sew weekly sunday: my mom is prettier than your mom

well, hello again. come on in. have a tall glass of iced tea. i'll make it a long island if you want. 

speaking of coma inducing drinks named after american isles, a very special hello to my peeps in the US of A! hey folks! how's it goin'? relaxing sunday? ADMIT IT! you are spending every last second of this weekend frantically finishing your taxes! i cannot imagine what you are going through, as i just skipped over to the local PO saturday morning and mailed our taxes off, without incident. i mean, there was a mildly annoying dude in line on his phone, blathering about what the contingency plan would be were it to rain on the day in cellular question. dude, just live. if it rains, you'll get wet. your taxes are done.

for the childhood challenge over at le sew weekly, i pored over tiny oona photos carefully scanned and copied by my dad, presented in an album by the parental balloonas as a birthday prize last year. i pretty much demanded this gift, so i wasn't surprised, but i WAS surprised they did it. balloonas don't take well to demands.

are you surprised i wanted pictures of myself for my birthday? no? GOOD. my self-involved air of brattiness is coming along nicely. allow me to add to said air.  i'm sorry, but how pretty is my mom?

i did not find inspiration in the copious unbearably cute polaroids of myself. no, i was most inspired by this shot of my mom. as a wee kalkatroonan, i remember staring at it in awe. it looked like the golden sunlight was coming right out of her gorgeous smile. i wanted to be her. she was so stylish and graceful and pretty sitting up there. and still very much is. pretty, that is. she's come down from the tree.

armed with my maternal inspiration, i decided it was time to successfully tackle my first pair of wear-outdoors pants. i've tried before, but have always emerged beaten. badly. 

although mom's in white & khaki here, she's always in bold color & print. so i decided to play with the sepia tones in the photo, but use a wild print in homage.

i had all intentions of dragging ruggy to the park today and finding a tree, but after three days of soaking the couch in various liquids, we decided to lounge around the house instead. so you get a window and the fancy little sepia button on my rinky dink canon.

mom might be glowing because dad was the one behind the camera. here's what happens to me when ruggy pulls the trigger:

guess what i did. no, seriously, guess what i did, because i sure as hell couldn't repeat it if i tried. i made amy butler's wide leg lounge pants as a jumping off point, because where better to start for wear-outdoors pants than wear-indoors pajama pants pattern? elementary.

added length to pattern waist and hem, played with the side seams, took the center back in, added back darts, a side invisible zip, cut some of the waist off, made up a buttoned waist band closure-- oh wait, i'm sorry, did i say button closure? i meant FULLY FRIGGING FUNCTIONAL BUTTON CLOSURE.

that's right, folks. and i didn't go through the unmitigated torture of a hand bound buttonhole. or even try to futz with the crippled buttonhole function on my kenmore. nope, i remembered a little trick i saw in a vintage simplicity pattern involving an opening for a wrap skirt, and i applied it here.

i rock.

oh yeah, and my dad could totally beat your dad's ass.

fabric: linen, three yards, $15 total

patterns: amy butler's lounge pants, vintage simplicity 7910 (skirt band instructions only) and a whole lotta my head.

year: 70s to present

notions: invisible zip $1, cotton thread (stash), plastic buttons (stash)

time to complete: about twelve hours altogether. what with Cat One and Cat Two, this one was a doozy.

first worn: in the future, to see our favorite jazz trio next week!

wear again: hells yeah.

total cost: $16