still making big people's clothes

I know there's been lots of sewing of little girls clothes on this here blog lately, which is insanely boring to those of you who don't have small children! Don't pretend otherwise, even I used to glaze over looking at sewing blogs that went from adult clothes to kids clothes before I got myself preggers.....

But all is not lost. Since I'm back at work on 1 February (just a few short weeks thanks for reminding me Carolyn!) I'm working on a back to work SWAP (sewing with a plan). I'm currently scouring my Burda magazines and patterns for suitable blouses and suits and already have a stack of fabrics in mind.

However until then, here's some adult clothes I prepared earlier - another version of the tab shorts from Burda 6/09 pattern 120.

I have made these previously in red linen, and just before christmas I managed to make a pair in grey and white stripe seersucker fabric in time for our holiday (from hell).

Instead of buckles for the side ties I used buttons purely because I didn't have any buckles or D rings to hand and I wasn't braving the fabric shops in the pre-Christmas madness. I also made the ties longer because the original version were barely long enough. And just for some fun I put some button tabs on the cuffs for decoration because I saw that done on a pair of Gant shorts that were retailing for $300 odd dollars and I like to feel smug in my thriftiness/cheapness.

Nothing too technical or too exciting I know, but here's something else I made to dazzle you. My husband is a bit of a golf nut and a few months ago we were in a golf shop laughing at the extremely ugly clothes when he picked up a pair of black and white check pants and said "but these are ok". I bit my tongue and thought otherwise, but they were $150 so I wasn't about to buy them for him. So as a bit of a joke christmas present I made him a pair from stash fabric, a lightweight wool in a black and white check with a fine yellow line through it. I actually made a vintage skirt out of this fabric a while ago, and while I think the skirt looks fine for some reason a pair of men's pants in this fabric are a bit, well, fugly! Technically they are pretty good if I do say so myself. I made an actual functioning bag pocket on the rear with a welt pocket (usually I just do the welt for show and sew down the flaps so it doesn't open) which looks wonky because I didn't match the check very pattern very well:

I made the fly in the proper menswear style with a fly extension which is so much fussier and more difficult than the fly zippers on women's wear:

So why is there no photo of my husband wearing them? Well I failed the most basic bit of all - they don't fit! I checked his RTW suits and they were all size 36, and the pattern I had is a size 38 so I thought it would be ok but it turns out they are way too small. I guess that's the danger of making a surprise pattern where you can't measure the recipient. And since I've never made anything for my husband before except for some boxer shorts, I didn't even have anything previously to go by. I used Vogue 7004, a now OOP pattern that I picked up from an oppy some time ago.

So this adds up to a craft FAIL, at least until my husband loses enough weight to fit into them ha ha ha ha.

Thank you all for your reassuring comments about travelling with little mites. I'm glad to know that lots of wee ones have fractious travel experiences and that Anna maybe isn't completely evil/insane after all. Oh Claudine, you've confirmed my worst fears - that holidays aren't really holidays anymore and they are still just about entertaining the kidlets but somewhere different! I've already told my husband that for my 40th birthday I want to go trekking in Nepal on my own and he can stay home with the kid(s). Sue - what a coincidence, we stayed at Peppers Salt at Kingscliff too although we got upgraded to the Bale section for some unknown reason that I wasn't complaining about because we scored a luxury two bedroom apartment when we had only booked and paid for a one bedroom one! Yay for small luxuries.....