eye spy with my (pink) eye

Well actually it's not me with the pink eye, it's Anna. She's picked up conjunctivitis from her daycare centre, so I'm home from work looking after her until it's cleared up. She seems happy enough despite having manky stuck together eyes, although getting eye drops in her eyes is a bit challenging! Jodie, I would love to be able to say that her sleep issues have been resolved, but no she is still waking frequently through the night and pretty much sleeps in our bed all night every night because that's the only way to stop the screaming. However, I have resolved to stop fixating on it - I fear I was becoming a dreadfully whingy bore always harping on about how she never sleeps. There are worse things of course, like this incredibly sad tale of a sick little girl and her amazingly strong mother, so that helps me put it all in perspective.

There are many good things about being home in the middle of the day, including being able to snare some daylight time during our currently very cold and overcast winter weather to get a photo of my new skirt on me. And here it is:

I've been looking for some smart casual clothes to wear on my days off work, clothes that would work equally well in the playground as well as swanning around cafes and shopping. After a bit of snoop shopping, I found this skirt over at ModCloth which I used for my inspiration:

I figured this would be a good choice because it's not so tight fitting or restrictive that I can't bend down or crouch down at the playground, but it's also not so full skirted that a breezy day wouldn't cause me grief. With a bit of tweaking to a basic pattern, a now OOP Vogue 9615 - adding extra width for gathers at the front and adding some faux pocket flaps, I managed to get a pretty close knock-off.

I used some red herringbone pattern wool fabric from the stash, and because this fabric was picked up from an opshop I only just had enough fabric to cut out the skirt pieces, so the gathered section in the middle is actually a separate rectangular piece cut against the grain because I didn't have enough fabric width to cut it with the grain. But the change in pattern isn't overly noticeable, and sort of looks like a deliberate design feature:

The vertical seams for the centre panel are visible, but oh well I managed to get what I wanted out of the fabric I had, so I'm happy with it:

For the lining I just made the a-line skirt as per the pattern, which I hope prevents that problem of gathered and full skirts bunching up between your legs when you walk if you're wearing stockings or you're walking into the wind (or I am the only one that happens to?).

Even though this is a pretty bright red colour, it surprisingly matches well with other clothes already in my wardrobe and I'm glad not to have made an orphan skirt for a change. In fact the only problem I have with casual skirts is what shoes to wear with them, because I always wear heels with skirts otherwise I don't feel properly dressed and my legs look stumpy, but of course heels aren't the best option for the playground. Hmmm, sounds like some shoe shopping is going to be required soon!

Thank you for all the tips on the overlocker problems, I will definitely try them out. I have been using the big cones and not the little spools, but they are just Birch threads and not expensive thread because that's the only type of overlocker thread for sale in Spotlight. Same with the needles, I think I was just using some universal type needles, so I will look into whether there are specific Toyota needles I should be using. Sherry your tip of winding the thread around the dial twice sounds bizarre, but I shall try it since you've had success with it. I shall report back soon people!

the machines are conspiring against me.....

Major mechanical dramas round these parts this week. My laptop went kaput, and with it all the photos and other bits and pieces I've used it for since February. Sigh, I know I should have backed it up more frequently, but well, I didn't..... Good news though that we should be able to get all the info out of the old hard drive, and with a new hard drive we may not even have to replace the laptop itself which is barely two years old. So to post this, I've had to clear some space in the room that will become our study but is presently the room in which we store loads and loads of junk, and set up the desktop computer to use. I shouldn't complain since I do still have a computer to use, but sitting on a comfy lounge in front of the heater is a much nicer option than sitting in a cold, messy study!

And my overlocker still hates me! I tried rethreading, changing the threads, changing the needles, even did that testing thing by using four different threads to work out which one is out of whack, but I'm still getting all sorts of loopiness at the back. Marie-Christine, thank you for confirming what I thought - that the fabric shouldn't make a difference to the tension it's the thread. So I am stumped as to why my machine goes haywire when I serge knits instead of wovens. It's all really annoying since I only had it serviced a few months ago. I think I will take it back there and ask them to firstly look at it and then show me how to thread it.

