#i don't want to darken it per se just get it less periwinkle-y purple-y

[dinosaurcharcuterie]

The Vacation Indecision Project continues!

Got a late start today, because one of our dogs decided the way I wasn't going to work on a Monday was suspicious and reason to act anxious, and absolutely nothing I did would convince him I wouldn't be abandoning him forever. It's been literal months since he had an anxiety day that bad. To make matters worse, I eventually did have to leave the house for mockup fabric groceries and medication.

But I finally did get behind the craft table, metamizole tablets gratefully replenished, and started sewing together things I pinned yesterday.

For, y'know. 45 minutes. Then there were another 35 minutes spent at the overlocker, finishing all the edges of this fabric that is absolutely stable until it decides to dissolve when you look at it wrong. I've made a paneled circle skirt in this stuff before. Fool me once, and all that. Also, I've never sewn this before, there's some techniques I don't do a lot, so I'm just finishing all the edges while everything is flat and relatively simple shapes, so I don't have to do geometry while panicking later. It's worth the extra thread it uses.

But, as we all know, most of the time in a sewing project is not spent sewing if you're doing it by machine. Most of my sewing skills come down to skimming the instructions for how much stuff can be done before I have to start ironing. Trendy YouTubers call this "batch working" instead of "putting of the inevitable".

And after all that, the pile to be pinned is... Smaller that yesterday. Some bits are as done as they'll be before being joined, others are waiting on bits and bobs to be fenagled before they can be used at all.

The only thing that needs much more work is the waist tie and the ruffle. I decided to work on the one that isn't 4 m long first. If you iron something well enough, you can sometimes get away with not pinning it. And many thanks to Quiltbr for teaching me that you want to use diagonal seams when piecing long, skinny bits that are going to be folded and run under a sewing machine.

Put in the pockets, leaving the iron on for the little bits of pressing needed for this. Then I noticed I could already put in the wrist plackets if I wanted to. Have I ever put in a placket? No, I just make potato dresses and shove in an elastic over the butt seam so they hang nicer. But how hard could it be?

Half an hour later, covered in an admirable amount of nervous sweat, I had managed to put these two miniscule little [undeserved expletive deleted] without needing to rip anything out, or introducing puckers, or having them be hugely uneven. I only nearly burned my fingers. Three times.

To come down from that adventure, I figured I could finish the raw edges of that frill. All 4+ meters of it. Twice, because there's two sides. And join it in the middle. And, seeing that the night light is on again, use my last two frazzled brain cells to mark the center points of it. And the quarter points. Actually, make that 8ths.

... I'm gonna have to do so much gathering tomorrow, and I'm already trying to negotiate it to pleats instead.

Oh well. We went from 33 pattern pieces at 7 pm to 17 right now, which feels admirable enough.