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Mar. 16th, 2008 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sillygoosegirlWell, Josh chickened out on the meetup hike thing, and with 10 minutes to mentally prepare myself for going and meeting random people off the internet by myself, I chickened out too. However, we decided to work on the bookcase instead, so it's all good. We started by reassembling it without glue. I'm not sure it's actually been assembled since last summer when we took it apart to stain it. It was seriously warped, and took something like an hour and a half to get it all put back together, with a good deal of arguing along the way. It's now assembled with clamps holding everything just so. We're wondering how long we should leave it assembled (in the hopes it learns what shape it should be and gets back to it easier), or just take it apart and glue it today, because who knows how many more months it could be if we don't do it now? Anyway, I think we're going to go the today route. Because there's no time like the present.
But before we get to that, Josh is taking a break to save the world. We set the timer for 1 hour, and amazingly enough, I got the entire interweb read in that time. So I went and pressed the new hem on the pant legs of the first suit I got altered. I now have the suit on in the hopes Josh will take a picture of me in it when he is done saving the world. I added as much length to the pant legs as I possibly could (about 1 inch), and I think they could use a bit more still... but I think they are now safely into the range "about right" or at least the range of "close enough". But yeah, if I had an unlimited amount of fabric to work with, they'd probably have yet another 1/2 inch to inch. So there you go. The dark lilac suit is good to go. All told, this suit cost me $10 + maybe 1 hour of work (spread across more like 3 hours because I tried to do it while watching Heroes).
Next up, and probably not for this break, the beige suit. The beige suit jacket is snug, but okay. The beige suit skirt will close, but only if I don't mind not breathing while I have it on... it needs another 1-2 inches around the waist. I've taken off the waist band already, and I think I'll be making the skirt bigger by letting out all 4 darts by around 3/8 of an inch each (adding about 1.5 inches around the waist). Waist bands are not strictly required for skirts, and the jacket of course covers up that part while I'm wearing the jacket... but it would be nice if the skirt was appropriately formal even without the jacket. So I'm thinking that since the waist band had about 1.5 inches of overlap (to allow the button to work, I can change the waist band to instead have a mock button and button hole (I can't get rid of the button hole, but I can sew it closed to avoid any peek-a-boo problems and sew the button on top so it looks like it was closed with a button), and use some little hook and eyes to close the waist band with little to no overlap. Since I'm enlarging the body of the skirt just by making the darts smaller, I wont even have to mess with the zipper, so that makes me happy. However, all this is a little bit intimidating. I'm guessing this suit will run more like $10 + 4 hours of work.
Finally, there is the black suit, which is a little big pretty much everywhere. It is also the most comfortable of all 4 I purchased, but needs by far the most alteration to look good. I'm thinking I will make the back seams (the ones on either side of the back of the jacket) a little bigger, and then make it double-breasted in the front. The pants need to be taken in a little at the waist, and then I think they may also need to have the cuffs hemmed a bit shorter. This suit was also $10 at good will, but I think could have a significant amount of work required.
But before we get to that, Josh is taking a break to save the world. We set the timer for 1 hour, and amazingly enough, I got the entire interweb read in that time. So I went and pressed the new hem on the pant legs of the first suit I got altered. I now have the suit on in the hopes Josh will take a picture of me in it when he is done saving the world. I added as much length to the pant legs as I possibly could (about 1 inch), and I think they could use a bit more still... but I think they are now safely into the range "about right" or at least the range of "close enough". But yeah, if I had an unlimited amount of fabric to work with, they'd probably have yet another 1/2 inch to inch. So there you go. The dark lilac suit is good to go. All told, this suit cost me $10 + maybe 1 hour of work (spread across more like 3 hours because I tried to do it while watching Heroes).
Next up, and probably not for this break, the beige suit. The beige suit jacket is snug, but okay. The beige suit skirt will close, but only if I don't mind not breathing while I have it on... it needs another 1-2 inches around the waist. I've taken off the waist band already, and I think I'll be making the skirt bigger by letting out all 4 darts by around 3/8 of an inch each (adding about 1.5 inches around the waist). Waist bands are not strictly required for skirts, and the jacket of course covers up that part while I'm wearing the jacket... but it would be nice if the skirt was appropriately formal even without the jacket. So I'm thinking that since the waist band had about 1.5 inches of overlap (to allow the button to work, I can change the waist band to instead have a mock button and button hole (I can't get rid of the button hole, but I can sew it closed to avoid any peek-a-boo problems and sew the button on top so it looks like it was closed with a button), and use some little hook and eyes to close the waist band with little to no overlap. Since I'm enlarging the body of the skirt just by making the darts smaller, I wont even have to mess with the zipper, so that makes me happy. However, all this is a little bit intimidating. I'm guessing this suit will run more like $10 + 4 hours of work.
Finally, there is the black suit, which is a little big pretty much everywhere. It is also the most comfortable of all 4 I purchased, but needs by far the most alteration to look good. I'm thinking I will make the back seams (the ones on either side of the back of the jacket) a little bigger, and then make it double-breasted in the front. The pants need to be taken in a little at the waist, and then I think they may also need to have the cuffs hemmed a bit shorter. This suit was also $10 at good will, but I think could have a significant amount of work required.
