One man's trash.....

I have mentioned before that when people know you sew, they give you stuff. My score this time is a copy of "Preschool Clothes" by Enid Gilchrist, originally published in 1951 I believe. She published a number of sewing books for children in Australia from the fifties to seventies, showing how to draft the styles. Naturally this is of HUGE interest to me and I was given this one today, a bit battered and minus its cover but otherwise complete. Worthless to most people, priceless to me.

Check out the undies!

Basic frock and how to turn it into a princess style.....

And this made my jaw drop - a three piece sleeve on a coat for a toddler! I feel honour bound to give that a go...

I love old drafting books. You can learn so much from them!

And today's parting shot - a peek at my latest Alabama Chanin corset top, the one for my sister. I removed the paper from one of the roses and snipped out the centres of the shapes so I could check that it's working as I expected. It is.

Will I ever tire of Alabama Chanin techniques? Unlikely.

Bartering

I have been bartering my sewing services for things I want or need for almost as long as I've been sewing. I love the idea of trading expertise I have for expertise I lack! (which reminds me, I owe my friend with the embroidery machine a pattern from ages ago - yikes that's slack!) In this instance it was a way of getting something I really really wanted but didn't need. (With five children there is always someone who needs something more than I do.)

My younger sister asked if I could make a jacket for her and two friends to give another friend who had recently had her first child. They wanted to give her something special, custom made. Which led straight to me. This is the jacket whose hood was giving me a headache a couple of weeks ago. Size two, modelled very willingly by Nicholas. Aged three years, nine months.

The recipient has one English parent, one Kiwi.

And this is what I asked for in return.

I've been through it cover to cover several times since she gave it to me last night. I love everything about Alabama Chanin, from the design aesthetic right through the simple but time consuming techniques and on to the championing of sustainable living. I have never been a designer groupie, but I love Natalie Chanin. If I ever win the lottery I'm going to Florence Alabama for a workshop. Or twelve.

Anyway, I have fabric already for a dress, but have much musing to do over it's embellishment before I start. I also have to finish this.

Yep, doing another one. This one is for my younger sister (the same one I bartered with for the book). She has always really admired the corset tops I've made for myself, and wondered whether she would be able to make one herself. Which she would, but I offered to make her one. There is a very very VERY short list of people for whom I would spend this amount of time and she is right at the top, for a lifetime (well, after we got to our teens and stopped fighting) of generosity and generally being great. I joked to her last night that I was so desperate to make another one (I love the process that much) that I'd almost have paid her to let me make one!

She chose this petrol blue (I laughed my head off when I saw it because I chose the exact same colour the same day for my dress-to-be!) with a white underlayer. Because there wasn't to be any painting I figured that the easiest way to mark the roses on this dark colour was going to be good old stitch through a tracing then pull out the paper.

And in parting, a shot of Nicholas proudly showing the lining of his jacket. (Which I originally made for Cayden!) He is obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine and despite wearing this jacket last year only just noticed the lining a couple of weeks ago. Now he does this to anyone who gets close enough.

And because my twins now each have to do anything potentially fun looking that the other does, Isabella wanted a shot of her coat lining too.

Twins are funny.

So, I made a quilt.

I love my fortnightly craft get togethers for many reasons. One is that while there is considerable overlap in our interests, everyone has a different speciality. Michelle is our resident quilt nut. And she made us all do a mystery quilt along. Most of us had never made a quilt before. I am the only one who has finished, quilted (yay for Michelle's quilting machine - that thing is FUN!) and bound my quilt. I may have mentioned this once or twice. Per evening. But Michelle pointed out that I haven't actually blogged it. How remiss of me to miss a chance to show it off! So here it is, my very first quilt.


Since it was a mystery quilt we didn't know what it was going to look like till it was done. Had I known I'd have planned my layout very carefully. Because that's how I do things. (Ask anyone who knows me.) I love my quilt, but the whole mystery aspect is not for me - I like everything just so. (Hence my blog name, also everything just sew because I sew e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.) What I did love was doing it as a group - it was enormously fun all together, mostly b****ing at Michelle for making us do it in the first place! And her quilting machine makes me want to get seriously into quilting just so I can get one.

Speaking of the quilting, here's a closer look at some of mine.

Those are supposed to be spirals. And round. I was very good at square spirals as it turned out!My perfectionist streak went out the window the second I began quilting because I knew it would take me years to get it perfect, and also because I want it to look like my first quilt. Yep, nailed the "first ever quilt' look.

