Move Over, Rudolf

Yes, my nose is redder than that famous reindeer’s. You could even say it glows. We’re going to make some lovely wedding photos, I’ll tell you. Warning, miserable rant coming up. You might want to skip this next part.

So why is it when every day I’m expecting to feel at least a little bit better, I don’t? I have the Flu-From-Hell that never goes away entirely. Remember, I’ve had it on and off since the beginning of March! T-Man says that a lot of people at his work have it also. Guess he brought it home to share with me? Nice, but I guess it’s not really his fault. He of course never gets sick himself. Right now I need an energy injection because I must finish my tunic! And all I really want to do is crawl into bed with the cats, a cup of hot tea and a box of tissues. And before you ask, yes I’ve been taking my vitamins and mineral supplements, eating properly, getting as much sleep as I can and exercising when I can get away from the sewing machine. There is no reason for me to have a low immune system. Unless it’s just the leetle teensy beet of stress I’m having right now? OK life isn’t fair. Move on.

I cut out my tunic and got about halfway through sewing it yesterday. The fabric is loosely woven and some kind of polyester (aka 100% unknown fibre) decorator stuff. Very much like a handwoven actually. It was easy to cut out because there is a prominent weave pattern that gives faint lines to follow to stay on-grain. However it shreds quite badly, is rather thick and doesn’t hold a crease well. Also very much like a handwoven. My neckline facing looks crappy on the outside so I’m going to have to disguise it with some bias trim which I totally was not planning on. It does drape well though (probably because it was meant for drapes!) so my extra wide skirt will be nice and “swishy.” Because it shreds and is heavy I need to put a reinforcement scrap of interfacing at the points of the centre front and back gores. (I didn’t do that for the other tunics with that style because I was trying to save time and these are all somewhere halfway between costumes and real clothes. They’ll probably never see much wear.) Anyhow that was the point where I quit yesterday because I couldn’t even focus enough to cut the slits.

While I’m at it, I’d like to mention a new magazine that just came out recently by Taunton Press, the same folks who do Threads magazine. (I have every issue!) This one is called Sew Stylish and has a lot of sewing information in it, even more detailed than Threads articles. And it doesn’t talk down to you or get too cutsey but focuses mainly on fashion sewing techniques. It takes you more into basic sewing details with lots of tips and photos of the steps. Although I’ve been sewing forever, I still got a lot out of the Summer 2007 (Issue 1, although there was one premier “test” issue before this) with the theme of “get red-carpet ready.” They discussed fabrics, underlayers, hems, details and embellishments and even my recent favourite subject of gores/godets. I’ll be continuing to buy this magazine if it can keep up the quality of information. This old dog is always ready to learn new tricks.