I’ve been a little scattered with sewing projects lately — not a lot of time to sew, so I end up doing the easy parts (pockets, collars) of dresses when I’m tired, and then leaving the hard parts (buttonholes, zippers) for some fresh morning (that never comes).

Here are some scattered pics of “coming soon” projects:

The Echino on top will most likely be a 9929; the red floral is a new pattern I’m working on. Here’s the pocket for it:

Here’s another disembodied part, a collar, interfaced with organza (using temporary spray adhesive!), for a new black shirtdress. (This dress is so boring that I can only sew on it in ten-minute intervals, but I don’t have a Good Black Dress and what if, heaven forbid, someone died?)

I love this pattern, it’s been on the top of the stack for a while:

Maybe in this gingham?

Blue: Look at them. They seem so happy.

Print: They’re like children.

Blue: They know they will die; some even know it will be soon.

Print: Fools.

Blue: Yet they keep on talking and dancing.

Print: What else can they do? Come now, we’d best be getting back to the ship.

Blue: Do you think they’ll even notice when the invasion fleet arrives?

Print: Not if the boys in stealth do their jobs right. Let’s go, this flesh suit is getting itchy.

Dear folks, if you tried to visit this blog in the last 24 hours, you may have been confronted by a giant Google warning saying that this site could harm your computer … unfortunately, Google had flagged my ad server, iSocket.com, as a malware provider. (The only harm iSocket does is to your pocketbook by tempting you with ads from fine vintage patternsellers across the web.)

I’m very sorry for the scare — I will do my best to make sure it doesn’t happen again!

If you are ever curious about the health of a site, you can use Google Safe Browsing to check it out. Here’s the link for Dress A Day.

Here’s a bonus Pattern Story for your trouble:

Martha: All she said was, “Hold this, I’ll be right back.”

Bertha: You didn’t ask her where she was going?

Martha: I didn’t want to pry. She was in a hurry.

Bertha: Which direction did she go?

Martha: How should I remember? That was Tuesday!

I’m besotted with shirtdresses again. I bet you could go back through the archives of this blog and chart the periodicity of my shirtdress obsession; it probably peaks in Nov/Dec and March/April, then trails off in the summer, when it’s too hot for buttonholes.

I have a semi-complete shirtdress on the dress form that is taunting me; I’ve put the skirt on and taken it back off again three times, and none of those times did it look even remotely like the front of the pattern envelope. I’m letting that truculent skirt think about its mistakes and then maybe this weekend I will say “Fine. If you don’t want to be pleated, I *will* gather you …” and we’ll see what happens from there. It’s my second try at a shirtdress in this same fabric, and I Will. Not. Stop. until I have the perfect version of it. (Expect a long post to this effect, later.)

I found this shirtdress on Etsy that is either perfect or perfectly frumpy. You can never tell with newspaper patterns, in my experience:

I really like that triangular yoke in the back. It’s crying out for piping, isn’t it? Just a little, and then a little along the top of the pockets. The collar is slightly 1970s, but that might turn out to be a good thing. It’s hard to tell. I will definitely shorten the sleeves; I like my sleeves to just hit the top of the biceps, because if I start competitive bodybuilding I don’t want to have to alter all my dresses. (I plan ahead. I also once had a Latin teacher who lifted a lot — I mean, A LOT — of weights, in-between his stints bartending and teaching us the Aeneid, and his biceps were so huge his sleeves had to be slit at the underarm seam to accommodate them. Which evidently made more of an impression on me than our friend Virgil, although I suppose now I am in effect “singing of arms and the man.”)

I almost didn’t buy this because the illustrated fabric pattern here is a dead ringer for some wallpaper my parents once had. (The dots were brown and blue on a beige background. I disliked it quite a bit.) But I will make this dress in something spare, perhaps  a nice crisp gray shirting cotton. Or maybe checks!

