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. 

Book Week 2022

Even though I love Book Week, my efforts last year were so minimal that it turns out I didn't even bother to post about it. Hilarious. I think that was a combination of having started the term teaching music and still trying to figure out the juggle of a part time job that wasn't at home, and the ongoing effects of Covid making everything harder, lockdowns and what not. 

From memory, Book Week last year snuck up on me amidst all of that, and when the girls asked if they could be dragons, I told them a flat out no. 2021 was the year that I told them to use a costume we already owned. Rachel went as Aoki in a yukata we had, and Sophie dressed up as Mr Mistoffelees from T. S. Elliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. 

This year, I was ready for Book Week. Not only because I love it and life have been a lot calmer of late (especially now the renovation is done), but also because I'm teaching at a primary school. This means that not only do the girls get to dress up for Book Week, but so do I! Since I was going to make a costume for me, it seemed only fair that this year, I get my act together and make a costume for the girls too. 

Great ready for copious amounts of sewing and costumes coming up! 

Guide Camp Sewing

Our girls started Guides this year and have loved every minute of it. I'm glad, because I have great memories of being a Guide when I was a kid too, and I know they are learning so much being there with other people. It also has the perks of being two hours on a Friday night. I'll be honest, Steve and I haven't really taken full advantage of that yet, but every now and then, we do enjoy the quiet dinner together. 

So one thing Guides do, if you don't know, is go on camps. Pretty frequently actually. The girls had one in August that was just at a local guide hut for two nights. I was so excited for them, because again, I can remember so much fun on guide camps. Hooray! 

What I didn't remember was all the packing. Our Guide group is lovely, but they aren't the most organised, I'll have to admit. So we got the packing list a week before the girls were to go away. All well and good if you have been on a camp before, and it's not like the list contained too many out of the box things. Wet pack, spare clothes, sleeping bag were all there. But extra things like a plate bag, to put all their cutlery/crockery in, and a tarp, that had to be two by three metres. And a "Sit-upon" which is a square mat (preferably water proof) they can use if they need to sit on the grass for a long period of time. 

Reading the list, I felt a bit silly for not remembering some of those things, but also frustrated. We did have a tarp, for example, but it wasn't quite big enough, and I didn't have two of them. Most people would have a spare drawstring bag lying around for a plate bag, but two that are roughly the same to avoid arguments? Sigh. Even one extra weeks notice would have been greatly appreciated. 

In any case, I got my thinking hat on and then got sewing. Plate bags first, since drawstring bags are easy and I was sure to have some fabric I could use up in the scraps box. Serendipitously, I found that I had exactly the right amount of material for two plate bags from two rectangles of  fabric that the girls themselves had tie-dyed after Christmas. The tie dye powders were a Christmas present from my Godmother, and I had just given them any white fabric that I had on hand to be creative with. 

Perfect for their plate bags: hooray! Rachel sewed hers on her little sewing machine while I did most of Sophie's on Sally. She had to patch her piece of tie dyed fabric first since she'd cut a random circle from one corner for something else. (See my peacock fabric below?) Sophie did come over and do a bit, but was mostly not interested. I happened to have exactly the right amount of cord and two wooden beads in my stash as well. So perfect. 

While I was looking through the stash box for plate bag fabric, I stumbled across the strip of leftover vinyl that we had from recovering the chairs. I had to patch it together to get the squares, but they are pretty sturdy. 

For the flip side, I used a quilted Lorraine Lea pillow case that my friend Katie gave me. (I've used pillowcases before see?) I figured that the quilted bit would make the mats slightly more padded and thus comfortable on the ground. Rachel learnt how to bind things when we finished all the edges with strips of the other side of the pillow case.  

Done and done. Though it was rushed, I did feel good sending them off with home made things in their bags. Also happy to report that the girls both had a fantastic time camping and can't wait to go again. 

Renovations Done!

When you consider that we started the physical prep work for this renovation in September last year, with the installation of the shed, not to mention the admin work of getting plans done, which actually began at the end of April, this has officially become our longest renovation to date. Whew. 

We've actually been able to celebrate the completion of the Nana Flat for a little while now, and even the very delayed carport has been finished for at least a month. The feeling that this is actually done is very surreal, which is probably why it's taken me ages to post this. I mean, are we really done? I feel like I'm asking myself that question even now. 

But here we are. Everything that was on the plans to be done, has been done. We have even finished off some extra things - like laying the turf and started growing grass seed out on the nature strip. Maybe the somewhat incomplete nature of the front fence and the lack of plants in the garden beds makes us feel like it's not real yet? 

Just in case you need a reminder about where we started, here is a flash back photo from last October, when we started relocating trees. 

And here we are now: all done!

It is certainly a change, even though the inside of our house remained the same. Front stairs, up to my beautiful handmade wreath. I absolutely love having the front deck for people to arrive on at the top of the stairs. There is a pretty sweet view over the roof tops to the trees at the park from that deck. We still need to oil the boards, but we'll get there. 

Water tank round the side. For some reason, we keep forgetting it's there and ready to go. Have to start using it soon so it can fill up again with all the summer rains. 

The double car port means that I don't have to start heating the car and run bottles of warm water over the windscreen before I can drive to work in winter. I know these seem to be first world problems, but they do make a big difference in my life. 

The other thing that's great, is that now we have a place for Steve's mum to live, for as long as she wants. That's not a small first world problem at all, and I'm very glad we were a part of solving it. 

Fixing Moo-Moo

Since I made Moo-Moo, Rachel's cow has become a very staple member of our family. 

We celebrated her second birthday (with Vulpix) last year.  As you can see though, Moo-Moo is looking a little worse for wear. 

Rachel added that little blue heart patch on her udder, but things were just very holey where they shouldn't be, so last month we ended up recovering the udder. Rachel held Moo-Moo's hand throughout the procedure. 

Everyone was happy when it was done. 

Some times I'm not sure why I'm posting these little things, but for some reason, I'm compelled to. Is it these small things in the big noise of life that matter? Maybe. 

This patch job on Moo-Moo did start a slew of sewing for the whole house, so there are loads of sewing posts coming up. First though I need to get to finally giving the promised finished renovations post that I've been talking about. So much to do, so little time to do it.