Werk it Girl

I finished my first big project since the girls were born! A wedding dress for a shoot my sister in law styled. 

It was nice to see the final product but oh my goodness! It was crazy town up in hurrr.

You can see the dress in action (middle right) on my sister's photography site Peaches & Twine.

inspira-stash

 I'm not so sure when or where along the line my fabric stash accumulated so many nudes and peaches and lacey details (because obviously my stash accumulates things, and not me...ahem..)

But I'm very much diggin it!

I have a couple projects I'm working on right now (bad ADD seamstress, I know) that I'm really excited about. AND! Since picking up my new sewing machine, I'm able to actually make things in a reasonable amount of time with an almost saintly lack of swearing.

Almost.

It has been really good to get some stuff finished and start on other things

...now to just finish the one thing I should actually be working on.

You know when you get halfway through with something (usually just before finishing neck edges and hemlines) and you look at it and think...from what 90's/40's/80's/early 2000's mangy love child did you come from? 

Pinterest is weeping right now at some of the half started/half finished projects I have tucked away around our spare bedroom.

Getting back on the sewing horse

My dearest friend Kait has provided me with some motivation to get sewing again. 

I'll be shipping these twirly-little-dresses-to-bes off to sell in her booth down in NC

I'm so excited for them to all be done!

15 to go....

Oh, and on the same note as making things again...We have more El Cap shirts on Etsy, check out my shop in the side bar!

Sewing in small spaces

Working at the Costume Shop has spoiled me rotten.

When I try to sew in my small (see >200 sq. foot) home, I get fidgety and frustrated. Everything seems to take three times as long and it always seems that I run out of the thread, interfacing, fabric, or needles that I need.

Living an hour and a half away from the nearest fabric store also puts a damper on my ability to bounce back from an "I-can't-doooooo-this-anymore" meltdown.

BUT!

After much struggles, pinpricks and alterations....

I ended up with 2 dresses, 1 veil/head piece and a happy bride to be.

(more pictures to come)

El Capitan

 

As part of my 26 goals for this year (...which some need to be amended, woops). I bit the bullet and made 20 of these bad boys (20! Yikes). 

Posted them online last night and found one sold this morning! 

WooT!

9 more me-made items to go and I've reached my goal for the year :). 

(You can check them out to the left!)

Getting back into the swing of it...

I'm so excited to be back at school (for my last semester!) (For reals this time!) and getting back into the routine...

Which is kind of routine-less. 

I love working at the costume shop where days are mixed with calm and chaos, I love seeing a whole show come together and I love seeing all the bits and pieces manifest themselves in motion on stage. 

If I could have just worked at the shop for the whole time I was in school instead of getting my degree, I'd have done it in a heart beat. 

is that bad?

Oh well, here's to sewing! 

...and school

Do you know what is happening RIGHT NOW??

Right now, at this very moment, Extravadance is wrapping up 

It.is.almost.over.

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!!!!! 

No more late nights for the semester. 

No more begging people to let us know if we need to fix something...before the 11th hour, only to be told something needs to be fixed...from last semester.

No more burnt fingers or headaches form E6000.

No more hearing biketards being called bikatards.

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It was fun to see 200 hours of my work (plus all the hundreds and hundreds of hours of the other girls) set in motion and lit up on stage. 

It was a bummer after putting so much work into the show to only be mentioned as a "costume shop stitcher" I was looking forward to adding that little program to my portfolio with my name on it, but oh well. 

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It is done.

Cya after Extravadance...

This week has been crazy, we were lucky enough to snag some time and head over to my boss' house to have the most amazing tacos ever. It was a great break after an intense week which included:

25 Marching hats

25 coordinated costumes to go along with said hats including:

22 boleros 

22 dresses

3 drummer shirts

3 pairs of pants

all covered in gold trim and bedazzles.

Over 50 costume alterations

and 20 new costumes. 

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We are down to the wire with alterations and 10 more costumes to make...by 5 pm tomorrow. So, sorry for the lack of posting (again) I'll be back after Extravadance is over!

In case you haven't noticed...

I have items up in my etsy shop. 

Swimsuits, custom made swimsuits. You know you want one!

You can also check out some of my other work and sketches 

HERE

Yay! Hard work finally coming together :)

Now to keep going :)

Oy! My eyes!

So after spending what seemed like years on a slew of ugly black sweat pants, I had what may be my first sewing-life-crisis (they happen oh too frequently in the sewing world) and snatched up the most ugly/awesome fabric I could find. 

Metallic Gold Spandex.

You know those words both scare and entice...

So, excuse the picture quality, ignoring my thunder thighs and cockatoo hairdo:

BAM! Gold swimsuit! 

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I tweaked and re-tweaked and lengthened and re-lengthened my original pattern so many times and I'm pretty happy with the result of the fit. Now to work up the courage to actually wear it swimming haha.

Whew

I now have all the parts of my portfolio, they just need to be assembled.

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That is all the news this blog post can handle.

This week in sewing...

So I have been a little AWOL lately, sorry about that. 