But one good thing (I'm not ready to concede there are other good things about them just yet!)about knit fabrics though is that they can be sewn without finishing the edges, so I made a little dress for Anna out of some mystery fabric from the stash. It is super soft and stretchy and in my favourite (lack of) colour:



Yeah, I know it's grey, but I did sew that colourful strip of red and pink striped knit fabric around the bottom to liven it up. It's just a long strip of fabric gathered slightly, sewn in a zig zag through the centre and it then naturally fell down in the manner which is just how I envisaged it. I love it when things work out when you're making them up as you go along! Although I did want to put elastic around the wrists to make them bell sleeves, but since there wasn't enough width I did a lettuce edge finish instead.

This turned out pretty well given my dislike of knit fabrics, so I even made some black tights to go with them since it's too cold to be without at the moment, although these turned out a little baggy because I don't think the fabric I chose had enough stretch:





Here we are on location at our local library, Anna looking like an angel moments before she started taking all the books off the shelf. For the pattern I used the sleeping bag from a now OOP McCalls 6899 and modified it by taking it in greatly at the side seams. It's probably still a little wide around the neckline, but it's better than my last effort when it didn't even get over her head. Birdie, thanks for your tips about stretching ribknit fabric and then measuring off your son's head with it - now I think about it, I didn't even measure Anna's head for that polka dot top, I just used the pattern piece provided! Probably the reason it didn't work.....


I have actually finished sewing something for myself, and it feels like ages since I've had something new. But at the moment I have a majorly red nose from another bout of the sniffles, and I'm far to vain to post a picture of me with it! But here's a sneak peek:

Yes, it's red (like my nose) and not grey!

stress and loopiness

I've had a somewhat stressful week. Not because of tonsillitis (which is gone now), not because of Anna not sleeping (which she's not, but I'm over it), but because I had my inlaws stay with us for the last week and a half, and all I can say is thankfully they've now gone home. Their home is in another state. Where they can't return quickly. What is it about other people's parents that are really annoying? Is it because you don't feel free to snap at them the way you would with your own parents? My inlaws aren't that bad really, but after a week of living in close quarters little things were driving me nuts, like my father inlaw flicking his really long fingernails (it's a chinese cultural thing) together making a grating noise, or my mother inlaw inventing housework to do like handwashing her clothes each day instead of waiting to do a load in the machine or whisking a cup off to the sink to wash it the second after you've put it down.

Anyway, I did manage to get a few hours to myself on Saturday afternoon, and it was lovely to retreat to my sewing room for some peace and quiet. I made a little skirt for Anna from the red corduroy wadder skirt I started to make for myself. Her version came out much better I think:

So simple, basically just two rectangles sewn together with elastic at the top. In fact, I didn't really need a pattern, but I used Kwik Sew 3665 that I picked up in a 60% off patterns sale at Spotlight a few weeks ago:

Since I was on a roll, I decided to try my hand at sewing knits again, using Kwik Sew 3424 because I had read all the reviews on Pattern Review saying it was a good pattern and I figured that since it's just a t-shirt for Anna that it would be good practice. And it turned out technically perfect:

I used fusible interfacing along the hem lines which did help stabilise it and prevent waviness, so thanks for whoever gave that tip last time I lamented about my poor knit sewing skills. The fabric print itself is a little off grain, but I thought it had the required stretch. I guess not though, because I can't get the neck opening over Anna's head! I don't think she has a particularly large noggin, but it wasn't getting over it! Maybe the rib doesn't have enough stretch? Who knows, but I do know that I know have to unpick some twin stitching and some overlocking to get the rib off and then I'll just sew some clear elastic on and turn the edge under.

And it seems my overlocker dislikes knit fabrics as much as I do. I had been sewing corduroy and some wool with no problems, but then when I put this knit fabric through the underside because all loopy and no end of fiddling with the tension would fix it. It must be a sign that I should stick to what I know best......

In spirited child watch this week, Anna has taken to stomping around in my shoes and drawing on her face with my lipliner:

Drawing on the floor even though she has ginormous pieces of paper to draw on:

And flicking through any book in the hope of seeing a clock, a bike or a car which she'll then yell the word out, although embarrassingly her pronunciation of clock is missing the 'l', which is a vital letter in that word I think.

But overall she has been a good child this week and all is happy around here. And I have a new lens for my camera, and it's turning out some fantastic photos.

Happy sewing everyone, I'm off to finish something for myself (hopefully not another wadder!)

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!