Milestones

Friday November 18, 2011 - 04:45 PM

We've had a happy few weeks around here.

The little man turned 10.

Our favourite redhead lost her front tooth.

And one of our chooks laid her first egg!

There has been great discussion regarding which of our girls might have laid the egg and what we're going to make with it (except that it got left at school after show and tell so maybe we'll make something out of the next one!).

Good sports

Saturday November 05, 2011 - 05:02 PM

It's funny the things you learn as a parent.  Like which are the best sports to take your kids to.  I don't mean which ones are best for the kids, I mean which ones are best for the parents.  I always enjoy taking the kids to swimming, because after the mad rush of getting them to the pool, I get to sit for 30 minutes drinking good quality coffee and watching them swim (I used to teach swimming many years ago so I enjoy watching the kids swim).  It's hot and noisy by the pool, but I love that little fragment of peacefulness in an ever busy schedule.  

That's nothing compared to this though:

That's me chilling out on the picnic rug at Little Athletics this morning, drinking my coffee and waiting for the sausages to cook.  My hubby and I hung out together all morning, soaking up the warmth and catching up on the week's events.  Oh yeah, it so happens that every second week you need to stand out there picking up disks from the running track, or measuring the kids' shotput throws.  But since I do the swimming and the ballet runs, I let my hubby do the Little Aths volunteering, and I just turn up every few weeks when the sun is shining.  Love it!

Here I am in the shirt I made last weekend. I literally unpicked a favourite Esprit shirt that was a good ten years old and used it to make a pattern.  As much as I loved the shirt it never fitted me particularly well, so I made a few adjustments and did the right thing and made both a practice shirt and a paper pattern before I made this one.  I'm really pleased with how it's turned out so will keep an eye out for some nice fabric to make another one (this fabric came from Spotlight and matches my Ojay skirt well, but wasn't exactly what I had in mind for the shirt).  I felt a bit overdressed for Little Aths but was so excited to finally have warm weather I wanted to wear my new skirt and shirt before it disappeared (which it no doubt will!).

Success!

Sunday October 30, 2011 - 09:36 PM

Yes I've had a few successes in my sewing room lately (which has been quite exhilarating after a string of disappointments which made me wonder why I bothered to sew anything).  I am particularly pleased with a couple of skirt alterations I did last weekend.  I find clothes shopping so frustrating - I go from shop to shop and hardly ever find something I want to buy.  So when I found this great linen skirt at an  Ojay outlet for $26 (yes the bargain theme continues!) I had to have it, even if it was a size 16.  I figured for that price it was worth trying to alter it, and if it worked, there was a whole shop full of cheap size 16 skirts I could come back for.

 

The skirt needed a couple of inches taken out of the waist band, but due to pockets that run into the side seams I didn't really want to unpick the sides.  What it did have was a bit of gathering on the back of the waist band, which was just begging to be cut out.  So cut it out I did!  (I only thought to take this photo after I had started to unpick the waistband). 

The skirt has a seam down the back which I could have taken in to get rid of the excess skirt fabric, but then I would have had to mess with the hem, and since I can always do with a little extra fullness at the rear, I just put some gathers in the skirt and then re-attached the waistband.

And it worked perfectly!  Well, if you look carefully you can see that the side seams now come around the back by a couple of cms on each side.  I have to admit that this bothers my very mild anal tendency for things to be exactly right (which only ever shows itself when I sew) but I'm sure most people would never notice and so I'm trying to ignore it and and enjoy my much needed new linen skirt.

That same afternoon I did the same thing on this skirt which was a little loose when I bought it last season, but was pretty much unwearable after I'd lost 5kg during the winter (before I go on I just have to say that I had no idea i had a penchant for linen skirts with buttons down the front until I started to write this blog post!).

This skirt doesn't have pockets in the side seams, so I did the right thing and took a couple of centimetres out of the waist band on each side (there was already a seam there which made life easy).  I then took in the skirt and lining, tapering it to meet the original side seam before I reached the bottom so that I didn't have to do any adjustments at the hem.

