Big News! Changes in the Wind!

1930s Daisy Picking from the Vassar College Photo Archives. 

Lots of changes going on here at $25V and I've got some BIG news! The biggest news? We're getting a domain of our very own! That's right $25V is hitting the big time my friends!  

We've also got a new name, a new logo, a new design, and a new server. I'll keep you posted as the change over happens. I'll be taking the month of march to make the change over during which time I'll be posting to both servers simultaneously.  So you'll have plenty of time to adjust your bookmarks and feeds. 

The other big news? I've purchased my wedding dress for the big day! I can't post a photo because one of my subscribers happens to be Mr. Fiancé, but I'm more than happy to share a link with anyone that sends me a quick email. 

Hope you're day is going just ducky!

Our Engagement Photos

We finally got around to doing our engagement photos last weekend (read: Superbowl Sunday). We've been engaged for about 9 months now so I guess it was about time to get around to these. We're "frugal" and we didn't want to spend too much on these. I want all the extra cash we can manage to go to the honeymoon and the reception or as I like to call it the "after party." We opted out of getting a professional photographer and instead dragged toted my best friend all over Roswell with us.  Cost $0.

These are just a sampling of the rough photos. There's plenty of photoshopping to be done, but I must admit that I am very happy with these proofs. I wore a vintage inspired dress from Pinup Girl Clothing that I had received for Christmas. Cost $0 (thanks Mom).  Mr. Fiance wore one of his favorite suits that we bought during a 60% sale at Dillards a few years back. I can't remember how much we paid, but he's worn this enough times to work that I can hardly justify it as a cost.

We did all of our photos outdoors at public parks and in public spaces. So that also cost us $0.

Hair was done with my awesome set of hot-rollers (under $25 I might add). I was once a sponge roller girl myself, but Mr. Fiance doesn't let me wear them around him. Apparently they're a bit unattractive and I can't say I disagree with him.

My make-up came from a smashbox make-up kit which was also a Christmas gift (Thanks Mr. Fiance's Mom).

In total these photos cost us about $2.00 and about half a day of walking around. We ended up snagging some books at a thrift shop we happened to pass in case you're wondering where that money went.

I'll be sure to post the final photos once I've finished the photo editing. I just love my engagement photos and I'm so happy we decided to do them on our own. So what do you think, Readers? Did they come out okay?

Hand Tinted Love

Happy Valentine's Day, Readers! Will you be my Valentine?

January Dress - Weekend work

This weekend wasn't the most productive weekend of all time sewing wise. I took a trip down to Mississippi to visit my grandmother and for my Uncle Robert's birthday dinner. It was nice, but sad.

My grandmother is in the early stages of dementia. She's still mostly herself, but she has a lot of trouble remember dates and names. She recently had to be placed in an assisted living center and this weekend was the first time I got to see her new home.

My two grandmas and my Mother at my college graduation in 2008. My Mississippi grandmother is on the left.

Overall the place was very nice. There were a lot of people her own age and she has a very nice roommate. Still it's hard to think that the woman that played countless games of Uno with me, took us to vacation bible school, and who made these huge lunch spreads every time we came to visit can't remember what day of the week it is.

I suppose that's life, but I can see that she's becoming less and less of the Mom-mom I've always known. She's forgotten everyone's last names and it's only a matter of time before she forgets the first names completely as well. There's not much I can do but be supportive and understanding of what she's going through, but the day is coming when my Mom-Mom isn't going to be Mom-Mom anymore.

Mom-Mom at my cousin's wedding in 2009. 

I'm going to make sure to visit Mom-Mom as much as possible. It's difficult when a drive over to Mississippi costs me over $100 in gas and I'm currently only working part-time, but some things are more important than money.

As far as the January Dress goes I've gone ahead and cut out all the fabric pieces for the bodice and underlined them with the ivory colored cotton. This evening I have class to attend until 10pm, but I'll try to assemble the bodice after I get home.

I used Tasia's tutorial (I just love her name. Tasia, it sounds so pretty) on underlining a bodice. If you haven't read any of Tasia's tutorials you are in for a treat. Her instructions are crystal clear and she creates the most beautiful dresses.

