New dress and new pants!

Hope everyone has had a great weekend!

My folks were in town this weekend and we had a great time. And a productive time! Daughter-person picked up her viola, which was very exciting, and a little terrifying, and a little ear-grating (for now anyway):

Also, since my parents own an antique mall, we went to a little crafts and collectibles place here in town. I love, love, love looking at vintage clothes, but I almost never look too closely because I almost never find vintage clothes that are remotely my size. But!! A particularly groovy little number caught my eye and as I peered closer, the tag somehow, amazingly, read my size. And the price?

Oh my friends. 

The price was $9.99. 

So I bought that bitch. And to my incredibly happy surprise:

It fit like a glove!! Now I have a fabulous new vintage dress that can be worn to work, out on a date, or really anywhere. I'm shocked! I don't have to do a thing to it! Thrilled. To. Death. 

But this blog isn't about new (to me) clothes that fit perfectly already. This blog is about handmade hell spawn! And here is my Thing I Made for the day.

Say hello to my $1 black trousers:

Purchased years ago at Goodwill because they were comfortable and fit my waist pretty well. 

But ugh...

Those legs! Hips are too wide, the hourglass shape is too dated, and overall they are embarrassingly short. They just look awful on me. 

Earlier today I was browsing the Old Navy website and came across these beauts:

I've always been a little nervous about skinny pants because, well, they're so skinny. But skinny pants are EVERYWHERE. I can't ignore them anymore. So I might as well give them a try. But I'll be damned if I'm gonna spend $35 on a pair of pants I'm not even sure I'm gonna like. So, using a combination of tutorials I found on the wonderful wide interwebs, I decided to make my own out of Captain Tacky-Pants up there...

And here they are!

I'm pretty thrilled with them actually. They feel great, like I could just as easily wear them around the house as I could wear them to work. They will be wildly useful come fall, which if this weekend's bizarre cold snap is any indication (it got down to the low 60s today!), we are going to have a good and long autumn this year. 

Anyway, enough about the weather. These pants might look fine, but they were well and truly a pain in the ass. So, if you want to give it a try yourself, here are my top tips for tapering your own pants:

1) If the pants have a megaflare like mine did, you'll need to pin them on both sides while you're sizing them. Otherwise your seams will be way uneven. 

2) It probably won't be exactly right the first time. But if you must err, err on the side of too big rather than too small. If you sew them too small (like I did a couple times), you'll need to pick out the bad seam, which can take a lot of time. 

3) Give yourself a couple hours. There will be a lot of trying on and repinning and I got really sick of it. It was through dogged determination alone that I actually finished this project. 

4) Get a pal to help you pin the new seams. Pinning them myself was hard, painful, and probably led to all of my wrong seams. 

I kinda can't wait to incorporate these new skinny pants into my wardrobe! I'm rather proud of the Thing I've Made. 

The week is beginning! Hang in there everyone...