I can hardly believe that I haven't posted anything in a month. I will try to get some things posted this weekend. Sunday I have my last Jeans class with Jennifer Stern. This means that my jeans should be finished Sunday. I will post some photos. I went away to the sewing expo in Worcester, MA the middle of April. I took several classes with Cynthia Guffey, she is an excellent seamstress and she is entertaining on top of it. I bought some new fabric from the Vogue store at the expo. I have a dress cut out from some of it and hope to put it together tomorrow. It is a very simple Vogue pattern. I also went away this month because I won an award with my TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) group and they were having a State recognition event. Over the past year + I have lost about 100 pounds.

My dress is finished and I will post a photo tomorrow. Yippee. Tomorrow is also working on jeans for class.

I have a dress started and I put together another muslin of my jeans for class this Saturday. We made lots of fitting changes at the last class so I wanted to be sure I transferred all of the changes to the pattern from the muslin. The new muslin fitspretty well except for right around the waist. I am pretty sure I know what I did wrong, which is always a step in the right direction. :) The dress is coming together nicely, but it is a very simple pattern. I wanted to try out using my dress form for pattern fitting and altering. I have posted a photo of it with some progress. I hope tomorrow evening to be able to finish fixing the back darts and sew up the side seams.  Yesterday, I needed a project I could complete, so I made a Barbie doll dress. It looks lovely, as you can see.....although I still have to sew on the snap for the back of it. Oh well, just a little thing.

I forgot to get a photo of my son and his girlfriend with the sewing machine. It is now back in West Virginia with them. I asked him to send a photo when he gets a chance, but only time will tell with that request. I also realized that I forgot to take any photos of my son or Jackie while they were visiting, but I did take some photos of their dogs. Here are Manny and Jerome. Manny is a Toy Poodle and Jerome is a Goldendoodle. 

No sewing today or tomorrow. My son is visiting from West Virginia and we are having a family gathering for dinner tomorrow night. Tonight was prep night.

Wednesday night I hope to have a little time with him and his girlfriend to show them the sewing machine I found for them on Craig's list. It was an excellent buy and I think it will be a great machine for them. (I almost hate to give it away, it is so nice.) I also found a basic "how to begin sewing" book for them. Neither one of them have ever used a machine so it will be an adventure. I will try to take some photos of them and the machine for posting later.

Self Drafted Skirt

Finally I am getting the photo of my skirt up here. I wore it to class yesterday and everyone liked it.

Photo by Clifford P.

I put together my skirt that I draped the pattern for and when I tried it on, I realized it was too big. So I needed to figure out what went wrong since SueEllen is supposed to be the same size as me. When I went back to the drawing board, I discovered that I had put the waistline tape too low. The clue was that the skirt fit if I wanted to wear it as a hip hugger skirt. That is not what I wanted to do. I moved the waistline tape up to where it should be and took the skirt apart and made the necessary alterations. I got up this morning and finished putting it back together and it fits. I have one little thing left to do and it will be completely done. I am planning to wear it to Form Draping class tomorrow morning.Yeah!! After I finish it, I will take a photo and post it on here.