Pleated Marble Dress

Another wedding season means more dresses! I was determined to sew at least one new dress this year, especially since I had such success with my first party dress.

I still feel most confident sewing with cotton, so I made a quick trip to the workroom and picked up a beautiful pale sage marbled print by Princess Mirah Batiks.

I was inspired by this beautiful pleated strapless dress by BCBG and decided to modify the Mary Adams pattern to have a fitted pleated dress.

Modifying dress patterns is hard! There's a lot of math to get everything to fit just right. I knew I wanted to create the pleated detail, add pockets, and even try to mimic the peekaboo lining.

I think I was quite successful in achieving all three details. The difficulty with a cotton dress is that it tends to wrinkle, and doesn't fall or drape as nicely as a more silky fabric.  I think I should have made the lining out of a different fabric so it didn't stick to the cotton dress as much.

In the end, dress number 2 from Mary Adam's dress book was still great.  It's such a great pattern that can be used over and over with slight modifications (but not without a little headache)!

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Bumbleberry Jam

A couple weeks ago, Dustin and I went to Downey's Farm to do some strawberry picking. I wasn't planning on blogging about our berry picking, or the first batch of strawberry jam I made using Ina's recipe, but after a little twist of fate, here is a blog post about jam.

I was first going to name this post "Freezer Jam" but that would be misleading. The term "Freezer Jam" refers to jams that are stored in containers that weren't sterilized for shelf life; you just keep the jam in the freezer.

The jam I want to share about involves all the berries in my freezer. The ones that I had been saving for a pie, maybe another batch of jam, maybe a milkshake. But as it turns out, Dustin and I left our freezer door just a teensy bit ajar and then left for a week of vacation.

We returned home to a melted freezer.  Some items were beyond saving, but the soggy mess of berries were still a little chilled.

It was time to make jam.

In total, I had about 6 cups of strawberries, three cups of Saskatoon berries, and about two cups of cranberries. I added a finely diced apple for pectin, a squirt of lemon juice and about 4 cups of sugar. A low rolling boil until 220 degrees Fahrenheit and voila! Jam!

I guess that makes this a bumbleberry jam.  I've only heard the term (meaning "mixed berry") used for pies, but I don't see why we can't use it for jam.

The jam was quite delicious. Deliciously tart. Perhaps it would be a good mix for a tart. With whipped cream. I bet this would be a delicious topping for a cheesecake as well.

So that's my story of leaving the freezer door ajar, and making a jar of jam.

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