Completely random post with a bunch of pictures of my week

The day after tomorrow we head out in the rv down to Texas.

This whole winter and our delayed and complicated exit is pretty weird. 

However my daughter is settled right now and has promised a thousand times to let me know if she needs me. The neighbours are watching the house, and my niece will be staying here sometimes too.

I have packed up everything I need including three sewing machines, some pre-cut projects, a case of vintage sewing samples for Tulsa, and some knitting I need to be sitting down long enough to finish.

What we can organize we have. 

However this afternoon my 87 year old mother-in-law broke a bone above her wrist, but that is now in a cast and appears to be a clean break. Not the best time to leave her but she will go stay with my sister-in-law, so hopefully she will be OK too.

You should see it around here,

Currently the rv is parked in the driveway snowed in and attached by ice to the driveway. We put on our boots and winter coats and dash out to pack things away in it in spurts.

It is of course a mini house so there is a lot of just transferring things out of the relevant rooms into their mini editions in the driveway. Out go the comfortable pillow and the contents of my makeup drawer. Out go too many pairs of my shoes and books to read. Out go the spices and the coffee maker. Out it goes and we try not to slip on the ice as we do it.

My husband is project manager of this stage of our year. 

He does itinerary and tire pressure and filling the fridge. 

I do working myself up to my annual performance as Nova Scotian's most delicate ageing princess.

You see until we hit Virginia at least we will be surrounded by cold outside the rv. 

All the rv places to park and stay are closed off season. So we have to stop at night in places that let you do that like overnight truck stops - my husband has philosophical issues with paying for motels and dining out when we are so fully equipped on our wheels. And we do have lots of good heat, water nearly all the time (got to watch those freezing pipes), an electric blanket, a stove, and a fridge. 

I get it.

But really there are only so many nights that this princess likes to go to sleep next to the sound of a row of semi trailers running all night.

So I am putting a lot of effort into setting myself up to be comfortable on the trip down - until we get to Texas where it should be warmer and until we can get to our first laundromat.

With appropriately low standards set for photography I am going to share some marvellous back of the bathroom door shots of what I have made this week, with comments. I stuck to a few of the same patterns for efficiency sake. I am sure once we are on the road I will be glad I pushed myself to get all this done.

Here we go:

I made a series of Patterns for Pirates Favourite Tee. The first few I made were as per pattern with what was a fairly wide neckband. I used a lot of cotton lycra for these tees and the wider band sticks out just a shade as you can see here in a blue version I made previously and a couple that I did this week:

Isn't this confetti cotton knit just terrific? I am so into confetti fabric right now and I don't know why. Reminds me of those confetti angel food cake mixes my mother used to make us when we were kids for special occasions.

Eventually I realized the thing to do was to just make the band narrower - I did this by just stitching a presser foot distance away from the edge of the band, cutting off the excess.

This narrower band lies much better so I made another series in this amazing luxe cotton lycra with a nice smooth hand from Fabric Snob. Love this fabric, very nice to work with for utility type tops suitable for traveling down the road with the dog on my lap:

In addition to the Favourite Tee I also made some Classic Tees from Lovenotions. The neckline here is more of a crew neck and the shape straighter, but I really like the reassuring way this covered up and comfortable tee shirt makes me feel:

A weird and fuzzy picture of a classic tee in double brushed poly. I usually never wear synthetics but this fabric is so cozy and soft. 

Since I was going all out on comfort clothes I also made a couple of pairs of sweat pants from the Jalie pattern. These have an elastic casing at the bottom in the pattern but I wasn't feeling that retro so I just made them straight.

I have to tell you they have a beautiful leg but of course you can't really tell that to see them hanging on the back of the bathroom door- where they look like something your dad would wear until your mother yelled at him to change into something nicer:

When I have more energy and am not cozy in here in the big chair with Daisy I will have to put them on and show them to you properly. A roadside rv shot in the slush would be nice.

Once thing I really like about these pants is the nifty way the pockets are done, entirely transferrable to other patterns.

These are so much nicer than those dreaded inseam pocket bags. You know the ones that never quite line up right and tend towards a lumpy bump twisting away over each hip.

Instead these pockets are made by turning under a bit and topstitching along a sort of curve on the front pant leg at the side.

After you have done this you just lay a pocket behind it and top stitch it down.

This leaves you with a completed front pant leg with a pocket now in it. You then forget about and continue sewing up the pants as you would be doing anyway. Slick.

