YOU SEE WHAT HAD HAPPENED WAS (PART 2)

I promise I'll not go into great detail regarding what has happened since the last time I posted.......more trouble with the serger and much more drama with local repair shop.  Just as I had made the decision to purchase the Babylock Evolution, my serger was returned in pretty good shape.  Not perfect as the auto tension adjustment seems to be a little off.  So I weighed the expensive cost of $2000.  - $3,000 depending on where you purchase against knowing I'll probably NEVER use 8 threads and decided to wait a while or just see how my Elna was going to work out.  However, I still deep down want it and I promise you that if this sucker acts up one more time I'm going to just go get one!!!  Well, we'll see.

 I've focused on making vacation clothes for youngest Grandaugher, Trinity Grace. Additionaly, I decided to make Burda 8368 View C for myself.  I knew that with this many buttonholes, my Designer 1 which is buttonhole challenged; would mess up at least one and I would have to pick it out so I decided to add a placket and hide the buttonholes and buttons.

I knew that sometime in my long sewing history I had done this but wanted to be sure of how to do it correctly.  So I  

 pulled out my copy of "High-Fashion Sewing Secrets from the World's Best Designers" and on pages 101-104 were instructions for making a fly or concealed front placket

.......and after hours of one mishhap after the other I completed the blouse.
Here is my version:

Thought I would give you a view of it on Gloria.  She's not quite ready for prime time but will do just fine for now:

I'm still working on making a wardrobe of perfectly fitting muslins.  The most helpful tool I've found has been the Lutterloh System.  I was surprised that it works quite well.  I still had to make adjustments but not too bad.  The next step in mastering fitting myself perfetly is working on how to transfer the techniques to commercial patterns.  I'm really enjoying using the curved rulers.....Very nice.  So far I've made four pair of pants (crop with cuff)...Very nice for summer, and several tops.  I'll try to get pictures online soon.

Now for the thing I'm most excited about now:  I think I have finally come up with a system that organizes my patterns in a manner that I can quickly see what I've got and the ability to retrieve them quickly without looking through my many, many boxes and files.  It stems from my absolute love for my iphone's camera.  The photos are wonderful....as a matter of fact every picture I've posted on this entire blog was taken with my iphone.  I'm taking a photo of every pattern and using the iphoto application that came with my Macbook computer.  Iphoto allows me to organize my photos by keywords...(tops, pants, dresses etc.) and I can view them in albums on my computer.  The next step is to keep the actual patterns in boxes organized just as the albums are (pants, tops etc.)  I started tonight and plan to enlist the grands in getting the patterrns into the boxes.  I can do this when I'm not sewing.  The next thing will be reorganizing the tons of fabrics.  Yeah right!  I'm sure there's an app for that.  LOL