the red carpet

 ^^ We went to a faaaabulous "red carpet" event at BYU's Museum of Art. It was fun to dress up for the museum's new exhibit Costume and the Cinema. There were beautiful costumes from movies like Phantom of the Opera, Sherlock Holmes, and Pirates of the Caribbean. If you're in Utah, you should totally go, especially because it's FREE. And it was fun to go with my smokin' hot sister and her date! ^^

diy t-shirt tutorial

 I posted these pictures on Instagram and had a few friends ask how I made these two shirts. I tried to make a tutorial for the t-shirt and it's probably more confusing than helpful. Sorry I don't have a pattern. And for the jacket thing, I would just recommend buying a robe pattern and adjusting the lengths.

T-shirt (XS-S)

Materials

3/4 yard of printed fabric

2 feet solid fabric

(I recommend lycra or jersey knit. I don't have a surger and these fabrics make life easier.)

1. The trickiest part of the t-shirt is the one I can't help you with: making the actual pattern. I used a t-shirt I like and traced it onto a sheet of parchment paper. I cut it out 1/2" bigger than the trace line for my seam.

2. Cut out your print fabric using your pattern. Set it aside.

3. I was too lazy to make a whole separate pattern for this next piece, so I just used the same one and folded it over. Measuring 3" down from the lowest part of the neckline, make a crease all the way along your pattern. Cut out the shoulders, arms, and neckline, and cut 1/2" below your creased pattern (for the seam).

4. For the sleeves, cut out two pieces measuring 14"x 4".

5. For the other half of your front piece, use the same crease from the top section and cut the bottom half out with your solid fabric. Don't forget the 1/2" at the top for the seam.

Now you have 5 pieces: front top half, front bottom half, back, and two sleeves.

6. Sew a hem along each neckline. Mine look like crap because I really have no idea what I'm doing (as you are probably figuring out).

7. With right sides together, sew the two front pieces together. (Does anyone else keep thinking of Arrested Development every time I say "front piece"?)

8. With right sides together, sew JUST the shoulders of the front and back pieces together. (See where I pinned.)

9. Open it up and lie it down right-side-up.

10. Fold one sleeve piece in half lengthwise. Pin it to the sleeve opening of your shirt, making sure the sleeve is seam-side-in with the raw edges on the outside. Sew the sleeve to the shirt body. Repeat for the other side.

11. Turn the shirt inside-out with right sides together. Sew each of the sleeves and sides together, starting at the sleeve and going down. (See where I pinned.)

12. Sew a hemline along the bottom of the shirt.

That's it! Too confusing? Leave a comment with any questions, or just text me if you have my number.

twinners, again

Despite living all the way across the country from each other, my sister and I have close to identical wardrobes. And we always seem to wear the same clothes at the same time. (Actually, our husbands have pretty similar clothes, too, as we all wore the exact same thing to church here.) Gotta love sisters!

isn't that pinteresting?

 I can't wait for fall fashion. I've been consuming Vogue's "September Issue" like it's candy.

 Genius garden idea for apartments! 

 Oh, my. Baby Girl must have this doll.

 I'm dying. It's like Tangled in real life!

 Crock-Pot Baked Apples. Recipe here.

I'm thinking this hair color for the fall. Yes, no?

golden apple

Ladies! I've started a jewelry business called Golden Apple that I'm about to launch on Etsy. Here's a sneak peak of some of the jewelry I'll be selling:
www.shopgoldenapple.etsy.com

Fashion Books for Summer Reading

I came across this Vogue article at stlye.com and loved it. For all you fashion gurus, here's a few books you should add to your summer reading list:

The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie (Knopf Canada, $26)

Florence was a bit off the beaten path for womenswear, but Diane von Furstenberg still chose the Tuscan capital, where her wrap dress was born, to hold her show. It put us into a Medici state of mind—which got us thinking about the latest offering from Salman Rushdie. On the short list for the Man Booker Prize, The Enchantress wends its way from Renaissance Italy to the court of Mughal emperor Akbar, and with its fantastical-historical blend of romance and globe-trotting exotica, it just might be 2008's perfect beach read.

The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell (Faber and Faber, $14)

Gilt-trimmed gowns for latter-day Cleopatras—you know, like J. Lo and Sienna—were on order at Marchesa. Fast-forward a couple millennia and Egypt has lost none of its allure…as proven by Lawrence Durrell's much-loved tetralogy. The four books (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea) detail interlocking accounts of a love affair, and Durrell so vividly conjures the North African metropolis circa the 1940's that your body might be plodding along the L.I.E. on the Hampton Jitney, but your spirit will be soaring to the souk.

740 Park Avenue, Michael Gross (Broadway Books, $16.95)The Official Filthy Rich Handbook, Christopher Tennant (Workman Publishing, $11.95)
Richistan, Robert Frank (Crown, $24.95)

How do the women who live in Oscar de la Renta live? For a fascinating look into the Black Card and Clyde yacht world of zip code 10021, this trio of books offers a little of everything: Gross' gossipy account of the building that has housed Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, Bronfmans and Schwarzmans; Frank's look at the emotional complexities of new wealth; and Tennant's so-ironic-it-hurts primer, which spells out the secrets of the Upper East Side with annotated photographs.


The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and Her Granddaughter's Search for Home, Bibi Gaston (William Morrow, $26.95)
The Unexpurgated Beaton: The Cecil Beaton Diaries as He Wrote Them, 1970-1980, Cecil Beaton (Knopf, $35)

Beaton's coolly flawless portraits might have been the spark for Erin Fetherston's tableaux vivants installed at Van Cleef & Arpels. That perfect surfaces can be deceiving is one of the points driven home in The Loveliest Woman, the sad story of a onetime debutante named Rosamond Pinchot Gaston, who was on intimate terms with "on tops" like Elizabeth Arden and David O. Selznick: She was "discovered" onboard a liner on the way home from France and seemed to be living a fairy tale…until her suicide at the age of 33. Less tragic, and ripe with gossip of the bon ton, whom he so ardently courted, are Beaton's own notoriously catty, and evergreen, diaries.

Three models in candy-colored dresses, shot by Cecil Beaton in 1948.

To read the full article, click here.