And I'm really stoaked to tell you that $25V now has over 1000 twitter followers! Thanks everyone for following me! I'll try to keep bringing you interesting sewing related tweets daily!

Updates: January Dress and around the house

Hello Readers! I just got my new fridge this morning!

This is the old ugly broken fridge.

And this is the new side-by-side fridge! It's shiny and new and I love it! My OCD will kick in in a few minutes and I'll have to scrub the whole thing down with soapy water and windex, but for now I'm admiring it. We've been keeping our food in the little wine fridge. You can't imagine how great it's going to be to put the food in a real fridge in the kitchen.

But enough about my appliances. I realized I hadn't posted the fabric for the January Dress yet. So here it is.

I went with olive green 100% linen for the shirt and bow. The eyelet is a white cotton paisley. I'll be lining the bodice with an ivory cotton (center). I wanted to use ivory eyelet fabric, but that's almost impossible to find in the shops around here. I compromised by choosing an ivory lining. It will add a little bit of the ivory color and it will help to really show off the eyelets.

When I overlay the eyelet onto the cotton it will create an effect like this. You'll get just a touch of the darker color. Just trust me on this one, it's going to look fabulous.

So what did I pay for all these fabrics? Well my plan had been to find an eyelet dress or top from one of the local thrift or consignment stores because eyelet fabric is so expensive. Unfortunately, eyelet hasn't been super popular in couple of years or so. I did see quite a bit of it last spring, but I guess it hasn't hit the thrift stores around here yet. So I had to go with this white eyelet that I found at Joann's. It was originally $11.99 a yard, but I had my 50% off coupon. Heck yeah. I ended up going home with one yard of the eyelet for $5.99.

The linen was a bit more expensive. I think I paid $6.99 a yard for it, but I'll check the receipt before I do a grand total post.

For the skirt of the dress I decided to use the skirt from this pattern.

It's just a simple 1950s circle skirt, but it's easy and won't cause me too much trouble. This particular skirt is pretty poofy so I'll be taking a few inches off the width of the skirt panels. I'll add a few inches to the length of the skirt panels to be safe, but I shouldn't need it. This particular skirt already ends near my ankles since it is not a petite pattern. (I'm 5'1/2".)

The plan is to make this an ankle length dress, but what do you guys think? Should I make it floor length or bring it up to the mid-calf and make it into more of a day dress? You're all my stylists so let me know what you think! Just remember that the bodice will end just slightly below my natural waist.

January Dress - The Muslin part 1

 Okay, so here is the fabulous part two of the January endeavor: the making of a muslin. For this little experiment I used some cheap cotton muslin from Hobby Lobby that I got for about $1.50 a yard.

I cut out all the pieces and lined them up. I like to line up my front pieces over my back piece to check for length and such. So far so good. You'll note the fabulous pointed join from the yolk piece to the bust piece that's going to have to be sewn here. Pointy joins are one of my least favorite parts of sewing, but I'll suffer for my wardrobe.

I didn't take too many photos of the sewing up of this baby, mostly because I wanted to get it done as quickly as possible so I could check the fit. You'll notice some pretty common features of a 1930s bodice here.

#1 is the loosely fitting bust. That's achieved by gathering the shoulder seams or in this case adding some pin-tucks. I actually could probably let this out a little more, but since I've got that big bow going in I probably won't.

#2 is the gathering under the bust line to make cups. I don't know why this was so popular. Okay I do, that was more about the loose bust aestetic. It's not like the dart didn't exist. You see them all over the place in Romantic and Victorian Era dress, but for some reason they fall out of favor during the 1920s and early 1930s. Personally I find making darts to be quicker and nicer looking, but you don't get that nice gathered edge which was so popular in 1930s evening gowns.

#3 I actually lowered the neck line here by about 3.5 inches. Originally it was straight across, but since my inspiration dress had the drop neck I went ahead and lowered it.

So here is the muslin on. You can see there are still some fitting issues. The sleeves have not been hemmed so you can expect them to be about an inch smaller in width. I'm suffering here from 1930s saggy boob syndrome. This happens to me with every single 1930s pattern I make. At the time we were still deemphasizing our busts rather than pushing them up and out. I don't particularly like the look of the boobs here, but since they'll be covered in a giant bow I'm not too concerned about that. I'll probably move the gathers an inch towards the center, but other than that I'll leave them alone. 

