So, I've been busily sewing....

At the risk of sounding like a trashy 1980s style souvenir t-shirt (you know the ones: my grandma went to Singapore and all I got was this lousy t-shirt), but I have to say it: I've been sewing like a crazy woman and all I've got to show for it is a few lousy blog photos because it's all for other people!

My daughter's school held its annual fete recently which took an enormous amount of time and effort before the day in terms of organising, selling raffle tickets let alone on the actual day. I was the stall co-ordinator for my daughter's class, and we were allocated the second hand clothing stall so I spent about 3 months lugging home bags of donated clothes from school to sort, wash and store in a large pile in my sewing room. The fete was a huge success though - we made nearly $60,000 and my stall made nearly $900 which is a great result and will go towards installing air conditioning in all our classrooms, upgrading computers and replenishing the library. All things you would think the government would provide (it's a public school) but they don't.

Being a little too quick to volunteer my sewing talents, I ended up hemming tablecloths, making drawstring bags and sewing bunting. Oh the bunting! It took way longer to make than I could ever have imagined:

That's about 70 metres of bunting altogether. The actual sewing of triangles to the bias tape wasn't the longest bit, but cutting out all those triangles and sewing them together took many, many hours. Luckily it looked great, we can reuse it next year and all the fabric I used from stash to make it (about 8m) has now balanced out a recent on-line fabric purchase binge!

Next up I offered to make Anna and her friends matching t-shirts for the sports carnival that was scheduled for last Thursday. Her school decided to have a retro themed sports carnival (in the early years it's all about fun and not competition) so I thought a 1970s style raglan t-shirt worn with some sweatbands would be extremely funny in a cute way. Unfortunately the sports carnival was postponed until mid July due to bad weather, but I did finish all these t-shirts:

I used Kwik Sew 2893 (now OOP) which is just a basic tshirt pattern but is drafted really well (all the notches lined up and the pattern piece for the neckband was spot on) and the sizing of the pattern is quite accurate which in itself is somewhat amazing for a child sewing pattern. I made sizes small and medium for 6 and 7 year old kids and all the tshirts fit very well.

I thought the curved hems, and contrasting sleeves and neckbinding were very retro. The different colours are for their different teams. The lettering on the front is made from iron on transfer paper and each t-shirt has their name and year of birth which the kids thought was very cool so the effort was worth it, even if I ended up making these really quickly for no reason.

Finally I had to make an emergency pair of pyjamas for Anna. Anna's school was holding a wear your pyjamas to school day to raise money for some good cause, and it wasn't until the night before that I realised that Anna has had a spectacular growth spurt and all of her pyjamas were way too short. And here's where the value of having a large stash of fabrics and patterns really proves it worth: I was able to dig out a lovely soft piece of pink check flannelette and some textured knit (like the fabric used for spencers) and made a simple pair of pants and raglan tee using the same Kwik Sew pattern again since it was still out on my cutting table:

Pyjama disaster averted, more fabric used from the stash and all done in about the same amount of time it would have taken me to to get to the shops!

So now that's all over and done with, I can get back to my regular sewing projects. I have a blazer for myself about 85% done which I want to finish very soon and I do need to get cracking on my June and July Burda projects because if I let that get too far behind I'm sure I'll never catch up again. Hopefully I have something more exciting to share next time I post

Inadvertent Jungle January make

Firstly some sad news - our beloved crazy dog Oscar has sadly gone to the great dog park in the sky. It seems a bit strange to share such a personal thing on a sewing blog, but since he always got comments whenever he photobombed a blog photo I thought I would share the event. He was 14 which is a very long life for a big dog like a dalmatian, and he spent each day of those years running around like crazy, wagging his tail so enthusiastically his whole body would wiggle and generally just acting like a puppy right up until the day his old body finally gave up on him. It sure is going to be quiet around here without him.

Switching gears back to my normal blog content.....

Until last year when I made this leopard print skirt I didn't own a single piece of animal print, so I've always just watched Jungle January hosted by Pretty Grievances each year with some amusement but no intention of joining in. But I've just made a few pairs of shorts for Toby using some fun cotton prints that were in the stash, two of which just happen to be lion prints. What can be more jungle themed than the king of the jungle?!

