sewing for myself

This is the last installment of 'sewing week' and I have been dreading it a bit. I don't like posting pictures of yours truly or what I sew for myself. Kids' clothes are so much cuter! But, it's been a while since I've posted anything I've made for myself (even though I've made several things, that maybe someday I'll post)...so here goes.

As we were packing and getting ready to go to Hawaii a few weeks ago, I started wishing for more summer-y clothes. In the middle of winter, summer clothes are pretty hard to find and because I'm such an excellent procrastinator...I didn't have much time to hunt through stores for something I wanted to wear.

INSTEAD, I spent an hour at the fabric store and several hours at a sewing machine the day before we left! Ridiculous, huh? But I made 4 new pieces for myself that I happily packed and wore in Hawaii. The total cost in fabric was around $70...way less than it would have cost to buy things new. Plus I have enough fabric left over to make some fun things for the girls for summer too. (I can't wait to make them some cute white shorts and a little blue linen dress.)

Here is what I made:

I made a pair of skinny white jeans (really lightweight), a wrap dress, a chiffon-ish skirt, and a sleeveless blue top (that was the only thing out of this list that I didn't get a chance to wear in Hawaii).

The colors and patterns seemed island-y to me and everything packed really well and felt great on! Here are the white pants and wrap dress out and about in Hawaii:

I am especially in love with those two pieces. The pants were the perfect length...which is nearly impossible for me to find in a store. BUT, the problem with deciding to sew them so last minute is that I didn't get to pre-wash the fabric. Can you see where I'm going with this? After washing them when we came home, the pants are now pretty much capri length. Bummer. Guess I'll have to make more. :)

The wrap dress is SO comfortable! I wore it to a luau and it was perfect. It's kind of a spandex fabric that's really heavy and super stretchy. The shoulders were made using a different technique than I had ever used before. Here's a close-up of them. They have a bit of a gathered look. They started out as extra wide sleeves and then I added a piece of elastic underneath and stretched it as I sewed it to the underside of the shoulder. Voila. Gathers.

I have a small stack of patterns that I hope to get to at some point for myself. But for now, I will just look forward to another trip to warmer weather (Florida in a few weeks - yahoo!) so I can wear some of these again!