Hats!

After we lost Sophie's hat somewhere in Japan, I noticed that both my girls were struggling with what to wear to school. Even though Rachel still had hats and there was even one offical school hat in the basket, neither of them were wearing them. I wonder if Rachel's old ones have actually gotten too small for her but she hasn't put two and two together yet and is just avoiding them since they are now uncomfortable. 

Anyway, as always with a problem, I turn to sewing for a solution and with hats, there are plenty of sewing solutions to be found. Even though I had made hats for the girls before, I had found a new pattern from Liz Haywood that I wanted to try out. 

Did a quick look through my stash and came up with some options for fabrics, most of which were heavy weight enough not to warrant any interfacing, so that was good. Then I sat down, cut out and sewed some hats. Why make just one for the daughter who truely needs it, when you can make one for each daughter with a spare just in case? 

Rachel's is actually made out of some more of this great Ikea fabric that I've used before in a dress and skorts. The one Sophie loves the most is made from some scrap fabric my mum gave me after making Sophie a dress out of it. I think it came from Japan and is a navy blue with kangaroos in various wrestling poses on it. 

The only one I made fully reversible was this other one for Sophie. It was made from a fat quarter of space fabric that I had lying around. The inside is lined with a grey pillowcase that I got from a friend who works for Lorraine Lea. It might be last the last of the pillowcases she gave me to sew with a few years ago. 

But even though it's fun and reversible, Sophie is yet to wear it beyond these photos. Oh well!

Travel Pillow

April held some pretty exciting travel plans for us, so as part of the fun, I made a travel pillow. 

I used a tutorial from this blog, which was a great starting point, though I found the end product a bit long/big when I tried it on. Then, I even when to the effort of pulling out all the stuffing and making it smaller before I finished it, which is the kind of thing I would have never thought I would do. 

I added a clip on the front, since I remember from our last big overseas travels that the one we borrowed had one and it was so useful. Not only did it mean that I could clip it on and sleep on it without it moving too much, but also made it so easy to just clip on to the strap on our bag. One less thing to carry when I'm juggling bags and kids at the airport. 

This travel pillow was made with a pillow case that matched the doona I used to make this dress back in 2018. I took the time to unpick the cute label and reuse it for authenticity. I figured since I was going to sleep on it, using pillow case material was the best thing. I can't say I ended up using it too much, and I would definitely revise the shape for next time, but this served the purpose on our overnight flight home last week, so it's a win.

Bean Bags

Teaching Japanese this year, I wanted to promote this relatively new subject with an all grades cultural festival day. I had been planning it for term two, but the deputy organised for a group of Japanese students to visit the school in the last week of term one and asked me to move it forward. 

So I did. With Japanese students here, it made sense to make it a mixed Australian and Japanese cultural day. This worked well, because it meant that for a first time event, teachers weren't being asked to do completely new things all day, but a mix of things they were familiar with and other new things. 

Anyway, one of the activities I have planned is a Japanese game called たまいれ (tamaire) which translates as "ball in". It's a game where you have a basket on a pole and then the kids throw bean bags in. The team with the most bean bags (or the team that does it in the shortest amount of time) is the winner. You need roughly 100 bean bags per team, so I asked the sports teacher how many we had. 

She said we had about 25 without holes in them, so I asked if we could order more. I was relieved that she ordered them early, because I'm an organised person and it makes sense to me to have everything ready to go three weeks in advance. I was less relieved when she told me she'd ordered 50. This was a fair bit short of the minimum of 100 I had said we needed, but unfortunately those 50 bean bags had cost $400, so there was no way to order more and still have any money left for the rest of the year. 

What is one to do, but solve the problem with sewing. 

I looked through the material I had in my stash for something sturdy enough to become bean bags and found two of the blue stripe curtains that I'd made when we first moved into the house. You can read about them here if you are really interested. These were not in use anymore, so I figured they would make great bean bags. 

Cutting them out was incredibly satisfying, because I could snip and rip. I watched/listened to the Emma miniseries while I did it and ended up with 240 squares of fabric to make into 120 bean bags. It took somewhat less time than I anticipated to actually sew the bean bags, and I did bother to snip the corners to make turning them out easier. 

