so, what are we making today?

Jack is joining in in the frantic Christmas present making ... let it not be said that kitties do not get in on the festivities.

Christmas Christmas Christmas!

Happy 1st of December, everyone!

My, it's been busy round these
parts lately. The pictures (to be randomly positioned by my ShoZu 'portable blogger' App, fingers crossed they don't make it look like I wrote this after drinking too many glasses of mulled wine!) were taken yesterday.

from left to right (or top to bottom, who knows?):

- 1st card for 2011, winging its way out the door!

- wide shot of the advent calendar

Grainy ... but I'm SO proud!

- close-up of one of the advent envelopes

I'm knackered. 34 DIY cards & 24 little envelopes later & I am DONE with paper crafting for a while. The idea was to use mostly recycled materials - so old Xmas gift tags, old wrapping paper, pizza menus, etc. I guess, in the end, it was 50/50 as I had to buy card blanks & pretty paper so the whole lot didn't look too much like a toddler's First Art Project.

Friends & family will be receiving their cards after they're posted this weekend (there's a lot of actual card-writing yet to be done, urg).

Happy 1st of December!!

today is a good day

Colette Patterns Sewing Handbook, coffee, tasty snacks & lots of making stuff ...

Catching Up: Part 2 - Wedding Blues

Just before our Hallowe'en party, my lovely friend Liz sent a desperate plea for help in the Wedding Guest Dress department.

We've all been there ... what the FREAKING HELL do you wear to somebody's wedding in unfamiliar territory -- especially when that wedding is miles away? (btw, in Liz's case, it was my hometown of Cape Town *sob*) She had raided every shop she could think of to no avail, a universally bad sign as, trust me, this girl has shopping mojo. And a 20% M&S discount, but that's another story.

So. Of COURSE I agreed to help her! Yay!!!!!! :)

(disregard the fact that this was my 2nd gig sewing for someone else, and therefore the only the 2nd time I would actually be expected to both finish the garment and not finish it poorly).

We went through my Burda & Knipmode collection & settled on Burda 10/2009-115, which was meant to be made up in heavy winter fabric, with a lining. The clever girl had narrowed our choice of styles by helpfully bringing a reference garment with her; also v useful for for comparative fit ... thank god. See below.

Seeing as the reference garment was a lovely floral summer dress and she was going to Cape Town for the wedding (!) we collectively pooh-poohed the heavy winter fabrics and Liz went off to buy a cotton/elastane blend, an invisible zip & thread. Like I said, the girl got skillz: two shops & one slightly frazzled phone call ('what kind of zip was it?') later, she had herself the ingredients to a dress.

Short version? I waited 'til the Monday after the party to start cutting, but all-in-all the dress took 3 nights: one night of construction, one night of fitting and one night of alterations ... plus one VERY frantic morning to finish off. The pattern is, honestly, not the easiest to interpret - Burda's instructions were sparse (as always) and by omitting the lining I created loads of problems for myself. HOWEVER. All of those problems were solved by liberal application of lovely lace trim. Huzzah!

What is with Burda patterns?
I hacked off nearly half a foot on the side seams during the fitting.

Ohohoh. And. Please, let's not forget one CRITICAL resource: Colette Patterns' invisible zipper insertion tutorial. I would have totally died without that info.

(Note to the lady with the big opinions about ironing the zipper teeth in the comments section of that tute: ironing them works. Not ironing them doesn't. Nuff said. :P)

Liberal application of lace. 

 Liz wore the dress a few days ago, and I'm most relieved that she looked very happy in it. Idiot that I am, I was so swept up in applying lace trim that I completely forgot to make the accompanying self-fabric belt ... it's on my list of things to do this weekend, I swear!

Looking at the pictures now, I can see the mistakes that another fitting session and a few more days' sewing would have fixed, BUT I'm really chuffed with the results. Considering this is only garment number 9. Shh,  don't tell Liz. 

Look at the happy smiles and ignore the mistakes. IGNORE THEM. 