I used a pattern from a Polka Drops Japanese sewing pattern book which I think is called Easy Children's Clothing (ISBN 978-4-529-04837-8):

I quite like the aesthetic of the Japanese kids clothes, but I find the patterns are a little too simplistic - there are no zippers and very few buttons, everything is pretty much elastic waist and loose fitting styles.  Which is fine for some clothes but sometimes jeans and pants need a little bit more tailoring. That said though, I do like this pattern because it has a slim leg and a much better fit than I can usually get from the commercial patterns. And now that Toby is out of nappies he doesn't need the big baggy legs and low crotch that the kids patterns usually produce but he does need an elastic waist to be able to get his clothes on and off by himself, so this pattern suited me needs right now.

The only problem is that the waistband sits rather low - it is designed to have two layers of waistband but I can't quite decipher from the pattern book how the inner waistband is supposed to be higher because both are cut from the same pattern piece. Note to future self - increase the rise of the pattern by at least 5cm!

The first pair I made from a blue lion print with pockets on the sides of the shorts using the waistband piece from the pattern - it's quite narrow and too low so I'll need to replace it eventually.

The second pair I made from a red lion print that I didn't bother with any pockets, but made the waistband much wider and used wider elastic too. These are the same size as the blue pair but look more baggy because the waistband is tighter.

The third pair is my favourite pair, made from a blue elephant print cotton that has been in the stash a long time. I used ribbing for the waistband and patch pockets on the back. Too cute!

Party season

I don't think my social life has ever been this busy - I have a party to attend every weekend this month and next, and in fact this weekend I went to a party both on Saturday and Sunday. Sadly I'm not talking about swish cocktail soirees or black tie events for which I need to sew some beautiful party dresses, but rather six year old birthday parties! We are well into the birthday party season around here, and every child in Anna's class seems to be invited to each of these parties, which is very nice and inclusive but it means that these parties are huge and very loud, energetic and tiring. The kids aren't at an age yet where you can do the drop off and run thing, especially since none of these parties are in people's homes but rather at indoor play centres or other party venues so at the end of the three hour or so parties there are a lot of parents gripping their coffee cups with tired looks on their faces!

Anna and I have had many discussions (aka arguments) about appropriate clothing to wear to these parties - it has turned quite cold here in Sydney lately and yet all she wants to wear her summer dresses which are now way too short thanks to a growth spurt that seems to have occurred unnoticed by us all. So after Saturday's discussion about what to wear which involved threats of not going to the party if something more appropriate wasn't worn, I promised to make her a new dress that night if she promised to wear it to Sunday's party. Deal.

I let her pick the fabric, a purple and grey knit 4 way stretch knit from The Fabric Store which is a lovely soft knit with great recovery although it was one of those knits that curls at the edges when cut which was very annoying to press flat and sew. I chose the pattern - a simple and sensible dress from the Japanese sewing pattern book from the "Fashionable Dress for Girls" book (ISBN 978-4-529-04816-3), which I've used before for these very cute puffy pocket shorts when she was just a little (but still highly spirited) toddler.

This post has details about where to buy Japanese sewing books and a mini review if you're interested.

The dress has sleeves and is knee length, which when worn with stocking or leggings is perfect for Sydney's version of winter (cold, but not really when compared with other places!). And the stretch factor is perfect for meeting all the needs of a bendy and wiggly 5 year old. It took less than two hours to make, including tracing the pattern out, so it's quite a simple project if you know what you're doing - those instructions in Japanese are as helpful as those in Burda (although there are little diagrams so they are still easier to understand than Burda!).

I made the pattern for 120cm height and the fit is perfect - I find these Japanese sewing patterns and others that do patterns based on height like Ottobre and Burda are perfect fit for Anna's tall and slim frame, much better than the commercial sewing patterns that base their sizes on chest measurements. The only changes I made were to add a narrow elastic band around the waistline instead of sewing a trim around the dropped waist level to give the dress a bit of shape. Check out that stripes matching at the side seam - you can barely see the seam line (but don't look too closely at that not so straight hem though!):

The pattern has a bound neckline with a keyhole opening at the back, but I left this off purely because I was too lazy to fiddle about with that in a knit fabric, plus I figured (hoped) that a neckline made of 4 way stretch knit would be ok without it. It is a bit of tight stretch over her head but it works.

You might also be thinking that I left off those gathers at the front neckline? Well, they are there - I just didn't notice until I was taking these photos that Anna had the dress on backwards. She might have kept her part of our deal to wear the dress, but she still did it her own way!