I did like my flowers though. (It's easier to see them on the back.)

So there you are Michelle, just for you. Thanks for the help/advice/laughs/use of your quilting machine/admonitions to "think round".

Measure twice, cut HOW many times?

My sister and a couple of her friends commissioned me to make a jean style jacket for another friend's new baby. They wanted a size two (to grow into), and for it to have a hood so you'd see some of the very cute lining they'd chosen. No problem I said, and began by drafting a hood from Aldrich and using that as a guide to graft on the hood from Jalie 2795, which I really like.

I was not happy with the height of my draft, and added height to the Jalie hood. Fortunately I have a pretty good size two fit model at hand and he was most obliging in modelling for me and allowing me to photograph the results as I tweaked the pattern.

Here's toile #3, mostly covers his head, but still pulling up the back and not coming far enough forward.

And toile #4, finally happy with it after redrawing the back neckline to make it sit lower and further forward.

Very concerned about WHY my original draft was so short when I've always had great success drafting from Aldrich I consulted all my other drafting texts, to no avail, before going back to Aldrich and my original draft and re-checking my work (which I do as I go, meticulously). Yup, I'd mis-measured the height of my hood while drafting. Once that was corrected it looked much better. Just out of interest I toiled it.

Toile #5. Perfect. At this point I swore a bit.

That one mistake in the drafting process (still don't know HOW I did that) led to an untold amount of work later. And to add insult to injury I like the basic hood better than my grafted Jalie, so I'm going with that after All.That.Work.

Lessons learnt:

1) If a draft looks wrong, check it from the beginning till you find out why.

2) Be sure of a draft before you use it to establish a design.

3) Toiles of questionable designs are invaluable as a learning tool.

I knew the last one anyway, but I would so much rather waste time and a bit of calico working this out than the nice fabric my sister and her friends bought and still end up with a too-small hood.

The Jinx Dress

I don't name my creations as a rule, but some acquire a moniker as I go along. This is most definitely the Jinx Dress. It felt like the entire process was jinxed from the get go! Looks pretty innocuous doesn't it?

I am very pleased with the fern, but I would prefer it a little lower I think.

Yet another item created from other people's discards. In this case, cast off jeans from David and my BIL. Worn through in the butt so they weren't worth mending, the legs were good enough to piece into this dress. After I got over this hurdle.

Once I persuaded Nicholas that it would be much more comfy to snuggle on the sofa I was able to cut the pieces from the jeans. And then they fought being made in every way!

My worst problem was when I sewed the dress shoulder seams and facing shoulder seams, joined the pieces at armholes and necklines with the intention of turning them right side out through the shoulders before sewing side seams and finishing armholes. The point at which I realised I had not turned the dress right side out was after sewing and overlocking both side seams and doing two rows of topstitching on one of them. Yep, said some bad words.

I had multiple thread hassles - not enough topstitching thread (I had some more in a different brand which was close enough that I figured to h*** with it, it's not for sale and open to public scrutiny!), running out of bobbin thread 10cm from the end of the last row of hem stitching, and most intriguingly, going to the ironing board to give the completed hem a final press and finding a section of hem with no bobbin thread. I assume it broke and somehow caught up a new loop, but I've never had that happen before! I had limited topstitching thread for the hem so I couldn't just redo the whole thing (which I would prefer) and it has so many starts and stops in it! The teeth were gritted so hard by this point I expect the surfaces are flat.

Anyway, it was always intended to be a trial, to be worn by Isabella. Good sturdy Kindy dress which cost nothing but my time. Here's her verdict.

And here's my last teeth-gritting realisation.

It's more obvious in real life that the denims for back and front are too different. The back is heavier, which I don't mind, but it's blue blue while the front is made from two pairs which were more black blue. Damn! I like the original side seams on the back pieces but after the dress was made and on her the glaring difference in tone between front and back jumped out at me. Next time I should have some of each fabric in the front and the back if the contrast is too great.

Repeat to self: it cost nothing but my time, it's for kindy, it'll be covered in paint in five minutes, she loves it......

Showing my roots

No, not the ever-increasing collection of grey ones on my head, these roots:

My Mum is English, as is my paternal grandfather, but really that's just an excuse for the fact that I've always liked the Union Jack (which I vaguely recall hearing on a Dr Who episode is really the Union Flag unless it's at sea) as a graphic image. And I like how it looks on clothes. The NZ flag is a Union Jack in the corner of a navy blue flag, so it's pretty much my flag too. The idea of appliqueing the flag onto a simple dress has been percolating for a while, and yesterday was the day.