And why is this post called 'Wedding Blues'? Well, apart from lovely Liz being in my lovely hometown while I had to be in stinky work doing stinky routine things, I mistakenly convinced myself that Liz had chosen not to wear the dress after all ... this is what comes from looking at people's Facebook pictures while in a bad mood. Dumbass that I am, I didn't remember that the wedding hadn't even taken place yet and that the pictures I was looking at were of a completely different wedding.
So, I proceeded to stomp around for several hours while poor Rob tried to placate me. When Liz sent a message several days later saying that she was wearing the dress, well ... I felt like a total twonk.

Lessons learned: BurdaStyle patterns come out BIG, Facebook-stalking never leads to anything good, and invisible zippers should be ironed prior to insertion. :)

Catching up Part 1 - Hallowe'en!

Hello lovelies,

This post might sound like the crazed ramblings of a madwoman, and um ... that's probably completely accurate because right now I'm feeling so COMPLETELY inspired & motivated and and and ... WOW.

Had to take my friend Rose to the airport this morning at the crack of sparrow's fart (intentionally mixed metaphor: crack of dawn & sparrow's fart, but ruder! hee hee) so got hom by 7:30 & decided to catch up on bloggy blogs. I have a self-imposed rule that I only read The Sew Weekly on a desktop computer, otherwise I miss out on so many of the lovely images via my RSS Reader. ANYWAY.

Oona took on my innocent challenge to produce Oona-fied work wear suitable to my OH SO boring work environment. Oona! Dudes. The number of girl crushes I have on sewing bloggers is phenomenal, but Oona is high up on the list :)

SO! Also inspired by a lovely comment from Zoe a few weeks back, here are some images of several projects I've been working on since my last installment...

The main focus of October was Hallowe'en. We LOVE Hallowe'en, and fancy dress is a big feature in our world for pretty much any occasion - so, let's face it, Hallowe'en is going to be a pretty big occasion. Because Rob has a beard now (and it looks so good on him :)), he tries to come up with costumes which enable le beard - hence Osama Bin Laden for his birthday in July.

Blessed are the meek.  

This time, he went for something a little more controversial: Zombie Jesus.

The very picture of zombified grace.

After my initial 'eek' moment, I though, 'Eh, well' and went ahead with modifying my self-drafted Osama tunic & troos-pattern into a Jesus-robe-thing pattern.  The robe was then made from two Ikea curtain offcuts from the charity shop, the toga-wrap-thing from a Primark sheet (it was impossible to find enough red fabric that wasn't new. Grrrr) and the trim was from a VERY lucky c/shop find - a bag full of upholstery trim for £1. Hello dumb-ass, wanna sell me some really expensive stuff for nothing? GREAT!!!

My favourite part was embroidering the sacred heart: I've always loved these images and this was so fun to do. Took AGES, but it killed lots of time commuting to/from Europe for work.

when the sun was still out at 6pm. *sniff sniff*

I'd decided to go with a Ghostbuster costume on the premise that it would be quick & easy: pair of cheap overalls & a vaccum cleaner strapped to my back, TA-DAAAA!

Yeah, right. When did 'quick & easy' EVER work in our house? So, instead it became this:

Embroidered Ghostbuster Badge for Pocket

Tracing Simplicity 5151 ... on pegboard????

I bought Simplicity 5151 on eBay while looking for a jumpsuit/overall pattern, which was scarce as hen's teeth then and as is to be found in abundance at ANY other time ... what's with that??? I was so excited when the pattern arrived that I didn't notice until the photo above was taken that the instructions in the envelope were for another pattern altogether. So, I winged it.

FYI: excluding the 3 garments I made in primary school needlework classes, this garment would represent my 8th (complete) garment. Eight. As in onetwothreefourfivesixsevenEIGHT. And no freaking instructions??? 

Thank god I read blogs. Honestly, this pattern was the bomb and gave me no grief whatsoever, it really was very straightforward. In the end, I only omitted the button placket because there wasn't time to sew it on over the centre front zip and make the pretty button holes. More on that in a sec. 

I finished the dress at approx 11:00 on the morning of the party, due to start at dusk. My dramatically-minded husband put that vague description on the invitation, so we really had no idea what time people would start turning up, and the house still needed to be decorated, AND I still had no proton pack. 

Enter chaos.

