Got the sewing bug..

A good friend of mine is getting married in less than two weeks. On Nov. 1st she will finally become Mrs F. after a three year engagement, and 3.5 years after the birth of their daughter.

She wants everything to be P-E-R-F-E-C-T, but as they have a three year old, two cars, and a mortgage, on only one income, they don't have much spare money to spend on the wedding. Which is where I come in. Not only am I one of the bridesmaids, I'm also the resident Fix It Lady. I've always been good with my hands, and she's putting them to good use.

I helped her make the invitations, from an opinion here and there on materials, to shopping trips all over the city to get the best prices on the various components, all the way to twelve hours straight (I'm serious. I got there at around 11am, and didn't leave till well after midnight) sitting at her dining room table cutting and folding and printing and arranging and fixing and deciding and gluing, and reminding her to drink her tea - AWAY FROM THE INVITATIONS!!!!!!!!!!! - and calm down.

I'm currently helping her recover a guestbook, so that instead of being a hideous floral vomitsplatter, its the same dark, eggplant satin as the bridesmaid dresses and the back panel on her dress. The book was in Target, marked down from $20-something to $6.86, and when we got it to the counter it rang up as $2.53 so YAY, especially considering she found exactly what she wanted on ebay for $80+. Even factoring in the price of the satin, the paper, the ribbon, the buckle, the spray adhesive, and labour, its not costing anywhere NEAR the $80 she would have otherwise spent.

All this crafty-ness and money-saving has got to me though, and rather than buy something for my Gosling to wear, that would be far too much money spent on something she might wear a total of 3 times, I decided to MAKE HER A DRESS. Which is funny, because, you know, I'm afraid of the sewing machine. I bought two shirts from the local second-hand stores in two beautiful shades of purple, and proceeded to cut them into dress shaped pieces - making the pattern up as I went along*. And then, I realised that not only am I afraid of the sewing machine, but the only time I have to use the machine is when Gosling is asleep, and therefor not stuck to me like a barnacle. Which would be great, except for the noise, which would wake her up, and oops, barnacle again and no sewing.

Good idea FAIL.

Then my brand new packet of needles caught my eye. Can you see where this is going?

Ladies and gentlemen, I am sewing a dress for my eight-month-old-daughter by hand.

Someone give me some sanity pills, please??




*By 'making up the pattern', I mean I don't have a bought pattern I'm following. I traced the outline of one of her shirts to make the bodice, the skirt is easy as it's just a half-circle, and the yoke I shrank from a grown-up sized pattern I found online. All the pieces have had to be tweaked though, so I really am just making it all up as I go along. I've also never made a dress, so I'm not quite sure how to put it all together..


**The colours in these photos are not entirely accurate, but are as close as I could get them in photoshop without losing any detail - my selection skillz are not good enough to only do part of the image. Yes, these are photos of the actual objects in question. Yes, that is a standard sized needle - about 1.5" (3ish cm) long. Yes, my stitches are quite small. Yes, I am completely insane.