snap happy

Well I'm still having a merry old time using my new snap press - it's absolutely great for kids clothes, and I can see it coming in handy for handbag making as well although it's not that often I make handbags because they are way too fiddly for my patience levels.

Anyway I made a little pinafore dress for Anna from a 1974 Simplicity pattern (Simplicity 6051) which my mum remembers making for me and for my brother (the overalls that is, not the dress!). Too bad she didn't keep them and we don't have any photos either, because it would have been fun to see what crazy fabric she used given it was the 70s! I used a stretch dark denim from the stash, embellished with a line of pink ric rac across the front pocket and pink plastic snaps. It looks rather mature and serious looking, but it is a good neutral colour to offset all the girly pink clothes she has.....

Sorry for the blurry photos, it is getting increasingly hard to get crisp photos of Anna since she is just a ball of movement most of the time!

So how did all of you NSW dwellers survive the extreme heat on Sunday? We were out on Sunday and came home to a house that was 35c degrees (95F) inside and 40c (104F) outside, and even at midnight it was still 30c (86F) degrees inside. Unfortunately we don't have air conditioning and boy did we feel it yesterday! Anna was awake half the night being very upset and unsettled which I thought was because of the heat, but this morning I see she has one top tooth popped through the gum and the other just about to come through, the poor little thing.

It was my birthday on Saturday just gone, and my lovely husband gave up his usual Saturday morning golf competition round for me to have a few hours at a day spa which was just great! Actually the real gift was a few hours baby free time, the facial and the massage were just the icing on the cake..... And my lovely friends gave me one of these very cool and very me brooches by the artist Liana Kabel:

that's not a bib, THIS is a bib

apologies for the lame Crocodile Dundee joke, us Aussies do sometimes trot it out when we're trying to be only a little bit funny......

Anyway, I have a stack of bib from various stores and they all seem to have one thing in common: they're either small, or very small and don't do much in the way of stopping food getting onto clothes. Lately Anna has developed a real attitude around meal times - she only wants to feed herself, but likes to rub her food into her face, hair and all over the high chair before eating it! All of her clothes are seriously food stained, and I have given up soaking them in Napisan before each wash because they just get dirty again.

But I recently bought one of these very handy snap presses from Nappies Covered:

I bought this to use snaps instead of velcro on the next lot of nappies I make since Anna has worked out she likes being without a nappy best (there's that attitude again!). And it is so simple to use, I'm trying to use it on practically everything I can. Since I have a stack of terry towelling nappy flats and more than enough decorative fabrics, I decided to make some supersized bibs to defeat even the messiest meal time.

I trialled a few different fabrics - the yellow polka dot is a plastic coated polyester cotton from Spotlight which is wipe cleanable but liquid spills roll off very quickly, the blue dotted and ladybird fabric are woven cottons which work great and were easy to sew, whilst the pink dotted is a cotton knit which works great as a bib but was a bit shifty when sewing. I used this free download pattern from Chickpea Studios, but I enlarged mine a bit.

As you can see, it covers her shoulders and her entire front:

And this is the reason why it is needed!

the grown up version of those little blue shorts

Ok, I'm a woman obsessed with using all of the stitches on my new sewing machine! After saying in the last post that I wouldn't use the decorative stitches on my own clothes, well I did, but it is very discreet and doesn't look too bad at all...


This is a fagoting stitch, used for smocking or some such thing (I actually don't know it's proper use!), but I sewed this along the pocket edge and it worked so much better in keeping the pocket bag to the inside than just a single line of topstitching.

I made some shorts for myself out of some navy blue cotton drill I had in the stash, primarily because I wanted to try out the fit of BWOF 11/08 pattern 121 if I took the pleats out.

When I made these pants previously in a grey wool the fit was great but the pleats added too much volume around my hips and thighs. And it turns out that without the pleats they are still very comfortable and look pretty good too, although a darker colour probably also helps in visually slimming the hips.

I also made little slits at the hem just for looks and not for ease of wear since the legs aren't tight.


Although I had to take the waistband in by an inch or so because I have lost a few more kilos since I made those grey pants, so I just put a centre back seam in the waistband which also helped with a sway back adjustment that I need in close fitting clothes like these. Now I have the pattern altered to a good fit so it just may become a TNT (tried and true) pattern. As much as I love trying out new patterns (and with 600+ paper patterns I should!), when it comes to tricky fitting clothes likes pants I think it is good to have something you know will turn out well without having to do a muslin every time.


So next up on the sewing to do list is a pretty frock for a christmas party, although I have washed, cut and pinned together three drops of the curtains so I should really sit down and sew those! I am such a procrastinator sometimes.....

But right now I'm off for a swim because it is 35 degrees here, far too hot to do anything else

fancy stitches

When I bought my new sewing machine a little while back that came with 70 different stitches (about 65 more than I had previously) I didn't think I'd need them all. Well as a few people commented when I bought it, I have used more stitches than I thought I would, mainly because I've gone out of my way to use them purely for decorative purposes. Although I love love love being able to keyhole button holes, I think they look great.

