I'm back!

We are back in the US - had some really rough transitions back into the house because of what I'll just call the renter from hell.  There was a lot of sewage and SO MUCH MOUSE POO!!!!  But I also was greeted by the following:

All of that fabric that I'd bought while in England, waiting for me to return!  The stuff on the far left is for a bag idea I've got.  The bottom left is the crazy ITY that I bought for a summer maxi.  That's what I first delved into, with what, unfortunately, turned out to be a bit of a miss.  Should have just gone for a simpler pattern.  I used Mccalls 7319 -  I had some worries about the drapes being droopy, but it looked quite nice on some bloggers I'd seen, so I scrapped my plan for a giant tent maxi and went for this one.

In the meantime, my sewing machine was taken over by a small forest sprite.

She is also my photographer, unfortunately, and has now been fired for the blurriness of the following pictures.

The top IS quite droopy.  I wouldn't wear this out on the weekends like I'd hoped, but could probably use it as a coverup at the pool.

 

In better news (not better photographing), I pulled out my old vogue 1440, made last summer.  The front is painstakingly pattern-matched, the back not so much.  It is too big - the armholes show a lot of bra.  And the right color flops down in a not-great asymmetric manner.  But I still like it a lot. 

This crazy pink one was made for a conference, actually - it's held in Palm Springs every year and everyone (earthquake scientists) wears hawaiian shirts.  So - I decided to make a new one, out of white linen. This time I cut the side seams at the size 10 line instead of the 12, and I redrew the front and back pieces and facings to raise the armhole by 1/2" on each piece.  It's all cut out -wish me luck!