Both girls helped me to turn the bean bags, and I did a huge chunk of them in church listening to the sermon one Sunday morning. Then I came home and filled each one with 80grams of rice which happened to be on special at Coles that week, making it the most cost effective thing to fill them with. 

Ten hours of work and $20 in materials (only the rice, since the material was recycled), and I'd estimate that these would have cost $300, which is considerably cheeper than the 50 we ordered for school. Mine are also environmentally friendly, since both the cotton fabric and rice inside will compost when we are done with them. 

Not a bad effort for one weekend and now, I can rest easy knowing the bean bag toss station on the cultural festival day has more than enough bean bags to function as it should.  

Japanese Banner

Here is a little something I worked on in the September holidays of 2023. I didn't know for sure if I would be teaching Japanese in 2024, but I had Japanese fabric and I wanted to sew something. Was I sewing in faith or folly? No idea. I might have just needed a project. 

In any case, I started with a yukata that I loved wearing, but had found on inspection that it had some holes in the fabric from some little bug that had been living in my storage drawer. So much of the fabric was still perfectly fine though, so I took the thing apart and considered how to use it. 

I decided if I were to teach Japanese again, I would need something for my classroom. So this, along with a number of random Japanese fabric samples that I had collected from homestay students over the years, my old sushi dress and a new piece of Japanese fabric mum had given me earlier in the year and I was ready to go.  

I did end up buying some black fabric for the letters, wanting this to be more than just bunting (if there is such a thing as "just bunting"), but also a sign for a potential room that I would be teaching in. Doing the maths, I figured I had enough fabric to make a rather long and big sign to declare Japanese to everyone. 

This did make it super hard to photograph on the floor of my house. I printed/hand drew all the letters on paper first to check size and layout and then went onto the black. Did the fancy interfacing glue stuff to get it stuck down and then zigzagged around each letter with white to make it clearly visible. 

Each of the letters down, I sewed the backing fabric on (right sides together and then flipped out) and bound the top with a long strip of exactly the amount of fabric that I had left. This project was actually a great way to use up all this fabric that would possibly have had no life otherwise. I only ended up using the sleeves of the yukata and a part of the okumi, so I actually still have a stack of that fabric left for something else. Pajamas maybe? 

Anyway, I did end up getting given Japanese to teach for 2024, as well as my own room, so hooray for faithful preparation. Hopefully the kids get excited when they see it too. My classroom as a whole is still coming together, but it is rather exciting to have one! 

Sewing Obi

While I've sewn many a yukata or kimono now, I don't think I've ever made an obi that I've gone on to wear. This year, I was gifted a box of fabric from some family friends which included two silk wrap things. The moment I saw them, I knew they were destined to be obi. 

I washed them, unpicked them and lay them out. 

They had the most beautiful embroidery on them and I loved the colours, particularly the black and gold. Everything about these made me happy for sewing and the potential of taking something that wasn't being used and making it into something else. Hooray!

I bought some fancy interfacing stuff that I think is generally  used to make jackets and lapels sit correctly, because I really wanted the silk to hold up as an obi without crinkling. Then it was a matter of cutting them into rectangles and sewing it all together. 

The black one really does look stunning on, but it's so so difficult to get a photo of. I'm wearing it here with the kimono I made last year. 

Can not say how much I love these. Guess I'll just have to wear my kimono more often so everyone can know. 

Bucket Drum Dampers

One down side to teaching music to a bunch of kids is that you generally want to get them drumming and that is loud. When they are little and just using their hands, it's bearable, but a class of 25 grade 6 students all using bucket drums with sticks in a confined space is not. Last year I ran lots of my lessons outside to combat the noise factor, but it's not always feasible. 

So I took the bucket drum home in December and did a shout out to my community for anyone going through their old towels over Christmas. With the donated towels and sheets, I cut circles and sewed three layers together on Olivia the Overlocker to fit the top of the drum. Noise damping success! 

