Crafting around our house

This week has been another hectic one, the lowlight of which was Ava having to spend a night in hospital. Thankfully it turned out to be just asthma (not the originally suspected pneumonia) and she is back home again in very good spirits.

With all that going on it has definitely been all about Ava lately and we have been doing fun and crafty things to keep her busy (and still, gosh does that child like to run!)

Gran bought Ava some plasticine and so we all had fun playing with that for a few hours.

Grandad (FIL) made piglet's head

Mummy (me) made a pig

Gran (MIL) made a duck and Grandad made a snowman

We let Ava play too, she made this cave/tent to go with Gran's worm

She also made her own worm, a bridge and I think the one in the middle is a backpack for the duck (it later went to the moon in a rocket ship)

Gran also bought Ava this cute little egg painting centre.

We painted paper when we ran out of eggs

One day we had to go to the transport centre to register the cars. The lady gave Ava a large stack of paper. When we got home we used to make origami and cut outs. Grandad's silhouette of Ava was the only one that I seem to have captured.

In our house (of 4 adults and one child) we all love cartoons. My parents in law used to work in animation, so they have an excuse. Ava is 2, so she has an excuse. My husband and I are just big kids at heart though! A series that we all love is Avatar. Our favourite character is Appa, the flying byson.


Unfortunately you can't seem to buy the Appa plush in Australia. No problem for my father in law though, he'll make his own for us! So far he has finished Appa's head wich you can see below.

The pattern is made just from looking at the drawings and he is made from mainly recycled soft toys.

I have also finished the pattern for my sloper, but I haven't cut or fit it yet. I bought some fabrics which will hopefully end up turning into something soon!

This is a blog post!

Okay so I have been a bit slack with the blog posting! A lot has been happening here (not all good) and it fell by the wayside a bit. :o)

I've still been doing lots of things, just haven't finished anything. I realised this morning I have too many things happening and not enough things finishing. I need to just sit down and concentrate, not get distracted. I just find lately when I sit down I think of 50 more projects that I would like to try and start doing those instead!

On my sewing table at the moment I have:

• A dress for Ava
• Pants for Mixie
• A shirt for Ava (I ripped the arms of yesterday because I didn't like them)
• Dress for Mixie
• Coat for Ava

The first three could be finished in about 40mins of sewing each and the last two have a lot of work to do.

On my computer I am in the midst of resizing two patterns for Ava and learning how to draft patterns from scratch.

If you haven't noticed already, I do have a tendency to be a bit.... well.... cheap. I don't like paying for something I could make myself. This manifested itself quite badly last weekend when I went on a bit of a baking frenzy. This week my interest has been in pattern drafting. I like the idea of making something from scratch, truly creating it. I looked around the internet at a couple of courses, books etc. I was particularly interested in Kenneth King's book on The Moulage, but patience is something I lack and waiting for a CD to arrive in the post would be unbearable. Eventually I found this site called Vintage Sewing which has a great little book on pattern drafting. I know its not exactly modern, but I like the learning process. I have been doing the drafting in Adobe Illustrator. Its good because I can select a point, and draw a line x length at y angle. I have been using trigonometry to work out the angles of the sloping lines. The theory being eventually I will write a program to draw these lines for me and exact math will be needed. I haven't printed anything out yet, so I haven't tested the sloper. Haha hopefully it will work!

I started back at uni this week as well. I'm doing a computer science degree. I hope to minor in maths, but it still a while before I get to pick.

No pictures today, sorry.

Origami Dress - Part 2

Drafting the Pattern

As I mentioned yesterday I am using this pattern as my base. In the end all I used was the SF & SB bodice pieces and extrapolated/drafted the rest. I wanted the skirt to have bit more of a flick at the sides than the original. To make the center front and back I used a mostly straight up and down piece. I thought a 2:1 gather would be appropriate.


There were two major problems with the center front and center back panels. The first was that it was too large and the second was that it wasn't gathered enough. I have pulled the bobbin thread tighter in the above photo, but it is still gaping. You can also see that I flipped out the skirt way too much.


Those black circles are magnets to weigh down the fabric by the way.

