Three graduations and two graduation dresses later...

(I used pipe cleaners in this dress! teehee)

I'm leaving for Hawaii tomorrow for a senior trip with friends! Maybe I will get fabric there. Hawaiian fabric! Or maybe I will just get the shortbread cookies. We'll see. I'm excited to spend one last week with school buddies, stay up late talking and playing games, snorkel, play in the sand, and eat shave ice. I do not know how dark I will get. The first time time I went to Hawaii, I accidentally used tanning lotion instead of sun screen. No good. This time will be better--I have lots of sunscreen.

And now it's time for a (highly exclusive) BDC (Banquet Decorations Committee) meeting! Steph is not here. She is not working on this with us.

Dress like a graduate

Hello!

I've been looking forward to this entire month for so long! Senior activities, orientation, and now I have graduation, Hawaii, and day camp. I can't wait. Also, I had some free time after graduation rehearsal, so I picked up some fabric to make dresses for my graduation and my cousin's wedding(!!!) coming up soon.

Graduation's on Monday, so I worked on that one on Thursday. My original intent was to create a tutorial, with pretty pictures that explain how I created my dress, but I didn't get very far. I didn't know exactly what I was doing until I was almost done. While I was walking around Fabrix, thinking of what my dress should look like and what kind of fabric I should choose, my only requirement was that I had to be able to put pockets in my dress (to hold phone/camera under my graduation gown.) But I didn't even think that through very much, because the dress I ended up making could never have pockets. There were also a lot of times where I would just stick the fabric under my sewing machine and really hope that things would turn out okay. I even broke a sewing machine needle!!!! because I was getting sloppy, trying to finish the dress in time for me to prepare for orientation, the next day. So those are all my excuses. No tutorial. At least not yet. All I have photographed is the first step, above, and the final product, here:

More pictures of the dress after graduation, I guess!

And I just came back from orientation a little while ago, so I'm exhausted and going to take a little nap now. But I will update again later this week!

PROM!

This past month, I have neglected my blog in anticipation for this post- the hustle and bustle of everything I have to do to get all girly and prepare for prom!

Starting with.. nails!

My amazingly artistic friend, Jasmine, painted nails for my friends and me!! 

from top, clockwise: Erika, me, Lorriane

more of me.

She also made my earrings into clip-ons, for my unpierced little lobes:

on my ear.

Two days before prom, I realized that I didn't have a nice bag to hold money/camera/cell, etc. So I made one out of a hat that doesn't fit my head anymore. It is only a hat, folded in half, with one pleat on each side, and a button/clasp to keep the rim of the hat down. I also put a little pocket inside the bag, for moneys and things. It's very easy. I would make a tutorial, but you don't even need one. It will take you all of five minutes. Here's the bag:

and now, about the DRESS!

It began with a very spontaneous trip my mom and I took to Fabrix. Fabrix pros: the suspiciously low prices. The cons: the strange quality of most of their fabrics. And the dirty, messy, hard-to-find-anything sense that you get immediately after stepping inside. [I did, however, discover that the woman buying fabric behind me was working on costumes/tech stuff for WICKED, which I will be seeing in a week!!! So I feel like I can trust Fabrix with my prom. If it's good enough for Elphaba, it is definitely good enough for me.]

With that said, it was hard to find anything prom-y. All the satin/silk fabrics were shades of blue or green, but most of my friends already picked out dresses that were those colors. I ended up going with black slacks-like fabric and white canvas (also useful for a Mother's Day tote bag). 

I found a thin, pretty, silver trim too, which I knew I wanted to use for the straps. I am almost ashamed (but not) to say, I learned from About.com that black and white can look good on anyone. So if you want to make this dress, you can. Go to Fabrix.

I bought:

3 yards of black fabric, 1 yard of white fabric, 1 black invisible zipper, and 1 yard of silver trim.

All for $13, which my mom paid.

Even after I bought the fabric, I wasn't completely sure what my dress would look like. I only knew I wanted it to be long and mostly black, with silver straps. Plus some white embellishments, to keep the dress from looking too plain. I ended up with this sketch:

After many hours spent in the back of my house, laying out fabric in the hallway (the only place long enough,) poking myself with too many pins, putting on and taking off the dress, sitting in front of the sewing machine, and standing in front of my mirror, holding seemingly endless amounts of black fabric around me while thinking (spent at least an hour doing that...) 

I ended up with this:

Sarah and her friends did hair and make up for my friends and me.

Our hair looks very good in this picture.

Group picture!

And... yes. I think that covers all of me getting ready for prom. Pictures from the actual prom will be on Facebook later, I guess. And prom itself was a lot of fun! in case you were wondering.

callysewn

Hello!

Because I haven't updated in about a month, this entry will be filled with little updates of the things I remember happening since my last update:

• Went to LA for a track meet. Got owned, but that's okay, they won't remember me...
• Went to San Diego with family
• Made banana bread
• Got better at ping pong!!!
• Just got on spring break! I stayed up late yesterday night sewing this:

And in this picture I am petting a glass bear because...

I'm going to Berkeley!

It's not really skirt seasewn but...

