sewing when you shouldn't

Just like texting whilst drunk is a bad idea, sewing whilst you're feeling poorly (as my late grandma would say) is not such a great idea either. I took Monday and Tuesday off work because I wasn't feeling that great, but because Anna wasn't sick at all I still sent her to daycare which meant I had two whole days of freedom stretching out in front of me. Instead of lying on the lounge watching crappy daytime tv or catching up on about 14 months worth of sleep, I decided to spend some quality uninterrupted sewing time. Mainly because I had a few projects for friends I needed to finish so I can get on with the important stuff - sewing for me!

Only my concentration was severely lacking because even though I was sewing quite simple things it took me at least twice as long because I had to keep fixing my silly errors. I made some more Viking tunics for my medieval obsessed friend, which are really simple to sew, only I sewed some bias tape trim to the wrong side of the fabric and had to unpick it all and re-do it. All 5.5m of it! That's at least two hours of my life I won't be seeing again.

Then I sewed a little shirt for a pageboy in a friend's sister's wedding, which is going to be a casual beach wedding. It's from Kwik Sew 3146, which in typical Kwik Sew style is really simple to make and the instructions really easy to understand although for some reason I find the paper pattern instead of tissue paper a little annoying. Anyway the fabric selected by the bride is a two coloured stripe cotton, so I paid special attention to matching the stripes. Well I thought I did but of course I stuffed it not once, but twice! Luckily there was enough fabric to re-cut pieces and in the end I managed to get the stripes to match up at the shoulders, the pocket and the yoke piece at the back:

I also ripped off the collar and stand after sewing it because I didn't like how it turned out at all. Because I've never sewn such a little button down shirt, I followed the instructions exactly in case the order of construction is different from adult sizes. Aside from sewing the sleeves in flat, it is exactly the same, and these instructions had the usual collar construction: sew the collar to the stand, sew the stand to the shirt. This method means it's really difficult to get a good finish at the curved start of the collar stand (well for me anyway).

So instead I re-did it the way I do my shirts, following the David Coffin shirtmaking book method of sewing the stand to the shirt and the sewing the collar to the stand. Although I have to admit, that even though I own the David Coffin book I used the fantastically easy and well photographed tutorial over at Sigrid's sewing tutorial blog - her version is far simpler to understand than the book. She has heaps of other tutorials as well which I can highly recommend.

So that was my week in a nutshell - two sewing days spent sewing simple things that should have only taken me one day max, an appearance at work on Wednesday (I have such a strong work ethic LOL) and today a stroll in the park in the sunshine while this one discovered the joys of running in grass and running amok in the library:

Hope you're all doing well, especially all of you in the northern hemisphere: may your toes be snug and toasty!

P.S Songbird Lane - you made me laugh by being jealous of my tidy house! There is a reason why my photos are fairly tightly cropped, it keeps the chaos out of the frame! I figure if the kitchen and bathroom are clean, and there is a clear path through the toys between the front and back doors, all is well. And if I had six kids I would consider just keeping them fed enough of an achievement and wouldn't worry at all how my house looked....