I haven't used the decorative stitches on my clothes mind you, I think most of the decorative/embroidery type stitches on clothes can look a little cutesy on a grown woman. But a 10 month old baby can't complain for a few more years yet, thankfully because I plan on dressing her in homemade vintage style clothes and giving her a bowl cut when her hair gets longer! Yeah, she'll probably need therapy when she's older but I've gotta get my own back for all these sleepless nights.....

Anyway I made her two more pairs of shorts because a) they're quick, b) they use up my bigger pieces of scrap fabric, c) it's getting really really hot around here and d) she's always on the floor with her butt in the air trying to crawl, so shorts are more practical. First up I made a pair of shorts from the Amy Butler Little Stitches for Little Ones book, in a size 6-9 months because I find the pattern size to run large. They're just made from some leftover white cotton, and I used the love heart stitching setting around the hem line in a contrasting pink cotton:

I also made a pair of navy blue shorts in a cotton drill that are actually cut out from the scrap of a pair of shorts I'm in the middle of making for myself (yes I'll be careful to make sure we don't wear them at the same time!) I used the same vintage Simplicity pattern I made these red shorts from, I just added a button to the pocket. On the hemline I used a little star pattern around the short legs:


I deliberately made these blue shorts to wear with a red gingham top that was a gift because she had nothing to go with it. Nothing like starting wardrobe building early in life!

And for more scrap busting ideas, check out this ultra cute partridge softie tutorial over at Retro Mama (via oneprettything) would be ideal for Christmas tree decorations. If only I had about a gajillion more hours in the day I would make heaps of these for our tree because this year may be the first year we actually get a tree (we're never home over Christmas so haven't bothered in the past).

But the ultimate scrap buster that will use up all your scraps very quickly has to be this: a 'stuff sack' filled dog bed from Molly Mutt (they sell patterns to make your own but I'm sure most of us could work out a similar thing)

This is particulary for Veronica Darling, who has the most gorgeous puppy ever! I need to make several of these because my naughty dog has a tendency to use his bed as a toy and tear it to shreds after a few months. Yes that would be this dog, who is trying to be bashful:

Thanks for all of your comments on the skirt in the previous post, I feel like the popular girl in school!

Vicki - I hope your got your curtains done, otherwise your neighbours may get to know a whole other side of you LOL! I hope you're going to put a photo on your blog soon, because I miss seeing your creations.

Rebecca - Anna is definitely chewing on everything in sight. There isn't a finger, shoulder or even my chin that is safe around her, let alone anything else in the house like the furniture, her toys or the chair legs.... Jean I haven't seen the baby numzit you mention for sale her, but I have been loading her up on baby nurofen at night time.

And thanks to those lovely ladies for commenting on my baby weight loss - don't hate me but I actually weigh a few kilos less now than I did just before I got pregnant. Which surprises me because I put on 20kg during pregnancy and haven't done any regular or specific exercise since but I think chasing a baby around plus being up walking the floor with her all night that I did for many months did the trick!

skirting the issue

Curtains sewn: nil.... Oh dear, finding the motivation for those curtains is proving difficult! But since they are mainly to keep the warmth in the house during winter, I have a good 6 months to get them done.

In the meantime though, I finished a skirt I started last week - BWOF 4/09 skirt 101A:

I didn't make mine in eye popping yellow though. Only in the pages of BWOF would a skirt that colour or the cleavage exposing tops they feature be appropriate in a workplace! I used fabric from the stash, bought long ago from a garage sale from a nice little Italian lady who make me a cup of tea and then piled fabric after fabric on top of me! She was so lovely, I walked away with bags and bags of fabric and still her house was full of fabric. From memory it is a wool gabardine (it certainly feels like it and has that wet dog smell when I washed it), it's very lightweight though so perfect for summer. The fabric is white with red, blue and brown checks. Bad description, but it is actually a nice fabric:

I wanted to make the centre front and back panels stand out since I used a busy fabric, so I cut them on the bias, and put red piping around the pockets to make them stand out as well. The red of the piping doesn't match the orange red of the button or the stripe in the fabric, but oh well close enough for me. And look, I even got the patterns matching pretty well at the sides too!:

I made my usual size 40 to fit my hips, but should have taken it in a bit more at the waist because it seems a bit big. But I like pulling my skirts down to sit low on my hips anyway, so it's just fine for me. The pattern is pretty simple, although the front waistband panel with the buttons is openable even though there is a side zip, and the method for attaching them is a little clumsy and messy on the inside. But no one can see the inside and only a sewist would care about such a thing really!

Well it's been a really long week this week and I'm looking forward to a little quiet time on the weekend when my husband will be home looking after Anna. I think I should install a little daybed in my sewing room, 'cos I need a nap or two this week! After slowly catching up my missed sleep from my insanely late night out, Anna has been very unsettled due to her teeth I think. Last night she was awake from 9.30pm to 2.30am (eek!), and would only stop crying if I held her. At one stage when I had absolutely had enough I gave her some baby nurofen, wrapped her really tightly and let her cry herself to sleep in her cot, but after an hour she was still screaming so in the end I had to rock her to sleep over the next hour. And this morning no teeth still! I can feel them in her gums but they haven't popped through the skin yet.

