Beautification

Time for a garden update. After we pulled out the corn and the garden looked bare and awful for a while. Not for long though, because a plethora of pumpkin vines came up from the compost and because the weather wasn't quite right to plant anything else, we let them grow. 

And grow they did. You can read about pumpkin spoils here and here. But then the weather got to be just right for planting other things, and so the pumpkins were not longer appreciated. I thought they would die back naturally, after they had grown their pumpkins, but alas, they just kept growing (you can see their abundant growth in a picture in this post from March). In the end, we had to do a big cull of pumpkin vines so that we could top up the dirt, re-mulch and plant the tomato seedlings. 

Now the garden looks like this:

Some of those seedlings came from a friendly neighbourhood donation actually. Someone else in in the suburb had a heap pop up and decided they could share the tomato love. What a great neighbourhood we live in!

The garden looks so professional, we we even put in some stakes and wire for the tomato plants to be supported by. There is one pumpkin vine (top left), which grows out of the box and onto the grass. There are two pumpkins still on this vine growing steadily. I've also put some snow pea seeds in too, so hopefully we will see them sprout up soon.

Meanwhile, out front, our rusty old wire fence is getting some winter beautification. Last winter, I planted snow peas around the swing set, using the poles for a natural trellis. You can read about it here. I noticed then that the ones that did the best were the ones in the sun the most. Thinking about it, the front of our house gets a lot of sun most days, so using the front fence for a trellis seemed to be the next logical thing.

The kids and I planted these. I went along with a shovel and made a little hole and got the kids to follow me with seeds and the instruction that they were to put one seed in each hole. Then we went along with a bag of potting mix and they put a handful of potting mix on the top of each.

They look small and cute now, but hopefully they grow up and make the rusty front fence look a bit nicer, even for just a little while. There are a mix of snow peas and other bean seeds, just for variety. Should be good. The gaps are where there was some random cement in the ground (I can only assume from a previous fence?) or the kids missed a hole.

This clump of seedlings are from the first hole, where the children clearly got over excited about putting seeds in.

Reality Dreams

It's a reality! This is the dress I dreamed about for a long time. That I made muslin practice dresses for, and that now finally I get to wear. 

The material is this gorgeous orange (not yucky in-your-face orange) sushi themed print that I got from another Japanese teacher who wasn't going to use it. I still have three meters of it and Sophie keeps asking for a dress, so maybe it will be used again soon. Not sure how I feel about matching dresses though. It's just not really my thing. Anyway, if you wanted to buy this fabric, you could find it here. It's fabulous. 

I wore the dress on Sunday to church and then we went to the park afterwards for lunch and a play. Steve took these photos there, as we enjoyed the wonderful autumn weather. I'm so bummed I didn't think to take my sunnies off, but such is life. 

The girls were also in home made dresses (coincidence!) which made me feel extra special. Maybe I am the Proverbs 31 woman after all!? You can read about the girls dresses here. 

And here are the dresses hanging on the washing line. From the initial dress that started it all, to the wearable muslin, and finally the sushi dress. I feel like seeing them all on the line confirms that I am actually wearing dresses more, which was just one of the goals here. Success! 

To Infinity and Beyond!

This post starts with a confession: I like to wear dresses. I really do. There is something inexplicably beautiful about wearing a dress, even if it's an about-the-home dress that's easy to throw on and ok to get a bit of sticky-fingered-child-love on. 

I don't get to wear dresses enough, because even though dresses can be, they are not always practical for the kind of work I do. The kind where pockets are a must for all sorts of miscellaneous essentials like tissues, lip balm, rocks from who knows where, animal toys, phones, keys and the like. The kind of work where I'm going to be sitting on the ground and may have to suddenly lunge with no warning to save a child from some imminent danger, thus needing to be modest and flexible. 

Sigh. Not many dresses fit this line of work at all. It's rather disappointing when every day I wear the same outfit in a different variation: shorts and t-shirt. Now that it's coming into winter, it's a mix of jeans and a t-shirt, sometimes with a hoodie! Sigh. 

A few months ago, I was hanging up dresses in my cupboard and I found one that I can not remember seeing before at all. Honestly. I do get many of my clothes as hand me downs from my generous patrons of fashion (also known as my sisters). There is probably about an 75% hand me down to 25% self bought ratio, although in recent years the gap is closing, so in all likely hood this dress was just another hand me down that I have forgotten about, but I was still perplexed as to how it got into my cupboard with no recollection from me. 

What was more perplexing was that when I put it on, it fit so comfortably, that I have no idea how I could possibly have had it in the cupboard but not realised what a great dress it was! Curious and curiouser! 

After wearing it a few times, I decided I must recreate more of this fabulous dress, because, perfectly fitting though it was, it was lacking in pockets. So I looked at the dress and thought about it, and drew my own pattern for it. 

I'm a little bit shocked at how far I've come with sewing. That I can now look at a dress and know what parts go where and how it might be constructed is astonishing to me. That I can confidently cut the fabric and sew with some semblance of a unified seam allowance leaves me perplexed. In a good way. 

I have heard/read of people who make a "muslin" before they make the actual dress, and for once I found myself in the same boat. The "muslin" is just essentially a rough draft dress that you use to check that everything fits where it should, and give you practice at sewing it. I've never sewn one before because it seems like a waste to me to make an entire dress just as practice. And I've never had enough money to justify buying material for a rough draft dress either. 

