fo: magic switch-y dance-y dress

forgive me for the messy room

As a sidenote: do you ever see that girl in the cafe or the library who's got headphones in and a serious shoulder dance going as she mouths the lyrics to some song? Yeah, that would be me. The music in question might be show tunes or Shakira or indie stuff (often the show tunes--oh, to be on Broadway! All the world's a stage though, right, so it's totally fine, right?). But keeping it to the shoulder wiggle and the silent singing at least keeps it from full-out taking over the whole place and belting. Which is a good thing, right?

Anyways...the dress. which you might actually care about, as opposed to my true confessions about singing in public. I used these two tutorials by Sew Like My Mom to make this dress during Thanksgiving break as a dance costume for a couple of shows. It's a great basic dance costume because A. you can change it every show if you want to be indecisive (I sure as heck did) and B. it's so easy to move in! I loved my costume. Bonus points for following what a professor told me about good dance costumes for a piece: it looks expensive.

apparently my new game is don't look at the camera

I stayed at school over break and therefore was still over a 1000 miles away from my sewing machine. So this entire dress was hand-sewn. I searched a little bit for instructions for how to do a stretch stitch by hand. A couple (more like half a season) of Breaking Pointe later, I had a dress. It's only three seams (the way I did it at least), so it didn't feel like that much work to hand sew it. Actually, it was a lot of fun! I really like handsewing. It's relaxing.

I basically took pictures of all the ways I know how to tie it. I'm not super creative about it, especially because I have relatively high standards for modesty when it comes to how I dress.

wait! I do know where the camera is!

Yep, we've come to the end of my four different stylings. I'm not very exciting. Do you have any suggestions for tying this thing in more creative ways that are still fairly covering? I'm too shy to do strapless, but I'm trying to experiment with how to look like a cool person in this.

top three tuesday

As I write this, it's actually last Tuesday (to the future Tuesday people). But honestly, having had Internet for a matter of a two days as I settled back into the world of textbooks (don't get me started) and dorm life and class schedules, I didn't really have the time to write up a blog post.

Here's my top three

...bloggy fountains of inspiration (sidenote: nice mental picture, right?)

Emma's old food blog, Food Coma, which has been my new obsessive read. Recently, I read a lot of A Beautiful Mess, too, which is really just food for all my DIY daydreams, which led me to Emma's blog, which is simply gorgeous and also delicious. I love that all the recipes are A. meatless and B. actually things I might make, as a broke college student. Sure, I love reading about the truffle-and-lobster-and-ridiculous-amounts-of-expensive-cheese concoctions of deliciosity that awesome food bloggers make. But I can't afford to make them. Emma's recipes are just so much more...obtainable. Which makes me happy.

Pati's Mexican Table 'cos I already miss Mexican food. And Pati just makes me happy with her joy of cooking and Mexican accent.

Flashback Summer--Emileigh is an amazingly sweet blogger and a wonderful vintage gal (to quote her) and I love her words of wisdom about living a vintage college life, especially here.

...things I'd like to try to do or make

turning this now shrunken sweater into a dance warm up

making an apron a la Marie's tutorial

Velvet Morning (the yarn should be in the mail soon--yay for yarny Christmas presents!) which I desperately want to call either Winter Night or Velvet Night and then I realize that I'm reeeally off.

...on my reading list (not the one just assigned to me, but the stuff I actually want to read)

The Story of a Soul by St. Thérèse of Lisieux--my current read. Oddly enough, the introduction called the book poorly written from a literary point of view, but I (a former English major) am finding it warm and personable, like sitting down for a cup of tea with her.

Divergent by Veronica Roth--I've been informed that I HAVE to read this, especially before the movie.

Citrus County by John Brandon--I started this one before break and it's too weird not to finish. Seriously. There's a kidnapped toddler and I don't know what exactly to do with it (the book, not the toddler).

So what's inspiring you? What are your creating fingers itching to make? What are you reading (or rather, in a self-serving way, are you reading anything that you think I should be reading)? I'm off to try to make the first grocery list of the year. Have a great week!