Nana Flat Updates

This post feels very long overdue, but when I looked back at our last renovation (which was similarly timed from November to March in 2018/19), the first real update post I had was February! So maybe it's not that overdue after all. This round of renovations, in a nut shell, is digging under our house and building a Nana Flat under and out towards the front for Steve's mum. While we are at it, we are also landscaping the front yard to add a double carport and rejigging the front stairs to add a small covered veranda to help keep that front room cool from the western sun. So just a small job, right? 

As with last time, we started with Steve and I doing some prep work, involving shed building and tree relocation which I've already talked about. Then, the builders rolled in and the first thing they did was a lot of digging. Everything under the house had to be dug out. Even though the final build was only going down a half a metre or so, it actually meant digging a lot further at the start to clear the space for footings and foundations. 

All of the asbestos cladding around the bottom of the house was removed and the old cement stumps were dug out and carted away. Truck after truck after truck took loads of dirt and concrete to wherever that goes and under all the lovely green grass turned out to be piles and piles of clay. Sticky, orange clay. And then it rained, because we are in storm season after all. 

And under the house and the whole front yard was mud for days. Our champion builders put on jackets and gumboots and kept working. New steal posts were cemented in with loads of concrete. Then lots of foundation work happened, which made things feel slow, but I can understand why you'd want to take your time getting the foundations right. 

The Nana Flat slab was poured just before Christmas, and then everyone had a break. 

After New Years, the builders were back at it, putting frames together, retaining all of the sides of our property and under the house, and clearing even more truckloads of dirt away for the carport. Somewhere here we also lost our front stairs. They put up a ladder for us, but for the most part, we've just been going around the back. 

The retaining walls seemed to take a long time, and I was always surprised that none of the dirt from where they had just cut away ever fell down before they put the retaining walls in. Clay is sticky I guess. Under the house the retaining wall is concrete filled bessa blocks, and along the sides we have concrete sleepers keeping things in check. 

The retaining on the left side of the house (as you look at it from the street) actually happens on the boundary of our property. So to put it in, we had to take down the fence and move it back a half a metre before we could get the retaining wall done. And since everything in our front yard was all construction, the builders put a hole in the fence further up, and we've just been getting into our place via the neighbours driveway for the last six weeks. Lucky we live on the best street in the world. 

This is the photo I've been sending to anyone who visits to explain how to get in, along with the promise that I'll send the girls down to meet them. It's a pretty funny situation and since the start of school was pushed back to February, we had a lot of playdate visitors through that January/February period. 

Since the retaining is mostly done, the builders had a lull in materials, so they switched focus from the Nana Flat to the veranda for a few days until roofing stuff arrived. Our front door ladder is well and truly gone now, but that's ok. It's great to see progress. 

It's been very noisy this week as the builders started putting up the roof and attaching things to the underneath of our current house, which will eventually be the ceiling of the Nana Flat. Still lots of dirt everywhere and mud, when it rains, with mud wasps making the most of this free natural resource we unearthed for them. 

Now I think this post is long enough and you will have to wait a bit for the next update. Until then, bye!

Jocelyn Proust Dress

In continuation of catching up on things I sewed over the Christmas holidays (seen this dress?) last year, here is something else. I think I picked up the fabric when I went with Rachel to get her yellow Pikachu fabric. It was 40% off and since there was only 1.8m on the roll, I got the .8m at a remnant price of $2/m, which makes for a very inexpensive dress. 

I had been wanting to make another Cypress Dress, since the first one, though wearable, wasn't quite perfect. I started this before Christmas and finished it soon after New Years. I had just enough fabric to get pockets and sleeves with cuffs (I was actually going to forgo the cuffs, but found the one strip of fabric left after I cut all the other parts was exactly what I needed. Win!) Kind of can't believe that I got it all out of just 1.8m! 

I adjusted the pockets to make them a bit more stable and easy to use. For the first time in maybe 15 years, Sally decided to start doing button holes correctly. I nearly fell off the chair when I saw it happen on my practice button hole. Unbelievable. 

I was going to just run the cuff seams through the overlocker, but noticed I had just enough of this satin bias binding in my stash (again, the perfect amount), so I used it up and man does it make this dress feel like it's professional. Also ended up using some bias tape from the stash to do the hem. Mum had these buttons on hand which again felt very thrifty to be using up. 

Such a pretty dress being modelled here on my new dress form. Can't wait to wear it soon!

