Tuesday, October 13, 2009

College Girl

College Girl is home on her fall break. Morman Boy had a paper to work on and College Girl had a church project that she has found herself some what in a leadership role on. So she spent yesterday at home and then most of last night too.



She took over my studio and painted this bigger piece for the Penumbra Show. We are involved in this show because the Morman Boy's mom is the organizer of it. Anyway Jennifer has tried to get Molly to create a work for the show and she finally relented. I love this - it is a larger version of the one she painted for me back at Christmas. The sunrise or sunset glow at the bottom is stunning to me. Would it be wrong of me to purchase this just cause I like it??

Then she asked me to help her with her church project. She works with the younger girls and they are learning to sew. They picked out an A-Line skirt pattern for this beginning class. Already some valuable lessons are being learned.

College Girl is a size 6 really long jeans. But this pattern runs small. She bought a size 10 and we had to add to the measurements to make it fit my missy. I showed her how to do that and where and we cut out fabric.


Then a lesson in cussing the machine. Yes - she became well aquainted with that activity. This is a cheap WalMart Machine that I have had for years. It is functional but temperamental. Hence -- cussing required. (Please disregard the pile of crap in the background - it is destined for the studio but just has not made that trek. )


The pattern included two things I would have avoided if possible.


A zipper -- this machine has no zipper foot and they do not make one to fit it. Remember - I quilt and craft sew. I have no need for a zipper foot. A quick phone call to my Mama gave me the trick of hand sewing the zipper into place and then you can zip and unzip to get the tab out of the way. She did a pretty good job of putting this in for her very first zipper.


The other thing is darts - four of them bad boys. We measured and pinned. Her OCD tendencies were not a good match for my "winging it" style of doing some things, so a lot of compromise was required. I could not find my white chalk pencil, so she quickly learned that a bar of Ivory soap will work in a pinch on that dark fabric.

The finished view a la model pose.

It actually fits really well. We will be working on the hand stuff tonight. Hook/eye and hemming. Then she wants to put a skinny black velvet ribbon around the bottom. Not too bad for a very first garment.


I'll try to get a picture of her when they complete all the skirts and have the fashion show.


I had a wonderful time with her last night. She is fun to hang out with.


I have a beautiful life.

2 comments:

Julie Ann said...

That's a beautiful painting!! And I love the red gradient, too! Such a cute skirt :) What a great bonus while getting to spend quality time

Carrie said...

Love the skirt! She did a good job. The thing with patterns sizes is they are not the same as off the rack sizes. You have to measure yourself first, then read the back of the pattern to determine what size pattern to buy. I'm a 10 size jeans, 16-18 pattern size.