April 28th kicked off imagine gnats' "Selfish Sewing Week."  I should not have participated since I can never finish anything in a week and all of my sewing is technically selfish.  But I decided to try to sew something anyway.

During this past month I have experienced some extreme lows as well as some amazing highs.  I can't speak to most of it quite yet, but one of my lows was losing my dog Bailey to a pituitary macrotumor in the middle of April.  Bailey had been my faithful companion for the past 13 years.  I still have days when I'll remember something special about her and tear up.  But we are adjusting to life without her being here and we were all lucky to have experienced her unconditional love (except for Phoebe...their relationship was a little one sided...Phoebe did the loving and Bailey tolerated her...sometimes).  My other dog Max is currently curled up at my feet in a Benadryl induced snooze after eating a bumblebee. 

Right after losing Bailey, I traveled south to Raleigh to visit my sister.  On the way I stopped at a wonderful fabric shop just outside of Chapel Hill.  I have always wanted some Japanese Echino fabric, but just hadn't been able to justify the cost.  But when I found a bolt of it in Mulberry Silks in Carrboro, I momentarily forgot that I wasn't a millionaire and splurged on a bit.  (*Note to self: open a fabric shop like Mulberry Silks here in SW VA...JoAnn's just isn't cutting it and I don't realize how much I'm missing until I go to a specialty fabric shop.)









I loved it!  After my past few weeks, I felt that I deserved at little bit of selfish treating.  Instead of patiently agonizing over what pattern would work best, I immediately dove in and created another Laurel.  It's only my fourth Laurel dress.  Is that excessive???  I also thought a simple shift would work best with this pattern, I wanted to leave most of it intact.  It has birds!  It had to stay all birdy.

Since the canvas linen is a little scritchy scratchy, I lined it in a basic white cotton.  I really wanted to use a green to line it, but JoAnn's didn't have anything in the weight and softness that I wanted in a lining (again...open a shop).  And I hate slippery polyester linings.  I'll sometimes use them, but for a summery dress I went with cotton.  Now that I have learned to line garments, I can't believe I ever made stuff without lining it!  And I put cardigans over EVERYTHING!

Here I am bravely showing off my untanned and untoned arms.  Oh, and Phoebe must have heard the camera clicking and ran from upstairs to be in a shot or two. Don't mind my lack of live grass.  Two dogs in a postage stamp backyard doesn't bode well for grass growing. 

My previous three Laurels were all cut the same, size 16 in the bodice and grading out to an 18 around the hips.  But my last Laurel was a little snug up top, my poor bust darts wouldn't fit over my bust.  I can only wear it with a cardigan or jacket (which isn't a big deal...since I wear cardigans with EVERYTHING).

For this dress I admitted to myself that I was larger than a 16 and made a straight up 18.  Guess what?  It's too big in the bust.  Oh well, nothing that a cardi can't fix!

So although almost 98% of my sewing is for me, I am deeming this dress selfish sewing because I bought fabric that I really wanted and forgot about price for a moment.  Which is why my most recent fabric purchase was $5/yard....

by imagine gnats