And... She's Alive, Folks!

Oh, what's that? Summer and half of Autumn have packed up and already come and gone since I last posted?? But I... I...

That's my belly folks, not my rockin' booty.

I was busy. Busy slackin'. Busy being delightfully pregnant. Persistently tired and having an excuse to slow down a bit.

Henna for the belly!

Quite frankly, I never got that major nesting urge that other women talk about. Which, of course, I had been relying on getting to finish all of the cleaning and sewing that I had hoped to do. But I didn't get the urge, so I didn't get them done.

Instead, I did manage to bring this little delight into the world:

Lolo!

Blogosphere, meet my LoloFe. She entered this world on the 8th of September via C-Section, but not without putting up a solid effort to be born feet-first into the world. :)

Buddy's Henna tatt for LoloFe. <3

And now, almost 6 weeks later, I seem to feel more like myself again. Less like a walking baby-buggy or a post-op zombie.  And the blog has started calling me again. The pictures are sadly going to be phone quality, which means you'll just have to deal with the less glorious resolution. But they're here, right? That's what matters, right? RIGHT?

The sewing, admittedly, is a little quieter with the calls right now. Though that may be because Lo is quite keen on being attached to her Mama AALLL DAY. Which, I don't generally mind. More napping and cuddling time for me. :) But it also means I'm up at 12:30 only because I didn't get dinner at dinner time.  Because I was feeding some beautiful little monkey-girl.

Sock Monkey, Klint, courtesy of Sock Monkey Drawer

But--Hello, again! I've missed you!

Memorial Day Weekend Dress

Okay, so the "name" of this dress is not entirely accurate. I didn't wear this dress Memorial Day Weekend, and I didn't even finish this dress Memorial Day Weekend. However, I got the fabric I used for this dress last year during Memorial Day weekend and completed the majority of its construction this Memorial Day weekend.

My birthday spoils from last year

So there you go.

General details about it's construction:

Source: Vintage Sewing Wiki

Pattern: Simplicity 7011, circa 1975, purchased on Etsy

Fabric: Synthetic border print, which I then hacked apart and reconstructed to make use of the different prints on it. I could have probably just used two different fabrics all together.

Changes made: The pattern is really simple: four pieces to cut for the dress, and then little tabs and facing to cut. I ended up cutting the dress pieces into different sections to help me place the border prints at the places I wanted. I also added a strange little pleat to the front pieces to add extra belly fabric. It wasn't the prettiest alteration, but the gathers/elastic end up hiding it well enough. Not to mention the print. I skipped the tabs, because they felt a little like overkill with this print.

I used flat-felled seams with the border print transplants.
If you look right under the beads, you'll see where I had added the extra pleat, too.

I also added the border print portion to the hem as a separate piece. It cut down on the need to hand-sew, and tied up the dress pretty well. In retrospect, I'm not sure it mattered too greatly either way. It's a little longer than I had planned, but it's a little neater on the bottom, overall. (Just ignore my horrid finishing stitches and poor matchup of seams. Leave it to Buddy to take detail pics of the parts I'm least happy with.)

Overall Impression: The fabric is very light and totally appropriate for a summery dress, so I am happy to have finally put it to good use. The construction of the dress is interesting--shaping relies mainly on the use of elastic at the shoulders and bodice. I would totally make this dress again, a little shorter and with some simpler print just because I think it would have such a vastly different effect. And if you take out all the frankensteining I did with the fabric, the construction would be even simpler. I would even venture to say I'd finish the sleeves with bias binding because it would work well for seam finishes and a nice detail on the outside. I just need to buy LOTS of bias binding for that.

Excuse the wrinkles (skin and dress) from the long drive in the car.

This dress fits the vintage, alterations, and dress categories for the Sew, Baby! challenge, too, I think. :D

And as full acknowledgement, I really am working on some sewing here and there. And I still need to post on Me-Made-May conclusions. Sorry! You'll see more soon, I hope! Third trimester starts Sunday, so I am now realizing how little I've accomplished and how much I have to do to prepare for major life change!

Baby Shower Aftermath

As stated in one of my last posts (however briefly), life has been quite hectic in recent weeks. This seems to be a seasonal thing, as May is just wacky-packed full of family things. Which means a couple of things: I drop off the face of the blogging planet for a bit, and I get sick. :P

However, somewhere in the past two weeks, the baby shower I was talking up and preparing for with the use of Moon Munkie's goodies, finally came to pass. It was a pretty nice shower, I don't mind saying. Big, and full of people who adore my adorable sister-in-law.

Here's a visual review of some of the goodies that my family and I were able to pull together. My sister was in charge of the desserts, and my mom, cousins, and younger sister all helped me get all of my designated decoration projects done. I admittedly chose projects that would have better served a smaller shower (we made 80 favors and 80 pins, though I don't know that we needed to). Silly me. Fortunately, crafty hands run in the family and they all saved me from falling into a crafty wormhole of despair.

