Vogue 1387

I almost always love Rebecca Taylor's designs. In fact, I've only made a handful of Vogue patterns and I think they've all been Rebecca Taylor.

I mentioned that I recently found where my fabric store here hides the little shelf of rayon prints! This is one I snatched up. A downside of fabric shopping here is that coupons don't exist for fabric stores and things don't go on sale either. Halloween costumes were much pricier to make this year, to say the least! I told Casey to slap me if I ever complain about JoAnn's on the mainland again, haha! But these rayon prints are $5.99, which is pretty great, I think.

I think it turned out nice! I will say, there's gotta be a lot of pins on the pattern envelope model to keep that neckline where it's at. It gapes A LOT! I ended up topstitching the wrap part to keep it in place. I do not do camis here in Hawaii. Even so, the neckline is shifty. But, the top is very comfortable and I feel pretty in it.

On a different topic, I realized in recent months that I have hardly taken any photos with my big camera this whole year. It's partly because iphone tech has gotten so great that I don't always find it necessary to take my camera with me places. But, it's also because my D90 just hasn't been on it's best behavior. It got slightly damaged on our road trip from Virginia to Colorado last Spring and it just hasn't really been the same since, making it not really fun to take pictures. It has a really hard time focusing and the colors come out really off, no matter how I tweek the settings. I really feel like this has contributed to my lack of blogging lately, since part of the fun for me has always been practicing and improving my photography!

So today I pulled out my old D50 and charged it up to try some pictures. They came out so much better. So now I know it's not just me, there really is a problem with the camera! So now, I can't decided if I want to spend the money on repairs or just use my D50 for awhile while I save for an upgrade. I borrowed a friend's spare D200 once and can't get that camera out of my mind. It was lovely. Maybe said friend still has it, doesn't use it, and would consider selling it to me ;)

At any rate, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! Enjoy again this video I posted last year of a song that I could listen to over and over at Christmas time and never be tired of it :)

T minus 6 days

My kids are daily reminding me how many days are left before Christmas. They've been doing this for weeks. Now that all my gifts are mailed, I don't get the same heart-restricting feeling I did a few weeks ago every time they gave me the number, ha!

I wasn't able to do a lot of Christmas sewing this year, unfortunately. I did not make ornaments this year *gasp*! The few people I told acted really bummed, so I didn't tell anyone else. Christmas really snuck up on me! Not only have I been really busy with essential oil classes and things, the fact that it still feels like Summer here just was not giving my brain the necessary indicators to get on the stick about Christmas prep!

At any rate, I did sew a few little gifts for my own kids and a few others. And I've sewn two tops over the last month and a half. That's pretty much it!

The first is out of a beautiful vintage print that I found at a thrift store. It feel like a cotton sateen and I'm pretty sure it has silk in it, it's just gorgeous.

 The pattern is McCall's 6755, which most people probably picked up for the awesome skirt pattern, but I had my eye on the top too. I really love the button detail in the back.

 That black scalloped skirt has been one of favorite things to wear since I made it!

The other is another of my new favorite t-shirt pattern. I grabbed this leopard print knit in a remnant bin at Fabric Mart Hawaii. In general, fabric shopping here is pretty hit or miss, but sometimes I find a gem. I just last weekend found a tiny shelf of great rayon prints! My favorite fabric to wear, by far. I already sewed up one dress, but I wanted to do some shirring at the waist rather than elastic and my elastic thread has gone MIA (because I'm pretty sure Natalie thought it would be great as jewelry string). Hope I can find some more soon!

I hope you all are having a relaxed week-before-Christmas!