I have never entered a sewing contest before, but I thought I would give this one a try.  I don’t think I could have picked a worse contest to do for my first time, but I am a jump in with both feet kinda girl.  So, the Sewing Bee contest is 4 rounds, I am going at this with the assumption that I probably wont get much farther.  I held off on it until I could see what the first project would be.  I was hoping it wasn’t shorts or a damn toaster sweater or something, I’ve had enough of that for now.  When I found out it was a pencil skirt type of challenge I was all in.

Full disclosure, I have always wanted to be a pencil skirt wearing lady, my life as a mechanic has not been able to facilitate the necessity of that.  But I want one… I want one real bad.  I have periodically tried them on in the store, but the hip curve is always way off for me.  To get my ass to fit in a store bought pencil skirt, I have to get a large or an extra large and I have more of a medium size waist. It’s flat where it should curve or is curving where I am flat.  This seems like a good way to make a long standing dream of mine come true.  I am about to become a fancy pencil skirt wearing lady.

I sewed up a muslin and it fit pretty good, no tweaks needed other than a little shortening.  I cut out my fabric and I thought that this would be an awesome opportunity for some color blocking to fit in with my inspiration (theme is music or musician).  I also decided to add piping… which I have to make… I basted it tonight at work, because I have a lot of down time.

Progress pic here…

I finished my robe first, Vogue 9015 as promised and I did a real shit job on the finishing.  I had an excellent time with it the whole way through.  I thought my fabric would be a nightmare to sew with, some cheap poly satin from Joann’s, it was easy.  I thought attaching the sleeve lace would be tough, it wasn’t.  It was great from start to…almost finish.  I was supposed to finish the edge around the neck and front with self bias.  But I decided to save on time so I could start the aforementioned pencil skirt by narrow hemming the whole thing.  Well, I am an idiot.  That was dumb, tough to narrow hem things that go from straight grain to bias , to cross grain and so on.  Ugh, so, some of it is awesome, some of my neckline looks like a lettuce hem.  Whatever, it covers my naked body after a bath.  I’ll be less stupid the next time.

wobbly hem on right

Not too bad, wobbly edges will have to do.

The print does give me life though.  How crazy is that!

Wish me luck!