And now I've probably set myself up for more last minute sewing sessions, because with another 5 birthday parties in the next 5 weeks she'll probably now want a new dress each time!

The cute and the not so cute: Japanese sewing pattern vs Burda 6-2011 #111

After doing that last post on the Japanese sewing pattern books that I own but have not sewn from I felt a pang of guilt not experienced since before I started actually sewing from my Burda magazines! So I traced out a few patterns and decided to make a new dress for Anna. This would be the cute part of the title of this post:

From the Fashionable Clothes for Girls book (ISBN978-4-529-04526-1) I made the tunic dress "a":



image from Tanoshii-Schneidern.blogspot.com

I used size 110 since Anna is 114cm tall now, and the fit is superb although I doubled the length of the bottom part of the dress (almost an extra 15cm long) because this dress was really really short. I think it may be a tunic meant to be worn over tights as shown in the pattern book, but since I wanted Anna to be able to wear this dress during summer I lengthened it so it could be worn as a dress. Of course Anna insisted on wearing tights with the dress for these photos so she could be just like the pictures in the book!

This dress was really simple and straightforward to make, and aside from the length the other change I made was to fully line the bodice instead of sewing on fiddly little facings at the neckline and sleeve openings. The fabric is an Alexander Henry cotton bought from the remnants table at Tessuti Fabrics earlier in the year which has a lovely soft feel to it, and the buttons, ribbon and red cotton faux pocket flaps are all from the stash.

And now to the not so cute. I'm sure you've all had those projects that turn out nothing like how you've pictured it in your head? Well, this is one of those! I saw a picture recently somewhere or other of a pair of shorts in a coral colour with a scalloped edge hem, worn with a black and white top that I thought would look perfect for a summer outfit. Unfortunately I failed to take into account that my legs are not long, toned and tanned so it doesn't look quite the way I wanted it to on me.

I wouldn't normally wear high heels with shorts, it was just for this photo trust me! I think the problem is that I made the shorts a bit longer in the leg because I'm not comfortable wearing them really short and that makes them look a bit dowdy.

 

I used Burda 6/2011 #111 mainly because it was already traced out since I've made it previously in a floral softer fabric. It's a very simple pattern with a side zip and some ridiculously long darts on the front. I left off the patch pockets on the back and instead did a single welt pocket.

For this version I used a piece of cotton drill that has been in the stash for a while so the fit is different but still not so bad.

That back view is far from flattering! How's that for truth in blogging? Anyway I think I'll cut off the scalloped edge and hem it normally and chalk this one up to experience.....

never judge a pattern by the cover....

Don't we all just love vintage patterns with their glorious illustrations? Problem is, I bet many of us have been fooled by them too - the garments never quite turn out like the illustration, and in some cases look completely different.  This has happened to me several times before, so really I shouldn't have been surprised, nor annoyed.....

Anna had been invited to a rainbow themed birthday party, and of course she demanded a new dress because unfortunately I think I've created a little fashion monster who thinks getting a new dress every week is the norm.  But I happened to have purchased some Lisette fabric bought from Spotlight during the January sale earlier this year that she liked, so I was able to oblige.  It is described as sateen, but it's quite thin like a poly-cotton voile, which would be perfect for a twirly dress style that she likes best.

I also let her pick out the pattern which she just loved doing since I've transferred all my scanned pattern covers to my Ipad so she just had to flick through them.  The hardest part was settling on one pattern, but in the end she chose vintage Style 1485 from the 1970s that I hadn't used before:

I always like using an unused pattern from the stash, and I've had good results from Style patterns before so I went for it.  I did the necessary measurements, sewed it up and finished it last Tuesday while both she and Toby were at daycare and had it ready and waiting for her to try it on when she got home Tuesday afternoon.    I congratulated myself on another productive day.  I then spent part of Wednesday unpicking it all.  Sigh.....

The completed dress looks ok on the hanger, but on Anna it may as well have been a wine barrel - it was really wide and really short.  In fact I think it may have been as wide as it is long.  I know the fashion for little kids in the 1970s was for short dresses, and I also know that Anna is exceptionally tall for her age (above the 100th percentile in the growth charts), but this dress barely covered her butt when standing and if she lifted her arms up the dress rose enough to show off her Dora underwear which is not so classy.

