The Skirt That Was In My Head

HAH. Got it done!
You know, the musing I was doing in that earlier post? About what I want to be wearing now?
Well for the last AGE I've had a skirt in my head.
A high-waisted, a-line, red one. Made of soft corduroy. With a Lily Tomlin in Nine to Five vibe (in my head that's cool).
Kind of like this one, Anthro's Hop, Skip and Jump skirt $78 - which is not too crazy expensive.

Or this one the Finishing School Skirt , also by Anthro also $78

But you know what's cheaper than $78? A meter of red corduroy I picked up at Goodwill last year for $1.98. And a pattern I already happened to have, McCalls 4783.
Here's my version:

I extended the waist UP an inch and a half (using the "meh, looks close enough" method of pattern adaptation).
I made the skirt less froofy and more gentle-a-liney.
And I added kind of off-center line thing (yah it IS a technical term) by folding over a little pleat and topstitching it down.

While I was making it the skirt tried to kill me a couple of times (I have pin-related WOUNDS!) but it came together fairly easily and now I LOVE it. Love Love it. I want to hold it's hand at a midnight showing of Pulp Fiction and make it mix tapes. Here's it in action today:

I had to wear thick tights, but it's super comfy and I managed to wear heels all day. Which is a win for me!

clean-up on aisle 6

Hey you know what I hate more than house work?
Nothing.
At all.
Fortunately that kid doesn't feel the same way. I was fixing a pair of tights real quick (we'll talk about that later) and when I came out this is what Teddy was doing:


Me: Ah? Bear? What are you doing?
Teddy: (rolls eyes) I CLEANING!
Me: huh.
Teddy: YUP

With an entire package of wet wipes. And a dump truck apparently (which is a bit drastic, it wasn't THAT grubby).
I wonder if he does windows?
UPDATED. He DOES:

More thrift store karma, and some musing

This might just be me, but there is totally something about this time of year that makes me want to scour thrift stores. (Not like clean them, just look around in them, scour is a weird word...)

I think maybe it's because autumn makes me want to dress like my Auntie M or my ma in the late 70's. Which, doesn't mean a lot to you guys, so um, think west coast, granola, feminist, whip-smart, potty mouth'd, sexy. With paisley. And good boots.
Still not clear?
Like this:

Germain Greer, 1974, Tuscany( image)

And this:

Margret Atwood, 19??, but she STILL dresses with enviable badassery, (image)

And lookit these suckers:

Ms. Atwood's shoes. Swoon. (Image)

So, thrift stores is where I'm shopping (H&M also has a few things but I'm still off the buying new - WR4life baby!).
A few weeks ago I had a couple of bear-free hours, a giant vat of sugary coffee beverage, comfy shoes, pointy elbows and some steely-eyed determination. Prerequisites for a successful thrift store haul.
But I also reckoned I'd hedge my karmic bets. That is, I figured out what we'd been buying for the bear most urgently, (footie jammies, sweaters) grabbed some of his old ones and took them with me to drop off. I was mostly thinking how crappy it would be to need warm fuzzy jammies for your baby and to not be able to afford them; pretty crappy I imagine. We really are lucky.

Anyway, apparently the thrift store dryads were happy enough with the trade, 'cause I scored these
(badly photographed) goodies:


The first one looks way better in person, I've worn it a BUNCH already. The second dress is kind of a tough one for me, I love it, and it kind of makes me feel like a Shieldmaiden of Rohan (heh, ubernerdy!); but it's tough to find the right situation to wear it.
Got any tips for Good Thrift Karma?

HEY Dragon!

You guys! Halloween! Firstly of all, the cute:


It was Teddy's first time trick or treating (And mine too; we didn't do it when I was growing up in London) So YAY for vicarious candy scoring and dressing up.
He's a Dragon, and I'm The Paper Bag Princess.
This is my "Seriously? You burnt my castle AND stole my man?" pose:

I layered up later, so as not to freeze to death.

