Finished: Colette Patterns' Meringue Skirt

I finally finished the Meringue Skirt! The muslin took way longer than the actual skirt took. Partially, I think, because I already knew what I was doing the second time, and I wasn't really procrastinating as much on it as I was with the muslin. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly I was afraid of with the muslin.

I know that half of the fun of finished projects is seeing them modeled, but...

I don't have a full length mirror to take selfies in, and I feel really narcissistic asking my husband to take pictures of me.

Alterations: I hacked off two inches in the length because I'm a petite, and I wanted the skirt to fall just above my knees, not below. Overall, I'm happy with the skirt and I wore it right away on a walk around the neighborhood with my husband. I am looking forward to pairing it with a butter yellow top that I have to bring out the yellow in the skirt, but that top is in the wash right now. :)

I should have taken in the waist a couple inches as well, but since I'm really new to this, I didn't feel confident in making that kind of an alteration. So instead of it sitting on my waist like it should, it comes down around my hips, which suits me just fine because that's where I wear my pants. Being a petite, high waisted things on me make me look shorter in the torso. I feel like Urkel. This means that those two inches I took out in the length pretty much mean nothing. In the models, the skirt falls a couple inches above the knee. On me, the bottom of the scallops hit just below my knee. But at least it's not that awkward few-inches-below-the-knee length that looks like it's supposed to be mid-shin but it's not...like it would have been had I not taken out the length.

To me, this skirt looks way bigger than what it is, but honestly, I know I have some body issues. I weigh more than I would like, and my shapes are not where I want them to be, but in my head, my body image is slimmer than what I really am.

The next pattern in the book is the Pastille dress, but if I'm really this big, and I google the dress and see others of my body type that have made it, I'm not happy with the results. I bought a really nice fabric, and I don't want to "waste" it on making something that I'm not going to love, all because I'm bigger than I would like to be.

For the record, this is not me being unhappy with the social standard of what I should look like vs what I really do. This is me being unhappy with the way I look because I know how I have looked in the past...and I want that back. I was a healthy size 4 (off the rack) at one point. I still jiggled in places, so fear not, I was not anorexic. Bacon cheese fries are far too delicious for that. Now, I'm a size 10. I can get into a size 8 pair of petite skinny jeans (I tried this past weekend) and they fit, but they don't make me feel comfortable with myself, and I know that if I were to have sat down in them, I'd have that doughnut tummy going on.

So for now, I'm going to stick to sewing skirts and keep working on my body until it's more where I want it to be. Shopping is great for pulling out your imperfections, especially in ready to wear. Every time I go shopping and am really honest with how clothing falls on me, I get really depressed. This time though, I knew what it was going to be like going into the "experience" and I feel that I'm coming at the issue from a much more mentally healthy standpoint.

I'm almost 100% sure that I have sewing to thank for that. Sewing sizes run much larger than ready to wear. I cut the skirt pattern from a size 14 based on my largest measurement, which is my hips (thanks to two children).

So my whole thing about sewing the entire Colette Patterns book will have to wait. I'm incredibly unfit and lose my breath easily. So while I build up to that, and slim down in the process, skirts it is! ... and loose dresses because Myrtle looks pretty amazing, even on the bigger model!

Shut up, Mom. You know why.

Finding Value

I've struggled for a long time to try and find a unifying theme for my blog so that it becomes something of value, rather than a place where I post the stuff that I make that no one really wants to see anyway. It seems to me that all of the blogs that I love to read are about something, whether it's knitting, cooking, photography, sewing, etc. They've all got that one thing that holds them together. The problem with doing that for my blog is that I am interested in far too much, and I go through my interests in phases. If I had a blog about ceramics and pottery, it will have been dead since 2004.

I love to create things, and I'm finding that it doesn't matter what medium it is, I will try it a few times and see if it's for me. Most of the time, I really enjoy the activity, but sometimes, I could really do without it. Recently, I swore off of quilting. I love looking at them, feeling them, and being in awe of some really amazing work, but I don't have the patience for piecing tiny stuff together...and all that math! I love me some geometry, but not that much. It's just an aspect of sewing that I can do without...happily. The same goes for crochet. I love making tiny little crocheted dolls and amigurumi, and I love how quickly the projects go when compared to knitting, but I do not like the fabric that crocheted stitches create. It's lumpy and bumpy, and any color changes in the yarn turn into camouflage in crocheted items. The sample picture on my crocheted dishcloth pattern is a perfect example.

So really, the unifying theme of this blog is me. Every day I wake up to my kids, either Goosie laying her head on my chest, or kissing my face (which sounds sweet, but I assure you it's at the most obnoxious hour of the morning, and I am not a morning person) or to both Goosie and Bug yelling at each other in some asinine argument that I can't make heads or tails of. Usually, it's just "Yes!" "No!" "I said 'yes!'" "Well, I said 'no!'"...and so on until I find the strength inside me to let them know that I am awake and yell, "SHUT UP!"

And then of course they know I'm awake, and both come barreling into my bedroom (thank God I don't sleep naked) to complain about the argument or that they're hungry, thirsty, bored, etc. and I'm still bleary-eyed and barely conscious.

Most of my days feel like a fight between being Mom and being myself. I struggle constantly with being who I want to be, and being who society tells me I should be. Maybe it's just my old fashioned way of thinking, but I'd really love to consistently have purple, or blue, or pink, or some other bright color of fun in my hair, but I don't because moms don't have fun hair. Moms wear God-awful jeans up to their armpits, Bermuda shorts that are too big, carry around an endless supply of tissues and bandaids, and ugh! I don't want to be a badly dressed mom-supply vending machine.

I do love my kids to tiny little pieces, but there are (many) days where I wonder if I should have ever birthed them. I'm not sure if at the end of it all, I have what it takes to see this motherhood thing through. They're 9 and 4 and I am looking forward to the days where they shut themselves in their room, blast whatever garbage they call music too loud, and they leave me alone.

And then I feel terrible for thinking these things. The Pinterest Moms are certainly going to come after me and scoff at me and judge me, because don't I know how lucky I am? Don't I know there are hundreds of women out there who can't have children, and I am just so blessed with two??? Don't I just want to scoop them up and make my whole life orbit around their every little desire?

This is why I had the "No kids after 30" rule. Because that sounds absolutely horrible to me. I don't want to lose myself in order to cater to these poopy little crooks! I swear the word that gets the most use in my vocabulary is "stop."

I hope we get a good school system when we're done being stationed in California, because I want to send Bug back to public school. I want to have confidence that Goosie will have a good start in Kindergarten and that they Army keeps their word on not moving people from station to station once a year, and sticks to the once every four years at a minimum. I cannot wait to have all my days filled with silence and doing whatever the hell I want.

So there's my unification. That's why I changed the name of the blog. I am more than just their mom. And I will claw at the sides of every box that people try to put me in like a feral cat with rabies. They are not my life.