ressurecting the dead. step 1: locate password

Weyyyyll, it took me over an hour and plenty of confused effort, but I successfully located the blog admin password.  When you have 4 scattered blog locations, 5 websites, and at least 30 passwords to keep track of, things can get tricky.

But I did it and I’m here, just in time to post a silly quickie to kick off my NaBloPoMo 2009 endeavor.  I’m going to try my hardest to contribute a post  every day this month to my lonely, abandoned blog in the hope that it will get me into the habit of writing on a regular basis.  Although I’ve been an absent blogger for the past year, it was not for lack of things to write about.

So… this November 1 I’m welcoming myself back to Sew Fussy, enjoying a sweet 33rd birthday with the fam, and laughing at the memory of yesterday’s hectic but happy Halloween.

sugar sugar

Anyone who knows me knows that sugar is absolutely my favorite thing in the entire world.  Not only sugar in foods or colors like “sugar pink,” but the word itself is pleasant to read, speak, and hear. Yes, I will admit it. I’m obsessed.

So you can imagine the mental anguish I endured for the last month knowing that my dearest, sweetest, most wonderfully delicious friend Li (wait, what?) was sending me a candy care package similar to the one she sent me last summer.  I even abstained from most forms of sweetness for a whole week in anticipation of the thrilling delivery.  My family can confirm this, because I was a moody wench the entire time.

I finally got notice that I could pick my package up at a local post today, and let me just say… Li did me right. She sent me the best of the best from the last batch, and a few new things that I can’t wait to try.   I’m going to tell y’all that I didn’t finish all of this tonight, but you’ll have to decide if I’m being truthful or not…

It was difficult to stop fondling it all long enough to let my girls sort through it and call fake-dibs (right, like I’m gonna share!)  but I did, and they had fun for an hour without even tasting anything.  When it was time to put the box up for the night, tears followed (okay, they were mine… )    I even put a few of my favorites under my pillow, I just hope the chocolate doesn’t stick to my hair too badly.

The cool thing is that I get to send Li underwear, you know, Fussies, in exchange for all this candy.  I totally got the better end of the deal, don’t you think?

bad blue dress part II

I just realized that I never posted a follow-up to my bad blue birthday dress entry.
Okay, so remember the dress was supposed to look sort of like this (I know it’s hard to see in my photo)…

Really a basic, no-frills dress:  semi-fitted darted bodice ending just at or below the natural waist,  a full skirt falling below the knees, lined all over, back invisible zipper closure.  I really didn’t expect it to be difficult to sew… I mean, there are barely any details to worry about. How hard could it have been?

Well, dealing with the lining just about killed me.  The flannel backed satin I was using warps very easily and I couldn’t get seams to line up properly or sew without ripples.   Poor, sweet, poly satin fabric… I’m trying to pass the blame, but really the problem is that I’m a sucky seamstress. (And will y’all believe me if I say it enough? I hate that people think I am actually good at sewing because it’s not true.)
It took me a while, but I *did* finally finish the dress as designed only to discover it was a very unflattering style for me.   Go figure.

I spent the rest of my birthday before dinner ripping, cutting, trying on, pinning, cutting more, basting, hating, an endless cycle.  I raised the waist, trimmed the skirt to an A-line kinda thing, cut a bunch – too much – length off, adjusted the gaping armscyes, and more.   I’m glad to say that I finally finished the dress, but sorry to say it looked absurd on me and I ended up wearing some totally random dress to my birthday dinner.  I can’t even come up with an appropriately humorous description of it, but the words “shrunken” and “smurf” keep popping into my head…

I did a good job on the zipper, however, and was pleased with the fact that I inserted it neatly into a lined dress – a first for me.  Since I plan to never wear it out in public, I decided not to deal with a hook and eye at the top, as you can see by the gape…

(Hey there, blondie.)

Because I took the time to put on freaking makeup for this photo session a couple of months back, and because I happen to think all-headless shots are kind of creepy,  I’m leaving you with this pearl.  (That’s a pretty obvious joke, right?)  Oh wait, for anyone who is wondering about the shoes, because I do get asked, they’re MAGS.

bamboo velour raglan

Nothing super exciting here, but it was fun to sew and experiment with the seams and hems.  As some of you know, I’ve been obsessed with the flatlock settings on my Baby Lock and I’ve been playing around with the stitches on various sewn items – from scrap wool scarves to underwear, and now this bamboo velour raglan. I almost can’t believe it, but this is the first bamboo velour shirt I’ve ever made in adult size. I used the pattern I used for my organic wool raglan from last year.

I’m not sure if I would do the bottom hem the same way again, but the shirt was about 2″ too short for my liking without it so I had to improvise. It makes it a little sportier than without.    (By the way, I totally made that neck seam off-center on purpose!)

And being a huge dork, I also had to make a coordinating pair of reversible hipster-style underwear.  Made from a stretchy organic cotton/lycra blend, and flatlocked as well. They feel really comfortable with the ladder stitch (? that’s MY term for it)  side against the skin, but they look “neater” with the ladder side facing out. They are honestly comfortable either way, though.

And yes, I lounged around in the set all evening. Long sleeves and underwear make quite a fashion statement!

expanding on tech. difficulties

I’m here on a Sunday morning, nearly three weeks after the Fussybutt cart crashed,  trying to sort through almost 7000 pages of database information to find customer order details, product descriptions, inventory levels, and so on.  It’s probably best just to start from scratch.  I find it so crazy that my 5 years of cart history takes up so many pages and has over 32 million characters and almost 4 million “words.”    That’s a lot to sort through!

Anyway, my desktop is pretty much a mess right now. Check out my screen shot… I’ve always got a ton of windows and programs open like this.