I was so thrilled that my sewing skills had come in useful and provided me with two skirts that will get heaps of wear this summer.  I went on to make a shirt, a t-shirt and two pairs of summer pyjama pants for Hamish.  Woohoo - I do believe I have finally refound my sewjo!

 

Just between you and me...

Saturday October 29, 2011 - 08:48 PM

I usually only show photos of the one ballet dancer in the family, by request of the second ballet dancer.  But since he's front page news around our parts, I've been given permission to post about his exciting news.

Leader article

Just don't tell anyone about it - ok?!

A big stash is a good stash

Tuesday October 25, 2011 - 01:18 PM

I have to say that I often feel guilty about the amount of fabric I have bought with a specific project in mind, which has never even made it to the cutting stage.  Sometimes though, I end up using that fabric for a completely different purpose, and I am thankful for my impulsive buying habits.  As a case in point - I needed a bag for Zoe to take to her school swimming program, and after trawling 5 shops without finding what I wanted, I realised I'd have to make something.  So I went up to my extensive fabric stash, and was pulling things out that might be suitable (I wanted something softer than the Mexican oilcloth I sell because it needs to be squished into her schoolbag to go to in the morning).  

Not finding anything, and starting to feel a bit desperate (because I knew quite well there was slim chance my local Lincraft would have anything), I pulled out some curtain lining which looked like it might be water resistant.  And with that, out fell this Amy Butler oilcloth, which I had bought more than a year ago to make shopping bags.

Cheap knits

Sunday October 23, 2011 - 09:28 PM

It seems like the bargain gods are shining on me lately. I went into Spotlight this afternoon to buy a metre of fabric, and came home with this:

 

These fabrics were $1 a metre!  I was so wrapped, as I've been doing lots of experimenting with knit fabrics lately and I've had trouble finding anything under $6 per metre to play with.  I think I have 15 metres here - that should keep me going for a while :)

Strawberry jam

Thursday October 20, 2011 - 12:54 PM

I was at my local fruit shop last week when I stumbled upon a 3kg box of strawberries on the bargain trolley for $3.  I had no idea what I was going to do with 3kg of strawberries, but since I had been raised to absolutely positively grab any fruit being offered for free (or in this case next to free), I piffed the two tiny punnets I already had in my trolley and hauled in the giant box.  

When I got home I did the appropriate thing and rang my mum, informing her that I had 3kg of strawberries in my kitchen.  She asked if I was going to make jam to which I replied no (I have watched my mum make jam every season of my life and have never once felt the urge to give it a go).  I told her I'd eat as many as I could, then give the rest to someone who knew what to do with them.  She said she'd be there in 2 hours.

And sure enough, 2 hours later, I had my mum in my kitchen making strawberry jam.  And when I got back from the ballet run that night, this is the little stash of goodness that was waiting on my bench.  I know - I'm pretty lucky huh?

Lost - one chook

Monday October 17, 2011 - 02:18 PM

Late last week I heard a disturbance in the backyard (ie lots of loud clucking), and went outside to find one chook on the roof our house (yes they CAN fly that high!), one up on the neighbour's fence, and one in the bushes across the yard.  Sadly the fourth chook - Tap Tap, hasn't been seen since.

Farbenmix Elodie at the Ballet

Wednesday September 21, 2011 - 09:18 AM

Last Sunday night the whole family went to see the ballet at the State Theatre.  It was the Australian Ballet School Graduate Exhibition, where the final year students of the Australian Ballet School perform a number of short works demonstrating the incredible skills they've learned during their years of training at the school.  The sell-out crowd goes pretty wild (well wild for the ballet that is!), and I have to admit I shed a few tears during the night (yeah I know - I shed tears at school assembly, but I assure you this was better than assembly!).  