Glad I could recycle the towels before they were thrown away, and have saved my ears in the process. The sad news was that Olivia began making funny noises as I sewed the last five or so. I assumed she was protesting at the thick layers of towelling I was making her sew, but after taking her to the sewing machine guy, it turns out the plastic casing on her motor is cracked. Alas for my hard working Olivia! 

Made a Table

What I've learnt from this blog post is that I am absolutely terrible at documenting things with "before" photos, and that my life would be so much easier if I got better at it. That said, let's dive in for the post for today!

My kids have had this little table that they use all the time. It actually was originally from my childhood and my parents passed it on to me when I was running the Family Day Care in the early years of life with Sophie and Rachel. The original chairs had died, but the table was still solid. A quick trip to Ikea sorted some new chairs and we got on with our little table life. 

This is the best, most recent photo I have of it, early 2021. Solid frame, but the table top bit was just chip board and had started to lift where the chip board was swelling. It did not get better, but we just kept using it. I was convinced however, that if we just replaced the table top, the table could continue to live a long and happy life. 

Enter the day that Rachel's dressing table drawers finally gave up. Rachel's dressing table was also a relic from my childhood, again, sturdy wood construction, but the drawer bases had popped out and the plastic runners they were sliding in on had started to split and fall off. When I took out the drawers to move the whole thing out of the room, what I saw was a whole lot of wooden potential for a table top. 

My original thought was to reuse the drawer fronts, but they were all nicely bevelled, and in the end I wasn't sure the three of them would fit nicely across the table. Also (I'll be honest), I couldn't get the handles off easily. But, there was an excellent surplus of wood in so many other places, that I figured I would just need to take it apart and make it work. 

So that's what I did. Holiday time came around and I started with the table, and then I unscrewed everything I could on the dressing table, and we borrowed a circular saw to do the final dismantling. The two side panels of the dressing table put together, fit perfectly across the table top. 

I sanded back the old table and cleaned it up. Then I put the new top together, with some extra support wood also salvaged from the dressing table. Rachel helped putty all the holes, even the ones no one would see. 

Steve did the final secure of the top to the frame with some brackets underneath, and I added one more extra support under the top just in case. Then I sanded the whole thing back some more and varnished it up. 

This table lives again. It's heavier, but it looks good, and I feel good knowing that two things that were previously destined for the tip have had their lives extended just that little bit more. 

Maybe one day I'll be better at before photos too. 

Book Week: Mary Poppins

Unbelievably excited to share this with the world! Hooray for Book Week! My costume was Mary Poppins. Since I'm currently a music teacher, I wanted someone musical as well as literary. My second choice would have been Matilda, since the musical has some great songs too, but Mary Poppins was hard to go past: practically perfect in every way! 

I started by putting on the shirt I made for Steve and thinking about how I could adjust it to be a Victorian long sleeve fitted women's shirt, rather than a short sleeve loose fitting men's. Then I traced out the pattern pieces added adjustments and cut up a random white sheet that I found in my material box. Looks like it had been used for a ghost costume before (random eye holes in the middle of it), but as I have absolutely no recollection of doing that it's a bit of a mystery. 

In any case, the white sheet fabric was perfect for a trial run of a Mary Poppins shirt. There were adjustment issues, and some fiddling with the sleeves to get the look I wanted, but all in all, I was on the right track. It really does pay to make a rough draft. 

When it came to fabric, I looked in my stash first to see if I had anything, and then went over to mum's to check hers out. Lucky I did, because she had the leftover fabric from Sophie's flower girl dress which was pretty great for Mary Poppins. 

I worked hard on the placement of the pattern so that I could get some matching of the pin tucks and lace. On the collar and sleeves, I wanted a bit of ruffle, so I went through my stash and found some eyelet trim that worked quite well. Mum had enough buttons in her stash too, so I'm feeling good about the sustainability of this shirt. 

Sally made some strange noises while I was making it, so I let her rest for a few days and did some other things before I attempted the button holes. As per usual, Sally was not keen on button holes, but I'm used to that now, so it's all good. 

