Finally, I have something to say

Fear not everyone, I didn't take to myself with my staple gun and put myself out of action for the last few weeks resulting in blog silence. It's just that nothing blogworthy has happened in the last few weeks, in fact I've been rather dispirited lately because Anna's sleeping patterns went from bad to worse: not only was she sleeping only 20 minutes at a time 3 or 4 times a day, she then stopped sleeping through the night as she had been and instead started waking every 45 minutes until we gave up and brought her into our bed, usually around 2am or so! So you can imagine how tired and frustrated I've been, and I had quite a few of those moments when you try to imagine your life if you never had children.....

But all is not lost because a few days ago I had an early childhood nurse come and spend the day with us to observe what is happening and to give assistance with sleep and settling routines. They don't advocate a controlled crying routine or a cry it out approach which is good because Anna didn't take to those methods at all. In fact she cried once for 2.5 hours straight even with me patting her stomach and singing to her until I gave in and picked her up when I tried the Tizzie Hall method which I found very harsh and upsetting. But on this more gentle approach, of only letting her cry for a minute before calming her it's so far so good, her naps this week have extended to 1.5 hours, falling to sleep quite quickly and re-settling quickly halfway through if she has woken. She is only waking twice at night time now, but they are getting shorter in length and she is sleeping for more hours before waking. So for any Sydney mums, I can thoroughly recommend the lovely ladies from The Infants Home in Ashfield if you're at the end of your tether like I was.

I guess I won't be dropping her off at the orphan's home just yet as I've been threatening to do (good thing babies don't fully understand what we're saying!). And apart from this hiccup she is doing great - rolling, sitting up, improving her dexterity and hand skills, eating solids and learning to squeal for fun, although that is not so great! And she is 6 months already, I can't believe how fast time has flown by. Here is a photo from just a few days ago:

Anyway this is a sewing blog, so enough about the baby and please imagine a big drum roll in your head: here is my new dress that I have been working on for at least a month or more now!

I used a vintage Butterick pattern, which is labelled an easy pattern. And it was an easy dress to sew, pre-baby it would have taken a few hours at most, but I think you all know how little time is left when there are children around. But I also made things harder for myself because the fabric I chose to use is very unstable, and would shift if I even looked at it, so it made it hard to keep the fabric straight when cutting and sewing it, made even more obvious by the check pattern of the fabric. I underlined the fabric with some black organza to make it more stable and more substantial since it is a lightweight woven cotton.

It has a bit of a school uniform look to it, although since my high school uniform was a bottle green straight skirt and lemon yellow blouse, and my primary school uniform was a pink check tunic with maroon ribbon, this would be a pretty good school uniform! Of course I could wear it with a more colourful polo neck top or scarf, or pair it with a red belt and shoes to brighten it up a little more. And taking a photo on a less gloomy day would help too I suppose. But nevermind, I'm just so pleased with myself for finally finishing it!

And to answer your question, Judy Ross, about the piping on the footstool in my previous post, I have to admit it was a bit of a shoddy job but you just can't really see it because of the thick fabric. Normally I would fold the raw end under and then sew the tubes one inside the other with the folded end on the outside, but because this fabric was so thick it would be too bulky, so I just overlapped the ends of the tube and sewed them down. To stop the raw end that is now exposed from fraying, I dabbed on some clear nail varnish! I suppose you could use some fray check spray if you wanted to do it properly, but I didn't have any and I find that clear nail varnish works wonders on lots of things other than your nails: stopping holes and ladders in pantyhose getting worse, replacing the plastic tips on shoelaces when they fall off, glueing down fabric where there are small holes or tears and finishing the ends of ribbon when cut. Anyway here is a close up of the join:

So I hope to be back shortly with something else to show off (other than the baby), hopefully I'm on a roll now!