Summer 2016

It has been a wonderful summer with trips to Venice, Florence, Rome, and Minnesota. Florence may have David by Michaelangelo but Minneapolis has Mall of America!  All wonderful places I wanted to visit for many years and finally did visit this summer.

Venice, Italy

While I am on summer vacation from my special education teaching position, I am excited to resume blogging, a pleasant activity I have sorely missed due to the busyness of the past year. The red travel dress I am wearing is made from a great fabric available at Emmaonesock.com: hi tech matte hybrid. The fabric hand washes and drips dry quickly with absolutely no wrinkles. I made three dresses out of the fabric for the trip to Italy. While the dresses may be conservative to many sewers, including me, the style choice was necessary because so many churches and museums in Italy have strict dress codes with regard to covering shoulders and knees. I can shorten the dresses for future use if I wish.

The red and royal blue dresses are sewn from pattern McCalls 6074 and the pink dress is Butterick 6051. I also made the patterns up in cotton/lycra knits but I did not take those garments to Italy because the dresses would take too long to air-dry.

I wear this navy cotton/lycra maxi dress all the time and I like the short sleeve and lower neckline. The length is at the ankle so it is easy to walk in and is casual.

I love the navy dots and stripes and the high-low hem on this dress but I regret eliminating the skirt gathers. The pink travel dress is very full because of the skirt gathers so I eliminated them for the white dress.  The problem is that the white dress is form fitted over the abdomen and therefore a bit unforgiving in white. The dress highlights the curve of my abdomen. I wish I had placed a few pleats or added two inches of ease to the abdomen of the white dress. I would need a pretty long jacket to hide the problem. Live and learn.
I have been working on easy jackets and have four to share with you soon! Enjoy the summer.