This one is for Isabella. I'm trying out my size four A-line dress block on her(104cm height). As she won't be four till May, I'm very happy with how this fits her. The slight rise at the armhole edge of her left shoulder is the most obvious sign that the dress is a bit big, and within my "I can live with it" tolerance. She is a very enthusiastic and willing model.

But "stand still" pretty much doesn't register at all. That blur to the left of her visible leg in the pic below is her other leg.

Being the stickler for accuracy that I am I didn't want my Union Jack to be reminiscent of the flag, I wanted it to be precisely correct in it's proportions. (Yeah, accuracy in proportion is one thing, colour is another!) It took three seconds on Google to find how to accurately draw the flag, and from there I made a full-scale diagram on a full-front pattern outline. The photo is a bit faint, sorry.

Detail.

After cutting the fabric strips and stitching them on the front looked like this.

I spent as much time with the iron as I did with the machine I think - making sure all the fabrics were perfectly wrinkle free before marking and cutting the strips (with scissors because I keep forgetting to get new rotary cutter blades) and after applying each strip, none of which are fused in any way. Not to have pressed every time would have invited distortions, which would magnify with each successive layer. If you want to know more about why pressing is so essential, go read the Pressinatrix.

I could reduce the thickness of the appliqued layers by stencilling the red areas onto a single cut out of the white areas, which I think would be sensible for smaller sizes.

Alabama Chanin #3

After an estimated 80 hours work, all by hand, here it is.

What, the sunshine is too bright to show it up? Sorry, I'll go inside.

Is this better?

Profile shot. My only alteration to the pattern (from the Alabama Stitch Book, corset top pattern, size S) was to lower the hem at the front so it's more level with the back.

Gratuitous parting shot of the twins being cute. I swear if I hadn't given birth to them I would NOT believe they are twins!

The first casualty

Remember these guys?

This morning Isabella handed me this.

The white patches at neck and butt are stuffing. On the bright side the twins love the mice. On the not-so-bright side they had a tug of war over this one. With bitter irony, it's me. I'm too battered to repair, so I'll have to make myself again.

To cheer myself up I photographed my injuries on my Alabama Chanin corset top, which I am now starting to seam together! Over his Christmas break David has been helping my wonderful brother in law on our bathroom renovation. My job is to keep the twins out of their hair, and with water turned off for the whole day a couple of times, housework possibilities were limited (yeah, hard I know) so I did get through quite a lot of the beading and running stitching this week, in short bursts between twin wrangling. Should be wearing it soon!

Other peoples cast offs

There seems to have been a theme to my sewing lately - everything I've made has been whipped up in double quick time from fabric I have acquired from someone else's stash reduction. Exhibit 4) (or 5, or whatever) A much needed pair of togs for Isabella. Keely has been in major decluttering mode and gave me some cast off fabric to rummage through. A small piece of this swimsuit fabric jumped out and yelled "Isabella needs some togs! Dunedin has just had it's driest December since records began in 1913!" I hadn't found any I liked on my one attempt to do so, so whipped these up. Size four bottoms are perfect, but I had to add extra strips to the sides and a band at the bottom on the top to make it big enough. There was only just enough fabric to eke them out! Pattern is KS2884, which appears to be out of print. Shame - it's a great basic two piece bathing suit pattern.

She needed them to wear while doing this.

And another friend decluttered this from her house to mine.

My very own, much longed for treadle sewing machine. It was painted this colour when she got it, and I suspect that returning it to its original appearance is going to be a fair bit of work.

I had a very quick go at sewing with it, and to my delight, it goes! The mechanism moves freely and it forms stitches. The tension was WAY out of whack, but I was very restrained and went back to the tog sewing instead of spending all evening playing. Its time will come....

Oh, and I've just started the LAST piece of my Alabama Chanin corset top. Another couple of weeks should see it done, depending on distractions.

New dress for MEEEEE!!!!!

When people know that you sew, they give you stuff. The fabric for this dress came from my very lovely Mother In Law (and I'm not just sucking up because I'm going to tell her about this post - she really is fantastic!). She had been given it to find it and some of it's mates a good home. And I took one look at this (70's ?) scenery print on something completely devoid of natural fibre and it screamed MAKE ME INTO BURDA 10/09 #119! (Many many thanks to Sewingelle for pointing out the Burda archives!). So I did.