I'm happy with the silloette. It's shaped quite well to me, but that also makes it more difficult to get on and off and it's probably going to be impossible once a shirk is attached. So I've decided to go ahead and add a zipper even though it's not really period appropriate. By the way, does anyone know when zippers became popular? I know they were invented in the 1850s, but I don't believe they became popular until the late 1930s. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that. 

And here is the back which I love! I was originally going to drop the back into a more curved shape like my reference dress, but this back was just too pretty to change. I just love it! I'm going to be installing my zipper in the side seam to preserve this awesome back.

So here's what I'll be changing between this and the final garment. 

1. Adjusting the bust gathers to give me less "saggy boob"

2. Adding 1.5 inches onto the bottom of the bust piece and dropping the yolk accordingly. I'll probably also drop the neckline a bit more and redraw the seam between the shoulders and bust pieces. 

3. Add closure of some sort, most likely a zipper. 

So how are all your January projects going? 

January Dress - Pattern Fixin' part 1

I have got to stop making promises on this blog that I can't keep. I'll tell you something is always coming up around here. Monday's post was delayed until today (late Tuesday) mostly because of issues ordering our new refrigerator. Our house was struck by lightning a little while back and it fried most of our appliances. We've been using the wine fridge to keep our food since then. We finally placed an order for a new fridge Sunday afternoon, but there was an issue with the ordering system and we ended up spending most of the day trying to get our purchase refunded. I am happy to say, however, that we got everything worked out an our new fridge will be here on Thursday!

The other reason the post was delayed was because we're getting ready to paint my sewing room/office.

So this is my current sewing space while we paint my office. It's a collapsible table in my dining room. The sewing machine is currently residing in the kitchen and the ironing board has set up shop in the upstairs hallway. Actually it's probably safe to say that my stuff has exploded all over the house. Oh well, I have more elbow room in the dining room.

But, you'll be pleased to know that I actually have sewing to post today! Hurray! My wrist injury has really been holding up the production line, but I've been taking my supplements and working the tendons during yoga. I'm still having a little trouble with certain things like opening jars, inking drawings, and certain yoga poses. Still not ready to do some of the Ashtanga inversions, but I've almost got my adho mukha svanasana back which is awesome.

I know I've written before about how terrible a draftswoman I am. I'm not lying. I'm terrible at it. Something about creating a pattern from thin air just doesn't mesh with my brain. I guess I'm just not wired for that stuff. Still, give me a pattern and I'll modify the heck out of it. I actually take great pleasure in transforming one pattern into something completely different. It's a fun challenge for me.

So today I'll be sharing part one of the process of turning this pattern:

Into something similar to this dress with my own twist, of course.

So the first thing I did was look into what pieces I would need. I decided to use a standard circle skirt pattern for the bottom. I opted out of the pajama pants on the suggestion of a few friends. So that left me with the bodice pieces only.

The first thing I like to do is write down what pieces I need somewhere. Post-its are my paper of choice. I'll normally stick them to the wall, the sewing machine, or my shirt to remind me of what I'm doing. I tend to get forgetful when I get really focused on a task. This dress required relatively simple alterations, but making notes is a good habit to get into so that when you do have to deal with altering 6 or 7 pieces you'll know which ones you need to worry about.

Next step is to trace your pattern pieces onto paper. I traced the bodice piece (A) first as it was going to require the most altering. You'll note my clear ruler above. If you don't have one of these you really need to get one. I picked mine up for less than five dollars at a Micheals and I use it every single time I sew. It makes altering patterns a breeze.

The first thing that I needed to do was decide where I wanted my seam to go. This is more of an art form for me. I'm self taught so I'm sure this isn't the right way to do it, but it's the way I like to do it. I wanted the band to be about 5 inches wide and to lay completely across my bust. Looking at the pattern the top of the yolk reaches just below the bust so I marked five inches from the bottom curve of the bodice. From there I just played with the seam until I got it where I like it.