Anyway enough whinging from me, the little angel is having her daytime nap so it's time for me to have a cuppa, read the latest BWOF issue (8/2009) that landed in my letterbox the other day and imagine the kind of lifestyle the BWOF designers think that us mere mortals lead when they dream up those clothes.....

scrap busting

Thanks everyone for your lovely comments on my dress - it was certainly good to have one come out look smashing after a few failures at the muslin stage lately! I've already hand washed and pressed the dress, and it's now been lovingly placed in my wardrobe where it will probably stay for a long time since I have no other special occasions coming up in the forseeable future....

Anonymous - I think this dress would work really well with an a-line skirt, or any style of skirt for that matter. I'm thinking about making this dress again in a cotton for day wear with a less severe pencil skirt style. While there is plenty of room around the hips because of the pleats, the skirt is very narrow around the knees and definitely needs the two side slits to make walking possible.

Gail - there are a few reviews of this dress over at Pattern Review in addition to SewTawdry's fitting and crafting tips which are really helpful because as usual the BWOF instructions are not so helpful. That said though, once you've worked out how to sew the side pieces to the bodice pieces it's all pretty straightforward after that.

katherine h - oh no! As Sew4Fun said, special night outs don't come along too often after babies so I'm so sorry yours ended short with you being sick.

Jean it's funny you should mention making a fabric alphabet letters for your grandkids because I've been doing the exact same thing for Anna! A contest of scrap busting ideas is being held over at Sew Mama Sew!, including a tutorial for padded letters with magnets in them to put on the fridge, so I've been gathering little squares of fabric and tracing the letters to make two sets (since Anna's name has two A's and two N's). Not that this has made the tiniest dent in my fabric stash, but it's fun anyway.

There's heaps of tutorials for using up fabric scraps, my favourites being the one for drink coasters made from old CDs, a ladybug pincushion, a fabric brooch and a yo-yo necklace. I'm sure you're all like me and have scrap bags that are as out of control as your fabric stashes, so it's worth a look at all the fun ideas.

just in the nick of time....

Well I've been playing around with my new machine and I just love it! It is so quiet and just does everything with ease so I am definitely happy with the purchase. Haven't sewn a stitch of curtains yet (or even unrolled the fabric from the roll for that matter), but I have nearly finished a skirt for myself where I made keyhole buttonholes just because I can now, and a pair of shorts for Anna using a decorative stitch around the hem again just because I can, and I made myself a fancy dress using super slippery fabric that was no problem for this machine.

My mother's group had planned a night out sans babies and husbands for cocktails and dinner in the city on Friday night and since this is a rare and hence very special occasion for me I decided a new dress was in order. In fact, a new dress using some red and pale gold floral patterned silk satin fabric I bought from the Remnant Warehouse a few years ago and was waiting for the right pattern to come along. You know those fabrics that are too beautiful to cut into for just any old thing? When I saw BWOF 5/09, dress 117 I knew it would be just perfect for this fabric.

I even made a muslin out of some fugly satin fabric I had in the stash to get the fit right, which I'm glad I did because the skirt is super long and has a lot of ease in it due to the pleats so I ended up cutting a size smaller for the skirt than I normally would for a BWOF. Doing the muslin was also good to practice sewing the unusual kimono style sleeves on the front. Even with practice though they were majorly fiddly and the points still didn't turn out perfect on my finished version, but I don't think it's overly noticeable since they are in the folds of fabric around the armpits anyway. Thankfully Audrey over at her blog SewTawdry (tee hee, I love that blog name!) had put together a tutorial on this dress which was of a great help, and her version is just gorgeous.

Anyway, with making the muslin and other distractions I only just finished the hem on this dress on Friday afternoon, enough time to press it and put it on straight away! It came close to becoming a UFO, because it was so annoying to sew together but I'm glad I persevered 'cos I think it looks pretty good:

I underlined the silk satin fabric with some organza I also had in the stash to give it more body and to have something to hand sew the hems down on to so they wouldn't show through to the outside. This is what made it difficult to sew actually, the layers kept slipping and sliding and needed a gazillion pins to keep it in place. But again I think it was worth the extra effort because it reduced wrinkling too, even after a looong night out it was hardly wrinkled at all.

What I like most about this pattern is that the pleated front bodice pieces are sewn into the side seams which eliminates any gaping you traditionally get with a cross front dress. The neckline is of a modest and wearable height too, which is unusual for Burda patterns which in my experience seem to specialise in having acres of cleavage on show (which is fine if you some to show off!)

The night out was great too - get a bunch of mums out on the town and we go all out and make the most of it! Seriously, I didn't get home until 3am, and since my husband was up at 5.30am for golf and then Anna was up at 6am full of beans to start her day, you can imagine how extremely tired I am today. Good thing I've have nine months of sleep deprivation training. But I had some great lychee and ruby grapefruit cocktails and Vietnamese food at the Libertine in Kings Cross, which I can strongly recommend for any Sydneysiders reading this. But now I think I need a month of early nights to recover now, I'm getting too old for that sort of caper LOL.......