You're telling me!

When we pulled in yesterday one of our dear friends said, "Welcome home!" Yep, that's exactly what it felt like to drive down that familiar dirt road. It's raining and cold, but I'm a happy camper.

Rings

My wedding ring finally came in the mail yesterday!! It's a little big, so we'll have to send it back for resizing. Which is probably good anyway, cause I just want to wear it now :)



Fred's was made by Al, and mine was made by Kate.

Wedding Planning

Fred and I have ramped up our wedding planning in these past couple of weeks. Things we've recently gotten accomplished, or nearly so:

• Fred's ring! We met with an Etsy jeweler. Al was amazing, and made us feel so much better about picking the ring Fred will wear every day for the rest of forever. It just came in the mail, and we're both thrilled with it. You know it's right when you kind of just want him to wear it already.
  
• My ring! Another Etsy jeweler. She's too far away to meet with her, but I'm glad to have found her and I love the ring we've come up with. I can't wait for it to arrive.
  
• A day-of-coordinator. Someone on board who knows more about weddings than I do. And as always, a neat person who we'll be glad to have around us that day.
• A band. A totally kickin' rockabilly band, a band that wears cowboy hats and boots. My reception is made. Nuff said.
• Patterns for my sister's dress (the halter version below) and my niece's tutu. Because my sister is awesome, and nothing says joy like a 2 year old in a puffy tutu.

• Our reception location. We've had it picked and set for a while now, but we actually went to look at it again and meet with the people there. I'm even happier with it now than I was before, and it was good to put a face to the person on the other end of the phone. As much as wedding mags make the whole process feel a bit like a giant factory-produced slide show, I always feel better when I remember that ours will actually be personal.

• Napkins! My Aunt Judy and Uncle Ed came over the other weekend to help me crank a bunch out, and Judy even took a pile of fabric home to keep working on them. Last year Judy and Ed came over to help finish my sister's wedding dress in the 11th hour. Not only are they lifesavers, obviously, but I love having them around to share in the wedding process. And now my sister is going to help too!
  
• Wedding blocks, wedding website updating, etc. Not exciting, but necessary and crossed off the list. Love that.
• And finally, fabric for my dress. I picked it. It's ordered. Holy cow.
  

Progress

Slowly but surely, the pile gets bigger!



Here's a major shout out to my Aunt Judy who's been helping, and another one to my sister who promised yesterday that she'd start helping too. Thank goodness for awesome family!

Swatches

In an effort to choose a fabric for my wedding dress I ordered 17 swatches of silk from fabric.com. Everything from "iridescent mushroom," which turns out to be fairly horrid, to "iridescent majestic apricot." Let me tell you, this is a really hard decision. And my original color plan won't work as well as I had thought it would. Hmmm......

UFO's

Unfinished objects. Works in progress. Call them what you will, mine are getting out of hand. First we have the half-made green summer dress that I'm totally uninspired to finish. It's something about the rain and the low 60's temperatures. I'm still wearing jeans and a fleece most days!

Then there's the quilt that I started, um, last spring. I had actually begun quilting it by hand when I realized that I just don't have the patience for it. It was summer then too, and sitting under a quilt was not my idea of a good time. It's lived in a neglected heap ever since. Now I'm working to machine quilt it, and quickly, so I can get it done and put it to use.

And the blue silk, of course, is for a dress that I'll wear to a wedding next week. As you can see it's not moved much since the last time I mentioned it. But I'm still planning to wear it next week.

And that's not to mention the napkins for my wedding or the chair I started to reupholster (demolish) in February, or the scarf I've been knitting....... Man. Does everyone have a pile like this?

Stash

Hello, my name is Kristen, and I have a problem with hoarding fabric. It's gotten out of control. We have a traditional New England built in cabinet in our dining room, and all the drawers below it are stuffed to the gills with my fabric stash. (This would make my Dad crazy. My Mom had the exact same problem. Her fabric had taken over an entire closet! At least I know where I get it from.) There's the fabric intended for elephants. There's the fabric I got to make who knows what with that's still in there. There's the giant pile that's supposed to magically turn itself into napkins for our wedding. And then there's the leftovers. I hate throwing away the extra bits left over from various projects. Case in point? Fabric from my sister's wedding. From last April.



I ordered 30 yards of silk and made three dresses from it. Two had long trains and bell sleeves, so that used up quite a bit. But I then saved ever scrap bigger than about 6". Come on, it's dupioni silk! You can't just throw that stuff away. Well, today I've come here to tell you it was totally worth it.

Our friends, the ones I made invites for, are obviously getting married and I clearly need a new dress for the occasion. But even more than a dress, I need a new purse to carry with said dress. I'm so bad with formal purses. I own one, and it's light purple. So I found myself some super instructions, bought a purse frame, and went to work.

Step one involved re-dying my silk. My silk was originally blue and white:



Then I accidentally put them in the wash together before I made my niece's dress, and came out with blue and light blue:



I wanted the light blue to be even darker this time around, so I stuck them in the wash again. Shameless, I know. But effective.



And it from there it was simple! I used the dark blue for the purse. The lighter pieces are larger than the dark, so I set those aside to make the skirt for the dress. I'll piece together the rest of the dark blue to make the top. Pictures will come when I, uh, actually make this dress. But for a grand total of $7, I'm now the proud owner of an awesome dupioni silk clutch. And completely convinced of the merits of stashing. :)