Pi Dress (#nerdalert)

I have a confession to make: 

I bought 3.14 yards of this fabric. I know, I know, it's nerdy on a whole new level. 

I also used (some of) the yardage (cause 3.14 is a lot for me) to make this dress for Pi Day (March 14th):

Here's a sneak peak I posted on Instagram the day before: 

Finally putting my 3.14 yards of fabric to good use #nerdalert #sewing

A photo posted by Taft Weber-Kilpack (@taftisseamstress) on Mar 13, 2016 at 9:36pm PDT

You might be asking yourselves, "Taft, if you made this dress by mid-March, then how come it didn't make it onto your blog until late-April?"

Well, my friends, that's a question I would also love to know the answer to. 

You've all seen this pattern before (it's originally the tunic I made for my mom that I've hacked over and over again). As is standard, no two of these are the same, so on this dress...

There's a curved hem!

It's so cute and sporty, I absolutely love it. Unfortunately, I made it a *little* too short, but there is definitely a longer one of these in my future!

I also got hella lucky at Fabric Outlet and found burgundy fabric that matched the pi symbols perfectly. I used it for contrast sleeves. I originally wanted to do raglan sleeves because I thought it would look better, but I ran out of time before Pi Day :(. 

Sorry about the weird yellow-ish light in these pictures. I took them at a weird time of day when the natural light was not at its best in my dining room. 

I'll let y'all know what other nerdy things I make with this fabric. 

-Taft WK

Wooden Bowl with Triangles

This semester I'm taking a Joinery and Turning class in the Wood Shop. For my turning project, I decided to make a bowl that could sit on my shelf to hold my jewelry and other doodads. 

I didn't want to make a plain bowl, so I decided to experiment with some triangles and see what happened. I made a mock-up first (forgot to get pictures, whoops!), but here's some photos of the final process:

I started by cutting out triangular prisms and gluing them together. The woods I used were poplar and walnut. 

Then I sandwiched the triangles between more pieces of wood. After the glue dried, I cut the block into a cylinder on the bandsaw. 

Then it was to the lathe! I started by rounding the outside, then started hollowing out the inside. When I got down to the triangle layer, these really cool patterns started emerging on the inside.  

The triangles on the outside rounded out on the sides, there's more pictures of these later. 

Here's the inside as I worked through the triangle layer. 

Then I got to the last layer of poplar. 

After that, it was mostly touch-ups and then sanding. When I put the beeswax on the bowl, it got a beautiful shine. 

You also might have seen the video I posted on Instagram last week:

#woodworking

A video posted by Taft Weber-Kilpack (@taftisseamstress) on Apr 5, 2016 at 3:27pm PDT

And here's the super nice photos I took in the photo room: 

I burned my name and the year into the bottom of the bowl, too. 

Stay tuned for more posts about shop projects!

-Taft WK