Utility Skirts!

Long time, no update, I know, but things have been rather crazy here. I've been bouncing from sick to not sick to a different kind of sick, so sewing has really gotten a little lax. Not to mention, we have just about finished remodeling yet another part of our basement for me to expand my sewing studio, so I have been working to keep things sorted in the transitional period until it is all completed.

That said, another angst was that the silk noil I use for my Utility Skirts was on backorder for a very long time. Unfortunately, while silk noil is easy to find online, it is exceptionally expensive, and as it takes approximately 5 yards to make one skirt, if I were to order it anywhere else, I would have to charge even more to create the skirts than I already do. Which is something I would really prefer not to do, if at all possible. I had used up all the silk I had on hand for one custom made piece, which I'll have to ramble about in a moment...

However, a pleasant surprise awaited me last Friday - a box! A rather large box, at that. And, inside, was my last back-order of silk! Enough to make only two skirts, true, but that was what I had on order, so I was really happy and quite giddy. Called them and found out that yes, indeed, they had gotten all of their supply, too, and would be able to keep offering the noil for sale.

I am so happy!

So, I created two more Utility Skirts over the weekend, which will be up on Etsy as soon as I sort out my other problem.

As some of you may remember, I worked on a production at a local High School that my husband teaches at as the costume designer. It was hard work (and I still get a little dizzy thinking about how much work went into those dresses!), but I had loaned my main non-industrial machine to the students who made up the costume crew to use. Well, they broke it, which isn't too big of a deal, since the school agreed to fix it for me.

Now, I am really miffed. I haven't really used that machine much since it was fixed - I rely mostly on my industrial straight, as it is insanely fast - except for a few little things like buttonholes.

I bet you can see where this is going.

I go to use it the other day, and for some reason it feels like a belt is sticking. No big deal, I figure it's a new belt, and needs to just be run through a bit to get it stretched and whatnot. Well, it finally starts working decently... until I try to do a zig-zag (one of those vital stitches for creating buttonholes *sigh*) and nothing is catching. I test it out for about an hour, trying different settings, and the machine starts going slower and slower, and then speeding up again.

I have no idea what actually is wrong, but I know it's not working, and that is causing a huge pain in my ass, as all I have left to do on all of these utility skirts is the damned buttonholes on the ties! And, seeing as each set of ties requires 8 buttonholes, I'm sure you can see how much of a pain this really is.

So, no idea when that machine is going to be fixed, and I'm dreading the bill - since I didn't notice the issue within 30 days of the repair (since I don't use it all that often...) I'm probably going to have to pay for their shoddy work. Unfortunately, it's the only repair place in the area, and, after consulting with a few sewing friends who have had to have work done on their machines, the quality of the work there has just started going down the toilet. Depressing, since they used to be just plain awesome.

Anywho, that's what's been going on with me lately! Also, Etsy orders have been rather crazy thanks to Halloween coming up, which is always nice. We're looking at some holiday art shows, but who knows how that will go. Just going to keep on putting one foot in front of the other and see what happens.