Proton Pack in Progress ... recognise any sewing items, folks?

MANY glue sticks later, the pack is ready to be sprayed black. 

We took this sucker outside and sprayed the heck out of it with - wait for it - Poundland-variety black matt car spray paint (seriously, £1! kicks ass).  Rob sacrificed an old backpack so that their straps could be glued onto the front of this tea tray-rubbish-glue gun confection, and that was it. The most fun EVER. 

Fast forward several bored guests (who arrived early, looking amazing only to find their hosts running around like lunatics trying to get Zombie Jesus' contact lenses stop moving around) to later in the evening and here are the proud results of the whole shebang: 

With 50p LED light and everything!!! 

The goggles only last an hour or so as they were way too flimsy ... but still cool :)

Who you gonna call? 

Last point to mention: we ran out of time to make an appropriate gun-handheld-thing to be attached to the proton pack ... so I got an old vacuum hose from some junk in the garage and wielded it at people incessantly for the rest of the evening. They weren't annoyed at all.

hello, are you really sewing?

Even Miss Meg can believe her little kitty eyes ... 'is this a reel of thread? You've GOTTA be kidding me!'

No-no-no, it's true. I sew, I sew. Hallowe'en is coming & I have finished Rob's costume (bar trimmings and toga-esque wrap thingy), while mine is still in the 'all the little things are finished phase'.

this is especially important as I discovered on Sunday that my lovely 70s pattern included the wrong instructions - ah, eBay. How I love thee blahblahblah. Anyhoo.

more soon! with real pictures! YAY!

Finished! The "A-Hunting We Will Go" Waistcoat

In November 2009, my lovely friend, Shelley, asked me to make a winter waistcoat for her. I very enthusiastically agreed and used the request as a great opportunity to head to Walthamstow High Street for the first time ever. (Of course, I hefted back armloads of fabric and notions, but 'that's another story...')

Anyhoo: fabric, check. Lining, check Buttons, check. Thread, check. ('Passport, check! Camera, check! Traveller’s cheques, check!')

Fast forward to March 2010 when Shelley & I go to the V & A Museum for some birthday oogling and I spot the perfect pattern in BurdaStyle 4/2010 (#135).

BurdaStyle 4/2010 #135

Fast forward to ... ummmmm ... September 2010 when Shelley organised a pamper day at another friend's house and I actually get around to tracing the aforementioned pattern on the kitchen floor.

Tracing & looking like an egit
(Shelley actually took this pic!)

Due to the intense guilt of the 10-month long delay, I got my shizz together and sewed. Like, a lot. I lined, I interfaced, I made welt pockets (and then covered the shoddily-made welt pockets with lovely chocolate brown velvet ribbon). Aaaaaaaaaaand then I got stuck, pending a fitting.

Fast forward to July 2011, the morning after Rob's birthday party, when I grabbed the semi-waistcoat and manhandled poor Shelley into the various layers. Minor adjustments aside, we were onto a winner!!

Final fast forward: to Sunday. After unpicking side seams & shoulder seams & side seams again (in an attempt to figure out how THE HELL you're supposed to freaking freaking freeeeeaaaaaking well turn the bastard thing right sides out), it was finally finished. And it actually looked pretty decent. I wasn't sure what to expect after all this time, so it was such a relief so see Shells happy with the end result!!



Happy Shelley!!



A-Hunting We Shall Go ...
so named as our friend Jason reckoned she looked like a "real English lady".
(This said to the vegetarian, wearing a waistcoat made by a vegan - LOL!)

 

Check out that lining ... and that facing!!!



Velvety chocolate pockets and lovely wooden-y buttons

Holy cow. I just noticed that I actually lined up the pattern, too! How the HELL did I do that??? Bahahahahahaa .... Yay!!

kthxbye

PS. Oh, one more thing. Back in May/June 2009, Shells & I spotted some felt brooches in Brick Lane Market that I reckoned I could 'make that for a fraction of the price'.

I, ahem, also didn't manage to deliver this item until Sunday. The fact that I made it from scraps (bottle green gabardine, waistcoat lining, waistcoat fabric & green felt PLUS a button I inherited from an amazing seamstress in Antwerp) in under an hour makes this all the more embarrassing.

