this is moving forward. I don’t know if I’ll make the dress part at all any more; the pieces are cut but I’m not excited about it. But I love the shawl and am sewing a little at a time on it; like two days ago I laid out three small appliques, and yesterday I sewed one of them. Today maybe I’ll sew one or two, or not.
I’m really enjoying sewing at leisure and not at high speed/high pressure. It reminds me of why I moved to hand sewing in the first place. 8 months ago

I added small/medium effects around a few motifs and it looks fantastic, really loving the dreamy effect of the tie-dye in small doses, and the space is filling out nicely (though slowly). So nice to not feel rushed any more on all these projects; I can just do a little and then stop. 9 months ago

Just noticed that my original due date was today and edited it to later. Don’t know what happens when you pass the date on a challenge but I asked the bots if it could just go back to a normal goal and they said no. 9 months ago

is to lay in a lot more medium reverse appliques (and probably some regular appliques as well) to fill up the space. I am collecting threads and beads and things but don’t have enough to do the surface yet. Need a trip to Knittin’ Kitten! 9 months ago

both regular and reverse. I’m pretty happy with it except there’s one that is too big and too contrasting and I don’t like that it’s the only one with one kind of border. I need to tone it down; it falls right on my shoulder and looks like a big bruise. And I need to change the border; it doesn’t go.

Update: I took off the border and replaced it with regular couching and that was all it needed, I don’t need to do anything else to make it blend in. Now on to the next phase! 9 months ago

at a very slow speed. Sewed on a few of my appliques yesterday, tried a couple of different stitches. I hope it doesn’t look too much of a hodgepodge when it’s done. 9 months ago

Which now needs to be applied, embellished, etc. Feels good to make a little progress even as hectic as my life is right now. 9 months ago

I got the dress and wrap cut out yesterday and started the textile work on the wrap. I did some large reverse-appliques; some of them have couching. This is going to take a while, but at least I am moving forward now. 9 months ago

So I am not going to said wedding any more, and I also no longer want to do an all-over pattern: too much work and not my style. Instead I want to capture the sense of this green look: a complex overlayer and simple underlayer with a plain dress and a fancy wrap.

I can’t un-personal-challenge this, so it may expire before I finish. 9 months ago

I played around with the fabric and looked at my pin boards and realized I’m on a drapey, criss-crossy kick. BUT I had already determined to do a square neckline because it looks great and is age-appropriate.

I figured out what I’m going to do is a psuedo wrap dress where the underlayer is structured at the top (square neckline) and then a wrap comes across the front. This makes a beautiful line, and then I’ve got a nice canvas for doing the embroidery I want. I’ll just line the part that gets the cutwork, because the dress is physically heavy already (I need to put heavy interfacing on the straps so they don’t stretch way out of shape).

So, wrap AND square neckline, get my embroidery/cutwork placed in an interesting area, a dress that’s a little size flexible and temperature flexible and best of all, totally doable in the time allotted, leaving me free to think about my next time-consuming task on a deadline, the new waterproof bag, which I am hoping to have done to travel with as my old travel bag is too big and my everyday bag is very worn. 10 months ago

I finally found something I’m actually happy with for the underlayer. Finding tone-on-tone color choices while shopping secondhand was quite the challenge. I got a tie-dyed purple/magenta piece. It’s not as large as the plum, but I think it’ll be plenty big.

I decided on a square neckline and a calf-length hem (so I can layer like the picture) but not really anything else, though I am certainly not going to do all-over embroidery at this point: no time, and also I don’t think it’s what I want.

Anyway the clock is ticking and I have lots of travel time coming up that I don’t want to waste. Unfortunately my adventure clothes goal also has a deadline, and it’s even sooner than this one. Fortunately, winging steampunk clothes at the last minute is very genre-appropriate. So I will try and focus on the dress. 10 months ago

I think I will not do an allover pattern; I don’t think I like how it looks. I really like the contrast of densely decorated areas with plain ones.
I also think I will be using leaves to make my pattern stencil(s). Not sure what I’m doing with the colors; most of their stuff is tone-on-tone.
Here’s what I have for cotton jersey: tons of a nice, dark purple, a skimpy but workable amount of sage green, various shades of grey, navy, and black, none huge pieces but again workable, and small pieces of turquoise and royal blue.
Not sure how the color’s going to play out. The purple’s not washed yet, so I can’t play with the fabrics themselves to figure out a layout. The obvious choice is sage-over-purple or purple-over-sage. Any thoughts? 11 months ago

purchased at Knittin’ Kitten yesterday. Tons of purple, def. using that for the dress, not totally sure how. A little blue, I was thinking for under the turquoise, for the bolero part if I construct the dress that way, or wherever the turquoise ends up. Now waiting for laundering. 11 months ago

I’m going to a wedding in New York on the first of September, and I’d like an awesome dress to wear, so I will be trying to make this dress in the next three months. It may not be doable, depending mainly on how dense I make the embroidery.
The picture is from Alabama Chanin, and it’s designer stuff. Just the little red bolero is $485, and the dress is upwards of $1600. They sell a kit, so if I had $289 to spend on a dress, I could get the material precut and pre-stenciled, or get the stencil alone for $59.
Being both poor and very frugal, I have purchased some second-hand fabric for about $6 and will attempt to do the rest myself. 11 months ago

I got about a fat quarter’s worth of deep turquoise jersey at Scrap today (for 50 cents, how awesome is that). It may become a contrast at the top. The sage green is only 36” wide, though there’s 2 yards of it, so I will probably need more of something to make the size dress I want. Also, the moon art goal may turn into moon shapes in this dress rather than or as well as flowers/leaves… 13 months ago

I was at Knittin’ Kitten today for the first time in months and picked up a couple of yards of sage green cotton jersey for this project. It was the only cotton jersey they had, and though it’s not in my usual color palate I am very pleased with it. 14 months ago

or more, but the last time I spent five years on making something I really loved I was not sorry (a knitted shawl that I spun all the yarn for and a lot was hand-dyed by me).
It’s heavily embroidered but I did really find great satisfaction in the making of a textile this weekend, and the work is so beautiful and this picture makes me want to live in it, just like the shawl picture did, so I know it’s something I want to attempt. 14 months ago