Firefly lingo – Shiny=Good

I finally got a chance to sew this weekend, since it was so flippin hot and humid outside that I sequestered myself in the cool basement.

This fabric has been sitting around for a few years, so I decided to make a skirt out of it.  At first I thought I would do a dress, but generally shiny=show every lump and bump on your body.  I knew a dress would need to be more fitted, so a skirt it was!  I love how swingy it is when I walk.  It is a drop waist with a circle skirt, and another randomly pleated circle skirt over the top.

Then Anya needed some new swimsuits.  The poor little girl got picked on for her too small princess swimsuit on Friday, so some new ones were in order.  We looked at some swimsuits online and she was really, really wanting a bikini.  Probably because some of those older girls were wearing them.  Probably the same ones that were picking on her princesses. >:(

The blue one is the first version  and not quite tight enough around the midriff and the bottoms are too roomy.  Not quite a perfect fit.  The pink/yellow one is just about perfect…but no ruffles.  I will have to ruffle the next one, per the girl.

Then I had to make a new pair of bottoms for another suit where the top still fits, yet the bottoms have gone missing in her travels.  The top is much faded from chlorine, but at least she can wear it a bit more.

The one thing that is hard with swimsuits is that if the fabric is too slippery my machine starts skipping stitches.  You have to use a zigzag stitch on them and when it skips the zag or the zig and ends up in a straight line the thread can break easily.  I have changed my needle, and I just think my machine is sensitive.  I did end up using the serger on these a lot, due to that issue with my machine.

Hopefully I will get to sew some more this week…I have some more skorts for Anya cut out.  Oh, and I also shortened some of Kailan’s pants into shorts after he blew the knees out on them this winter.  Reuse, reuse, reuse!