And … sorry it’s been a while since I’ve posted regularly. Lots of work — the thingy at the bottom of my blog entries here, that shows related posts? That was released in beta today. Also, I got hit by a car while riding my bike. (I’m fine, but I totally feel like a Real San Francisco Bike Commuter now.) And there was that turkey-enabled holiday, for those of us here in the States. I’ve got more excuses if you need ’em …

When I talk to people about learning to sew they often start off enthusiastic (yay!) and then start to feel intimidated (boo!) … especially if they’ve just walked through a Big Chain Fabric Store and seen the oceans of Special Sewing Stuff that’s available. Do they need all of it? Do they need any of it? What the heck is some of it for, anyway?

Once you have your basics — your sewing machine, your iron, a good pair of scissors, and half a dozen seam rippers, a few more things can make a big difference, but acquiring the entire notions aisle is not necessary (or desirable). Here are a few sewing tools I use all the time:

1. A really good invisible zipper foot.

I put an invisible zipper in almost everything I make … and for many years I muddled along with a narrow foot or even those pink-and-blue snap-together feet that you sometimes get in the zipper package. Don’t do it. This foot is less than $5 (for my machine, anyway) and is completely worth it.

2. The Dritz EZY-HEM.

I’m pretty much a sucker for anything with deliberate cheesy marketing misspellings, but the EZY-HEM really is easy. It saves SO MUCH TIME when pinning machine or hand-sewn hems, and it’s extremely satisfying to run over this (metal, indestructible) tool with your steaming iron. Highly recommended, and under ten bucks.

3. Tailor’s Ham.

You’ve probably read by now that half of sewing is really pressing, and it’s true. A tailor’s ham lets you really steam curves so that your collars, facings, sleeves, and so on all lie flat nicely. Also, it’s really fun to throw a tailor’s ham at people who bother you when you’re sewing (joke). There are plenty of tutorials online that teach you how to make your own, but since they can usually be had for well under twenty dollars, I prefer to buy one and save my sewing time for other stuff. Also, I’ve had mine now for …. fifteen years? So I think it has been amortized sufficiently.

4. Small scissors.

I know I said that you just need one pair of good scissors, and that’s true. But it’s incredibly convenient to have one or two pairs of these teeny (four-inch) scissors around. They’re great for snipping threads, clipping curves and points, and other close work. You can get nicer ones, but since I tend to drop these on the floor a lot (or lose them to someone who uses them for things that AREN’T FABRIC) I buy a new eight-dollar pair once a year or so.

5. A really big ironing board.

Okay, so this is more than ten bucks — it will set you back over a hundred, most likely, especially if you upgrade to a muslin cover. But, again, sewing is mostly pressing, and a really good ironing board will last you decades. Mine is actually a Rowenta, but I couldn’t find any good pictures of that model. You’ll probably have better luck buying your big ironing board when the Giant Chain Fabric Stores have their 50% off sales, if you can wait that long. A giant ironing board will make pressing just-washed fabric and hand hemming (when you use the board to support the skirt fabric) go much faster.

I’d love to hear about your must-have tools, or the ones you use all the time. Tell me about them in the comments!

Every year I make the last dress of summer. (Some years I make it more than once.) Even here in Greater Suburbopolitan San Francisco … digression: I really have trouble with the phrase “the Bay Area” — I mean, it sounds like something you tell your doctor when you have an embarrassing ailment: “It hurts in … [vague gesture] the general bay area.” Also: lots of places have bays: Massachusetts, Tampa, Wisconsin [they have a Green one!].

Sorry, epic digression. As I was saying … hereabouts … where it will be summerishly warm for another couple of weeks, at some point in October lightweight and light-colored cottons start to feel seasonally inappropriate. And judging by the number of people I saw in the city wearing corduroy and tights today (when I was perfectly comfortable in a sleeveless dress), I’m not the only one who inclined to go by the calendar instead of the thermometer.

Yep, this is ANOTHER Vogue 9929, in this Michael Miller gray and green key print:

I really like the key motif. (Prediction: I think keys are the new bicycles. They may even be the new birds, mustaches, and owls.)

The way you can tell when you’re sewing the last dress of summer is that it takes a real effort to finish it. When you started it, you were excited to get it finished so you could wear it, but then at some point … you slow down. You start to fondle pieces of corduroy in your fabric stash, and think about what might look good with boots and leather jackets. You work on it, not because you want to hasten the wearing of it, but because you need the cutting table for something that has sleeves, or is mustard-colored, or that is plaid (or all three).

