In which the internet is a wonderful place populated by fabulous people.

So I posted a month or so back about Enid Gilchrist and my interest in her books, to which a very lovely comment was left by Bev ( a decidedly great Australian I reckon, whom I have never met) offering me some that she had which she wanted to see go to a good home rather than be tossed out. Oh YES PLEASE!

And yesterday when the twins and I got back from a very lovely play in the park with my sister and their almost-the-same-age cousin, THIS was on my front doorstep.

And inside, these:

(The white thing at the bottom of the photo is Nicholas' elbow. Yet again I can't do anything without close supervision.)

EIGHT Enid Gilchrist books! A couple of missing covers, one or two pages loose from the centres of one or two, and a few small tears here and there, but all complete and fascinating! TREASURE! I do get a bit squeally (is that a word?) and over excited about stuff like this.

I had a good giggle over styles considered appropriate for teenagers 40 odd years ago (hehehe, I mis-typed "odd" as "ood" - been watching too much Dr Who) which most would rather die than wear now, but there are many, many details and ideas which are completely applicable today. The more recent ones also had some styles in more than one size, and at least one book had instructions for increasing a basic pattern by two years, which makes them considerably more versatile than the early ones which only have one size given for each pattern. A few patterns appear in more than one book too.

This design caught my attention because I've been doing these back fastenings for dresses and love them. I've also been doing external facings because it keeps in inside of the garment nice and smooth. I don't remember seeing the back wrap over fastening idea anywhere but didn't think I'd invented it - as they say, no new ideas in fashion.

And this car coat with it's lovely shaped sleeve. (There are a LOT of shaped sleeves, which I'm really curious to try as one piece sleeves with little differentiation between front and back don't sit or work very well.)

I've never seen a hood quite like this one. Have to give this a go.

These are the hood pieces, which clearly show the very simple drafting technique.

I doubt many parents would dress little girls in a dress this brief these days, but it would look great layered over things. I'm going to make this one for Isabella to wear over leggings and long sleeved tops for winter. It could easily be made reversible too, which is handy for Kindy.

And that's all I'm going to post for now. If I put in everything on which I had something to say we'd be here till next week! Expect Enid projects to appear in the coming weeks/months/years.

So in closing, Thank You Very Much Bev, I am very very grateful for these and will enjoy them immensely.

Creativity or chaos?

I always enjoy peeping at the Creative Spaces, originally hosted by Kootoyoo. And it got me thinking about my creative space. While I have stuff all over the house, I tend to actually do the creating in a small area - my desk mostly, with a bit of cutting on my dining table (which is next to my desk) and hand sewing on the sofa (or outside if it's a really nice day).

Yesterday I snapped a few pics to illustrate my creative day.

Firstly there was a bit of freezer paper stencil cutting:


Then I had to help Nicholas build a house for his stone collection. The tidy bits are mine, the creative bits are his.

Which led Isabella to create too.

Back to my desk and on to pattern tracing.

After an interruption to dash down to Georgia's school to give her some desperately needed moral support for a vaccination it was back to the desk for cutting. Yes I cut small garments in this tiny space because I am too lazy to clear off the (adjacent) dining table.

And on to painting. (Note the coffee cup in the upper left corner. Same cup of coffee from the previous pic. Which I finished before it got cold. Rare event)

That was all I could do on this garment (for a baby shower on Saturday) until the paint is dry and heat set and I can get white overlocker thread today, so it was on to beading.

After upsetting the bead dish twice I took the hint and put it away and went on to plain stitching.

Looking at all that makes me feel like I was very productive yesterday! In around all that I built more duplo, dropped David at work after lunch so he could drop one car off to be serviced and collected him after work so he could pick it up, did laundry, finished reading the last chapter of "Dead Until Dark" (I really like Charlaine Harris), fed the ravenous hordes (repeatedly), refereed the who-gets-the-tv debate after school, went to the gym (the most peaceful bit of the day) and visited the supermarket.

And while I'm feeling really really smug, here's how David and I celebrated our wedding anniversary on Sunday - the inaugural Stadium to Surf fun run. Supposedly 10km, but the 10k mark on the map looked to be almost 1k from the end!

That's me in the white top right next to the marshal. David is right beside me but you can only see his feet. I should have given Oliver more direction in photo taking! This is just around the corner from our house, about 7km into the run. I wish I'd got Oliver to take a pic of Georgia holding up the "Happy Anniversary Mum and Dad" sign she'd made to wave at us as we ran past our street. It was great!

You know, I think all this post does is prove that I have a very short attention span.

At what point am I officially obsessed?

I got this far on my sister's Alabama Chanin corset top - centre front panel stitched, beaded and snipped.

Then I ran out of beads. It'll be a few days before she gets more and I tell you I was positively ITCHING to do more. You know how it is when a project gets under your skin and you just can't settle to anything else? So I started this:

It's the tank top from Alabama Studio Style, with their paisley pattern, which can be downloaded here. I have decided that I require a hand work project of some sort to be at hand at all times. Something I can easily pick up and put down frequently and which can be abandoned at any point when required. (Machine sewn projects are harder to drop instantly when someone screams.) And which can be worked on while parked on the sofa watching tv in the evening.

So, I have completed three hand sewn corset tops for me and have the fabric for a dress (once I decide on embellishment), I'm in the middle of a corset top for my sister and have started a tank top for me. I think I need a shrug or bolero in this style as well..... These garments take a Very.Long.Time. (an estimated 80 hours for the first one I made) What possesses a rational person to want to spend this long on one garment? More than once? I just find the whole process so enjoyable - it's very relaxing and somehow the fact that it is going to take so long makes it easy not to be in a pointless hurry, which is a big contrast to most of life! (I'm a process and product person - I enjoy the process as much as the finished result.) I thought the first corset top I made would have scratched the itch, but all it did was inflame the passion!

I haven't abandoned my beloved sewing machine though, I made a pair of pants for David to wear to work, and these for Nicholas:

We both love the dragon freezer paper stencilled onto contrasting fabric then appliqued on.

I've drafted this design from a couple of different blocks, and annoyingly grabbed the wrong one (regular fit) instead of the slim fit Nicholas needs. Oh well, I need to make him more anyway.

And in closing, here's a random twin shot.

I keep saying, twins are funny.

Giving Enid a crack

Predictably, I had to have a go at one of the designs from the Enid Gilchrist book in my last post. I decided to have a go at the basic dress, altered to princess line, to see how it compares to my current A-line draft. Extremely easy to draw up from her diagrams, by the way.

Here's Enid's size3-4 princess line dress.

And here's my own size 4 A-line dress draft. (From Aldrich)

Now obviously this isn't an apples for apples comparison - I would expect a size 3-4 to be smaller than a straight 4 (although not by much) and my A-line draft is slashed and spread right from the shoulder and so adds width through the torso as well as the skirt, whereas the princess draft actually nips in at the waist (this is optional). What I noticed particularly is that the armholes and neckline are pretty small - noticeable even on Nicholas (yes, he insisted on trying it on but lost interest before I got out the camera) . Her shoulder angle is very good on Isabella (it's being distorted a bit by the tight armholes), better than mine.

Next task is to compare her bodice draft to my three and four and see how similar they are, particularly in the neck and armhole. I wonder how much of the snug fit is due to the prevailing styles of 1951, and how much is due to the smaller size, which I would expect to be no more than half a size. I haven't yet found any size charts for Enid Gilchrist's patterns so it's hard to tell exactly what the intended fit was. Is it odd that this sort of thing fascinates me?

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.