Anyway last time I went to the ballet I wished I'd made more of an effort with my outfit.  Not that everyone is in evening gowns, but I was wearing an outfit that was well passed its use by date and I felt a bit drab.  So this time around I made sure we all had some well overdue new clothes - I got a new dress, Hamish got his first ever shirt, and I made Zoe a Farbenmix Elodie dress, which I've been wanting to make since I first saw the pattern.

 

The Elodie dress came together beautifully, just like the other Farbenmix patterns I've made.  The instructions are in German, but I used the Google translated step by step online instructions and had no issues at all with understanding how to put the dress together.  The only problem I had was trying to put an invisible zip in the back, as I couldn't get it to go past the thick velvet ribbon.  After eventually breaking the zip I had travelled to two Lincraft stores to buy, I put in a normal zip which worked fine.

The fabric was from Cutting Edge Fabrics in Malvern, which sells ex-designer dress fabrics.  Most of the prices are still pretty expensive (up to $100 per metre), but this one was in the bargain bin for something like $4 per metre.  The grey leaves are actually flocked and it is quite gorgeous.  I'd love to make the same dress again in a bright print as it would be a perfect dress to wear to birthday parties.  That will have to stay on the wish list for now though.

 

If you ever see the Graduate Exhibiton advertised I highly recommend it - tickets are only $35/$25, and the format makes it very accessible for children or people who wouldn't necessarily enjoy sitting through a full length ballet.  You need to book early though to get a good seat.

Ottobre Creative Workshop 303 Pattern Review

Wednesday September 07, 2011 - 12:19 PM

I was reading Milly's Tin Whistle blog last week and saw she had been playing around with the Ottobre Design Creative Workshop 303 - Women's Best Tops pattern.  Funnily enough I had been doing the same thing myself, so I was really interested to see the variations Milly had been trying out.  I was then asked about this pattern by two customers in the same week which finally motivated me to blog about my own experience.

As a short introduction, this pattern is published by the Finnish company Ottobre (who do the pattern magazines) and comes in a women's and a children's version.  The women's version comes with three different neck options - a V-neck, a low scooped neck, and a higher round neck.  It can be made with short or long sleeves, or as a singlet top without sleeves, and is designed to be used with knit fabrics.

I haven't included photo of my first attempt at this pattern, but it was a t-shirt with the high round neck, and I found the neck a bit high, and the size I had chosen a bit big, so when I cut into my good fabric I went for the low neck and a smaller size.  This top is made from the 100% wool knit I sell (although I now only have the green in stock).

Although this dress form is technically my size, she and I have very different body shapes, and I personally found this neck too low for me (although I did wear this top all winter with a scarf).  I decided to go back to the high neck for my next attempt which was a dress made out of some interlock I'd bought at Spotlight.

Not surprisingly I found this neckline too high, and I also found the fit a bit wide across the shoulders.  I was becoming much more confident with sewing the pattern though, so I reached for some Stenzo fabric I had put away (but sadly hadn't put enough away to have sleeves from the same fabric).  This time I used the Ottobre pattern as a basis for my own neck and shoulder shaping.  And this time I was really happy with the results.

Now that I'm really happy with the pattern I'm looking forward to sewing up a stack of t-shirts and singlet tops ready for summer (it's such a quick pattern to sew - it is very satisfying!). 

If you're new to sewing with knits and want to have a go at this pattern I will give a few tips:

1) Sewing with knits takes practice so don't get put off if your first attempt doesn't look like the top you saw in Country Road.  

2) It is a good idea to try the pattern out before you cut into your best fabrics, but remember that good quality knits sew much better than cheap knits (keep this in mind if you're using something from Spotlight and things aren't going right).

 

3) There are several different ways to put neck binding on a t-shirt and my favourite is different to the method used in the Ottobre pattern.  I have only discovered this by trial and error though, so by all means follow the Ottobre instructions, but keep in mind there are other ways that might work better for you.