I really like this fabric as a skirt.

The silver lines are pretty and not overwhelmingly sparkly. I used it on my last dress for the skirt part, too, because I can't find any other use for this fabric besides as a skirt. It looks like normal fabric (what I originally thought it was when I got it at Fabrix) but when I took it home, I found out it's like at least 90% spandex. And it's really thick. And if somebody ever invented a spandex tablecloth (like those spandex reusable book covers) they would definitely use this fabric.  So thank you, Fabrix, for tricking me into buying elastic table cloth. You win.

k I'm not really that bitter. I still like

this skirt. I still like Fabrix.

And these are the pictures of me wearing the skirt! I have to post more than one because it definitely took me longer to take pictures than to sew the skirt. I went online and found these nice guidelines for me to follow on taking pictures of things I sew. I didn't really follow most of them, but I tried sewwww hard. Especially for this last one. I was going for the scene in Model Behavior (really bad Disney Original Movie) where these identical twins think they're staring at a mirror but they're actually looking at each other.

Confessewns of a sorta only child

Week 3 (of 4) of being an only child is coming to an end. I thought I would be miserable and sad and insane by now--and every once in a while I do get that way--but for the most part, I have a lot of fun hanging out with my parents. I don't feel like a nerd staying home. Actually.. I'm sure I'm a nerd whether or not I stay home or go out, but I don't mind being home. Home is cool.

As a sort of sequel to my story about my haunted phone (see my other entry, "Sew Scawy!!") I have this magic toothbrush. Or toothbrushes. They're electric, and came in a two-pack that we bought from Costco a long time ago. They're Oral-b, and you probably have them too, because a lot of people have them. We have one charger and the 2 brushes in the two-pack, which we use interchangably. My dad insists that they are broken, because when he pushes the button, nothing works, and a dying motor sounds. He brushes manually with the electric brush and talks about going to Costco to buy a new one, or two. But everytime I use the brush, it works perfectly. The motor is fine. Sometimes, during the day, I walk up to the toothbrush and turn it on, just because I can and my dad can't. 

The secret? I have faith. Really strong faith. I believe so firmly that the toothbrush will work that it does. Every time. 

My dad doesn't believe. He figured that by luck, or lack there of, the toothbrush he was using was always the dead one, and the toothbrush I was using was always the alive one. I use the one on the charger, he uses the one left on the sink. So my dad does this:

Yes, he brought a napkin, sharpie, and tape into the bathroom so that he could tightly wrap the working brush in the napkin, remove it from the charger, and place the identical "broken" one on the charger in its place.

Instantly, I lost faith in the brushes. I was like, "Mannnn, now I have to tear off the napkin and use this one, cuz the one on the charger is probably broken" even though before I was so convinced that both toothbrushes worked. I unwrapped the "working" one, and it didn't work. Is this some sick sort of reverse psychology? My dad would. So I tried the one on the charger, only to find that one didn't work either now!! Neither of them. Now we have to use the new toothbrushes that my dad bought from Costco. That's what happens when you lose faith.

So I'm glad God doesn't work like this. Cuz with all the stuff going on with my mom's cancer, I've gone back and forth a million times between being really pessimistic and really optimistic, and I'm glad it's not like I need absolutely perfect faith for God to be faithful. Especially for times when I feel really hopeless, I'm glad there's grace for me to not feel like I'm not allowed to think what I'm thinking. It's good to know God is faithful despite all my "what if" and "why me" and "what are you doing" questions.

This picture is really gross, but it makes me laugh really hard.

Also, my family has a lot more healthy food around the house. I'm not always really happy about it, but sometimes I am because I get to explore this whole new side of baking that uses all these crazy ingredients. I think healthy recipes are a lot more creative than recipes that just use different combinations of chocolate, butter, and sugar. 

Tonight, I made oatmeal cranberry flax seed cookies!

EDIT: okay, my mom just used the toothbrush (old one, not the new costco one) and it works. whaaaat?

allysewn beanie

This past weekend I started working on Mr. Hoffman's Shield and Scroll beanie. It looks like this.

I never really liked how these beanies look. I know some people like them, but I think it's kinda embarrassing to wear so I never wear mine. Maybe I'm just overly self-conscious.
Anyway, I was supposed to cover the white sectors with light blue felt--YEAH. FELT. It brought back so many bad memories from previous felt projects (see my other entry, "Failure".) And I'm pretty sure the entire beanie is made out of some sort of felt, which was really hard to work under the sewing machine. So I had to hand sew it. It's probably better off that way, though. Things would have gotten really ugly if I tried to do it all by machine.
I also got to try embroidering by hand! The cat was kinda just for fun, so I took it off (the legs are weird and it doesn't really look professional. Really.. Would you respect someone wearing a little cat on his head?) If I'm feeling ambitious I might try and embroider the cousin sweatshirts! (We ordered it years ago and never actually got it done.)

The Final Product!

"Mr. Hoffman, do this *asian studio pic pose with hands under chin* so I can put you on my blog!"
"What? No. Why?"
"Please?"

"Wait can I see it to make sure it turned out okay?...Okay, tag me."