When you love what you have, you have everything you want

My Anthem

Spent all day sewing.  Hopefully tomorrow I will have my party dress and a new skirt to showcase. In the meantime here is the new lining I´ve added. I had to recut the skirt pattern, but make it a bit longer.

 

 Lining is attatched, now time to shorten the hem & add straps. 

 Two weeks until we move to Paris. Nothing but heel heights & hem lengths.



The series finale of Gossip Girl was killer, can´t wait to see what Blair does with her new home. My money is still on Chuck for being the ¨real¨ Gossip Girl.  Now that it´s over there is just one more show finale left until the summer. Can´t wait until Sunday for Game of Thrones.....

Radical Face - Welcome Home

Party Dress

Working on my party dress because I finally picked out the material!

I start out with about 10 pattern pieces and will end up with  about 27 pieces of fabric to put together. The bodice has 7 pieces alone and with 3 layers of bodice including the outside, the lining for structure and the interior pieces, that comes out to 21.

My monster hanging,. Not too bad. Now it´s time to stitch her together. 

Later I will add some under layers to the skirt to give it more volume. 

Watching C.D. for inspiration.  How do they get so much volume into those skirts?

hablas español?

Weird dreams last night, in spanish.

You And I - Ingrid Michaelson

Regina Spektor - "Samson" [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

Frida and Crafty Chica

I got my amzing hard back book Self Portrait of a Velvet Dress finally, and I was totally inspired but had not idea how to incorporate what I know about sewing with the things I want to do. That´s when I found Crafty Chica´s Guide to Artful Sewing. Kathy Cano-Murillo is evidently the latin sew goddess I´ve been needing all along. She loves to spice it up and offers some really cute ideas for bags, clothes and house accessories that I can wait to get into.

Love Sponge - Gianni and Sarah

Pardon Me - He Is We Lyrics

Juices flowing

Today I´m studying up on sewing. I´d consider myself a novice at this point in the craft but now that I´ve got several projects under my belt it´s time to go to the next level. My good friend and partner-in-coudre brought over a wonderful book called Built By Wendy Dresses in which she describes so clearly all the important steps in making clothing. I´ve racked up a collection now of pattern books and others that don´t nearly explain so clearly how to go about sewing something you´re actually going to wear.

In addition to this book my Mary Thomas´s Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches just arrived. Because of my love all things Mexican I really want to learn to embellish clothing with colorful designs by hand.

Once this little gem below comes in I will be up to my ears in inspiration! Really I think I am Frida reincarnated or at least I wish I was so I could wear all these amazingly beautiful outfits everyday. Modernizing them will be the challenging part of the projects.

Feeling so Mexican today, I think we will break in our new pressure cooker with some Carnitas! 

Diet Days

So, I´ve been feeling sooo out of energy lately and my schedule has been all over the place with travels and such. I think it´s time to finally get into the health kick for summer and start eating a little better. No more crackers, cookies, breads and all those other things that drag us down.  Today I gave our new food processor a spin and made this yummy shake. Surprisingly I couldn´t taste the spinach.

I´m not a stickler for measurements so basically adjust the following to your liking.

Small low-fat yogurt
Banana ( I used about 3/4)
Crushed pineapple
1 cup of water
2 handfuls of baby spinach

Then mix and sip. Soooo good.

Source: greensmoothiespower.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Pillow

On Monday we visited a Japanese fabric store in Barcelona I´ve been dying to go to for a while now. There was so much beautiful fabric that was quality that I just couldn´t decide on what to get. So I picked up a couple of pre-squares for about 4 euros each and put together a little pillow at home today with some gold bordering I picked up at Toto.  http://www.nunoya.com/  I know it´s just a couple of squares but I put in a zipper and a separate pouch with the stuffing. I´m really pleased with myself.

Song of the day. So haunting. So beautiful listening to this in the park on this warm sunshiny day.

and for good measure, some of The Cure.

40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes

Baby Emma

Little Emma arrived one week ago and I couldn´t be a prouder aunt!

Since shopping for baby clothes, I´ve found that the enfant clothing industry is booming. Simple patterns, one sized everything, and sellers are taking advantage of the cuteness to charge waaay too much money.  Last week while searching for a gift for the newbie, I walked into the sweetest looking store in Barcelona which was literally Baby Couture.  It was filled with about 4 racks of baby clothes ranging in about 8 different patterns and 5 different styles that were duplicated for each color. A dress for an one year old costs 90 euros!!! The fabric couldn´t cost more than 8 per dress. Sure, they were cute but really there was nothing special other than they made the clothes there in the back of the store. Imagine the profit margin. I think I might be on to something and at the very least I can save the family some money. So today I wandered over to a gigantic cloth store a friend just tipped me off to the other day called Mondiale Tissus. The name fits because this was the largest fabric store I´ve ever seen and there was so much there I couldn´t even pick. So instead I went over to the section where the have the precut fat squares (about 50cm x 45 cm) generally used for quilting and I decided I would just make something for little Emma. After picking out fabrics I found some buttons, threads, ribbons and tassles. I could get in trouble in this place..

Here´s what I´ve got to work with..

First up, this adorable little baby romper. Not sure if 

I´ll have enough fabric but at the very least I can make the top and that headband is a must

Love this little summer dress.

For this I think I will combo the purple with the green. 

Another variation on the romper found at youcanmakethis.com. 

I found these adorable diaper covers from an Etsy store called pinkpoodlebows. Aren´t they adorable?

  

This fabric is nice and neutral for this project. 

I´m going to spoil this little girl!

Lucas Nascimento

A couple of pieces from his grafitti inspired collection for Fall 2012. 

Little Green Garçons

I just got my Little Green Dresses book in and I have to admit it´s much better than I expected.

There are lots of different projects that will keep me busy for the next couple of weeks. One of the more edgy pieces is a cage dress. Not sure if I would ever wear this but maybe with some tweaking it could find a way into my closet or at least into a Halloween costume.


Meanwhile in the high fashion sector, Comme Des Garçons was sporting a similar look on the 2012 Spring runway. Lots of nice fabrics and textures but not really wearable clothing.

old home, new home

I just read about these two lovely australian ladies in Be magazine and immediately did a YouTube search. First thing, they pop up in The Woodlands!


In the same article this Swiss/German duo are featured, their #1 single is filmed in Barcelona.


Skin gives me chills, so beautiful

black

something new


something old


Feeling blue after another cliffhanger and ultimately disappointing match from the blaugrana  (blue & red) Barça. Here´s a tribute to one of my many former towns, Pittsburgh.



A Classic!