My trusty assistant overseeing proceedings.

I am really pleased with how this turned out, with the possible exception of where the pleats are released. The fabric is very thin and both it's lack of body and tendency to be see through led me to underline it (in the ubiquitous red lining - the dress looks gold when light shines through it!) and while that is perfect for the rest of the dress it makes the area below the pleats a bit poofy. I am trying to decide whether or not I care. Edgestitching the pleats would flatten them, but I don't want to do that. I also don't want to sharply press them, so I'm wearing it today to see what I think. So far, not bothered.

In addition to underlining it I added 4cm to the length (I hate my knees) and scooped out a chunk of neckline as I'm not a fan of a high neckline on myself. Other than that, straight from the pattern.

So once again a project which wasn't even on the horizon a short time ago is made and being worn. I suspect I have sewing ADD.

Four down...

... four to go. Progress on my latest Alabama Chanin corset top currently stands here.

I would like to finish it by Christmas, but I keep getting side tracked by the urgent need to make things like this:
Owl from here. (I saw an owl ornament somewhere with antlers, so naturally added them to mine.) Fox very liberally adapted from here. Star from a magazine. Bird from several places.

Oh, and Cayden needs some clothes. I've also photographed his bass (front and back) which I'm going to print out and laminate so mini Cayden has real Cayden's actual bass! I really do amuse myself. The idea and tutorial which I've adapted for this is from the brilliant Jodie of Ric Rac. (The tutorial is on her sidebar)

Some of the mouse family need clothes too, and they need a house.

At least the advent calendar is pretty much ready to go. I just need to apply the embellishments, some sewn and some (eep!) glued. I'm avoiding having to glue stuff.

Christmas is less than a month away. No pressure then.

My turn,my turn!

As is so typical for me, this isn't one of the umpteen trillion queued projects waiting to make it to the head of the list. A few days ago it wasn't on the horizon, and here it is already finished.

I was looking for a different pattern (which I found) and this one was in the same box. I'd traced it from a Burda mag I borrowed from the library and forgotten it! I knew immediately that my dear friend J would love it too (we have very similar taste, so she's hugely fun to shop with!) and I excitedly tried to find it on the Burda archives to email her a pic. They only go back two years, so no luck for her, or to link to here. (I had to get it from the stacks at the library so I can trace one in J's size). For the record, it's Burda 02/2009, #129.

This is unusual for me, as I'm not a frilly, bow-y person, but this spoke to me. The fabric is a mystery synthetic intended for something else but willingly sacrificed for a wearable muslin. I'm very happy with the fit, but next time I'll spend more time on the front neckline to snug it it a bit. I did have to chop 10cm out of the neckline elastic (I hate unpicking three-step zigzag) and the sleeve elastic is a tad snug, but bearable.

Verdict: Broke the drought and scored a win!

Actual garment sewing. Just not for me.

When inspiration strikes I've learned to just go with it. That was the case with this - three remnant pieces of broderie anglais edged dobby voile. It jumped up and down and told me it'd be perfect made as the Oliver + S ruffled halter. (Available as a free download here).

The broderie edges are on the top ruffle, bottom ruffle, and back. (Trying to photograph a three year old is challenging enough without worrying about actually showing the details!).

Speaking of the back, I'm not a fan of halters for kids because they seldom sit nicely so I made this more like pillowcase style by making the back from the same pattern piece as the front and cutting a facing to match.
Isabella is gratifyingly pleased with it, and when I showed it to her delightedly squealed "You made a pretty top for MEEE!!!". Her training is coming along nicely.

Keely, this is your fault

Well, yours and Lara's for getting to craft night and asking me if I knew how to crochet a granny square. And then if I could show you. The feel of hook in hand after quite a few years got me inspired to make the crochet roses I've been pinning.

My first attempt. Slightly more open than the original, and it looks pretty naff in variegated acrylic, but you can bet your life there will be more, in the pretty pink yarn I have lying around waiting for a project. And I have three more patterns on my desk to try as well. Because I have sooooooooo much spare time and need another hobby. Thanks ladies!

And on the subject of pinning, Georgia absolutely loved this penguin and made these three all by herself. She's going to make one for each of the family to put on the tree this year.

This weekend we're having the neighbourhood girls over to make felt ornaments as a group. I sincerely can't wait - indoctrinating the next generation in the ways of making stuff.