We wandered around Cabbagetown, and it was pretty much perfect! (at the risk of sounding like an UberNerd, it looked JUST like that episode of Buffy where they become their costumes. But without the killing and rampaging.)
Teddy scored big, and now we have enough sugar in the house to make a whole preschool hysterical and to put a hole in my willpower.
And hey, the whole weekend was another post's worth of brill. How was YOURS?

I Heart the Weekend

This weekend = SO. MUCH. FUN.
Friday was a gig by the boys (The Black Devils Brigade, their button is on the left there, see? You should click through if you're into awesomeness at all). Our chum Ian was home from Big Kid School (Queens), my sweetie and I got to go out AT THE SAME TIME(!), a whole gang of our chums were out and there was dancing, hollering and hi-jinx. And maybe a few drinkies.

Saturday morning was breakfast at my new favorite greasy spoon, and YAY for the restorative powers of bacon. And also for Teddy ditching the booster seat like a big boy.
Saturday night there were TWO parties, (which is a big deal for a person who doesn't get out a lot!) And I got to dress up; I hadn't really planned to, but I decided to at the last minute and reprised my outfit from 2006 (I was mostly just happy I could get it done up!) I completely neglected to get pictures but this is it then:

(I'm NOT an air hostess - I got that a lot. It's a vintage RCAF uniform. )
The first soiree was at our friend Mike's and it was maybe the most sequined party I've ever been to. Fun. The second was a little less sequiny and ALSO fun.
Sunday was drip-fed coffee, racing to Walmart for paper lawn bags, whipping up a super-quick costume, and scoring CANDY! I hope your weekend was as awesome!

The Democracy Tunic to Dress Tutorial

Yesterday was a bit gloomy you guys. We have a new mayor, and I'm not a fan.
I love me some democracy, it's a privilege and I am thankful for it. Even if sometimes the result sucks. And to folks who don't vote I say "pheh" (and I totally roll my eyes).
Yesterday there was a polling station in the lobby of our building (yay for LAZY democracy!) Which means I could have gone and done my voting in my jammies BUT I have a "no jammies farther away than the garbage chute" rule , so I threw on this instead:

It's a tunic. You can tell on account of how it barely covers my bum. And is shaped roughly like a potato sack.
Now, tunics and I are not really friends, in fact we're barely even passing acquaintances but this is different. This is something I've had since I was pregnant and it has some pretty crazy history for me. But it is quite obviously too short, and I would have felt really uncomfortable going any farther than the lobby in it. So a refashion was in order.
I did this to it
Want to see how? Hokay!
Firstly of all I just happened to have some lightweight black cotton from another dress refashion project that exactly matched the tunic. You'll need a fabric that matches (or contrasts if that's how you roll ) depending on how much length you want to add a meter should be plenty.
Then you'll need to
1. Fold your dress in half straight down the middle.
2. Pop your folded-in-half dress onto your extra fabric, matching up the folds, like this see:3. Mark out however much more skirt you want, making sure you follow the line of the existing skirt (in this case it's a slight A-line). Replicate the curve at the hem on your new skirt bottom, and match up the curve at the top too. Don't forget to add a bit to your sides for a seam allowance (the solid line should be farther out. Oops!)
4. Mark out you skirt with chalk or pins. or just go crazy with the scissors if you're brave.
5. Snip! You'll need to cut out two skirt pieces.
6. Whip! Turn the new skirt pieces right-side-together then sew up the side seams so you have one piece of skirt. Press the seams open.
7. Pin the new skirt into the bottom of the old skirt, right-sides-together. Like ZIZ see:

8. Sew around the bottom of the skirt, where you've just pinned. Press the new seam UP. Try it on, admire your handiwork then hem it as you normally would.

And voila! Tunic to dress. Giving that sucker a waist instead of a sack shape is the next step. (I'll stick that tute up tomorrow, on account of some WAY to dark pictures and some shenanigans with Ernesta the body double).

