Weekend recap, still no pictures, though

DH and I decided that last weekend would be dedicated to "playing", which meant some good amount of painting time for DH each day and gave me time to putter around the new sewing room. We did have one house-related thing to do each day (things to Goodwill similar projects), but overall we spent all weekend sleeping in, hanging out, cooking together, questing (we play WoW together, great fun) and pursuing our hobbies. For the first few days (I have longer weekends due to 12-hour shifts, DH was still on vacation) I arranged and re-arranged the sewing room. It is coming together, although it will be a few more months before it will get to the "find my way around it blindly" stage.

I petted and sorted piles of fabric, I set up the Singer Futura (just as a sewing machine for the moment) and my serger. I sifted through old projects, getting an idea of the state of doneness of each UFO and I even threw away some stuff. I picked out patterns and fabrics for the August WiaW contest coming up next week (there are photos, but it will be a few days before I can upload them) and then....well, then I didn't really know what to do. There was more to move in, but I wanted to do some actual sewing related activites. It was too early to start for any prep for the WiaW and not enough time to do something completely different. waaahhhh!

I mentioned this to my DH and he sorted me out. I had just gone through the same thing after picking his hobby back up after an almost total 3-year hiatus due to deployments. His advice was to do anything. Basically to just pick up something, preferrably something already in process, and work on it. It didn't have to be sensible or fit into a plan or even work out, but he figured if I could just get started, I would get over the mental block I was experiencing. My DH is a very smart man. He was right, of course. I picked up a jacket (part of a 3-piece wardrobe concept I started about 5 years ago, possibly a little longer) and worked on it. It was a good choice, since most of the jacket was done already. I didn't have too much time to work on it, but I top-stitched the whole thing, hemmed the lining and measured and turned up the sleeves. in theory, all that is left to do is to insert the shoulder pads (little shaper ones, not 80s football pads), attach the lining around the armhole (sleeves are unlined) and hem the sleeves. It needs a good pressing, of course and quite frankly, before I do that I may just give it a quick hand wash to get any dust out I may have missed in shaking it out, but after that, I can put in my label and call it done.

There's a little skirt that goes with it. The skirt is almost done, as well (faux Hongkong finished seams and all), it just needs the hem sewn and the waistband tacked down, as well as the hook and eye installed. I have a pre-cut One-Seam Pant of the same fabric all cut out, but I will have to remeasure that. I remember that I may have miscalculated the length or something, so I had better check on that before I get too far into it. All of this is in a nicely textured black mystery fabric, so it is almost seasonless.

It's a start.

In other news, one of the autions I won on eBay, a buttonholer and the disks for the decorative stitches, arrived yesterday. What lovely stuff. I am going to take pictures and post, but I can say already that the stuff is in excellent, near pristine condition, sitll in the original packaging from 1967 and earlier. Neat!