Good news though! I got into the Portland internship expedition (a month past the deadline) and now get to show my design portfolio to a bunch of Portland artsy fartsy big shots.

One problem. I don't have a functioning design portfolio. 

Oh, and another problem, the expedition is on the 6th of next month. 

Yikes!! So I'm scrambling like ants do when you touch them. No I don't do that, what do you think I am? Crazy? psh.

So I'm scrambling and pleading and recruiting models to show off my creations and photographers to capture them and all that jazz.

Anyway, here's a little bit of what I've worked on this week:

I took this dress and an identical one in green from Old Navy, in a size XXL (which I definitely left the tag in, just to freak the dancers out) 

And narrowed the waist to a size 24, lengthened it with a ruffle and added sleeves (they aren't sewn on in this pic yet because I need the girl's over shoulder measurement.)

Next week, we have about 100 costumes in our queue for the costume parade in a week. Yep, the five of us are going to work our little fingers to the bones.

Stolen Time

I broke down and bought a little white board to write my weekly calendar on.

This way, I can find little blips of time that aren't accounted for and which I do not have to sleep or shower during.

This little development tipped me off to the fact that Russ and I both had a free night that we could spend out and about. 

So we BBQ'd! (So many lettersssss!) and slack lined with Kait and Tom

And I totally broke my slack lining record. 3 steps! 

woohoo, right? I was proud.

Burning the Midnight Oil...

Hi, my name is Cambra. I'm taking 15 credits, I work two jobs (42 hours this week), I'm sewing a wedding dress, taking on side projects, fulfilling my church calling, currently doing laundry and getting this week's meals in order.

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And apparently I don't know when to say no.

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This week has been oh-so-long, I closed at the pizza parlor last night and I had to be up by seven to pick up our bountiful basket and then be to work for a mandatory meeting...4 hours before my shift, the meeting ended an hour and a half early so I skiddadled my way out to my car before anyone could side track me and took an hour long nap in the front seat.

 Homeless person style.

...

Well, homeless person with a car style.

This week in sewing...

I learned that prom dresses are not fun to alter. A lady had brought in her daughter's dress last year for Junior Miss and wanted it cut to a cocktail length. So it was done.

The other day, she came back through the door with the same dress and bag of all the excess that had once been cut off, so we could sew it back on....commencing my two day tulle cage and my first time using the Juki ,and lemme tell ya, that  bad-mama-jama is a beast!

and...

 (don't tell, but) it went so fast I accidentally beheaded a pin. Chopped it right in half. It was pure carnage.

This week in sewing

Isn't he so creepy?? A couple semesters ago, when the girls were moving the fabric room, he fell off of a shelf and terrified everyone. He was promptly bedazzled and now lives on the project shelf.

This last week at work I:

Hemmed 3 pairs of jeans, while keeping the original hem (they were all $170+ pairs of pants, so I was a little nervous) using a tutorial I found on Pinterest. 

Put neck, sleeve and waist casings on 5 Southern Belle skirts/shirts

began sewing a pair of sweats from a previous pair of sweats

Tag teamed 8 60" long sashes

Seam ripped, and re-cut 6 cheer leading shirt fronts (after the local screen printing shop melted the fronts)

and, I did a little freelance work in sewing a baby blessing dress and bonnet, with promises of more to come!

and that's all I can remember right now haha. But today it hit me that I am actually getting paid to sew and it seems (seams, punny) all too good to be true!

My friend/coworker Kait and I are going to be making a wedding dress this semester, so I'll be keeping you updated on that! We are going for something really old-Hollywood glamour. It's going to be stressful awesome!

So, if you're in the market for a wedding dress, let us know!

(now it's off to work V2...)

back to sewing...

I've been bouncing around between jobs a little bit, luckily I've got it figured out!

I had the amazing luck of getting hired on at the school Dance Costume Shop. It's like a paid internship! I am learning so very much! And the practice is really helping my skill set.

I'm also working at a pizza parlor and eventually as part of that job as a zip line guide (woot!)

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So to reward myself, I think I am going to try and make myself a blazer.

an awesome blazer.

Similar to this without the buttons and tailored to me:

With this fabric!:

and lined with this:



Pretty awesome, right?

I want to make a jacket, because I've never fitted a jacket before and it's a lot better to test it out on something for me than on something for somebody else! I think I'm even going to try making a muslin first so I'll really end up with something quality.

Now, I just need to find a pattern to start with, because there is no way that I am drafting that whole thing at this point in time :)

A little busy again...

We made it through all the hustle and bustle of wedding planning and proceedings, apartment renting, unpacking and getting settled into work. All just to pack everything up and move again! We are now in our little (little!!) studio apartment figuring all our possessions into every spare nook and cranny.

The thing I love about being especially busy, is that Russell is always good for a timely time-out. During such time outs we went on a hunt for a good Pad Thai...The Pad Thai was decent, but I think it was the napkins that were the real hit with us.

Another thing about being especially busy that I love, is at the end of the day, when we are struggling to get the last little bit done that we can  before we went to bed and got up at 5 the next day...

If I don't see Russell for a few minutes, I know that I am likely to find him crashed somewheres...