If you don't have any fabric that matches your tunic you could go the obvious clash route and stick two different prints on the bottom, (kind of like in the original of this tunic).

Not The September Issue

So. I've been thinking a bit about fashion. Mostly because at this time of year I get all "GAH WHAD AM I GONNA WEAR" almost everyday. Le sigh, I miss summer.
But here's my problem. I'm not a big fan of fashion magazines. They make me feel bad. (oh hey, look how nerdy I sound).

Which is not to say that I don't think fashion matters. It DOES. I'm just not sure that the ridiculous self importance of designers and vicious, industry-wide, body type standards are worth subjecting myself to.
I used to consume Vogue et al like crack; but these days I feel pretty disconnected from breakable-looking adolescents wearing $1000 t-shirts.

So my inspiration comes from other places, actual humans for the most part. I'm p'ticly talking about the Wardrobe Remix pool on flickr. LOVE those girls. Finding it two years ago was a pretty big deal for me.
Anyway. Inspired is what I'm saying and just recently I've been SUPER inspired by one blogger, Vanessa, who's tagline is Big Girl Small Budget Tiny Town. (I realised I was clicking/thinking "favorite" on pretty much every outfit she posts and was all "huh, I hope this doesn't make me look creepy" )
This is how she rolls:


Unintended creepiness aside, Vanessa has a LASER eye for detail (and a bargain), she's fearless about colour and a good photographer; more importantly though, she has that unfakable thing, genuine style.
You should totally head over and say hi.

Gerrr Argh

Yesterday we ZOMBIE WALKED. Brains? mmmmm BRAAAAINS! And it was as super fun as always. Thousands of the undead lurching around Toronto, what's not to love?
This year I went for a Zombie Mime thing. Because you guys, the only good mime is a DEAD mime! Here's me, pre-leakybrain lunch:


and meddling with my gore-stained gloves.
And us guys, looking like we just ate the Reservoir Dogs (complete with candy blood mouth dribble. It tasted like EVIL. Super super yucky)

The outfit was dirt cheap too (naturally).
I used one very old (kind of insalubrious) plain white tee - stolen from my sweetie's vestie drawer
A pair of black trousers I already had (they remained relatively gore free)
A cardigan - ditto
beret - ditto
A pair of white cotton gloves - $2 from the costume place (the dollar store has them too with the cleaning and painting stuff)
Some black ribbon from the stash to make braces (suspenders) like this see:

I just safety pinned them to the trews.

The trick with the shirt and gloves is to give them time to dry before you have to wear them (or get paint literally everywhere in the world) I mixed up a bit of red and a spot black paint, then thinned it with water, put my shirt on and drizzled the gore onto myself. It's a good idea to jam a plastic bag or something between your skin and the shirt. Gravity will sort out the drip patterns (just like on CSI, but with less Horatio).
Then take it off carefully and let it dry, if you only want ick on one side of your shirt then best leave the plastic bag inside.
And that's it. Apply lurching walk and add braaaaaains for fun times.

Um. There's an elephant in here. No really, there is...

I LOVE this city for lots of reasons but today especially because of elephants.

Our local park, Allan Gardens, is not normally a pachyderm playground. In fact lots of the time it's full of drunk guys shouting and peeing. But the thing our park DOES have is a Palm House.
And today the Palm House was all dressed up like a Sikh temple (pretty!) for a movie set. But that wasn't the first thing we saw. Nope. This was:


Sure, she's pretending to be a lighting boom (she's totally down with the crew, no diva moves for her) But she's DEFINITELY an elephant.

I stopped and did a massive double take, and was all
"TEDDY! There's an elephant!"
He looked up from the business of scooting along on his bike with a "say what now lady?" look
But then I hoisted him up and showed him and his mouth made an O.
"Elephant"
"Yup baby, it's an elephant"
And here's the conservatory, all gussied up:


It COMPLETELY made my day.