The seam obviously had a few incarnations here. The biggest reworking was due to the fact that I forgot to adjust the neck line before I drew the seam. Whoops. I ended up reducing the darker bust portion down to about 4 inches across with an additional 1/2 seam allowance below the adjusted neck line. I freehanded the curve. 

Basically my method works as such; I draw my seam, pin the pattern piece to my shirt and then see if I like how it looks. If I don't get what I want I'll go back and rework the seam again. This time it only took me two tries to get it the way that I wanted, but I confess reworking a line 5 or 6 times on other garments.

Next I separated the pieces. When I have more than one cutting line on the piece I'll normally mark my actual cut line with a marker. I wasn't totally sure where my markers were today though so I used a blue pen instead. It works just as well.

I like to write myself a lot of notes while working. It's not uncommon for me to forget what lines are seam allowances, which are tucks or darts, etc. So if you ever borrow a pattern from me expect there to be lots of scribbles along with it.

I then traced the pattern piece again and added a seam allowance along the bottom edge where it would connect with the dark strip of fabric across the bust.

By the way, cans make the best pattern weights. You've probably noticed them in previous posts, but they're cheap, heavy and work fantastically. Who needs fancy pattern weights when you have canned pumpkin?

I added in the rest of my seam allowances and my notches and was quite satisfied.

It's a good idea when you transfer a pattern piece more than once to check it against the original. You can see here that my notch had migrated and needed to be put back in place.

All that was left was to cut out the pattern piece.

Rinse, repeat on darker bust strip, and end up with your two new pattern pieces. I've named them A1 and A2, but I normally just number them.

Up next: The Bodice Muslin

Delicious Frozen Yogurt Time for a cure!

So in case you're local and you didn't know, the south side of town now has it's own TCBY. Little known fact about me: I love TCBY. Not just like, love. We had a TBCY at the local mall while I was growing up and almost every time we went I would beg for TCBY yogurt. At the time my favorite flavor was their White Chocolate Mousse, which believe me I would still be enjoying on a regular basis if my stomach could handle the dairy. 

In any case the new TCBY is in Peachtree City, Georgia and is just a stones throw away from Haus of Nancy. When I scheduled a meeting with one of my favorite local ladies and fellow health food enthusiast, Mrs Carol, on Thursday we both knew where we were going.

The new Yogurt store is way too cute. I just love the funky updated retro-design.

The colors are really fun and right up my ally. Best part of the trip? The store was donating one dollar to the American Cancer Society for every 16 ounces of yogurt purchased that day. You don't have to tell me twice! I can easily rack up 16 ounces of fro-yo. Well, actually fro-so since I can't really eat fro-yo.

The Peachtree City TCBY is more like other popular frozen yogurt bars such as Yoforia, Cloud 9 (another personal favorite of mine), and Frozen Yogurt Bar. You start with a giant cup and the rest is self serve. 

I really wanted this....

But I was good and went with this raspberry fro-so[rbet]. 

And then I topped with some Strawberry-Kiwi sorbet for color. Who am I kidding? I just wanted more sorbet.

They had your usual display of toppings. I always go for the fresh fruit myself, but you can get anything from sprinkles to captain crunch to peanut butter cups. Michael, the store manager, tells me that they are working with local farms in the area to get all their fruit fresh and in season. I'm a big time local foodophile so I was very excited to hear that.

I was very close to grabbing some of these maraschino cherries, but I went with blueberries instead. 

I'd much rather have fresh blueberries then sugary food-colored semi-fruit, even if they are super delicious.

Of course I added a ton of my favorite thing on earth. That would be coconut. 

Delicious, delicious coconut. I also tossed on some toasted almonds and strawberries. Yum!

My finished creation was just under 16 ounces, but at least I gave it a good shot.

I guess TCBY donated about 90 cents in my name and I got to eat delicious sorbet and enjoy the company of a great lady who also happens to be cancer free for 29 years! Congratulations Mrs. Carol! 

So you're probably all thinking this is becoming a food blog with two posts in a row being food centered. Well I promise you it is not. I've got lots of sewing going on this weekend. 

Goals for this weekend are: 

1. Finish last baby surprise for Mrs. Eleanor

2. Cut out the fabric for the January Dress

3. Put some paint on the walls. 

Expect a sewing post on Monday all! Have a great weekend!