished a new wedding dress for my friend Liz (details later!).  Forgive me if I still have to recap all the wedding fun that I haven’t talked about in detail yet! 

I’ve decided since it’s taken me many many tries to finish this post, I’m going to break it down further.  Let’s see if we can go in chronological order here.  1st- the rehearsal dinner dress.  I didn’t wear it because I decided it turned out too horribly.  I want to turn it into something else… I’ll post on that later if it happens.  :)  Next up is my wedding dress, then the bridesmaids’ dresses.

mini wedding projects

I’ve been preoccupied with last minute wedding plans and little projects.  Nothing has taken lots of time individually, but combine them all and it’s plenty of work.

I uploaded our kid photos and had mini moo cards printed.  The backside has our wedding date and a URL where guests can upload their own digital photos to share with us/each other.  I plan on having these by by the guest book so they can take one home.

 

kid photo moo cards

Our awesome wedding planner Melissa is also acting as florist, and she needed a little ribbon to wrap the bouquets.  Never satisfied with store-bought when I can create my own, I cut one inch strips of the flower girl silk, burned the edges, dusted them off and rolled them up for her.  It’ll be a detail that most people won’t notice, but it matches my dress and the hems of the bridesmaids’ and flower girls, so I am happy.

 

burned edge silk ribbon

That’s it for now!  I have a feeling I’ll have lots more photography posts in the future, and I’m making my friend’s wedding dress as soon as I get back from my vacation so that might make an appearance if she doesn’t mind.

See you again as a married lady.

flower girl dresses

Yippee!  I am done with almost all of the things I said I wanted to sew for my wedding.  I think there’s a waist sash/ribbon for one dress left, and I still have a tiny bit of hand sewing on my dress, but all of the big projects are done.  I present to you…

The flower girl dresses!

 

flower girl dresses

They’re miniature, lighter colored versions of the bridesmaid’s dresses.  The flower girls are my two nieces aged 4 and almost 9.  

 

flower girl dress close up

An aside- while the fig tree is shade for my bedroom and nice smells for my nose, it is also raccoon/possum food and barefoot grossness, along with dog snacks if I don’t say “nonono” fast enough.  One last photo for you.

 

death of a flip flop

You can even read the brand I was wearing if you look close enough. At least I was wearing shoes!

Neckties

Making ties for the wedding party and dads turned out easier than I thought.  Preparation takes the most time; planning how to cut, especially with my hand dyed silk, is the first step.  Cutting the tie and then the guts is more time consuming than the machine sewing portion.  All in all I spent the better part of two days making these, all while watching/listening to “Rear Window”, “Vertigo”, “Be Kind Rewind” and a couple episodes of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”.  I feel like I never need to watch TV again.

Aqua ties in the fading July 4th light:

Back view of the ties hanging from our fig tree:

One satisfied customer:

Just imagine that tie but with a nice dress shirt, black jacket, shaven face and trimmed hair.  Same groom, though.  This one hangs a little funny… I will fix that.

I’m more satisfied with these than I am with the rehearsal dinner dress, but less satisfied than I am with my wedding dress.  I can live with that!

finally!

I am on the brink of completing my wedding dress.  A little work on the hem and then tacking down the ruffles a little so they don’t flap up in the wind and I’m good to go.  I am going to wait until after the wedding to post about the dress, but I should be talking about neckties next week and flower girl dresses the week after that!  That’s my schedule, anyways… we’ll see if I can keep it. I can’t afford to slack off because the wedding is less than 5 weeks away.  It’ll be nice once these projects are over so I can relax a little!

Sneak preview because I can’t resist…

eh- the rehearsal dinner dress

The dress you saw in the last post didn’t turn out so great.  I have a bad habit of rushing when working on projects for myself and cutting corners.  First problem- I accidentally dyed the silk lavender instead of orangy-peachy-pink.  After deciding to go along with it, I had a really difficult time sewing in the lining and the zipper didn’t turn out so great either.  I could have avoided all these things, but I rushed and didn’t plan well.  As a result…

Here’s the dress on the form.  The bubble hem didn’t work well because I cut the lining too short, so this is unhemmed.  It’s also not very boatnecky.

Front view after I hemmed it.  I burned the edges then attached the body to the lining at 4 points, making it a quarter bubbley or so.  I’m inventing plenty of words right now.

Side view… Here you can see many of the reasons why I’m unhappy- I stretched the back neck out and the zipper doesn’t lay nicely.

Finally, the only decent way to wear it- half covered!  I don’t like the high neck with the sweater over it but I won’t wear it by itself.  Maybe I’ll throw a t-shirt over it and call it a day.

I promise myself to not rush on any other projects.  At least I think it looks prettier in motion than it does when I stand still.  The next big finale will be the wedding dress.  The end!