Shirt done, I turned my thoughts to the skirt. For this I really did need to go and buy fabric. I got two meters of a light linen in a dark blue, and another two metres of a similar blue in a poplin to line it with. I used the skirt pattern I had drafted from a skirt I already own, just lengthened it really. Oh, and split the front into panels to mimic the Victorian style skirt Mary Poppins wears. I would have done the back as well, but I didn't have that much fabric, so I just put in darts. 

It turns out making three of those skirts last year was very good practice for this, though, since I managed to get the zip inserted correctly the first time round. Hooray! 

In the Julie Andrews movie, Mary Poppins wears a thin red bow with her shirt, but I wanted something a little fuller. So I traced Steve's bow tie onto some gorgeous red fabric I had leftover from what Steve gave me for my 21st birthday. On a side note, I can't believe I never blogged about that gift, the fabric or what happened to it, since it's possibly my proudest make from all those years ago. Trawling back through the archives to try to find any post about it (not something I recommend) was interesting indeed though, because it seems I didn't post much about sewing at all. So strange!

Anyway, back to making a bow tie. After tracing the shape, I sewed it, turned it and ironed it, and was pretty happy with how it looked. Mary Poppins was really coming together at this point, and all I really needed to add was her rather iconic hat. 

For this, I traced some circle shapes onto cardboard, cut them out and covered them with scraps of black fabric from my cape. I had to buy the grapes and flowers to glue on, but all in all, it's not a bad bit of DIY. Rachel found it hilarious that I was making at hat out of cardboard. I gave myself a nice burn with the hot glue gun doing it too. 

The last thing I did was very quickly sew up a strip of yellow fabric to be a measuring tape. I wrote the sayings that Mary Poppins has on it in the movie for herself (Practically Perfect in Everyway), and Jane and Michael. I also wrote two new ones for the girls. The kids at school thought it was hilarious when I measured them. 

Then it was a matter of getting dressed and going to school. I had a great time as Mary Poppins (there was even a student dressed as Mary Poppins too!), though I do think an umbrella would have been a good addition. 

Hooray for Book Week and being able to celebrate characters and books that have changed our lives. 

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. 

Reminiscing: Rachel's 7th Birthday

When Rachel told me she wanted a sewing themed cake and not an insect cake, I was shocked, as you know. Well, we ran with it, and not only did Rachel get a sewing cake, she also got a sewing party. 

These were the invites. That ribbon was wrapped around and stuck with a safety pin. We got it free from someone in our community who was giving away a bunch of them conveniently just as we were discussing invitations. 

It was the end of June, which was probably the busiest month of the year and feels like a life time ago now. We did a fruit platter, veggie sticks, some button biscuits, poppers and the cake. Sewing basket cake. Pretty simple party fare really. 

We played pin the buttons on the dress (which all the kids cheated at), 

pass the parcel - fabric wrapping for reusability (each layer the kids got a chocolate and a spool of thread), 

and then we sat down to do some sewing. Rachel actually wanted all the party to be just sitting around teaching kids how to sew, but I managed to talk her out of it. I prepped a set of ribbon and felt bookmarks for the kids to do, and they managed to whip stitch around the edges with degrees of success. 

For the rest of the time the kids all just ran around in the yard, playing games, climbing on things and blowing bubbles. 

Rachel's party bags were fabric (of course), and full of sewing supplies; thread, buttons, safety pins and fabric. She wanted to give the kids needles too, and she wanted to hand sew each of the bags, which I again, managed to talk her out of. She did cut the fabric and the ribbons to size before I sewed them together. 

Sewing Basket Cake. Steve had to make an emergency trip to the shops to get an extra bag of chocolate bullets when I was running out, but I feel it was worth it. Some of the sewing items in this "basket" look a little funny, but kids were happy to eat it. 

The next day, we had the fam over for a bbq lunch. Pretty casual. I had told Rachel I could make her a sewing machine cake, but in the exhaustion of June, I reneged and told her I would make whatever flavour cake she would like, but that it would just be round. 

Rachel asked for a lemon cake. Too easy. We had leftover button biscuits, mars bar slice and the usual BBQ lunch and salad. 

Happy Birthday Rachel, as you make another year around the sun, I wonder if your next birthday will be variation on theme or a new song all together.