Shower cake courtesy of the family's favorite local bakery

Tulle instead of streamers.
I made a point NOT to make these tissue pompoms, but I did hang them with Moon Munkie yarn. 

Mini fruit tarts

The new and improved ivy banner, with little Moon Munkie flower accents

The favor envelopes

The envelope contents: seeds, quote, planting instructions

Family favorite: individual "Krispy Krespy" (Pistachio pudding, cream cheesy sweet stuff, whipped cream, and graham cracker crust. Not in that order.)

Sweetpea blossom pins from satin, tulle, and felt

Hanging flowers

Second hanging plant, used as prizes for the shower games

Individual pretzel salads

The dessert table; my brother, his wife, and they're pre-packaged bundle of joy. ;)

Ooops! Almost forgot to include my present for the wee 'un. Probably because I didn't take a decent picture of it, so tried to brush over it.

I made a quilt for my niece using my friend Eleanor Grosch's fabric that I mentioned ages ago:

I had thought I had gotten some better quality shots when my husband snuck a few in, but he deleted them because they weren't as good as I had thought. And with the rush to get the shower stuff and quilt done, I was just glad I could give it to her. :)

Me-Made-May '12, weeks 1 & 2

I had hoped to be all fancy and make a nice little photoshopped summary of my wears for Me-Made-May before posting them on here. But my brain doesn't seem to want to cooperate on this. Or I'm just plain lazy.

So, I post them in little pictures for folks to see in a row. Many of these pieces you've seen posted on here before. There are a couple of refashions (leg warmers and arm warmers from socks, t-shirt yoga pants, a hemmed dress) that I have not posted on, but they are not difficult projects with any interesting stories to accompany them.

Week 1:

Week 2: 

I know I should provide better explanations for each of these pieces, but wrestling with these little thumbnails has taken the wind outta my sales.

Week 3 is far less interesting. I'll post on that in a couple of weeks, to tie up the month with weeks 4 and 4.5. I'm hoping to get a couple new pieces made before then, because I've already hit the repeat stage since some of my other projects are just not bump-friendly. It's fun wearing all of my clothes I've made, but I do enjoy some variety.

T-shirt Dress, Re-done

Remember in March, when I wanted to make a dress out of these t-shirts? (Apologies again for the poor quality of the pic, but you get the idea.)

I tried to self-draft a dress, which didn't work out well. And what I thought would work for the use of the green really just didn't want to come together either. So, I made a cute green stripy skirt instead, and threw these cut up tees into my pile of UFOs.

I had intended on wearing the dress out of these tees to my Buddy's work party, since they were from last year's party. When St Paddy's Day came and went, the work party actually was postponed for various reasons to this May. So, putting off the dress wasn't a complete loss of plans: I had a couple of months to get something together.

This is what I came up with, using the free One Shoulder Knit Dress pattern off of Burdastyle (thank you dixiediy!). Super comfy and not reliant on making sense of the print on the massacred tees.

My niece is damn cute.

The top was an interesting lesson in piecing, without a dress form mind you. I tried to use as much of the scraps as I had, so there are some awkward places where lines didn't come together the way I had intended. In the future, I'd likely make two separate blocks of pieced fabric to cut in opposing directions to do a more effective chevron effect. I was a little too limited on available fabric to do it with the way the tees were already cut from my last attempt.

However, the dress is SUPER comfy (did I mention that earlier?) and wears well. I added a little pleat to the front for more belly space, but I'm not sure it was really effective. It certainly is off-center, so I just get distracted by that every time I wear it.

detail on the top

Sorry the pics are not formal, but life has been crazy of late. Setting up some photo shoot just isn't feasible these days. Fortunately, life is crazy with family gatherings, so this increases the chances that I get pictures like this to share. ;)

And this maternity dress counts for the refashioned/altered pattern category and dress category for my Sew, Baby! Challenge. Yay!

Pay It Forward 2012

So, I'm a sucker for participating in things, I think. Marie at A Sewing Odyssey noted that she is participating in the Pay It Forward fun for 2012, and I thought I would also join in. Though I wasn't one of her first three commenters, she kindly has offered to make me something anyway, so I will return the sentiment and offer you lovely readers the same option!

I make no promises that I will get it done in the next four months, pre-baby, but I'll do my darndest. In the meantime, I have the whole year. ;) I actually do have a gift I have to make for someone from over a year ago on another similar agreement, but I'll be good this year, I promise.


To review the logistics of pay it forward:

I will send a surprise gift to the first three commenters on this post - the gift will be a handmade surprise by me and I will send it to you sometime in the next 365 days.  All you need to do is:

Leave me a comment telling me your favourite colours (or the colours you hate) and/or your favorite animal to help me make you a gift you'll hopefully love! Please don’t forget to include your email address so I can get in touch.