Finally, because I was on a comfort clothes roll I made myself some little boy at Christmas pyjamas in knit - the top made out of the Lovenotions classic tee and the bottoms made out of the Jalie sweatpants pattern:

Just so you know, sometimes when you are doing rv travelling the driver is pretty intent in getting out of the Arctic Circle to some place where they have rodeos and BBQ cook offs. This means he might want to get on the road again pretty early. 

The beauty of rv travel, as opposed to airline travel where you have to take off your shoes and put your watch in a tray so you can cross through security just in time to see your flight get cancelled, is that a person in pyjamas like these can move in a short straight line out of her bed to the bathroom, to picking up a coffee, to strapping herself and the dog into the front seat, without even taking off her slippers.

And if you are not quite awake it is also even possible to drag your blanket along with you to that front seat.

So if you see anyone looking like, that next week or so, through the window of a 32' rv with Nova Scotia plates.

Wave.

Maternity sewing

Of the many pairs of leggings I have been making lately two of these have been for my DIL who is expecting in November.

I used the Pattern 4 Pirates add-ons (thank you P4P for not calling these hacks) for different styles of maternity waistbands that can be used in conjunction with the Peg Legs pattern. Note again both the Peg Legs and the add-on patterns are free.

Maddie liked the over the belly waist so these two pair, made in some lovely Supplex from Halo Fabric Addicts again, used that option.

I am going to show these out of interest for both those who might want to sew maternity leggings and for those who won't ,because the construction is interesting.

For a start the Peg Legs have a deep waist band, and like the Clara's really, have a short front crotch seam to accommodate that. Kind of weird when you are making both of these patterns up if you try them on before you have attached the waistband because it feels and looks at first as if these units aren't going to be high enough to cover anything much less a belly and the distance up to the waist.

But you attach the waistband and what do you know, they do.

Having this deep dip in the front means it is so easy to switch these up for maternity sewing. The Peg Legs maternity add-on is really a very deep front waistband with a little self fabric knit band stitched onto the top.

Now these look really weird I know, hanging on a barn door in the basement, and they will look better in pictures that Maddie has said she will send, but there is hopefully still some educational, and certainly some humour value in these shots.

Love this fabric, this is a side view so you can see how the front waist dips down and the wide overbelly waistband comes up. We will cut this down to make a postnatal pair later if we want.

Long and skinny but hopefully comfortable
And here is another pair in a lighter colour so you can see the waistband seam and the band at the top a little better:

I top stitched the seam allowances down with a triple zig zag on this pair more or less for my own entertainment

Now to go with the leggings I made some tops. 

I used Love Notions famous Laundry Day tee. I wanted to try this out for myself and figured doing a size small for Maddie would give me some sense of how it might look. This pattern has quite a swing to the hem, despite being fitted through the shoulders, which I thought would make it work for a maternity top basic.

I added 2" in length over all and an additional 2" to the centre front hem tapering that up to the side seams. As you get bigger that front hem pulls up and that centre front dip down in the hem is useful.

Here are the tops, it is interesting how they all look slightly different because they are each made in different fabrics. The grey one is cotton single knit, the white one bamboo, and the navy one is rayon knit:

Since I was on a sewing, neglecting all other aspects of life roll, I decided to also make a replacement skirt for one that got lost in Maddie's travels - the Jalie Lisette again lengthen to 30" with a centre back seam added and a 12" walking slit. I added a little to the width of the waist and left out the elastic in the front waistband and put it only in the back:

I have to give a shout out to Stonemountain in Berkeley for sending me the exact same fabric I made the original in. I sent them a picture of Maddie in the original skirt and they put the same fabric in the mail to me and I got it in a few days - pretty impressive I thought. Another reason why I love them.

I also played around with one more top, a striped cotton lycra knit (yes I know the stripes are not matched on the sleeves - I had to really scramble to find fabric to cut them out at all - the lower front of this pattern is doubled - a long gathered piece attached to a shorter under piece). I used this pattern, and added 2" to each side of the bottom of both bodice pieces and the 2" to the centre front of the hem like I did with the Laundry Day tee. I am completely enumerate and once I come up with a number I like to stick with it and apply it everywhere. 

This pattern also includes a modesty panel thing that I originally had made and was going to apply then I decided we didn't need it. I sewed in some clear elastic ever so slightly stretched along the sides of the V neckline under the binding and I felt that was enough to do to prevent gaping.

I also made Maddie a swimsuit using the First Crush pattern from Rad Patterns. Not a bad maternity pattern at all (they also sell a non maternity version) but the instructions were apparently written for Harry Houndini to execute so I sort of had to throw those out the window (sort of literally) and applied what I have learned from other swimsuit construction.

