Finished! Well, Mostly~~

I actually finished it Saturday night, rushingrushingrushing so I could wear it to a birthday party. I want to make more of these out of the other t-shirts (the base t-shirt on this one is one of a half dozen I dyed but no longer wear because, as I said, they're a little too short to wear with jeans. Well, unless you wear Mom Jeans that come up under your armpits or something), and I needed to wear it out-and-about and see what I think. It turns out I LOVE it, although I would not have put that heart appliqué on there if I'd taken time to think about it--trite, already done it, don't really like it. But that's OK--I also would have over-dyed some of the t-shirts I used--the dusty gold-ish [No, Wayne Newton, I did *not* want to type "goldfish," thankyouverymuch--sometimes auto-correct makes me crazy (Wayne Newton is the name of this computer. Don't ask me why; I can't remember and have no idea why I named it Wayne Newton except that that name makes me laugh.)]

Where was I? [No, asking that--"Where was I?"--isn't an affectation: I really do stop and go, "Where was I?" I'd actually scratch my head, but I'm using my hands to type.] Oh: so I wouldn't have done the heart if I hadn't been rushing like crazy to finish it so I could test it out and see if I liked it well enough to make more.

Yes, I do. It's soft (all pre-worn t-shirts, soft and comfy) and fun (twirly! swingy!) and easy to wear--I wore it again yesterday--all day yesterday, even to eat dinner (I usually put on an old shirt because "eating dinner" means a cat in my lap and me dropping food on myself)--but the purpose of my new wardrobe--the one I'm slowly, slowly developing by embellishing what I love and giving away what I don't love, is about having stuff I can wear all the time, over and over, and not have to treat it like Princesses. Clothes I can live in, wash and wear over and over.

So here was what I started with:

The base shirt on the left, the ones for the skirt part on the right. Two of those were ancient t-shirts The EGE wore to work in. When they started falling apart, I snagged them for the t-shirt bin. They'd been dyed at least once--probably overdyed.

Here it was midway, before I stitched up the skirt panels:

Here's what I did: I ripped out the hem of the base t-shirt (next time I'll just cut it off--the stitching line still shows (I could stitch over it and may do that)), ironed it, cut it on a slant (I'd like even more assymetricality and will work on that--I want a deep slant but don't want one side up under my arm, all bunchy on the side of my chest, which would be way dorky and uncomfortable) and then cut a bunch of isosceles triangles but without the point at the top, meaning they're actually trapezoids, come to think of it. Whatever. I think next time I'll cut diamonds--rhombi--so there's a point at the bottom. It really depends on what size t-shirt you're starting with--if it's big, you can get maybe four panels from it with room for long points. Smaller ones are a problem unless you want to piece it, which I'll probably try on one of these. I think piecing would look really cool, but since I'm doing every single bit of the stitching by hand, I was unwilling to spend too much time on the first one, lest I hate it. The thing about this is: the bigger the difference between the top and the bottom of the shape you've cut, the fuller the skirt will be. I'll play around with that next time. For this one, I pinned all the panels in place before I stitched and then about halfway through took all the pins out and stacked the panels up and just grabbed one when I needed it. Way better suited to the way I like to work, plus less sticking of myself. I had to cut another panel to fill in at the end, but that worked out fine, no problem. Make sure you have plenty of t-shirts. I don't know how many--I'll pay more attention this next time, but for this first one, at least one of those t-shirts already had a chunk cut out of it for some previous project.

Here it is now. I may roll and whipstitch the hem--I haven't decided yet. I probably will, but I wanted to wear it first before I put in that extra time.

 All day yesterday I kept tweaking the hem, taking the Ginghers and snipping a little here and then a little more there. It's a wonder there's anything left.

 Very twirly~~

Check out Humphrey's look of alarm.

Be glad you can't see the studio this morning. I've got piles of half a dozen loads of dyeing today and should already have started. It will take at least two days. I ordered a bunch of tights for The EGE--he wears tights under his shorts when he runs, and the only men's tights we could find that come in colors were about $40 a pair, from We Love Colors, and the first two orders of stuff I ordered for me had to be returned--I ordered medium leggings, thinking surely those would fit, since the hip measurements were a little large and since I wear an extra small in Dharma Trading cotton leggings (I don't think this is a good photo of these--mine don't bag like that at the ankle, and they don't seem that high-waisted and dorky, either) and those suckers were so tight on me I thought I'd suffocate. So I'm waiting on the replacement large ones to see if I like them--they were so uncomfortable I have no idea if I even like the style. And then I ordered some footless tights from them, and I took one pair out of the envelope and tried them on, and there was a hole and a runner in it. Fresh out of the package! So I returned those and cannot in good conscience recommend them to anyone, never mind they have a ton of fabulous colors. They're expensive, and I haven't been happy with them at all so far.

What I have been happy with--delighted, in fact--is the cotton leggings from Dharma. I love Dharma--it's where I buy all my dye and all of my underwear. We haven't had such good luck with the shorts The EGE wears to run--they fall apart at an alarming rate. So we're iffy on these tights for him--I ordered five pair of the same women's tights I wear, but in a large. They fit, but I don't know how well they'll hold up. It's kind of moot, though: the tights he's been wearing are threadbare, so we have to find something. I have about a dozen pair for myself--they are comfortable, take dye perfectly, fit really nicely (of course, in Real Life I am not an extra small; since these go all the way up to 2-extra large, there are tights that will fit almost anyone). I'll try to get some photos of those later. For now, I've got to start dyeing and get ready for today's interview.

~~XO