This past month has been full of re-writes and sewing projects; while I haven't heard back from the various folks who have the re-written novel bits just yet, I'm fairly confident in them. They probably need polishing, as first drafts of anything usually do, even random bits of new in the middle of lots of has-been-edited-80-times, but I think they make the book better overall. I now have vampires that don't feel so tacked on, further illustration of Darren's abilities and what exactly the vow of Wardenship does, and a tiny little bit of character development for the vampire formly known as Claudia - I've re-named her. She's Lydia now (just as of today, actually, so that'll be news even to the people who have the re-writes). And all of the above, when combined, make this fictional supernatural world that I'm building a little bit more ominous - which is good. So generally, I feel accomplished about this.

In the way of sewing, my most ambitious project was a winter coat. It's finished, sort of, but I'm not entirely satisfied with it. I wanted it to close in the front with these pretty pewter-looking clasps, but after a few weeks of use, I'm not sure I'm sold on their practicality. I sort of want a zipper, just for convenience. But a zipper would just look so much less cool. I'm still waffling on this. It'd be easy enough to go back and put in a zipper instead, but it'd make the coat not nearly as nifty.

Also, the cuffs are huge. This is owing in large part to the sewing machine on which the coat was made - the cuffs, to get sewn, had to be able to fit around the . . . part of the machine where the bobbin goes? I'm unsure of its official name, but it's significantly wider than my wrist. I'm debating on ways to fix this still.

So the coat is in use, but it's not really quite finished, so I'm not posting any pictures just yet. I'll post pictures when I have a truly final version of the coat to photograph.

Also, I've been making skirts from curtains.

This is an idea that had occurred to me some time ago, but at the time, I'd been thinking mostly of buying fancy curtains and making fancy dresses, and I have a number of fancy dresses already and very few occasions for wearing them, so this possibility was never explored. Last week, though, I was in the Linens & Things (which is closing down - the entire chain, apparently) buying some flannel sheets, when I saw a very pretty one-panel curtain package, in a floral pattern, at a very clearance-like price, and thought, hrmm . . . that'd make a pretty skirt.

And it did make a pretty skirt, and I was so amused by the idea of having all the many truly nifty fabrics used for curtains available to me for much, much cheaper than the home decor fabrics are sold at the fabric store ($20/yard and up, mostly - a bit out of my budget), that I went out and bought two more on-sale curtains. The one was a really gorgeous red silk that was so cheap I figured it was worth getting even if I don't have a particular use for a red silk dress at the moment - something will come up eventually, and I'll never see red silk for roughly $3/yard again in my life, I'm sure. The other was a sort of jacquard chenille tapestry-ish thingie, which I though would make a nice winter-weight skirt. It did.

The skirts: