conquering my sewing nemesis

Thank you all for chiming in with your own experiences regarding your spirited children - it's comforting to know that so many of you have survived parenting the little blighters, but it's amazing just how many of them are out there! Anna has actually calmed down a little this week - going to sleep at 7pm with no tears, and only waking a few times for 30min or so each time. She's also slept really well at daycare, which means she's a happy little girl in the evenings and eats her dinner with no tantrums! If only she was always like this. I did see my doctor about the situation, but while she was sympathetic, she certainly offered no suggestions.

Well this week I have finally finished sewing my living and dining room curtains, achieved only because I've been home sick from work for the last two days with another bout of tonsillitis, this time paired with a head cold and a mouth ulcer to boot. But Anna wasn't sick so she went off to daycare and since I had the house to myself I couldn't waste it by doing something sensible like resting and sleeping all day now could I! Luckily my husband has banished me to our guest bedroom because I'm sick and he's been dealing with Anna at night time, so I've had a relatively good night sleep knocked out on painkillers. See there is a silver lining to practically everything!

These curtains have been a loooong time coming. After a long search for fabric that looks good but was also reasonably priced, I settled on this cotton from Spotlight for the bargain price of $16.95 a metre:

I needed 20 metres plus lining fabric, so some of the beautiful fabrics I saw in the $50 to $150/m price range were definitely out of the question. I made simple 'S wave' curtains, which are the easiest to make and use the least amount of fabric too. All that is basically needed is to hem the curtain and lining fabric on all sides, sew on a stiff header tape, insert a curtain hook about every 10cms and then hang. That's all, no pinch pleating or pulling cord to gather it up, but it still took me a long time to do because a) sewing curtains are boring, and b) handling such large sizes of fabric is a pain in the butt.

Because my living and dining room are so bright, these photos are pretty crappy I'm afraid but here is the big reveal. First the living room:

And the dining room:

And because I tidied up the house today I can show you what is out of frame of my tightly cropped outfit photos:

I had thought long and hard about what to do with the triangle windows at the top, but have decided to leave them uncovered. They are laminated glass so should be energy efficient anyway, and there's no privacy issue or significant glare from them, so that's how they're gonna stay. A lick of paint to the window frames wouldn't go astray though, I guess....

And I would like to say that our living area is finally complete, but there are still a gajillion things left to do: painting window frames and door trim, painting the staircase railing, having a carpenter build a bookshelf, hang some artwork, etc etc.

But I am now free to start sewing what I like best: clothes for me. Stay tuned, I promise to return to your normal programming soon

my spirit child / my flagging spirits

I received a lovely email from Heather last week who came out of blog lurkdom to recommend the book by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka titled "Raising Your Spirited Child", to help my understand/cope with Anna's "spirited" personality. Isn't "spirited" a much nicer term than saying my wilful/ annoying/ exhausting/ PITA child? All terms I use readily (in my head not out loud) when dealing with Anna. Apparently spirited children are more alert, persistent and sensitive than others, plus they are more energetic, have worse moods and are shy in new situations. Yes, that describes Anna pretty well. I have this book on order.

Well this week, my spirited child has:

• has spent two to three hours every night screaming after being put to bed instead of going to sleep, and then waking at 11pm-midnight to start another 3 hour screaming match. Yes she has a regular bedtime and bed routine (bath, book bed), she also has soft music playing all night, heating to keep her room to a constant 20deg, curtains with three layers of lining to keep out the light, and we tiptoe around keeping quiet. All to no avail!
• after an hour of the second stage screaming match, she comes into our bed to sleep and she quietens down but then she then proceeds to play with my hair or stroke my face or arm for most of the remaining night;
• broke the arms off my prescription sunglasses, the second pair of my glasses she's ruined;
• slapped some children at daycare;
• refused to eat dinner most nights, instead opting for raisin toast; and
• managed to peel a few keys off my laptop:

Sigh..... but, her vocabulary is amazing, her words come out loud and clear, and she is pretty switched on - she saw me searching for a shoe the other day and she went off and found it! Of course she probably hid it in the first place but she was smart enough to work out what I was looking for. She is also starting to recognise pictures and say what they are, her current favourite being dog, clock and car:

I know long term having an alert and smart child is great, but boy is it tiring right now...

Anyway enough babbling on about my child - the reason I tell you all of this is to report on my woeful progress this week on those annoying curtains, other sewing, this blog, essentially anything not related to trying to get a screaming toddler to settle and sleep! Basically curtains are half done - I've done four drops, only four more to go. And I vowed to myself not to move on to anything else until they are done so I am aiming to finish them this weekend even if I stay up all night, because I have plans for another red skirt for me.

