Dress for Isabella.

I started with this shirt, bought unworn, with tags, for $2 from the Kindy fair left overs. (New price $69.99).  Nice soft slightly brushed cotton.  Not a style or colour that David would wear, which was fine, because I had designs on it for something else.

A few polka dots in two different sizes stencilled on with freezer paper (thanks J for the circle punches!)

And I ended up with this.  Because little girls who are turning four tomorrow NEED a new dress. I think it's a rule.  (Little boys who are turning four tomorrow don't need a new shirt because they have yet to outgrow or wear out the new one Mum made last year!)

Piped peter pan collar and petal sleeves in a red I chanced upon in a remnant bin which matches my paint really well.  The original front button and buttonhole bands are now at the back.  I did have to add a little yoke to make up length.

And some inseam pockets inspired directly by this dress on Pinterest.

I decided to photograph the dress today because when we get home from kindy tomorrow it will probably be covered in mud, paint or food.  Or all three.  Which is as it should be when you are four.

From very slow top to fast dress.

After rather a lot of slow sewing the speed of this dress from purchase of magazine to finished garment was, um, a bit of a contrast.

I bought the magazine (Burda 03/12) on Thursday and finished sewing the dress on Sunday.  The only reason it took that long was because I had to wait till Saturday to get to Spotlight for thread and a zip. (Btw, I'm wearing a black cardigan over it today which goes better with the black tights than the pale green merino thermal on it's own - only took the cardy off for the photo!)

For the record, it's #108 from that issue, and I have been itching to get my hands on it since I saw it online three months ago (that's how long it takes for the issues to arrive in New Zealand).  It's a size 76, which is the tall size 38.  Normally I would probably have to do the petite alteration to bring the bodice length back to regular, but this dress has a raised waistline anyway so I figured that if I didn't do anything it'd be fine.  There was a risk of the front being too low (always a risk with Burda anyway!) but I intend to layer it most of the time anyway, and if I wear it without anything under it I will just pin it closed.

I made no alterations to the fit, but I raised the armholes 1.5cm after comparing the pattern to a size 38 sleeveless dress pattern.  It would have been fine to leave them, but I hate low armholes.  I also brought in the neck by 2cm as I wanted wider straps.  Wider straps meant that I could sew the back and fronts together at the shoulders and join with their facings and then pull the fronts right side out through the shoulders to have a cleaner finish than the pattern directions would have produced.

The fabric has narrow stripes of elastane woven in which makes it crinkle up.  I pressed most of the crinkle out before I made the dress, and I'm interested to see what happens during wear.  I'm not sure to what extent it will crinkle up and hence shorten.  On a taller woman this is supposed to hit at around knee length.  On me (5'6") it's just below, so I hope it doesn't get much shorter!  I also omitted lining and interfacing to keep it as soft and drapey as possible.  The front neckline is cut almost on the lengthwise grain to make it as stable as possible without tape stays or anything else needed.

So, there you have it - a new dress in double quick time.  There are at lest two more patterns from this issue which I NEED to make, and I want this dress again too....

Raising the rise.

After spending rather a lot of time on this. (For my beloved younger sister)

And this.  (For me)

My poor sewing machine was literally collecting dust!  I do have a great project coming up, but in the meantime I got on with this quick fix.

Pull on stretch jeans with ludicrously low rise. ($5 from Kmart)

Unpick folded over casing.

Press.

Sew on new facing to top edge and understitch.

Fold in facing and stitch down.

 Re-insert elastic, slightly shortened to allow for jeans sitting a little higher on torso.

Not shown is the stitching through all layers of the waist at all seams which prevents the elastic twisting and bunching in the casing.  Result - jeans I can wear without showing my knickers to the world if I sit down!

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.