Icky picture, pretty flower brooch thingy

so many lovely blogs, so little time

could you all please stop being so inspiring ... and prolific?? ;)

I mainly read your lovely blogs during above ground commutes or in the bath. we don't have a shower in the new house yet, so it's a good use of soaking time. but seriously. this weekend I had no blogreading time (yes, I did bath!!) and this morning I had to read according to a process I hate, which is basically saving favourites for last!

but I luff you all ... goddammit!!

(image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Betliar_inside4.jpg)

(originally published 08/08/2011)

grimacing compliments

when I went through the security gates at Gatwick this morning on my way to Amsterdam, the guard on duty gave me a wry smile & said, 'you can always tell a frequent flyer'.

ugh.

while, at first, I was chuffed that I'd not invoked the wrath of the summertime airport guard, I'm left with this overwhelming sense of ickiness. To me, being a frequent flyer means:
- getting up at 4am to fly to historic cities that I don't see in order to attend unnecessary meetings;
- hedging my bets by unpacking most of my bag & disrobing of all accessories (shoes, belts, hairclips, glasses, jewellery);
- getting 2 stamps on my Caffe Nero card because the barista recognises me from a few days before.

most importantly, it means being away from home and missing out on normal life (like dinner with friends or just sitting in the garden on a summer evening).

that's not worth anything. to anyone.

(originally published 02/08/2011)

comfy pyjamas

While frantically getting dressed for work this morning (having overslept for the 2nd time this week), it struck me as strange that my go-to work outfit on a rushed morning is a suit.

Once out the door I realised that I was very comfy - a bit like wearing a favourite pair of PJs. WTF? Business PJs?

So the image above is not one which suggests workplace armour or gender equality or even (gasp!) quality tailoring ... but comfort, ease of wear & simplicity. All I have to do is find a suitable top, some matching jewellery (which I forgot today) & a pair of shoes and PHWOOM! I'm out the door looking good to go.

And yet, herds of women stalk through business districts wearing the same basic get-up & emanating 'grrr' vibes. Granted, I didn't straighten my hair this morning, nor am I wearing make-up (ugh) and I still bite my nails - so I'm sure I don't fall into the 'she'll eat her young' scary-lady.

So what is it that gives a suit power? Or is everyone just wearing jammies?

(pub 27/7)

eeeee!!!! Mollie Makes!

Found - would you believe it?? - in Morissons.

48 Ways to style my home with Thrifty Finds? YES PLEASE. (case in point: green broth cup thing, 20p from a boot fair)

Thank you, Tilly, Karen & Dibs for the heads up ... more printed word love in the house. *beams happily*

(originally posted 12/07/2011)

... Shop Yourself Holy, 2nd July 2011

Woohoo!! Another catch-up post! It's so liberating (hee hee ... I typed 'liverating' --- WTF??) to post stuff that's been sitting, unedited & unloved, in my bloggy outbox :)

So, here goes. The Saturday in question was one of shopping yumminess. Rob had ventured out for a Saturday night of Foo Fighters, supported by Biffy Clyro, supported by Death Cab for Cutie, supported by (um) someone else. I wasn't jealous at all. Never mind that the tickets had been bought & paid for by his BFF in 2010 .... I wasn't jealous. not even 98% happy, 2 % jealous. Not. Jealous. At. All.

In an effort, therefore, to assuage my not-at-all-jealousness, I went shopping in South West London (Morden, Mitcham & Tooting, specifically) ... and found:

This 80s-tastic Dressmaking encyclopaedia,  £2

Add caption

A big black sari scarf/wrap and a gorgeous sarong/tablecloth/whoknowswhat, £6

Miscellaneous buttons (some still on their cards, SWOON)
and some supercool organisers, + some books £4

Stunning print, revolting 80s dress - REFASHION!
... and some seam binding, £4.20

Oh, how I LOVE these containers ...
my local pound shop stopped stocking them :(
£1.25 each in Tooting, baby!
(PS LOOKKIT Jack in the background :D)

I love Lidl.
If I'm going to buy (new) mass-produced stuff,
at least I'm skewing their sales stats by buying sewing gear :)
Elastic + Thread + Bobbins + Needles, £6

Some lovely stretchystripeystuff from one of the
many stalls in the two markets in Tooting (Tooting Market),  2m @ £4/m

In conclusion, y'honour, I'd like to say that South London rocks and it might be time to organise a group shop to the somewhat sticky streets of Tooting. Bookended by the two Wimbledon Sewing Machine shops (South Wimbledon & Balham), whose oddly interchangeable names have always struck me as mighty odd. 

