Sewing Laurel (aka Project Laurel)

My sewing themed Laurel!

I made my barrette a few years ago with some pretty aqua lace and tiny black beads.

April 30^th, at about a quarter to midnight I was on my labtop frantically trying to learn the nouonces of flickr. I was one of the procrastinators, uploading photos for the Colette Laurel Challenge on the night they were due. It was a wild night. After so many years as a fan, I finally know what it must feel like to be a contestant on Project Runway. The night was rife with last minute photoshoots, quickly sewn hems, and tears… many tears.

This is the expression procrastinators make...

To make matters worse, our internet connection decided to come in and out that night, so I had to re-upload all the images to flickr after I had already named, tagged, and described them. I think I hit my lowest moment around 11:45 at night, when the internet quit again and none of my photos of this "Sewing Laurel" were on flickr. I had a little cry, and then bucked-up and got the job done.

It was all sooo worth it in the end because the challenge was really fun and I love my dress. It is just awesome to see everyone's different interpretations of the pattern. Who knew there were so many ways to do one dress? I was truly inspired.

I found a cool old bottle on the forest floor, I am going to use it in our wedding next spring.

My Laurel has self-designed cotton voile fabric for the bottom section, a beautiful sheer swiss dot fabric on the bodice, black lace sleeves, a dark navy underlining, and light aqua bias tape trim around the neckline. The fabric I designed is sewing themed - it has little pins and needles stuck in a latticey-lacy geometric type pattern.

It's hard to see in this photo, but the pins are a light blue color.

This was my first time printing fabric from Spoonflower. I think it printed pretty nicely, I had intended the skirt to be more of a dark-rich black but I think it printed grey because it was on voile - not quite sure. I would definitely print fabric from them again - I love having that amount of freedom/control.

Dang allergies

We took pictures again at Maquoketa Caves State Park. The flowers were just starting to bloom and everything was starting to turn green - it was magical. I saw some of my favorite wild Iowa plants.

These are Jack in the Pulpits - one of my favorite wild plants to find.

I found a little snail

I love the tiny scallops on the edge of the lace sleeves.

I'm not really sure what my next sewing project will be. I have been dreaming about polka-dotted shorts and Hepburn-inspired cigarette pants. Definitely something that takes advantage of this nice warm weather!