My Christmas Photo challenge Was a great idea only I didn’t count on having no time! You think I would know that having two young kids. Anyway here is what I have been doing. Sewing. Shorts this time. Christmas theme of course! Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to sew I go…
I sew.
I sew pants.
The other weekend I went on a bit of a sewing pants bender and sewed six pairs of pants. Here are a few of them.
You know those stay at home mums who keep an immaculate house and give their kids educational activities to develop them? I am not that Mum. When I saw the prompt for today’s photo ‘on the table’ I thought about cleaning it up. But I think half of the reason so many of us feel inadequate is because we compare ourselves to the public face that people show. I could of cleaned up my table and shown you a lovely bowl of flowers (cue groaning from those of you who are sick to death of flower photos), but it only looks that way on rare occasions when I am trying to impress people. Most of the time it is a storage hub for the goings on from the day. Craft bits, things I find on the floor and need to get away from the hungry jaws of a 1 year old who will eat anything (except what he is supposed to!), food related things, tissues, you name it, it may be there if you look under something.
So here are a few photos of my table the way it was when I read the prompt. I personally think it is more of a compliment to show people the way you truly live, after all it shows that you don’t feel the need to pretend with them. I am and my table is.
These pins look more like nails up this close and I decided to share this photo especially because of the fluff that is visible on one of the pins! I also enjoy the texture. You can see the individual cotton threads in the cotton fabric. Who knew a pincushion would be an interesting macro? Look around you, I bet you could take heaps of great macro shots just of the things around you.
After my son E decided he loved the flannel pirate pants in the pyjamas I made him so much we wasn’t going to take it off, I realised that little kids love colour and pictures. They love them and they couldn’t care less if they are not fashionable. Boys fashion is horrible. Sure they look nice enough, sophisticated toddlers in their navy, grey and brown, but they don’t care about our social construction, they just want to love the pattern and colour on their clothing. So I have decided to make E some pants, in kid’s pattern material. As summer comes the cotton fabrics will be great. I will make pants into shorts and let him love what he is wearing. He can have the rest of his life to conform to society’s norms. As an adult he will be confined to typical men’s clothing and shunned if he dares to commit the worst crime of wearing pink! So while he is little enough to just like what he likes I am going to let him enjoy it.
Anyway!
I made him some pants with an Olympic theme in honor of the London games. I found a brightly coloured fabric with beefeaters in Beatlesque style and throught it was great. I decided in addition I would add a red stripey cuff for good measure (mainly because they were replacing the pyjamas which had a cuff). I procrastinated on these pants. They were half done then I couldn’t bring myself to sew again to add the cuff. I even did one cuff, then took a few days to do the other! In the end the realisation that the games had started and the pants weren’t finished moved me into action and I finished them.
E loves them! (He still wouldn’t oblige by turning around to have a photo though!)
Two days in a row now he has come to me carrying the pants asking to change out of his other clothing into them and he says to me, “Mum, I am going to wear these for a really long time”. “OK, E” I say. And I mean it too. I made them about 2 sizes too big so he can wear them ’til they fall apart!
How did I make them?
I used my favourite boys pants pattern, here. I use the FLAT FRONT PANTS. The pattern has options for both. I think they look better for day wear. Incidentally if you add extra size to the pattern and use the gathered pattern they make good shape pj pants that aren’t bag shaped (perhaps its only me that doesn’t like bag shaped pjs?). I added about 1cm to the outside of the pattern. Added the cuff giving me extra length in two ways. 1. by not hemming the pattern the legs were longer anyway and 2. obviously the extra length of the cuff. The cuff means that I can fold that up until his legs get longer. Coming up to 3, he will no doubt lengthen in the coming months!
I also added extra length to the top at the back as he still wears a nappy and it helps to cover the extra bulk.
Now I just need to make some for W. Poor thing never gets the new pants because E has so many that he has outgrown!
It is the last day of July! Therefore this is the last red photo I will be posting for a while. Unless of course it happens to be incidental.
For those of you who follow this page for the photos, you are probably a bit miffed when occasionally you get a post about something I have made. I am not a photographer. I am just a mum who likes to challenge herself and photography does that, so does sewing.
In honor of the London Olympics I decided to make my son some pants to wear. He loved the pirate pyjama pants I made so much he wanted to wear them all the time…out of the house. So I thought I had better make him something interesting… and not flannel.
So while I was sewing I was thinking about my July challenge and realised I was surrounded by red.