Alterations were then made to narrow down the skirt and I decided to belt the middle as this dress will not be worn without a belt, so major design flaws aside, what is looks like without is fairly irrelevant. And yes the tape measure was the only appropriate thing I could find at the time! :o)

I really want to forge ahead and make a material version of this dress with the alterations, but Mixie is coming tomorrow, so I will see how this is fitting then.

The Origami Dress

I was reading Sigrid's blog yesterday, which led me to Berry's blog, which led me to Christina's blog, where I found this dress:

I emailed the picture to Mixie who asked if I would make her one. I loved the dress too, so I thought why not give it a go. The worst thing that can happen is that is doesn't work, and the shape of the dress is very forgiving for any sizing issues.

For the base pattern I decided to use the Laura dress from Burda Style. If you haven't already I higly recommend having a look at www.burdastyle.com They have lots of free patterns for good quality, well designed clothes.

Clearly there were going to be quite a few adjustments that need to be made. Including

• Omit pockets and buttons
• Replace center front and center back panels with gathered panels
• Redraft center front panel
• Combine skirt and bodice pieces to remove waist
• Add weaving and change belt.

Really it is a guideline more than anything else. It has the right sleeves and a 6 piece skirt design.

Once I get the pattern worked out, the dress itself is fairly basic. There are no darts in it so an FBA won't be necessary.

For the belt, I doubt I will copy that exact origami pattern, but I will find something I like. The origami part doesn't scare me. Although I don't do origami that often, I haven't found a design I couldn't complete yet. I will starch the fabric into oblivion so it folds nicely. I know this will work because I used to use way too much starch when I first started working, clothes sure can get crisp!
Here is a close up of the belt buckle. I like the design, but I don't like that you can see the stitching. I think I will hand stitch it from behind to keep it in place. I can't really know for sure until I start playing with the design though.

I am that stage now where I have cut all the pattern pieces and I am redrafting them to fit. This will be a very good challenge.

Ava's Winter Wardrobe

There are 3 months until Winter now, so I thought it was time to start planning Ava's winter wardrobe. I started by doing an audit of what she had and found she had 4 pairs of jeans in different colours, 1 corduroy pant and jacket set and one long sleeved shirt. Not bad, but she really needs more long sleeved shirts.

I had enough fabric for one shirt in my stash, so some serious shopping was needed. I tried in vain to find a good online fabric store, but the shipping from the US was a killer, and the lovely people on the Pattern Review forums couldn't really suggest any in Australia. I'm sure it doesn't help that because I am shopping for Ava I don't like to spend a lot of money on fabrics. If I am lucky she will get two years wear out of it. I might think differently if Mixie had girls, but she is determined that their house will be filled with boys (yes I do know you can't really determine this, but I am not sure Mixie does!)

Around this time the latest spotlight catalogue came out, so my MIL and I decided to go on a long drive (3 hours round). I came back with enough fabric for 3 shirts and one pair of pants for Ava. I think a couple will actually end up being shirt dresses so she can wear them over tights or pants.

Three jersey knits and one corduroy

Some sheep flanalette for some pyjama pants for Mixie

I couldn't resist this sheep fabric. In fact I had a hard time picking just one. At $5 a meter I might mail order some more. Its super soft and they had so many cute designs to pick from. The only thing that concerned me about this obvious night wear print was that on the selvage they have written, "not intended for children's sleepwear". I know we have fairly strict rules about flammability in material, so I will assume it has something to do with that!

I am about to embark on a fairly ambitious project, but it will be a whole other post on its own which hopefully I will get up today.

Mixie is getting married!

My sister Mixie is getting married in September and I am actually starting to get excited. (She will fall off her chair in shock when she reads that). I think its just that she is starting to get to the good bits in the planning stage, like the cake and dresses. Lately I have helped her pick the cake she/we are going to make. It is from the Martha Stewart website.

This cake deserves a mention in the crafting side of my blog due to the fact that we will be making and painting all those little cherry blossom sugar flowers. I will post pictures once we start the process and you can watch as we get better and better leading up to September. Luckily every man and his dog is having a birthday between now and then. Can you guess what type of cake they will be having?