Mind you, if you are one of these three commenters, you must play along too by blogging a similar post and pledging to make a surprise for the first three people who comment on it.

Are you up for it?

Also, as a side note, I have decided to post my Me-Made-May-2012 outfits via my Instagram account (which will also feed Flickr, so they'll go to the Flickr pool for MMM12 too), if you want to follow me. You can find me under sneakfuzz. And don't worry, if you don't want to follow or don't have Instagram, I intend on doing weekly reviews.

Cheers!

Bambi Shirt, Deconstructed

In entering into my second trimester and rediscovering this thing that folks call "energy" and this other thing called "motivation", I must admit that the high levels of what I perceive to be energy and motivation may just me being a little psychotically over-ambitious.

I'm not sure. But I think that might be what's actually going on here.

All I know is that I come home frantically thinking about all the sewing I should be getting done, trying to plow through, only to lose myself in the deadline instead of the process of sewing.

I haven't really spoken on Charlotte's concept for Mindful Sewing, but let me just say that it's a concept I aspire to endlessly. Just not accomplishing it very well. Instead, I want to sew like a freight train wants to arrive at its destination.

Such is what happened with my Bambi shirt, which, I suppose I thankfully could not immediately share due to technical difficulties after completing it. It forced me to slow down a little bit.

As stated earlier, I made the shirt for the Sew Weekly challenge based on a picture of me as a child. I wanted to use a picture of me at the age of five wearing a tiiiiiny little Bambi t-shirt. In my mind, it was my muscle shirt, and it was my favorite. I never felt tougher than when I wore my Bambi shirt. I could have sworn that I had a copy of the picture I had in mind a week or so ago, but I was to find I was wrong.

I had to take a quick phone pic at my mom's house yesterday so I could post this.

Anyhow, I'm going to do a quick and dirty review of the deets on the pattern and a confession of my issues with this project:

Details:

Source: Cation Designs

Pattern: Simplicity 9333, won in a Sew Grateful giveaway on Cation Designs. Altered via a tutorial to make it "maternity" that I can't seem to find now, and resized to be 34" bust instead of 36". Alterations include expanding the waist measurement by 2" on each side, lengthening the front, and adding ribbons in a lace casing to provide the ability to gather the sides or let them out.

Fabric:  super soft and bouncy remnant jersey, $7/ yard? (Everything is $7 to me if I can't remember. It's been in my stash for a while).

Notions: stretch lace and a blue button, courtesy of Kat's Moon Munkie Mystery Make package. Grosgrain ribbon. Acrylic paint

Additional: In order to make the shirt Bambi related, besides the tight fit (in some places), I added a print of a fawn silhouette. I admit I am pretty proud of drawing that little fawn myself. The butterfly came later.

Issues: 


1. PRIMARY ISSUE: I didn't do a muslin/toile.

2. I used a jersey that simply was not in existence in the 70s, which means it behaved in ways that just didn't suit the cut of the pattern.

Puffy sleeves, and weird neck pull.

3. Even after taking about 2 inches of ease out of these sleeves, they're still too puffy for my tastes.

4. The back was too droopy on me (see #2), and the zipper was totally inappropriate and wonked out the shape of the back (see pics).

Zipper totally bowing out the back

Excess fabric, wavy zipper, just not working.

Back, taken in. Button and eye/hook added to top later. Better, but I still feel like there's a mild case of scoliosis.

5. The alterations to make the shirt "maternity" spoiled some of the things I liked about the 70s design and any resemblance I originally saw in the pattern for my childhood shirt. I am hoping that the massive amounts of fabric will come in handy later, though.

6. The jersey is quite synthetic, and couldn't handle high temps from the iron, so my original plan to use a freezer paper stencil for the fawn was second guessed. I wasn't sure the freezer paper would stick at the fabric appropriate temp. So I used plain looseleaf, a roller for the acrylic paint, and totally slopped up the process.

7. The jersey was "hairier" than I anticipated, so the edges are muddled on the fawn.

8. I got paint on the shirt where I didn't want it. So I made it a butterfly.

9. In trying to add the lace casings for the ribbon, I overlooked the tension change, leaving me with some sloppy seams. I was too tired and crazed to care to change it at that point.

Conclusion:


Okay, so that wasn't very quick. But it was pretty dirty, right? I mean...

"Ruched" sides

So, I really do like this shirt, overall. Even with my gripes. I am a little scared to wash it with the acrylic print, though. I did heat set it, but we're back to issue #6. The fabric is super comfy, and it does offer plenty of room to grow. I'm proud of my little fawn, and hope to do it justice at a later date on another project. My main lesson in this project though is the idea that I need to slow down. Deadlines are generally arbitrary and never ultimately important. A good lesson to keep in mind when my due date approaches. ;)

I think this project counts as a Sew, Baby! entry for separates, altering patterns, and vintage, don't you?