OOOHOOOHOOOOH! And and and and the place in Mitcham that I bought the buttons & organisers from has the most STUNNING shop counter table thing ... um ... they're called .... um, a Haberdashery Shop Counter? Anyway. They have one, and the lady serving me mentioned that they were going to be replacing it soon as the drawers tended to fall onto the feet of the little old ladies serving customers (not nice, owowow!). Rob might leave me for this, but I gave her my number and practically begged ('practically'??? nonono ... 'SERIOUSLY') her to call me when they were ready so that I could buy the old one off them. HELLOOOOOO gorgeous!

Not the same one. But you get the picture.
(source) 

Shop Yourself Holy: eBay & etsy Catchup

Hello lovely ones!

I'm currently on a train heading back to London from a day working in Liverpool and I've been catching up on some of my favourite blogs during my train time. For reference, I was up at the crack of sparrow's fart* and promised myself that if I started work at 7am, I could have a lovely cooked veggie breakfast and read blogs until that time. YAY! Cleared yesterday's new posts and managed to add 3 new lovely peeps to my RSS feed for more iPhone bathtime lunchtime reading.

*an intentionally mixed metaphor from high school days :)

Anyhoo, reading so many lovely things written by all you lovely people - and seeing all the gorgeousness that you've made or transformed or just plain ol' laid-out-cash-for - made me want to upload some of the posts that have been lurking, unpublished, on Blogger. They taunt me, and I blow raspberries at them before hiding under the duvet. Honest.

So, anyway. Here's some stuff I bought on eBay & etsy, way back in the spring (sniff, sniff ...).



Haberdashery Loveliness: £5.90



I swoon. I swoon at the lacey loveliness: £3
Swoony swoonswoonswoon.
Swooooooon!!!

(Swoon)





I could not resist this set - natural buttons, and vegan-friendly!!
Buttons & buckle approx £5 on etsy



More loveliness to come soon ... and maybe even some sewing? Who knows.

Dead Famous - Part 1 (Rob bin Laden)

As posted about here, we had a 'Dead Famous' birthday party for Rob on  Saturday.

He'd come up with the idea while we were visiting my family in South Africa over Xmas, and had obsessively diligently been working on the playlist ever since. His playlists are amazing. Anyway, we sent out the FB invites to the usual suspects about 6 weeks before the day and then the mayhem started.

Rob, of course, had to dress as someone controversial. There are no 'normal' fancy dress costumes in my husband's repertoire (in fact, I think I'll do a post about that soon, as most if not all our fancy dress gigs have been thrifted/vintagey/handmade). So, his choice was either Jesus or Osama Bin Laden --- mostly because they both involved having a beard - which he had (until Monday - but that's another story) - and a simple costume.

LONG story short, he picked Osama. We decided to make the costume as simple as possible, so we found a white king-sized sheet in the local charity shop and he bought a US army jacket on eBay. Unfortunately, I had a bit of a glitch with my self-drafted tunic pattern ... well, not that pattern so much as the idiot who thought she'd found a piece of fabric big enough for the front collar facing without realising said piece of fabric was actually the tunic back. D'OH!!!! Several minutes of frenetic piecing & decorative top-stitching later, we ended up with quite a pretty (if basic) result. Huzzah!

Great big chunk of tunic back missing :(

Tunic kinda pieced back together
(I'll show you the close-up in Part 2!)

Just in case you were worried it didn't work out, here's a teaser ...

(Just in case you were worried it didn't work out, here's a teaser ...)
GRRRR. I'm well hard, me.

Yes, that was a liquid latex bullet hole. It kept moving around his forehead all night, a bit like Prince John's mole in Robin Hood: Men in Tights.