sewing FAIL

i still have our quickie weekend trip to phoenix to recap, but i've been immersed in this national craft month challenge i've committed myself to. hopefully finishing up a project i was already working on prior to 3/1 counts. wait, what am i talking about? hell, it's my challenge, my rules. i say it counts!

after setting it aside for a week-ish (mostly due to the ailing bean last week, who's better now, thank goodness), i finally sat down at my machine with the teen's dress and sewed in the zipper. i'd learned at my sewing lesson how to do it easily, but i was trying to follow the pattern's directions. next time, i'll just do it the way i know how - because those shitty instructions led to me having to rip out several rows of stitches. what a pain in the ass.

i called her out to come and try the dress on, and we were a little bummed to realize that the top of it was too big. i pinned it in to make it fit properly, and now i'll have to figure out exactly how to go about altering it without having to take the whole damn thing apart again. it still needs to be hemmed, but here it is - my first garment, fully lined and, actually not too bad:

"my hair is gross today, mom. can you please just shoot the dress?" the teen pleaded. heh.

wanting to take a break from the dress, i got started on a new project - operation laptop sleeves. i'm following a really simple tutorial, but of course, it's me. i carefully measured the teen's macbook, cut out the material, and jumped right in. i even threw in a little twist in it - i decided to do a little piecing with the main panels so that the black & white pattern was broken up in the middle with a pop of red. i was super duper proud of myself for my improvisation skillz.

except that i realized (too late) that i'd mixed up the length and width measurements - after i'd already completed the first part of the project. shit, man. but at least the error was slightly in my favor - the pieces were too big, rather than too small. i calculated the difference in sizing, made the adjustments, and now i'm back on track. phew.

i was totally on a roll, sewing and trimming and pressing, but i had to make myself stop so that i could bake our weekly loaf of bread. and because the oven in our thimble of an apartment is such a piece of shit and my little convection oven is, well, too little, i always have to mix the dough, get it ready, pile everybody in the car and head over to the grandparents' house. they have a fantastic oven that heats wonderfully evenly, and my shit doesn't end up burnt or overcooked in there. plus, since it's a normal-sized oven, the bread can rise as much as it wants to and the top won't touch the heating element like in my convection oven.

by the time the bread was baked and we'd had a nice visit with the family, it was too late for me to get everyone home and make dinner. oy. so we ended up running to chipotle for some grub. i left the girls in the car while i ran out, and as a special surprise i ducked into the nearby golden spoon to grab some frozen yogurt for dessert. we all know how much the bean loves her some ice cream.

that little smirk cracks me up.