I did however quickly whip up this lumpy looking dog bed from some bright green terry towelling from the stash, stuffed with fabric scraps:

It's just a rectangle of fabric with rows of stitching sewn across the width to create a channel to stuff. Of course Anna had to have a test lie down before the dog did:

Yes, she's still in her pyjamas and slippers - it's been cold around these parts lately! And then she generously shared her dummy with the dog:

I wish I could say I managed to get the dummy from her before it went back into her mouth, but alas I wasn't quick enough. It's alright though, because shortly after this photograph she rinsed it out in the dog's drinking bowl LOL! Germs are good for kids, right?

The dog bed looks a little small, I measured it to fit into his sleeping crate, but didn't take into account that when it was stuffed it would get shorter. Anyway it does the job and got some fabric scraps out of my sewing room, although two days after I took this photo the dog has ripped part of it open so now those sewing scraps are swirling around the garage! Double sigh, I think I have a spirited dog too......

I will see you all shortly on the other side of my curtain sewathon, I promise!

Resurfacing

Well that bout of tonsillitis knocked me down for longer than expected. Even after my throat stopped hurting I still felt unbelievably tired, achy and nauseous. I was scared witless that I was either preggers or had the flu, both of which would be terrible options for me at this point in time, but thankfully it's all passed now and I'm back to normal. I think a year or two of greatly disturbed sleep just caught up with me in a big way, and I'd like to say I caught up on some sleep but with hurricane Anna still in the house that's just not gonna happen. Anna's teeth seem to have settled down as well, because she's back to waking only three times a night and sleeping only half the night in our bed (this is good for her, trust me!).

Anyway, I ventured back into my sewing room the other night and was hoping to do a big ta da! reveal of a new skirt in a colour other than grey but sadly it has turned out to be a big fat wadder. I did take a photo though to prove to you all that I did actually sew with fabric other than grey:

It's the Kasia skirt from Burda Style, one of their free download patterns. I was a bit dubious about it, being high waisted (which is totally not my style) and gathered at the hips (which is my widest part), but having seen so many great versions out there in bloggyland, and wanting to try something different for a change I ignored my inner voice. Well sadly, it's bad and I should have stuck with what I know. Even with doing an adjustment for a sway back, I found the skirt to overall be to large and badly fitted to my body, and I think red corduroy was probably a bad choice too. If I had enough fabric I would have cut out the back hip panels without the gathering to see if that improved it, but sadly I didn't have enough fabric to try. And then I noticed that I had cut some panels on a different nap to the others, so that the front looked matte whilst the back looked shiny. So it was beyond salvage.

I originally bought this fine wale corduroy with a slight amount of stretch to make Anna a pinafore so I had only bought a single metre, but I liked it too much so I decided to use if for me. Oh well, I'll rip it apart and could probably still eek out a dress or skirt for Anna from it so no great loss at the end of the day.

For anyone else contemplating this skirt, it has a bajillion pages that you need to sticky tape together, and there seem to be hundreds of pieces that need to cut, interfaced and sewn together (16 pieces for the waistband alone!). It's a fiddly but not difficult project and like I said, other people have achieved all sorts of awesomeness out of this. Just not me.

So now I'm in a strange place in terms of sewing. All the fabric I pull out and the patterns I'm drawn to are formal, work wear pieces which I definitely don't need since I only work three days a week and have a huge work wardrobe already. I really need smart casual pieces for my second job moonlighting as a yummy mummy half the week, but I'm crap at sewing with knits or making pants and pencil skirts don't really make sense at playgroup. Hmmmmm, maybe some more inspirational blog trawling is required.

But I am on with another task that I've left far too long: finishing sewing the curtains for my living and dining rooms. I meant to sew them before last summer, but now that winter has arrived and it's cold I need some heavy curtains to cover the expanse of glass. But they are so boring...........

and my woes continue

Well Anna has had another tooth pop out and she has calmed down somewhat. She is still waking 3 or 4 times each night, but goes back to sleep relatively quickly. Good thing too, because now I am quite sick with tonsilitis. It might be a week of icecream for dinner for me!