As I mentioned the other exciting thing is the dresses. Mixie got hers sorted a long time ago. She is getting a Wendy Makin dress. She is having a champagne coloured gown with green bead lace overlay. I could be wrong about that actually, but I'm sure she'll correct if I am. Around the same time she picked her bridal gown, she also got material for myself and her one other bridesmaid. I've only seen it briefly so I can't really describe it, but she promises me some photos are on the way. My mum is making Ava's Flower Girl dress.

Mixie has left it up to us to pick the pattern and get the bridesmaid dresses made. So I have been searching for patterns.

This was my first pick, but unfortunately the lace is not scalloped

So now it is a pick between the black Butterick and the black Vogue pattern. Both are boned, but the skirts are a little different.

Okay, so I can't wear strapless dresses, genetics and having a child have taken care of that! Useful when all the nice formal wear is either incredibly low cut or strapless. So I need to raise the height of the front panel (don't want cleavage showing) and also attach straps, but Mixie doesn't want the straps so thick that it takes away from the elegance of the dress. It will be a balancing act.

I was thinking the straps from C might be good.

It is probably worth noting at this stage that I intend to make my dress in its entirety out of similar fabric before cutting the final product. There are no second chances with the fabric Mixie bought.

Switching courses entirely now, Ava wore her shirt dress for the first time today. Other than being too big, it was incredibly cute. I think I will have a bit of a hunt for some shirts and see if I can make a couple that fit well. No pictures, but it was sufficiently worn in by the time she came home from Day Care!

The neccessity of pyjamas

I love to read other people's blogs, especially the sewing blogs. I love to read on as they turn a piece of fabric into a truly awesome creation and I dream of one day doing the same thing myself. There are a few things that stop me from doing this now, most importantly being I can't justify spending a long time sewing for myself when I am in the midst of losing weight. It just seems like a waste of time.

Having said that I did get a chance to sew for myself this week when my favourite pyjama pants gave up on me.

I love my Hello Kitty Pyjamas

I loved them to death!

I did think about darning the hole in the pants. But eventually I realised that the fabric was so worn as soon as I fixed one spot another was sure to appear. I had some bright pink cotton that was too pink for even Ava, so I decided to make new pants. I looked at patterns online but for $16 for a basic sleepwear pattern, I could just go buy new pants. Especially when all the patterns were pants and a simple t-shirt. I looked through Mum's old patterns, but they were all for long flannel numbers, so the only thing to do was rip up the old pants and use them to make a new pattern.

The original pants had an elastic band at the top, but I wanted drawstring due to shrinking waistline. Subsequently there is an extra 10cm (4") added to the top of the pants to make a casing.

There really wasn't that much more to it. I cut out the material and sewed the pants up. All the seams were made with a running stitch followed by overcasting the edges. The hems and top casing were doubled folded and kept closed with a running stitch. I decided the drawstring would just be a white ribbon and used the automatic button hole on the sewing machine to make the openings.

Unfortunately I had already stitched the casing closed. I remember when I was planning it out thinking I would have to stitch the holes for the ribbon before I stitched the casing closed, but I have a memory like a goldfish sometimes! So I un-stitched everything and fixed it up. I'm quite happy with how they turned out. They fit well and they are super comfy.

We got a few other things this week when we bought thread for the pants. I found this handy little thread organiser for $5. I had run out of room in my old one and I didn't think that this seemed too expensive. I have nothing to compare it to though, I've never bought one before.

I've noticed lately when I take Ava places people like to give her things. I'm not sure why, but I'm not complaining either. I just hope she doesn't get used to it. When we went to the craft store she was given this cute little wrist pin cushion. Of course she told the lady at the store she didn't want it and refused to say thank you. But by the time we got home she was proudly wearing it and calling it her watch. I sent an email thanking and apologising to the store. I hope they get it.

It curls around your wrist. It reminds me of those slap bands that were so popular when I was little.

I'm contemplating appliquéing some of the Hello Kitties onto the new pants, but other than that there is not much going on here. I'm planning on doing the SWAP competition next year. But that is a long way away.