New sewing project = new clothes!

As someone with a large waist to hip ratio, I love my shape even as I work on overall downsizing. The frustrating part of having an exaggerated "hourglass" figure is that clothes often gape at the waist if they fit in the hip, or are too tight in hip when they fit at the waist... tailoring is the answer, but it can be difficult for a novice seamstress to get good results when altering a waist by 2 sizes. With Fall around the corner and my dislike for most of my wardrobe, I decided to try making a few of my own pieces.

I bought some patterns on Etsy, and I'm starting with this one from VintageCorePatterns:

I'm planning on making the brown skirt (pictured fig 2) and was hoping to find a mustard colored blended wool but there wasn't a huge selection at the local fabric store (choice of store is surprisingly limited in the Boston area, especially when you don't have a car!). I ended up picking this material (if you can see it, I think it looks better in person), along with some new tools so I can do this right:

(with flash)

(ambient light, no flash)

I'm hoping to get started soon, and I've invited my friend Seana to work on a skirt of her own from this pattern. Wish me luck!

progress

I'm a procrastinator - always have been. Without a deadline, I don't see the need to hustle. Progress is slow but steady as I work on more hats for my friend Emmy's fashion show next month. Since I've been teaching myself millinery (from books, websites, experimentation, etc.), it's been especially slow, but also extremely gratifying. The color scheme for this particular line is deep and dark and the fabrics are wool - nubbly and textured as well as wool felt. It's August outside, but it's cold and snowy on my work table.

Hopefully I'll have lots more to show you soon, but here's some of what I have so far (the bases are just the beginning - feathers and other adornments to be added):

Lots more to come in the next few days! Surrounded by all of these feathers, I'm feeling inspired.