Sewing Nook Upgrade

When we renovated the house in 2018/19, an unexpected surprise was the addition of a sewing area for me near the laundry. I talk about it a lot in this post here. That little sewing area saw me through a stack of sewing in the last three years and worked amazingly as my change table for all the day care nappies that I changed. 

But it had failings. The sewing cabinet that I had (inherited from my Yia-yia) did indeed store both Sally the Sewing Machine, and Olivia the Overlocker (also inherited from my Yia-yia) as well as a bunch of sewing related supplies. All good. It was also on wheels and folded out to make lots of sewing space when I needed it. Also good. The down side was that when it was all folded up, I couldn't keep a chair underneath it. 

This wasn't a problem when I didn't have a sewing chair, but my parents graciously gifted me one for my birthday one year and I found myself storing it in the ironing cupboard and pretty much never using it. Oh well, right? Except that at Christmas, my parents also gifted me a dress form, and the moment I opened it up, all Steve could think was "Where will we put that?"

I was stoked with the dress form, especially given that only a week before Christmas I had asked both Steve and the girls to pin a bodice to fit me with mixed results (although, to be fair, also a great final dress), but I had to agree with Steve - "Where would it go?" The sewing nook, for all it's capabilities, was not generous with space by any means. 

We got home from all the Christmas festivities, dress form in tow, and I think Steve said that very night, "What if we got rid of the sewing cabinet and had a desk/bench set up instead?" The solution here was that the sewing chair could then be stored at the sewing bench, and the dress form could be stored in the cupboard. 

Not a bad solution. I had wanted a peg board and a hanging thread storage solution for a while, so this was a good nudge in that direction. I also negotiated another shelf to go at the top of what I already had for more storage, given that whatever was stored in the cabinet would now need a new home. 

We ummed and ahhed over how to make the desk/bench solution work - Steve researched options at Bunnings since we figured all we would need would be a slab of wood that would be mounted to the wall. While we thought about the options and how to make it work, I took Rachel to Bunnings myself one morning to buy some 6mm dowel to use in my creation of thread storage. 

All the other wood was stuff I found under the house. I just made what lengths I had work, knowing roughly the size I wanted it to be based on where I was going to hang it at the end. Then I got the tools out and put it together. Steve's brother (who is a handy kind of guy), despaired at my description of how I drilled the 45 degree angle holes for the dowels to go into, but I think given that it works, my method shouldn't matter too much right? 

I have to say I was delighted in the end result, because it was everything I had wanted and more. Coincidentally, we also happened to be going to Ikea that week after Christmas, and so I measured the space for the pegboard and was ready to buy. While we were there, we walked past the desk displays and discovered you could purchase a desktop that would fit the space pretty perfectly. 

We didn't overthink it. Initially I wanted the wooden look top, but they were out of stock, so I just cut my losses and we bought the white. I was thinking I'd rather it be done, than have to wait or go back to Ikea again. A day later and Steve had mounted it to the wall and repurposed a shelf from the study for my extra storage. Unbelievable; in less than a week, the makeover was complete. 

Here is an action shot of Steve getting that black shelf (leaning against the cupboard up onto the wall. You can see the bit of wood we attached to the wall at his legs. There is another one on the other side that the desk top rests on. The desk top is leaning against the cupboard too. You can also see my dress form there - already doing a great job of modelling a work in progress dress that I'll blog about soon. 

Funny story about mounting it to the wall though - we couldn't quite find the studs by tapping on the walls, and not wanting to risk the thing falling down (it was going to have a desk top and two sewing machines on it after all), started to think of other ways to mount it (vertical supports, desk legs etc). Suddenly I had a revelation that there must be studs there, and that we had a way to know where they were from all the photos and videos that I took when we were renovating and the walls were being built! 

We looked up the video, paused it as I panned passed the wall and there was the location of the studs. Brilliant. If you are ever renovating, document everything - you never know when it will be very useful. 

I got some new storage boxes and sorted through all of my sewing gear with Maria. We culled somethings, probably not as much as I expected, but in the end, everything fit and there was space to spare. Hooray! I switched out the curtains too, just for a change and I have been sewing happily ever since. 

In the big clean out, I also found the receipt for Olivia the Overlocker, from when my Yia-yia first bought it. Olivia celebrated her 30th birthday this year on the 24th of January. Happy Birthday Olivia! There is so much sewing potential here now and because the case numbers were up, it meant lots of time for sewing too. Time to use up the stash! 

