What do you do in a power outage? I had to pick my older son up from school almost as soon as I dropped him off. We got a call that the school was reopening just after the bathings suits and sunscreen went on. You know that wouldn't be fair to bring him back, plus I've been itching for my summer schedule for about 2 months now....

Look ma, sand crab!

First dip of the season!

See the bias center? The edges are fine. The straight grain side pieces got rippled under the serger. I decided to go ahead anyway, and most of them pressed out. But I kept wondering, what would Julia do?!

Back to that skirt I'm making.... No matter what I did the serger rippled the edges slightly, but only the edges that were on the straight of grain. The bias cut piece (left) was fine.

My older daughter graduated from middle school! I am too proud!

GARMENT TIME

This is an interesting magazine. It's published in Germany and then translated into a bunch of languages and republished. Obviously, I get the English version, at a cost of $60 a year. What's great about this magazine is that it gives you the latest fashions, with dozens of patterns included in each issue. I've let my subscription expire as I've clearly been doing too much quilting to be sewing garments. I do miss it though. Somehow just knowing I can sew any of the things I see gives me a tremendous amount of satisfaction. The only catch is that you have to trace the patterns before you're able to sew them, but this is a good thing for me because then I am more likely to alter it to make it fit better. With the tissue patterns that you cut, I'd have to slice, add, tape, ugh!

I've chosen to make this skirt from the magazine for my cousin's wedding.

Here's a view of the detail of the skirt. I'll be doing the "E" version.

Here's the very shiny polyester brocade I'm going to try to use. Why do I say try? Because I'm out of practice with garment sewing, and have been sewing with cotton knits for as long as I can remember. Two things scare me about this. First, it frays like crazy. As a matter of fact, the blue strings that just fall off were used to accent my apple quilt - remember? This doesn't scare me so much because I do have a serger. Which brings me to the next thing that scares me - the slightly curved seams. If I need to clip them to lie flat then what about the fraying? I calm myself thinking it's just a slight curve. Julia! I need you!