we call this muppet buckles

there are many perfect weekends to be had, of many varieties, and this past weekend was one of them. myriad marvelous ladies, mimosas and mood on saturday, followed by a firefly marathon.  sazeracs and steelers on sunday (TROY POLAMALU STRAIGHT UP THE MIDDLE I DON'T EVEN CARE THAT HE DIDN'T BLOCK THE KICK) and a snuggly sweater dress by sunday eve.

as you know i've been stuck in the bayou with old blue, and i was one hundred percent certain i would NOT have her finished (and oh, i do mean finished) in time for my scheduled mood sewing network post.  inspiration struck when i strolled the second floor with homies devra and clio.  we were there just for a minute, having shown fine restraint when saying goodbye to wanett's crew at the door on the first pass, but a second driveby was too much.  presumably we entered to get ideas for clio...as usual i found booty for myself.  devra left empty handed, as she "wasn't looking."  i asked her how do you not look when your eyes are open.  it is impossible not to see.

whoah!  one too many weekend libation?  non, photographeur extraordinaire ruggy simply insists on taking these shots at an angle.  it is apparently more artistic.  it takes a correction of 2 degrees clockwise, to be exact, EVERY TIME.  cropping hacks off half my hair n' footsies.  i can't complain. he accomplishes in four minutes what takes me forty.  artists.

returning to the point.  holy humped up hell, there is so much to see right now on the second floor.  i never know what i’m going to find up there, but i always walk away hugging something fiercely.  like i’ve just won a prize that must be guarded with my life.  this poly sweater knit came in many eye searing colors in an aisle full of sweater knit, and it is sooooo soft, which only added to the hugging factor.  i believe the tag said it was from italy.  is that the secret to poly of quality?   italian birth?

having a bit of the italian in me myself, i’d say it’s a good theory. 

for real, i have had my share of meatballs.

i’ve always wanted to work with sweater knit, but have been too afeared.  besides getting chartreuse muppet fluff everywhere, this was way simpler than i thought it would be!  and muppet fluff is fun, let’s face it.  it was an amusement park for our 23-pound beast of a cat.

of course i did plenty to make it hard for myself anyways, like cut the all-in-one front piece out whilst leaving myself with no room for the back, necessitating an eyeball surgery of sleeves, which was already an eyeballed hack on a burdastyle magazine pattern traced back in 2008 and then abandoned, really i screwed with this so much there's no point in mentioning the pattern.

what really made it easy was testing everything i wanted to do on the many bits of muppet parts left lying around after cutting out the pattern.  meg extolled the virtues of test runs over at mood sewciety last week.  although she rightly suggests testing before cutting out the whole shebang, there is a bonus to cut-now-test-later: it makes you feel better about all those post-cutting scraps that would otherwise go straight to the garbage, unused, in a fit of MUST CLEAN EVERYTHING DONE WITH THAT DRESS BEGONE REMNANTS NEW FABRIC NEW FABRIC NEW FABRIC

what, you don’t get that part?  you save all your scraps?  scraps make me want to pick a fight.

notey notes
pattern: hacked beyond recognition
fabric: italian poly knit, 14/yd from mood fabrics (an MSN project)
notions: pellon seam binding, leather buckles from pacific trimming, twin needle, jersey needle
tips: i used the seam binding at neck edges to keep the neck from growing to barbarella proportions, and after sewing other seams, fused the same binding to one side, and overlocked the seam. kept the seams nice and flat and safe from unraveling!  though i need to find something better than the pellon, it seemed pretty cheap.  the neck and hem are folded under a good inch and twin needled down.

this poly poof was made using my monthly fabric "allowance" as part of the Mood Sewing Network.