High-Low News

The high-low skirt is coming along nicely, and definitely busted my entire stash of this particular fabric! I made it a little small for me, so it’s going to be one of the first offerings in my Etsy store next month – yay for busting stash and making progress toward a personal goal!

Game Plan, April 2013

As mentioned in my previous post, things are changing – for the better – here at Mostly Raaw Edges. I’ve got themes and goals and I want to share them with you!

This month, the theme is stash busting. For those of you who don’t craft, a stash is a collection of materials that crafters have at the ready. It sounds great, but stashes grow out of control faster than children grow up! And my fabric stash is no different.

So for April, I am joining the 2013 Stashbusting Sewalong, created by CationDesigns and EmSewCrazy. And here is my pledge:

"I, Ebi of Mostly Raaw Edges, commit to sewing only from stash fabric in April 2013, by creating projects for what I have. I commit to using at least six pieces of stash fabric this month, and buying fewer pieces of fabric than I use from my stash."

My goal in joining this challenge, besides reducing my stash, is to get over my fear of ‘ruining’ fabric, and to reduce lag time between projects.

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Next, I have a personal goal. I have been talking about opening an Etsy store for-ev-er, and finally it is time to put my money where my mouth is. My goal is to sew ten or more items by April 30, so I may open my store in May 2013. This ties nicely into the stash busting goal, because some of the fabrics in my collection are no longer very ‘me’ – but they could be very ‘you’ or ‘someone you know’!

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Finally, my professional goal. Starting up a clothing line is a monumental undertaking, but just like the pyramids were built one brick at a time, so will I build my line. I’ve finally got a decent collection of sketches, so my next hurdle is making samples of my designs to see how they look in real life. My goal this month is to make one finished and perfected sample. It may be a new design, or it may be the Peekaboo Polo Tee which debuted in February. We shall see…

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Whew! April is going to be a busy month. Better get cracking!

La Robe Paprique

I’ve got a new dress in the works!

It’s based on McCall’s pattern 5971, a pretty and simple dress with details that make it the perfect dress block for every body type to wear in every situation. I’ve made this dress twice before, making little tweaks each time. This time, I was inspired by Gertie’s version of this dress, to make the whole thing a little more fitted than my previous versions, especially in the waist and derriere.

Change up the fabric from a mid-weight woven to a sheer knit, and now you have something casual and slightly alluring; use a mid-weight knit in a bold color and wear leggings underneath, and now you have something funky and youthful. Make it in black wool and line it with silk (as I plan to, eventually) and you have the ultimate little black dress. The darts in back allow for shape over the derriere, and the box pleats in front easily cover a full belly or abdomen. The princess seams in the bodice make for a snug yet comfortable fit around the upper torso, and the sweetheart neckline is just defined enough to be sweet without being saccharine. Can you tell that I love this dress?

To finish the sleeves, I turned the edge under twice and laid ribbon on the right side of the hem as I sewed through the folds. I didn’t even cut the ribbon off the spool! I find that sewing ribbon from the spool minimizes waste. Anyway, I love the effect so much that I’m going to do the neckline and the waistband seams the same way.

The box pleat on this pattern is quite deep, as you can see in this picture. Isn’t this fabric fabulous? If I’d looked more closely at it when I bought it, I would have purchased more. I bought it almost five and a half years ago from Fabric.com, my absolute favorite online source for fabric. Now that I am sewing daily, I get to finally use the fabrics I spent years accumulating. New clothes and stash reduction! It’s exciting.

The Fabric in the Stone

“In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.” – Michelangelo

This quote from Michelangelo has inspired me for many years, as I derive a great deal of my artistic inspiration from the materials I use to create. Below are some fabrics which I’ll be working with over the next few months, and the projects which I see in them.

Office pants:


Dress pants, perhaps cuffed and pegged:


Maxi dress:


Cocktail blouse:


Simple tee (or something like that):


Frilly, girly, tank top:

They’re All Going to Laugh At You

The last time I wore shorts, I was eleven years old.

I remember that last day, and the shorts I was wearing – in fact, the whole outfit I was wearing – like it was just yesterday.

My grade was on a whale watching cruise, and the weather was gorgeous. I’d picked out one of my favorite ensembles to celebrate both the fine weather and the special day. It was a white button-up shirt and lime green shorts held up with matching suspenders. The fabric for both was a mid-weight cotton that was always wrinkled, because I didn’t know you could iron play clothes. I thought I looked pretty fabulous.

In addition to always being wrinkled, the shirt-and-shorts combo was at least a year old, maybe even eighteen months old. Given the growth surge I was experiencing at the time, wearing something so old was definitely risky as far as a proper fit was concerned. In hindsight, I probably looked ridiculous, with my long, skinny legs cascading down from the too-short lime green-and-white get up, but I definitely didn’t have the gift of hindsight then.

I was fine until I had the misfortune of catching some of my classmates laughing at me: doubled over, can’t breathe, hysterical laughing. And these were boy classmates, at a time when I was beginning to vaguely understand the importance of male/female roles and relationships. I wasn’t sure what about me was so hilarious, and desperately hoped they weren’t actually laughing at me. Paralyzed by humiliation and confusion, I was uncharacteristically silent, unable to ask what was so funny. It was the last time I wore shorts.

In fact, for many years after that, I didn’t even expose my legs. I’d wear skirts here and there for special occasions, but always with tights. In my early-mid twenties, fueled solely by liquid courage, I recall wearing bare legs under a skirt precisely two times. And then the music stopped again.

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Now I am older, wiser, and less inclined to shoulder the yoke of social acceptability. I am also drowning in fabric, especially old pieces which I bought for all the wrong reasons. One such piece, a purple and white checkered seersucker, has been on my radar for at least a year, but every project I wanted to use it for fell through. Today, I finally found its calling: shorts! Unabashedly preppy bermuda shorts, to go with my purple-on-white Nikes (another ill advised purchase, but these things happen). Perhaps I’ll pull out my sleeveless white polo shirt, to complete the prep school look I’ve always secretly admired. Stay tuned for the making of shorts, the baring of legs, and the adoption of a new look.