Green voile Citronille top

I found Citronille via Amanda at Soulemama a few weeks ago, and ordered a few of their delicious patterns. I fell totally in love with a square-necked smock shirt and a pointy-hooded coat that both boasted simple construction methods, and picked up a third hippy-style shirt that looked like something my partner would wear in a larger size.
Whilst the shipping wasn't cheap it WAS fast, and the patterns themselves were very inexpensive and covered a wide range of sizes - not to mention beautiful and unusual compared to the poor selection available without flounces or skirts in Australia.

After whipping up a toile in calico I thought the first shirt pattern looked a bit wide and short for my long, skinny pixie (who refused to try it on for me to double check after eyeballing) so I attempted to adjust it when it came time to cut out my actual first attempt.

Lesson learned; don't eyeball changes. Especially ones that make it difficult for the shoulders to fit a garment. I ended up having to add triangular gores back into the side-seams, thus rendering my years in the Medieval Society useful in modern life, after all!

I used a gorgeous green voile that snagged with very little provocation, and was originally another Medieval Society garment. It seems to be my month for remaking old garments into wildly new ones.

And then Pixieface wouldn't try the actual garment on until I'd added the buttons (which were then cause for excitement, celebration, and definite donning). I found these two delicious little red apple buttons at a church market stall and bought them for twenty cents, knowing I'd find the right project sometime.



Unfortunately, Two seems to be a difficult age for getting nice shots of this child of mine. A combination of camera-shy and inability to stand still made these about the best I could do.
BUT the final verdict is that I will be making one of these in every colour, for the warmer months. With longer sleeves and body length than suggested by the pattern (but not narrower!). Just too gorgeous for words. And so very European looking!

Fatuous reasons to become a Mum

To show somebody how fun it can be to step in a puddle of paint, feel it ooze between your toes, and then march across paper, leaving a trail behind you, feeling it stick to your feet and giggling at the mess.

 

Recently seen on my sewing machine

Early this year I found a sleeveless fleece vest for my son's wardrobe. It's been really useful on cooler days this winter, when we've gone out to playgrounds where it's very cool when you stand still, but running around like a two year old makes it a bit warm for a jumper.
I didn't quite trust myself to fit a zip to stretchy fleece fabric so planned to do a double-breasted button thing for my homemade version. This turned out not to be as practical as I'd hoped, since a sudden growth spurt meant he was filling out his clothes an inch or two more than when I first began cutting. So the resulting garment looks slightly lopsided, but was still a big hit - the minute I added the buttons and rediscovered my machine's buttonholing capabilities that is (he didn't want a bar of it, pre-buttons).

The outside is a gorgeous grey minky fleece, and I cut around the fading on an old cotton garment for the lining, that was retired from the Medieval Society when I was in charge of the loaner gear (so the local group heads offered me the spoils!). I patterned it off a (slightly A-line) shirt, allowing a few centimetres extra on each seam, so a few layers could be comfortably worn beneath. (To do this, turn your garment inside out, pull the sleeves inside the body of the garment and lay it as flat as you can. Potential tute to follow. Eventually.)


I think next time I'll try finishing the edges with a contrasting rib knit and not bother lining it. I'd also curve the front edges rather than leaving them as right angles, one of which inevitably flips up.
But not bad for a first go. With the skivvy and embroidered flares the Tiny Tyrant was definitely channelling the 70s the other day!

Two Year Old Backpacks

Yesterday my Small Person turned 2.
We had a Ladybugs' Picnic at the local Botanic Gardens, inviting all his friends to wear black and red and join us near the really cool playground there.

I've been prepping like mad, and can now totally understand other parents' love for pay-n-play padded spaces and professionally catered events! I tried not to pressure myself too much (hence the low-key theme), figuring two year olds would just love the chance to run around and have fun, but the one thing I did pull out all the stops for were the party bags. I'm not super-comfortable with handing a group of very small people a bunch of sugar and chemicals to take home and smear all over their rooms, and I really wanted not to give away a heap of disposable plastic junk that would go into land-fill in no time at all.
Also, the food issue was especially important for me since not only does the birthday boy have some food sensitivity issues, but quite a few of his friends do, as well as having all-out allergies.

So instead of traditional party bags I found vegbee's toddler backpack over at her indietutes blog. It was the perfect size for our toddler invitees, and the perfect shape for bug bags!

Inside each bag was a bubble-blowing kit (so I didn't totally escape the cheap plastic - at least it's reusable), a red ribbon on a stick (made at home with chopsticks and lengths of ribbon from Spotlight) and two home-made lavender bath fizzies (with printed instructions designed by me).

Long story short the bags and contents were a bit of a hit - far more than my mediocre attempt at a birthday cake (thank goodness I have lots of years to perfect this art!) and now I have to go figure out my neglected Paypal account, to donate to vegbee.
And after all my stressing and work we all had a lovely time and quite a few of our guests decided to wear their new backpacks before they even got home.

Just Pants

The toddler has had a growth spurt and the pants that fit my miniature manling last winter are now just as tight round the waist, but sit ridiculously high on his ankles and shins. So has begun the great pants-making effort of Winter '10.

Red pants with contrast fabric at cuff and on/in the side pockets of green with daisies:



Same but in blue, with blue, red and yellow birds and a back pocket too:



Up close the red pair looks homemade, the blue handmade with an unfortunate seam. I'm still wokring on streamlining this pattern/sewing process. Because my goodness, aren't these cute?

Reversible toddler wrap dresses

This has been my major preoccupation of the last month - hence the lack of updates. It's also something I've been holding off on, firstly because I knew documenting the project was going to be somewhat epic, and secondly because I didn't want people to stumble across their daughters' first birthday gifts online before they'd been gifted.




These are four fully reversible, crossover-back dresses/tunics - these pictures are the two sides of each dress. I patterned them myself, working out kinks as I went along, and I am unbelievably proud of them!

I got my measurements and basic outline from a button down the back tunic I got at a garage sale and made a mock-up out of old sheets. The lovely Mummy to one of the little girls who would be receiving let me borrow her daughter to check that my size and pattern was right (Thanks Tracey, and thankyou to my lovely patient model, Lucy!)

This is the first dress I then made (Lucy's Mummy likes to bake).

One side is printed cotton, with silver glitter decoration on some of the cupcakes. Unfortunately you cannot see this, because the weather here has been despicable lately, and thus the lighting is trashy. That, and I need more practice taking decent shots of my own handiwork.
The other side is pale purple polyester dug out from my stash (I bought several metres years and years ago!) which had a nice weight and matched the purple on the cotton. On the front of this side I hand-stitched a circle cut out with a cupcake.

The back two pieces cross over, and it's all sewn together like a simple Gordian Knot (perhaps I should call it a Gordian Knot dress?), which is what keeps the garment on. I'm possibly proudest of this detail, as it means there are no press-studs or zips to catch on sensitive skin or have to wrestle with whilst holding a squirmy child still. There's also no buttons for the small recipients to suck on and possibly choke.

Since two of the dresses are made from quite busy printed cottons they didn't get any sewn detail, but the last dress was made from red and neutral tone linen-cotton blend that had me salivating in the shop but is very plain.
I left the red as it was, since it's such a fantastic colour, and spiced up the neutral side with a little freehand embroidery in backstitch and running stitch. The more I do it, the more I'm enjoying exercising my embroiderer's needlework skills, these days!