Sunday, October 5, 2014

A Complaint of Sorts and a what would you do?

Hello dear readers, sorry I haven't been blogging nearly as much as I want.  First things first, we have been sleeping in the guest room/sewing room, making it much more difficult to sew.  Second of all we're still waiting on the rest of our stuff, so if I want to cut something out, I have to bring everything out to the kitchen table, and then clean it up.  Third of all, can I be frank?  The color of the carpet and the walls in our bedrooms, all of them, makes me cringe.  I honestly hate being back there.  Red carpet, pinky beige walls. 
This is what we have in our room.  I really shouldn't complain, as our apartment is huge, and is for the most part really nice.  We have two giant bathrooms, both with jacuzzi tubs, and one even has a built in sauna.  (I don't know if we'll ever use the sauna, but the boys love the two person jacuzzi tub aka small swimming pool).  Anyway, my sewing room is not inspiring me to be creative.  I have some carpet squares on the way in a grey, some peel and stick wallpaper, and I've talked Tony into painting (which means we'll have to paint in 3 years to get it back to beige), so I think in a month or so, it will look a lot better.  Also not having all my stuff organized is driving me nuts.  Luckily, our stuff is arriving tomorrow, so things will start getting better.  I hope!

I've also been in Odessa for half of the last week for work.  It's a beautiful city, and I really enjoyed it.  I forgot my camera, so no pictures.  But I can check off my Russian nerd list- seen the Potemkin stairs.  

Enough complaining!  In preparation for getting our stuff, yesterday Conor, Alex, and I trekked out to Epicenter.  Epicenter is pretty much Home Depot mixed with Walmart.  We ended up at one of the not as nice ones, but we still got what we needed.  I bought a new sewing table and some shelving to put on the walls for better storage. This is my new sewing desk:


What I love is that it is large enough for both machines, there is storage, and there is even space for my transformer on top of the desk.  I hated putting it together, though, it was completely unassembled, but without IKEA like instructions. 

This was it.  There were at least six different types of screws.  Luckily, I've put together a massive amount of furniture in the past, so I figured it out.  I even got help from my lovely husband.  That made it go a heck of a lot faster.
So I am pretty sure that there was a second box that we didn't receive.  I guess I could have gone back to Epicenter to check it out, but that would have involved a 40 minute bus ride, and arguing in Russian, and then getting back home.  What was missing, was all the plywood for the drawer bottoms.  To make due, I used pieces of the box.  I thought it would work fine, as I'm not putting anything heavy, but then Alex stepped in the bottom drawer, so um no.

Anyway, there has been some sewing.  In fact, I am almost done with a dress.  I went to the fabric store last Sunday to get some bias binding, and also came back with three meters of a printed cotton.  I used the same bodice pattern as my last dress- B6094, but I closed up the back.  I also added sleeves, and made a pleated full length skirt.  Everything is done, but the sleeves are just basted in, and not hemmed.  I tried it on tonight, and I'm not sure about it.




The fit is spot on, and I love the pattern, but I kinda feel like it's a little too modest?  Here in Kyiv, the full length dress or the long midi is really on point right now.  You must wear the dress with high heels, but other than that, it's very turn of the century chic right now.  (And I'm not talking about this last century.)  Anyway, I can do one of the following things.  A. nothing, hem the sleeves as is.  B.  unpick the skirt, raise it to midi length, hem sleeves as is.  C. leave the skirt as is, reduce the poof or the length in the sleeves.  D. raise the skirt to midi length, reduce the poof or length in sleeves.

Let me know what you think in the comments!   Until next time happy sewing.


4 comments:

  1. Mid calf & sleeveless would be my preferences. But where is my cutie patootie little boy. Love the hubby, but I want to see little guy!!

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  2. Yes - I think take off the sleeves, then it could still stay the same length, or make it shorter?

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  3. I understand how the colour of things can put you off. Paint is a relatively inexpensive mood enhancer.
    As for the dress; remove the poof from the sleeves but leave the length of both the sleeves and the skirt, especially if long skirts are 'the thing' right now. I thought, too, about removing the sleeves altogether but leaving them in place will make the dress much more wearable in the approaching winter without having to add a sweater.

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    1. I took your advice, I took out the majority of the sleeve poof and kept the length. Glad I did, I've been at work for 20 minutes and have already received 5 compliments.

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