Enter the space bed sheets that Steve's mum gave me as hand me downs from Steve's childhood. (I've used them before here.) These were in the drawer, and I did need to start cleaning out those drawers, so why not use them for the rough draft dress? Once the problem of material was solved and I started sewing, I realised another exciting factor about sewing the draft dress: you don't have to finish it. 

By "finish it" I don't mean you can leave it half done, but that you don't have to finish the seams (that's the technical term). It means you don't have to sew them so they don't fray, because you won't be wearing this rough draft dress (in theory), so you just sew the basics. No hemming either, or binding the neck holes, or finishing the sleeves. Sewing a draft dress is fast. 

Of course fixing the mistakes of the draft pattern takes longer, but at least you've made progress, and you've seen the way the dress could come together and be amazing. I'm officially converted to making a muslin, because I know if I do it, the end result will actually be great, rather than something I might have to adjust. Here's hoping that people continue to give me old bed sheets to use as drafts for the rest of my life and it does not become a financial burden. 

Back to my story. The first draft dress worked well, but there was something wrong with the bodice fit. Not for nothing did I read iKat Bag's series on dress drafting though! At the time when I was reading the posts, which were long and involved, and slightly over my head, I was wondering if this information would ever come in handy. But when I looked at the draft dress bodice and knew that I needed to take 2cm off the side bodice pieces to bring the princess seams to the correct place in the armscye, I felt empowered beyond belief. 

When the adjustment proved to be exactly correct in the second draft dress, words can not express my joy. There may have even been a dance around the living room. 

Can you see how the Princess Seam fits perfectly there!? 

I'm not sure why I have no photos of these draft dresses, or why I don't even know the current location of these dresses. Surely I didn't throw them before I finished blogging about all this sewing? Who knows. Anyway, in draft dress two, now that the bodice fit, I also added sleeves. Traditionally I don't sew anything with sleeves. Not sure if you've noticed on the girls dresses, but in four years, I've only sewed one with sleeves. 

I had been reading some Sewing Rabbit posts about dresses, and she has a different way of putting sleeves into dresses that seemed to be way easier that the usual way a pattern will tell you to, that I was keen to try. Draft dress two was the perfect time, and again, reading the copious amounts of sewing related blogs paid off. 

Pockets!

It was time to try the real thing but I wasn't quite ready yet. Mostly, after all the sewing of draft dresses using super cool space material (that was also super soft because it had been well used), I kind of wanted a space dress as well as the dress out of the material I originally wanted. I rationalised this by saying a third practice dress that I actually put all the finishes on would be good practice for me, and it would use more space material (remember I needed to clean out the drawer?). On top of that, I could use it when I'm working, because it would have pockets, and I could make it as long as I like for modesty and easy wear. 

So I did. This is actually what I spent most of my Mother's Day on. I sewed while Steve played with the girls. It was really nice to be listening to them play while I got to sew. So spoilt. 

So the Self Drafted Wearable Muslin Space Dress is finished. Sophie's reaction was: "What a beautiful dress Mum! You should wear it to playgroup." I'm a little sad that it's coming into winter and I'll have to layer it, but I think I will be wearing it, and soon. 

And now that it's done and it turned out beautifully, I'm even more excited (if that was possible) about sewing the dress in the fabric I had dreamed about all along. Just wait and see! I really do feel like the options are limitless: to infinity and beyond in the world of dress making! 

Mermaids

There has been a lot of undocumented sewing going on around here. Most of which I will talk about in another post. I suppose I say this to somehow justify the absence of regular posting. Meh. Anyway, today's post is about to change things by documenting some sewing that happened only yesterday! What an incredibly fast turn around from sewing to posting. In fact, even from conception to posting is only three days! Record!

And what is this sewing with the record turn around from conception to post, I hear you asking. Well!

Mermaids.

The girls were playing/pretending to be mermaids the other day. They have a Little Mermaid book that we've read and they've seen the movie once or twice too. Ahh the movie of my childhood. So many memories. Anyway, something popped up in my pintrest feed on Sunday about sewing a mermaid tail for a doll, and after several clicks, I finally got here to where the tutorial was. Really easy and straight forward. So I saved it for another day.

On Monday, Sophie told me she was going to be Ariel and Rachel was Flounder. So I happened to mention I had found a pattern for sewing a mermaid tail for her doll if she was interested maybe we could do it together. The response was positive. (At this point, Sophie also pointed out that she too would like a mermaid tail, but I managed to convince her that was for another day.)

So Monday afternoon the material box was out. Both girls made their choices and measured their dolls. They helped with the pins and played with the scraps after cutting. I'm sure they would have helped with the sewing (as per usual), but they got distracted pretending to be mermaids again, so I just did the sewing by myself (much faster).

These were a really easy sew, used up a bit of scrap material, and they look great on the girls dolls. (If you are interested, Sophie's is here, and Rachel's is here.) It's been nice to see the dolls get another run of being played with (they had been on the shelf for a while).

Now it's Tuesday afternoon and the mermaids have been to the swimming lesson and playgroup as well as being the cuddle toy of choice for bedtime last night. And look at me blogging about them! So fast!