PS sorry for the bad photos. The Sewing Nook is unbelievably hard to photograph. Best photos I could take were opening the laundry doors behind the sewing table and siting on the sink. 

Make Your Own

When I started work again more permanently in July last year, I had to go out and buy some new work clothes to wear. I was unsurprisingly disappointed that I couldn't find a pair of black pants that fit well. Shopping is the worst. At the time, I just bought a pair that I didn't love, but worked well enough to get me through winter, but it makes me sad that I had to do that, and it makes me angry to have to wear them. Not a great combination. 

Being able to sew makes me think that the solution is to just make my own, regardless of the fact that I've never sewn pants before (well, pants with tailoring and a zip) and my zip sewing skills are still pretty average to say the least. As always, I thought a lot about it, and watched a stack of YouTube videos before doing anything. 

I probably wouldn't have done anything, because even after all that research, pants making is still daunting, except that someone in the sewing community of Brisbane was giving away a shorts pattern in my size that looked pretty achievable. Time to give it a go? I picked up the pattern, and did the diligent sewing thing of making a trial run based on my measurements. 

The first pair, made in a deep red that was leftover from making this dress, ages ago. I've gotten much better about knowing how much fabric I'll actually need for something, rather than panicking, buying too much and having heaps left over, but at least I'm using it up right? Anyway, the first pair were beautifully made, because I followed all the instructions and took my time pressing things right, but were huge. They look like they kind of fit in the above photo because I took in the waist band about 15cm in the back. I learnt a lot about making tailored shorts though, with a functioning zip, and figured out where I went wrong, so that was good. 

The upside was that these beauties (after I finished them), fit my neighbour perfectly, so they didn't go to waste either. The next pair was made out of some yellow fabric that was leftover from wedding table cloths that some friends gave me a long long time ago. I've used some of it here, and I'm sure I've used it in other cases, but I apparently didn't make tagging it a priority in the blog, so meh. The downside of the yellow fabric was that it was very see through, which did not make for good pants, hence no photos. 

I made the yellow pair to check the fit after I adjusted some things, but I didn't go into quite the loving detail as I did with the red pair, since I knew these wouldn't be wearable in the end anyway. Fit troubles sorted, I scoured through my stash for some more fabric to use up making wearable-trial pants and found this grey camera print fabric that mum got in a remnant bin at Spotlight one time. Couldn't see myself using it for anything else, so off I went to make it into pants. 

These ones do fit and I can wear them, though because of the camera print, I feel I can't wear them with anything except a solid black or white T. Heh. Success; I think.

The thing is, after wearing them a bit, I'm not sure I like that they sit on the hips, rather than the waist, as all my other shorts currently do. Do I redraft and add to the pattern to make them waist height? Or start again with another pattern that is waist height and go through another three practice pairs before I get it just right? I don't know and to be honest, it seems just a little bit too hard. Maybe I'm not meant to make pants after all. 

That said, the thought of the black ones that don't fit and are made out of terrible plastic fabric in winter time still makes me mad, so maybe in April I'll be fired up enough to try again. 

Spontaneous Dress

It seems I did lots of sewing over the Christmas break, but perhaps it's more that I just got slack about blogging and then had a rush of sewing stuff to catch up on. I don't know. Anyway, one of the things I made before Christmas was this dress.

I had leftover fabric from my jumpsuit that was languishing in the drawer calling to be made into a dress. So I did! I had a pattern, made a rough draft of the bodice, made adjustments and then sewed up the real thing. Still can't believe I'm making grown up choices to make drafts and adjustments rather than just rushing headfirst in to sewing things to be completely honest, but it's becoming a real theme here. Maybe I can't deny that I've grown up after all? 

I had Rachel help me to mark where to sew the hem in the bathroom, and we were having such fun that I called out to Sophie to take a photo for us. This is one for the memory books. I think it's hilarious that Sophie cut off my head, and Rachel's expression is priceless. Isn't it great to see Moo-moo likes to come along for sewing related adventures too? 

This dress is comfy, fun and has the essential pockets. I wore it with Steve on a date night to see Scat, the jazz band that played at our wedding, do a Christmas gig at The Brisbane Jazz Club, before everything got too COVID crazy. (See Steve is wearing his shirt! Happy dance.)

We also got to take a photo with the band to recreate the one taken on our wedding night.  

Haven't aged a day, right? Such fun!