I see red

through my red bloodshot eyes, that is..... This last week and a half has been absolutely horrible, I think I may have been awake for 22 hours each and every day because Anna is cutting some more teeth. These ones must be painful, because she hasn't responded to any painkillers, and even holding her didn't calm her down at all. On Monday night she screamed so loudly and for so long that she actually lost her voice! So she took to banging on her bedroom wall to get our attention, and when we ignored that she swan dived out of her cot and landed with a loud thud on the floor.

So she has been sleeping in our bed this week a lot. Which is fine with me because it means we all get a bit of sleep and there's no chance of adult activities which lead to more babies being made - I am so not ready to go down that path again any time soon!

As a result of spending so much time alternating between trying to settle a screaming toddler and collapsing exhausted into bed, I didn't manage to get much sewing done at all. Which is really getting to me because I have so many projects rattling around in my head that I'm itching to get started on. Today I hosted a little sewing school at my place, I'm teaching two friends how to sew so it was fun but chaotic trying to show them how to sew and keeping an eye on three rambunctious toddlers. And I do have a skirt pattern for myself pinned out, and guess what?! It's in red fabric! Although I'll probably wear it with a grey top LOL....

I've changed the thread in my overlocker to red, and since I'm too lazy to change it for each project and mess around with getting the tension right, I plan to sew a few things out of red before I'm done with it. First up though I made Anna a pair of pants out of a red corduroy skirt that I started a few years ago that never made it out of the UFO box. It's a bright red, almost tomato red colour, which isn't so great for a poorly sewn adult skirt but it just right for a pair of little pants with some stripy bias trim:

I just used my trusty Kwik Sew kids pants pattern again, and since I've made this four times now I've pared the process right down I can make them in less than 2 hours from start to finish. It was very difficult to get Little Miss Cranky to model them this week, here's pretty much the only pic I was able to snap at playgroup last week:

Thank you all for the lovely comments on the green suit. I feel like the popular girl in school with so many of you taking the time to leave a comment.

Toocutedobs - I am guilty too of not leaving comments on other people's posts that already have a lot, since I can't think of anything different to say. But it is nice to get lots of comments so I shall try better in the future.

Mary Nanna you are absolutely right - a sway back adjustment is just what I should have done. I normally do an adjustment for fitted clothes, but I thought I may have been able to get away without one on this jacket thinking it would finish at the small of my back. Guess I was wrong! Ah well, I can live with it as is though....

Bonny - these are my favourite shoes, they are pretty high but they are quilted satin inside so they are very comfortable. In fact I wear them so often I've just had them re-heeled so they can live on for another season (I had them done at Brices in Castlereagh St for any Sydneysiders - they are the best in the CBD).

Anyway happy weekend everyone, hopefully I shall get some quality time with my sewing machine and scissors. Although tonight my husband is out at a dinner with his mates for his cricket club reunion, so I may just have ice cream for dinner!

Burda 9/2009 #127 and Burda 1/2009 #128: the green suit

I've finally finished my green skirt suit, green in both colour and eco credentials because it's made completely from thrifted materials. Seriously, the fabric, lining and buttons are from op shops, the zipper is pulled out of a doomed project and even the interfacing was bought at a garage sale. Only the thread is newly purchased, because I've had heartache in the past using very old thread and it's associated snapping, tangling and fluffing as it passed through my sewing machine.

So if I just ignore the cost of the pattern, which is probably astronomical given how little I use the Burda magazines compared to the cost of the subscription, overall this suit cost me next to nothing but turned out fantastic:

The jacket is from Burda 9/09, pattern 127. This jacket is so easy to make, particularly if you're wary of setting in sleeves or dealing with notched collars. The sleeve is in two parts, and the sleeves get sewn on to the front and back pieces separately, and then you sew one long sleeve from the neckline along the shoulder seam, down the outside arm seam to the cuff. This makes it very easy to construct, but I found it hard to get a close fit. The Burda description is that this is a loose fitting jacket, but while I got the front to sit well, the back is a little baggy:

I guess a muslin would have come in handy here! Oh well, I have to keep reminding myself that I don't normally stand around in a photographic pose, and in real life it may not be noticeable.

The fabric is a wool or wool blend possibly, and it presses easily especially since I block interfaced all of the jacket pieces. Interfacing and putting in a back stay was about the extent of proper tailoring techniques I used, because I couldn't tell where the roll line was for the collar to do any padstitching, but there is an internal button just under the collar point on the inside which holds the collar in place properly anyway.