Sorry for all the boring posts lately, I am trying to get back into blog mode after months of not writing but I’m so engrossed in all these cart issues it’s hard to think of anything else! I have my bud Maureen on the job to speed things along, and hope to have the new CKGold cart modified, fully stocked, and running soon (hey, at least I installed it myself without too much trouble…)

article on company name changes

I stumbled upon an article this morning (now months ago, this is an old draft!) that I found really fascinating, considering my past and ongoing dilemmas regarding Fussy branding, re-structuring, new websites, etc.  I know there’s at least one friend who reads my posts who might find it useful as well! ;P

Company Naming Changes – 2006

Actually, after poking around a bit more I think there are a few pages of interesting reading on that site. Check out this article on linguistic naming, which begins by noting that the English dictionary only has around 80,000 words, yet there are more than 378,000 trademark applications per year for business or product naming. Pretty crazy!

few resolutions

I had typed up a fairly comprehensive list of resolutions for 2009 but after reading it, I realized nobody else is going to care about most of them or find them interesting enough to spend 5 minutes reading.  Since one of my resolutions is to EDIT (everything,) I’m choosing to start now.  Instead of my super-long, super-lame list I will just post a few relevant resolutions here.

In 2009 I plan to

–finish putting the Fussybutt diaper patterns to paper so that I can *finally* start selling my line of home-sewing patterns – I’m determined to make this actually happen in 2009, and it will
-continue to develop the women’s underwear line I’ve been working on for the last 8 or so months
-be FAR more productive
-waste less time
-get more sleep

That’s it!
Here’s to a fantastic year, y’all.

technical difficulties

I’m going to remember 2008 as my year of technical difficulties.  I’m not sure if it’s really an accurate depiction of the past year, but it certainly feels that way…  so many frustrating things have happened, I can’t even begin to list them.

The latest and most time consuming issue is the recent crash of my heavily modified OSCommerce-based cart  at www.fussybutt.com.  It was a really awesome cart on the back end, with lots of powerful admin. tools that my web helper Maureen (who is amazing! do you hear me, Maureen?) installed for me.

All was going well until a recent unexpected server update caused my cart to crash a few days before Christmas.   The only fix would have been to install the latest version of OSCommerce and try to import the backed up databases from my old cart…   So I (total tech dummy) downloaded and successfully  installed OSC OM V2.2 , and immediately realized just how good I had it with my my former cart.  I was missing a lot of features that (thanks to Maureen) I had come to take for granted and that I couldn’t imagine going without.  I also couldn’t imagine spending all the time and money that would be involved in getting all of those features back.

So I’m doing the next best thing, I hope…  I’m making the switch to CKGold.
I became  familiar with the program browsing through the portfolio of Aeolidia, whose work I love.  They recommend CKGold to their clients and in fact, they are currently working on a CKGold cart for Just Fussy (so it makes sense to use the same software for both Fussybutt and Just Fussy, right?)  My friend Li at Tiny Tapir also uses the same cart for her totally cute website.  It has some of the features I loved in my previous cart, though not all of them. Still, it was pretty darn easy to install and I’m excited to get started with it.  But for now,  I’m using this cute splash page that Andrea of Wanted put together for me in the middle of her busy workload  (THANK YOU Andrea!)

I’m a bit overwhelmed with so much going on.  I mean, SO much going on…  But I plan to be writing a lot more in 2009.  I should probably post about some of these “many things” that are going on, eh?

bad blue dress

Oh boy, I worked hard on my birthday dress… I had been lusting after the black dress on the cover of Simple Chic ever since I bought the book on ebay (after I saw it mentioned by Aimee at the Betsy Ross blog.)

It was the very first Japanese pattern book in my collection and it is written – er, designed? – by Machiko Kayaki. I have since acquired several more of her pattern books (I think it’s a “her” but I don’t really know.) I love her designs even though I haven’t sewn anything from her books until now.
From the start, I wanted to sew Dress #3 because it’s so basic, but versatile and eye-catching. Doesn’t it make for a great cover shot?

Machiko Kayaki Pattern Book

I quickly realized it was much more complicated of a dress than it appeared at first glance. Check out the pattern layout below. This dress had 6 pattern pieces cut from lining and another 9 cut from the main fabric.

Seeing as how I am psychic, I knew in advance that I would mess this dress up big time so I chose a navy blue crinkle cotton that was cheap and abundant in my fabric stash, along with a navy blue poly/cotton satin for the lining. In fact, it is the same lining fabric I used for the Betsy Ross coat I made last year, just in a different color.
Just sewing the lining pieces to the curved cotton facings proved to be quite a feat. I swear, I’m a terrible seamstress. Next time, I would get rid of some of these curves and pray for an easier time. Here are the two back bodice lining layers with the attached facings. This poly satin is so annoying to work with, very warpy…

Speaking of what an awful seamstress I am, I should probably give myself some credit for figuring the dress out at all. Here are the only instructions I had to go by (which, to be honest, are quite efficiently done even if I had a hard time. Most people with a bit of experience could probably figure these out, as long as they aren’t hopeless nimrods like I am.)

I’m going to wrap up this post for tonight and continue tomorrow, but I don’t want to keep anyone in suspense so I’ll admit that I did, indeed, mess up big time on the dress. You won’t see any pictures of me modeling it anytime soon… but you might eventually see a pic of the dress on my nameless dress form. Even HER boobs are too big for my sorry mess of a dress.

Happy Everything!

I know I have gone for three months without any posts, but I should have lots to write about this month! For now, I’m hitting “Publish” and going to bed.  When I wake up, it will be an hour later than it should be…  I need that extra hour!  Wah.

(just editing to add that  I realized after I posted that I was actually GETTING an extra hour, and that I’m an idiot for getting all confused!)