I didn't have enough fabric left to add another layer, so instead I decided to add contrasting layers in a solid colour in between.  However life intervened and it's still all in pieces in my sewing room.  But it didn't really matter in the end because it just wasn't to be a party dress.

Last Thursday, after his first 3 days at daycare, Toby got terribly sick with some virus and spent hours vomiting continuously for most of the day and evening.  We ended up in the emergency department at the wonderful Concord hospital (the staff in there are so lovely) for him to be re hydrated, which luckily they were able to do with medicine and he didn't need a drip.  In fact he perked up quickly and has been fine since.  We got home from the hospital at about 1.30am on Friday morning, and by 5.30am I was doing my best impersonation of Toby the previous day.  By Friday afternoon Anna joined in the fun too.  My husband who is proud of his iron guts constitution managed to hold out until Saturday night before he too succumbed.

So that is pretty much the whole weekend wasted, and I can't even say that all that bed rest and couch time has left me well rested.  Worst of all I missed meeting up with everyone who went along to the second Sydney sewists meet up as I had planned to on Saturday afternoon.  But there is always next time!

And now a mound of washing awaits me tomorrow, but on the bright side the kids are well enough to go back to daycare - whatever doesn't kill makes you stronger, right?!

take that, Dora the Explorer!

I think I've mentioned before that Anna's favourite dress is a Dora the Explorer dress that was given to us amongst a big bag of hand-me-down clothes last year.  As much as I love hand me downs, I don't love licensed clothing very much so I had put it to the back of her wardrobe, planning to refashion it by appliqueing over the Dora picture.  But Anna discovered it before I did and has pretty much worn it on high frequency ever since.

And this is the offending garment:

For a licensed clothing garment it isn't so bad really, it only has one small picture of Dora and her trusty sidekick Boots on the front, it's red cotton and not a neon coloured polyester and it has some cute white crochet detail to the shoulder.  Plus it does this which is a favourite past time of late:

Perhaps why I dislike it so much is that her favourite garment isn't something I've sewn for her.  How dare she prefer a hand me down dress made in a sweatshop in China over something lovingly handmade by her own mother? So I decided to challenge Dora in the favourite dress category.

I let Anna choose the fabric from the stash, and she chose a pretty floral cotton drill which is probably a bit too heavy weight for the style but at least it will withstand a lot of wear and it helps give it a very flared finish due to its stiffness. 

Using McCalls 4817 which I bought one time when sewingpatterns.com had a 99c pattern sale - even with their exorbitant shipping charges the overall price was still cheaper than what I could get here in Australia, this is my challenger to the title of favourite dress:

The back has a little bow tie detail which is nice, but doing the gathers on those three tiers nearly drove me nuts - the bottom tier is 1.6m wide. In fact doing the gathers annoyed me so much I went out and bought a ruffle foot shortly after sewing this!  I made a size 2 pattern except I used the length of a size 4 pattern since Anna is a bit of bean pole and the fit is pretty good.

And how does one accessorise a pretty dress like this? With frilly socks and purple Converse high tops of course!

Anna has now declared this her favourite dress now and has worn it frequently over the last fortnight.  In fact Dora only gets a look in when this dress is on the clothesline so I'd say that's a win for me! Isn't this the face of a happy customer?

p.s still pregnant.  Sigh.

mmmmminky

Ok so maybe I've gone a bit mental (and at 39 weeks pregnant I think I'm entitled to!) but I just can't pronounce the word 'minky' properly without drawing it out.  Even before I had kids and had never bought a scrap of it I couldn't walk past the minky table in the fabric store without giving it a good fondle before moving on to buy more fabrics I didn't really need either.

Anyway a few months ago I was searching for some minky fabric to make a change mat cover and some cloth nappies for the new baby.  When Lincraft had a 50% off sale I bought some of that bobbly minky in a pale yellow for the change mat (which is very high on my to do list), but even at 50% it was still quite expensive and the range of colours and prints was very limited.  I started to do some online searching when coincidentally the lovely Lisa from the OnlineFabricStore sent me an email asking whether I would like some minky and fleece fabric in exchange for a review here on my blog.