The skirt pattern I wasn't overly enthused about. It's the exclusive design from Burda 1/09, which is the first time I've sewn one of the exclusive designs in the magazine. Even though they are supposed to be designed by international designers and not Burda designers, I didn't find much difference in terms of pattern design or instructions really. I picked this skirt because of the vertical lines to match the jacket, and so that the tabs at the waist would make the skirt interesting if worn on it's own. The tabs at the waist are just decorative, and are actually sewn to the front skirt panel. They were super fiddly to sew on. Even with a thorough pressing and clipping the curves they still look a bit dodgy.


I also found the skirt to be very boxy, the side seams had hardly any shaping to them whilst my body has lots of shaping! So I ended up taking the side seams in a few centimetres above my hip and below my hip to the hem line just to give it a little more shaping.

I underlined the skirt with organza because the fabric is a loose weave and I hope that interlining will help prevent it bagging out as well as reduce wrinkling. The real test will come when I wear it for a full day at work next week. I used fabric covered buttons on the skirt to match the jacket, but they are hidden by the jacket when worn together.

I possibly will make this jacket again in a funky colour or fabric to wear casually with jeans, although I will pinch out a fair amount of excess in the back and probably make the sleeves full length. I meant to make these full length sleeves, but somewhere between deciding that when looking at the pattern photo and tracing out the sleeves I completely forgot! I think it looks ok though with a long sleeved top underneath poking out, my wrists get far too cold at work otherwise.

And for my next trick, I've threaded my overlocker with red thread so be prepared for some primary colour happening here soon!

utility sewing

I've practically finished sewing the skirt and jacket shown in the previous post, all that's left to do is sew on the buttons - all eleven of them! Not that sewing on buttons is that hard, but getting them lined up properly and sewing them on by hand since they are shank buttons is a little tedious.

But I got a little distracted last week because we had an unexpected cold snap, well relatively cold for Sydney because it's not like there was snow or even frost, it was just a little chilly! Anyway I finally took the hems up on two pairs of jeans I bought over a year ago - how unbelievably lazy of me when it takes about 5 minutes to do. Especially when I did three pairs a few months ago for a friend! I also whipped up some fleece tracksuit pants for Anna to wear around the house, so unexciting they aren't even worth taking a picture of.

I also made her some grey corduroy jeans from my trusty Kwik Sew pattern 'cos nothing says cosy winter clothes like corduroy. I know, I know, grey again! But grey is a good neutral to offset all the pink hand-me-down clothes she has (I avoid buying her pink clothes). However, to liven them up, and because I cut these from some left over fabric and didn't quite have enough fabric, I cut out the cuffs, pockets and rear patch pockets in a grey and white stripe seersucker cotton.

Aren't those autumn leaves pretty? Anna had a ball grabbing handfuls of them, and if she could talk she could tell you what they taste like as well! She is still in that stage where everything goes in the mouth, and not just once either, she likes to try things several times especially if I say not to. I swear Crayola should release some icecream flavours because those crayons seem to be a favourite for munching on too....

A few questions popped up in the comments to the last post, which some of you very experienced sewists out there might be able to better answer, but here's my 2 cents worth:

Mamalucy asked about padding her recently acquired dressform to use it to it's fullest potential. I have to say I rarely use my dressform for anything other than hemming and hanging UFOs on to gather dust, because even with padding to more closely match my extra padded bits it still doesn't really resemble me and I don't get a good fit. I think it's to do with my forward sloping shoulders (aka bad posture) and narrow shoulders - those are things that just can't be padded out. But to answer your question mamalucy, I have seen other people use those body shaping slips over padding on their dressforms, because it fits closely to the dressform and is a slippery finish so that your clothes don't stick to it.

Ribbons Undone asked about the top layer of her fabric shifting when she is sewing. I find this happens to me when I'm sewing layers of different fabrics together, like when I'm using organza for underlining to a thicker fabric it shifts like crazy. And recently when I was sewing some curtains (still not finished, alas) I found the coated lining fabric and the cotton curtain fabric did not play nicely together either. But as to why it is happening when sewing two layers of the same fabric together I don't know, it may be the differential feed because I don't know if you can change the pressure of the presser foot (maybe check your manual?). What I usually do when this happens to me is to periodically lift the presser foot up and smooth the fabric out before it's shifted too far, sew a bit further, do it again etc and that distributes the fabric evenly. Or I try to feed the fabric through holding the top layer taut and letting the machine pull the bottom layer through to even up the rate at which the fabric moves through.

All highly nontechnical answers I'm afraid! Anyone else know what is going on? Here's a direct link to Ribbons Undone's post if you can help a fellow sewist in need.