If you give in to giving up, if you don’t buckle down and finish the last dress of summer, one of two things will happen: there will be a freak early-fall heat wave just when you are SOOOO BORED with all your summer clothes, and/or you will gain or lose a size-changing amount of weight before summer dress time rolls around next year. This is guaranteed. If you *do* finish it, though, you’ll only wear it a couple-three times before it gets autumned out by last year’s unfinished Last Dress of Winter wannabe, which you will finish immediately after finishing the Last Dress of Summer. This is also guaranteed.

The upside is that the Last Dress of Summer often turns out to be The First Dress of Spring, because when you dig it out on the first warm day next year, it will feel absolutely brand-new.

There are other ceremonial-slash-seasonal types of clothing, of course … some of my favorites are The First Day of Wearing Those Tights You Bought On Clearance Last Spring That You Thought Would Never Go With Anything, But Somehow This Year Work, and It’s Still Too Cold For Sandals But These Are Super-Cute Day (in Chicago this would happen in late April/early May), and everyone’s junior-high favorite, First Day It’s Cold Enough to Wear Your  Fashionable Back-to-School Sweater. (Which, when I was in junior high in Florida, didn’t usually happen until after Thanksgiving. Torture!) And of course many people celebrate Charmingly Ironic Holiday Sweater Day (or week) as well as (under varying levels of duress) the annual Day of Wearing the Gift Well-Meaning Relatives Gave You Last Year at This Event.

Of course, you can’t take these seasonal influences too far … or you wind up with this.

What’s your last dress of summer?

Plaid: I Vant. To Suck. Your BLOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

Yellow: I wonder how my dress would look with a bow? Not red, of course, but maybe white? Or green? I’m getting hungry, I don’t know why Mina said we’d have lunch here, I don’t see anywhere to eat …

Pattern and sale today thanks to Jen at MOMSPatterns — use the code ‘hotsale’ to save 25% on all orders until midnight EST tonight, Monday October 1.

So it turns out that Plaidurday is a thing (as it should be) and it’s on October 5th this year. I plan to participate fully — I’ve been itching to make a plaid shirtdress (or two) and this is a great excuse.

I don’t know if I’ll have all the kinks of a new shirtdress pattern worked out in order to use this fabric, but I hope so:

It’s plaid AND dots, and it’s really, really nice Italian cotton (here’s a close-up). I bought it in Portland completely serendipitously — there was a great little fabric store about a block from my hotel. I really liked the fabric store — it’s called Josephine’s — for a number of reasons. First, they weren’t irked at all when I wandered in fifteen minutes to closing; I’ve been to way too many small shops where it’s as much as your life is worth to go in thirty minutes before the closing time written on the door to take that niceness for granted. And in addition to this plaid, they had some really good fabric, including the fox fabric I posted about the other day. (It’s always fun to see something you’ve already made up still on the bolt in the fabric store — it feels like greeting an old friend.) Besides, I’m always wary in a (US) fabric store when I don’t recognize *anything* — I feel like that means everything is either super-generic or really, really old. But this place had some nice Moda fabrics and a good balance between cotton prints and fancier stuff. (Although: what is up with all the ITY knits or whatever those slinky poly things are? I don’t understand it.) They also had this pattern — which has been in my “maybe” pile for a while — made up and on display, and it looked really good.

They don’t have a web store (and anyway, I bought the last of this on the bolt) but they do take phone orders (and also had it in blue). I was briefly tempted by the blue colorway, but it had a lot of navy in it — this plaid has just enough blue, anyway. The whole point of plaid is being able to pull any of the colors in it to the foreground through determined accessorizing, and I just never am able to find navy shoes that don’t make me feel like a cross between a first-year associate in a very conservative law firm and a gawky eighth grader in a parochial school.

This is probably my favorite kind of plaid — a little rough and painterly, not exact (which seems like an odd thing to prefer in a plaid, but there it is). And the dots are just a whole extra level of busy-cute.

So what are you wearing for Plaidurday?