Little boys and bow ties

I slowly eased myself back into the sewing habit this week, although I don't have much to show for it. I'm halfway through making a dress testing the Sugarplum dress pattern for Lolita Patterns which is a lovely dress but rather involved and time consuming so it's taking longer than I expected, not helped of course by me getting terribly sick last week and losing my sewing mojo.  I also made two pairs of pants for my friend's baby son who I think is the baby that all the commercial patterns size their patterns for - he is the fattest baby I've ever seen! He is three months younger than Toby but is a few kilos heavier which is pretty amazing since he refused to eat solids until very recently, and my friend has the hardest time buying pants for him that aren't tracksuits. So I made a pair of simple elastic waist corduroy and denim jeans for him from the same pattern that I was complaining were way too big for Toby.  But I forgot to take any photos before I gave them to my friend - I guess I fail blogging 101......

Toby went to his first birthday party during the week so I made him a little bow tie out of some red gingham just to dress him up a little. No tutorial of course because you all know my disdain for tutorials that have been done a billion times before or are so simple they are just not required, but I did consult this tutorial by Prudent Baby for the dimensions although I made mine with just some hat elastic for the neckband instead of a fabric band and proper bow tie clip:

Amazingly he kept both the bow tie and some matching red suspenders I found in an op shop ages ago all day, and I might be biased here but I think he looks pretty damn cute!



There's no mistaking that my two are siblings is there? Even with Toby weirdly having red hair.....

Today I went to the Australian Sewing Guild industry day at the Simplicity patterns headquarters here in Sydney. As much as I would like to say it was like being on hallowed turf being in a large building surrounded by thousands of sewing patterns, it was really just a standard big warehouse with boxes stacked on pallets! But they did have some big tables with loads of patterns out for $2 or $5, boxes of trims, sewing notions and other bits and pieces, so of course I couldn't help myself but buy some things despite having no intentions to do so.  I picked up these patterns for $2 each:

and these 5 reels of trim for only $2 - a total bargain!

Plus the day was very interesting and informative as usual, aside from learning loads more about how to sew successfully with knits there was an amazing talk by Yvonne Twining who does amazing things with leather, including making very beautiful bags and her own shoes. If I could make my own shoes I'd be in absolute heaven. Anyone in Australia who hasn't heard of the Australian Sewing Guild should definitely check them out - they offer loads of interesting talks, courses, fabric shopping trips and the like.  Plus their regular sewing days are a great chance to meet up with like minded sewing fiends, it's totally not a bunch of ladies sitting around doing hand smocking or patchwork quilting like I erroneously thought it was!

And now I need to go and ponder my wardrobe to figure what to wear to our Sydney sewists high tea tomorrow. The weather forecast for heavy rain and wind is a bit frock unfriendly, so I'll have to dig out some tights and a coat to accessorise.