this is blasphemy

Friday 17 April 2009
As well as the millions of sewing blogs I love to read, I often stalk craft blogs, and Craftzine is a favourite. Then I see today that they link to a post with "projects you can make with the tissue paper of old sewing patterns". Whaddya mean, 'old' sewing patterns as if they have no value and need repurposing? Unless they are super fugly 1980s style patterns (which I strongly suspect may one day come back into fashion just like the previously daggy 60s and 70s patterns are), I think making the dress is much better than making paper flowers or reusing them for wrapping paper.

Although, these decoupaged boxes by the etsy seller sewinggeek are pretty special and I could see a few of these in my sewing room in future made from prints scanned from my patterns and not the actual pattern of course!:

But I forgive this little transgression because they also provided a link to this gorgeous vintage button tag PDF download from the delightfully generous doe-c-doe:

Too cute! If I still had time for mindless procrastination I could just see myself sewing my favourite buttons onto these for display in my sewing space......

Thanks for all your feedback on the BWOF pants from the last post. Mary Nanna you are so right about not adding extra volume at your widest part - I knew this, and have known this for a long time so why I thought now would be a good time to try something different is beyond me, especially since I'm still carrying about 7kg of excess post baby weight! So for now on, no more pleats for this little black duck.

But as per all your wise suggestions, I did sew the pleats further down the leg and let the hem down a little so that it touches the floor when wearing heels, so they do look better and I will wear them regardless. Speaking of heels, it's been so long since I've worn them they had dust on them! But thankfully they still fit me, I did hear horror stories that some women's feet never return to pre pregnancy size....

Oh and happy happy days, I can finally squeeze back into my pre-preggo jeans! They give me a massively unflattering muffin top a la Kim Craig (from the Aussie version of Kath and Kim not the poor US remake - no offence!) but I can do them up and a few more weeks of schlepping the little one around trying to get her to sleep may see that fixed too.

10 comments:

  1. I have a whole stack of old tissue paper patterns just waiting to be used for something! But I shall hold onto them because -though it may not happen overnight, it will happen.

    Love those round boxes too.

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  2. I am SO SAD about the US version of Kath and Kim. We didn't get the final Aussie season on Sundance Channel and they will not release a NTSC version on DVD in the US. ARGH. The US version is awful. It's not even the same show!

    I love slang. Please use words like daggy as often as possible :)

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  3. Your so funny... glad to hear that your body is co-operating with "the plan".... so hard sometimes.... sometimes mom... we just have to let her cry for a while... 20 minutes here and then 30 minutes there... she will get used to putting herself to sleep. It takes time to train... both of you!
    Ahem.... you may also have dust because of all the construction! LoL.... glad shoes still fit... that would have been terrible! I never had that problem... as far as them not fitting afterwards. Except when I got a bad case of poison ivy... urghhhh... I broke out all over and our youngest was only 2 weeks old! Everything from my knee's down swelled up! So, no shoes for me.... just flip flops!
    That was when they weren't in style!

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  4. The US remake of Kath and Kim is so awful that...that I am at a loss for words! Glad the shoes still fit! It terrifies me to think of losing my shoe collection.

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  5. I am so impressed that you can still blog with a newborn. The first three months of my son's life, I was a virtual hermit and barely capable of doing anything beyond babycare. Kudos to you!

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  6. I love your stories and I agree about the pattern tissue. I bought some really ratty probably 50's patterns for little girl smocked dresses that the covers are almost gone and the tissue inside folded, but ratty on all the folded corners which probably means swiss cheese inside. The intent was to do "something" with them decoratively. However, they still sit in a pile and I am unable to used them just *because* ?????? I have tons of patterns for the same style yoked smocked baby dress but I might want this very one. It's a sickness.....
    BTW, I looked at my non-sleeping babies differently once someone gently pointed out that my issue was not whether or not the baby slept, but whether or not *I* slept. ;-) Mine were always happy and contented, just never needed the amount of sleep I'd expected. Anyone have this mythical child that sleeps 22 out of 24 hours as a newborn?

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  7. Well done you sounds like you made a good rescue on the pants .. although I did think they looked cute anyway.

    I have a very limiting figure - I can only really wear tailored fitted garments because of my 'generous' proportions .. and how I long to sew other things, things with lots of tucks and gathers and swathes of frills and drape

    One day I posted a picture from something from BWOF that I wanted to sew from my "I wish I could wear this" list.

    My kind blog friends wrote, "do a muslin."

    If someone tells you to make a muslin they're really thinking, "don't waste good fabric on that."

    My very truthful sister wrote, "consider this phrase carefully: puppies in a sack."

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  8. I hate to tell you that you never lose that muffin top once you have kids. All the extra skin just flops over the top when you sit...sigh...that is why they invented mum jeans perhaps? Anyway, you are looking great...and where is our photo of Anna?

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  9. O.K. guess I haven't a clue who Kate and Kim are??? Is this something that I need to know? Just wondering.
    You know, if you look at patterns long enough, most of them are just repeats of years past... your right. So, if you happen to miss something (say you don't have a retro pattern) then hold out for a while... it will be back...lol... sometimes even the bad ones!

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  10. You know there are always those tattered patterns from junk shops that are missing half the pieces so would be no good to sew anyway. I like to have a wee stash of those for "reusing" purposes. My reuse is much less interesting tho- usually just wrapping little objects for posting.

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