I will be moving on to A is for August. I have decided to do a double challenge which I will continue to follow for the rest of the year! The WordPress postaday themes. So for August I will be trying where possible to combine my alphabet shot with the theme given by wordpress. WOW! It is starting to get complicated! Until my challenge is how to work a DSLR camera I need to up the difficulty level. And in honor of the Olympic games its got to get harder. If elite athletes can push themselves to attain that level of perfection by challenging themselves repeatedly then I can at least give it a go. No one ever improved by not trying.
I have had a few sewing projects I have been meaning to put on here and haven’t got around to it. Here is the other one.
I needed to get my son some pyjamas as he has just had a growth spurt. He spurted right into a bigger clothing size. Well, boys pyjamas are frankly uninspiring. Its like the designers went ‘let’s make great girls designs, colourful, interesting…what about boys? well there is this grey material or perhaps another set of skulls in blue or black?’ Bleurggghhhhh (insert fake vomit here)
So with that I decided to make some. Pants no problem. Top…hang on that looks harder than I had thought…make a pattern???? um……ok?
I did.
I am exceedingly proud of the fact that the pyjamas did not fall off, or apart and that despite being not perfect, they were given the stamp of approval when E refused to take them off.
Hoorah!
I do have another pair to make, but I need to recover from the trauma of my first fiddly pattern making exercise before I go there again. Kind of like having babies…only completely different.
Friends of ours recently celebrated their daughter’s first birthday. These particular friends love op shops and are into refashioning so I thought I would do one for the birthday. They are NOT into pink. Considering that 99% of the clothing for girls in stores is a variant on that particular colour I took that as confirmation that I had had a stroke of genius and set to work. I found a ladies halter neck in a jersey fabric that I thought was nice. Jersey is great for toddlers who tend to fall, crawl, scrape and so on, so something stretchy with give is better in my mind than something that will tear.
It had a nice design on the bottom which I loved so I made it into a tunic using the standard pillowcase dress idea.
I cut of the edges and used them as the ties at the top. I love it. It can be worn with a turtleneck skivvy underneath and jeans or leggings in winter and with shorts in summer. I hope she gets a lot of wear out of it.
Happy Birthday C.
It’s the final week of my June Challenge and I wanted to make something useful and push myself so I made it up as I went. I found it time consuming and my brain hurts, but even though it isn’t perfect I am proud of the result.
I made a stable table for my son to use in the car on trips and us to hijack and use for tv dinners at home too!
I found this bug table in a thrift shop. It cost $3 and it’s fine. It was a bit worn looking, but I had been looking for a table for a while so I grabbed it as this one comes off.
I wanted to use the top and make another bottom with a pocket for books and side bits to store pencils etc. for my son to use in the car.
I bought some cotton drill (heavy duty fabric) for the main parts and some decorative fabric for the pockets. I also wanted to be able to fill it with beanbag beans but also wash it so I made an empty zippered compartment and an extra bag from raincoat material that I filled with beans.
I used normal priced fabric because I didn’t have time this week to find exactly what I wanted in a thrift shop, but it could be made cheaply by taking time and doing so. I used hair ties to join to the table and obviously zips (you can also get them at thrift shops, but I wanted green and red like traffic lights so my 2yr old would know which one to open for paper and which not to open as it contained the bag of beans)
It took me 2 days (albeit interrupted by children and life in general) to conceptualize it and make it. I made it up as I went, but my goal was to get it done on time and it is so I am happy!
Here is the result
I am…finished my June Challenge.
In July I will be doing a daily photo challenge. The first in my colour series, I will be including red in all of my July photos.
For June I have been buying 2 items from a thrift shop and joining them together to make something else.
Week 1 I made boys linen pants from 2 women’s skirts. Then I hit a slight hurdle in week 2 and didn’t have time to sew! So, I went double or nothing. Week 3 joined together with Week 2.
I had a women’s maxi dress that cost $1, that I joined first with a white and purple striped shirt that also cost $1, then with a black and white striped girls top, cost 75c, and made an extra piece with the left over fabric.
So the total cost for these three is $2.75. Can’t really go wrong with that!
This is the result from the dress and shirt. I made a girl’s skirt for a 2-4yr old. I liked the fabrics together. I sewed up the front, cut off the bottom, added pockets and a waist band. I don’t have a photo of it on because I don’t have a girl!
I liked the girls top from the second week challenge so I decided to just add a bit of interest. I added Ruffles to the sleeves in the maxi dress fabric and to the pocket.
Finally with the left overs (the bottom of the dress was left!) I made a simple knee length skirt for myself. It’s a light fabric so it will be great for summer. Excuse the poor photo, the light in the room was bad, but I couldn’t miss another deadline!!
Next week I will try something a bit out of the square…if I get it done!
Learning the Light 