Sorry about the *cough* silence.. *hack, cough*

Yep, I'm sick. And the boyfriend is sick. He actually got sick first and is still way sicker than I am.
I *did* get a little sewing done the other day. The bodice of the galaxy dress fits like a dream but the raised waist is really unflattering, so I'm going to lower it back down to 1" below my actual waist. But now the skirt doesn't fit! What is with Vogue and their crazy curvy side seams?!?!

this is me:

I have a 30" waist and 40" hips, but aaaaalll that hip measurement is pretty much back in the "trunk," so to speak. Not on the sides.

From the front: Straight up and down. From the side? Badonkadonk.

So here's my plan:

I'm either going to straighten up the side seams and deepen the darts, OR, use my skirt block.

Is anyone else (meaning my two readers) noticing that this is about 5% a Vogue pattern and 95% alterations now?

I'm still glad I bought the pattern though, I didn't want to draft those sleeves.

Good Grief

Suffice it to say, I'm having some fitting problems. In fact, after making all the alterations you see here, I *still* had a bunch of gaping above the bust. So I said, "screw it" and started tracing the pattern for re-drafting.

WOW, I think I might see why this dress isn't fitting right out of the envelope. I mean, dayamn. The waist and the bust points, to start, are in the wrong places. And that's just what I realized right away. I compared the traced pattern to my two-dart block.. at the end of this I had better have one sexy dress.

Galaxy dress progress

Last night I started sewing up a mock-up of Vogue 8280.  Besides the fact that it fits nowhere on me except the waist, there are a few things I want to tweak around the neckline.  I want to make it a little less rounded, but I think what's keeping it from looking like the real thing is the sleeves.

I thought the pattern directions were a little unclear, so I tried folding the pleats a few different ways:

So far the third one is my favorite.  Still, it doesn't look like the famous dress:

..Which seems to have a "W" shape to the pleats.  So I'll try again tonight when I get home.

And here, you get a bonus picture of my re-introduction to sewing.. while watching What Not to Wear:

Missed opportunities

I'd like this blog to be full of project photos and finished products.  I don't want this to be a private journal, but I saw something today that I felt like I had to talk about here.

In 2008 I went to an interview for an internship in New York.  One of my very good friends made the trip with me.  I had nowhere to stay, a laptop bag with my computer and portfolio, and a suitcase with my interview clothes and shoes in it.  When I got there I felt like a bumpkin: frozen, red, wet and loaded with baggage, but on time for my interview.  The next day they hired me for the summer.

I was ecstatic.  I saw this designer in In Style magazine and tore out the page.  I pulled it for inspiration because I just liked the outfit, but I fell in love with her aesthetic.  I got to spend a summer working with her design team and felt like I was really accomplishing something... Until little by little I felt like I was fumbling my opportunities there.

I kept saying the wrong thing, I got confused by things I had missed because I worked every other day.  I stayed in four different places that summer so I was always moving.  I tried to be proactive and asked for more days, but I felt like the design director didn't like me.  I rarely saw the designer herself, she spent nearly all of her time working with the designers with vendors with the company that was looking to invest in her, and the one time I got to talk to her, she walked in and I was looking at a magazine.  I must have seemed like the lazy intern.

At the end of the internship, I was asked to go get some bleach and make patterns on a knit blend purple fabric out on the fire escape.  The director liked what I was doing so that became my 'job' for a couple of weeks.  I started to miss more announcements, I forgot things, I left early because I didn't know we had been asked to stay late.  What a horrible impression to make during such an important time.  But I had my little project, and every once in a while another intern was sent out to the loading dock with me to work on it too.

I left my internship, later asked for a reference and haven't heard from them since.

I beat myself up about the internship because I've never gone back to New York to get a job.  But today was worse, because I saw the print on a famous model today on a fashion blog that I read.  The designer I worked for is getting more and more successful, as I knew she would, but seeing her dresses on Oprah and the first lady never bothered me as much as seeing the print I worked on out at a red carpet event.

I keep thinking, should I be there?