Now I haven't done any sponsored reviews before, mainly because I'm growing tired of those blogs that have either sponsored reviews or giveaways as the majority of their content with very little else interesting to read about.  Plus the offers I've received for sponsored reviews in the past have had absolutely nothing to do with what I blog about, so I've ignored or declined the offers.  But this offer was for free fabric! And fabric that I was actually searching for to make something that I would have posted about anyway, so I hope you'll all forgive me this once.

So I moseyed on over to the OnlineFabricStore and selected a minky fabric in a deep red colour and a fleece fabric in a chocolate brown with aqua polka dots, figuring that both were quite unisex so that it would suit Anna and the new baby no matter what it turns out to be.  There's quite a lot of choice in colours and prints, plus at $8.85/yd US ($8.50/91cm AU ) for the red minky and $6.85/yd US ($6.50/91cm AU ) for the fleece fabric their prices are better than what we can get here in Australia (yay for the very strong Aussie dollar!).

When the fabrics arrived I realised the red minky was far too lovely a shade of red to be hidden away on a baby's bottom so I decided instead to make little matching jackets for Anna and the new baby.

Fabric preparation:
I simply chucked both the red minky and chocolate fleece fabric into the washing machine on my normal cold wash before I sewed, remembering to overlock the cut edge of the minky because it does tend to shed little fibres a lot.  The fabric lost very little colour and didn't have any discernible shrinkage so it was a good start.  Another bonus is that these fabrics don't wrinkle, so I didn't need to press them either.

Sewing:
I was worried that the minky layers would stick to each and not feed through the feed dogs properly like I sometimes experience with velvet and corduroy, but the minkee sewed up with no problems at all.  I actually used my overlocker for 90% of the sewing on these and just used a stretch twin needle for some toptstitching.  Minky does have a nap so you do need to cut the pieces out with the grain in the same direction, which luckily I remembered to do, even in my baby brain state.

For the new baby I made a little raglan sleeved cardigan from McCalls 9407 which is OOP, which I got from an opshop some time ago.  Seriously is there anything easier than sewing a raglan sleeved cardigan? This took me about 1.5 hours maximum, from go to whoa. 

This pattern calls for a facing around the neckline and the front edges, but that seemed too fiddly to me and instead I lined the cardigan completely with a contrasting cotton knit fabric from the stash.  I just made two identical cardigans from the two fabrics, sewed them together with right sides facing, turned them inside out, stuck on a couple of snaps and all done!  Here's the finished product, sans baby of course:

I love the contrast of the black and white stripe knit against the deep red colour of the minky.  I decided to topstitch around the edge with a blanket stitch for decorative reasons, but I think a single stitch line would have been a better idea because the blanket stitch just made the minky look a bit ragged.  It looks better from the inside though (probably more so if I had sewn a little straighter of course):
 

I'm rapidly learning the politics of being a parent to more than one child: making sure the second child doesn't only get all hand me downs, trying to take as many photos of the second as the first and also balancing the attention evenly between them all.  So big sister Anna also needed something new and luckily the cut of minkee that Lisa sent was generous enough to make a hooded jumper.  I used trusty old Kwik Sew 2025, which is an ancient pattern long OOP that I picked up one time in a op shop. But again it's just a simple raglan sleeve style with a hood which never goes out of fashion for the toddler set. 
And here's what I made for Anna:

For the pocket, cuffs and inner hood I used some ribbing from the stash again bought from an opshop ages ago that is a pale pink and red stripe. 

Luckily this was an easy style to make because the instructions were missing from the pattern envelope, but I think I got it right.  Too bad my model decided to be funny and ham it up when I was trying to take to her photo, but she did profess to love this:

So far I've found the sizing of Kwik Sew patterns to be pretty good, much better than the other commercial pattern companies, but on this one I found that the sleeves and the body were a little too short. It did fit over her head and around the body so I guess I could just replace those cuffs with some wider cuffs.  Or I could just make her walk around with her hands in her pockets which would be extremely helpful when out shopping in those annoying stores with all the easter eggs on display at floor level....

The final verdict? The fabric is good quality with a lovely feel to it that didn't go away after washing, the colours are very close to what appears on screen and the fabric was easy to cut and sew with.  Because I didn't buy these fabrics I don't have any experience with their customer service or shipping, but I do think their prices are reasonable and the fabrics arrived fairly quickly even with international postage.  I'll definitely be looking at their website to get some more fabric once the next baby is out and I know whether I'm in for more pink butterfly fabric or some blue pirate fabric!