More on those details in next month's swimsuit sew-along.

Here is a front view and a side view, to show you how maternityesque it is, fabric again from my mega order from Halo:

Finally I even remembered that my daughter-in-law is married and who she is married to is my oldest son.

You know the one I promised I would make him a shirt for his birthday March 30.

So I finished that too and put it in the package to keep up appearances. 

So folks when this blog goes dark for a few days this is why. I made this batch of garments over about a 10 day period and sort of like living like that.

However if any of you would like to drop by however and fold a bit of laundry or do a few floors ... those jobs are still outstanding.

In the meantime more to say on sewing along leggings over the next few days!

Terrible home made pictures, good idea and thoughts on emotional sewing

Whenever I take a break from the blog you can assume that I am either:

1. At the top of some mountain somewhere in the rv where there is neither water, electricity, nor internet (we can carry enough water for 3 days and there is a generator for electricity if we need it, but the internet thing is random)
2. Have company in the house, something that happens fairly regularly around here, and I am not one to miss out on a conversation of any kind (actually had the kitchen walls taken down so I could participate in all discussions even when I was off getting dinner ready for guests, I kept burning things running into the living room to contribute my 2 cents worth)
3. Off deep in some sewing project and if it is for family usually under some sort of deadline

#2 and 3 have been at play this week and part of the week before as my son from San Francisco and my daughter-in-law have been in town for a wedding and visit (couple of my son's friends from the States have met and married girls from Halifax who were down there, interesting and random).

My DIL is expecting and I have been making her a few maternity things.

This is the point at which I talk about emotional sewing.

Now let me get this straight. I do not "sew for other people." I would rather go over Niagara Falls in a barrel than replace a zipper in jeans. It is my experience that the kind of people who ask you to make things for them are also the kind of people who have no idea what they are asking, how long it would take, or how those take it in or let it out a little jobs are far more work than making a whole new outfit.

My one real foray into sewing for others happened years ago when one of my sisters and I briefly made wedding dresses. My sister was a nurse and it was for people from her work we usually sewed for. Our grand finale in that little adventure occurred one day when we arrived at the Head of paediatrics' house to deliver dresses for the bride, bridesmaids, flower girl and even grandmother of the bride.

I remember walking up to this lovely house with our arms full of dresses. And being nearly run over by the groom being chased out the front door by all female relatives. He had chosen that exact time to show up and say he had met someone else and the wedding was off.

Man did we drop those dresses fast and run ourselves.

We quit sewing for other people after that.

Subsequently my sewing was all about me or sewing for my children. I did a lot of experimenting. I will always know how much my children love me when I think of some of the things I put on them to go to school, and that they wore without complaint.

Later there was a lull when the kids became adults and went out into the world able to feed, dress, and support themselves. Usually on all counts better at it than even their mother.

This coincided with my discovery of the words "add to cart" and the instantaneousness of PayPal.

You could say, with accuracy, that I filled my empty nest with fabric.

And now, like all the other times in my life when sewing has stepped in with a life solution, consolation or new direction, it is giving me a way to mother a family who is no longer under this roof.

Now- particularly now that I rely on their good taste rather than my own- I use my sewing to build my emotional bridges.

I make shirts for my two sons in the States, and am starting one for my marvellous son-in-law down the road. I make shirts for my daughter to wear to do one of the hardest jobs in the hospital and for my niece as she trains to do the same. I make warm jackets for my husband so he can finally have clothes that fit him, and swimsuits for the kids to wear all summer. And I have made maternity clothes for my wonderful daughter in law who is way too far away so I can in my own way make a contribution to an exciting time in her life.

Anyone who has ever woken up in a quiet house and has only one or two toothbrushes in the bathroom rather than the half a dozen that used to be there, next to the toothpaste squeezed in the middle with the top left off, will know what this time of life can feel like and how important it is to reach out to family still.

 It is amazing how quickly you can get up in the morning when there is already a fight you hear down the hall you need to break up. And it is just as amazing how much time you can waste on your phone and with a coffee in the morning when there is no one who needs your intervention any more.

There is always a time in every mother's life when she never needs to wonder what to do because someone needs her. And there is another time when she realizes they don't.

What sewing, sewing that always comes through for me, is doing right now is give me my job back. It even makes me sometimes feel overwhelmed because I have so much to do for everyone and they are all waiting for it.

How normal does that feel?

So now onto some patterns I have used this week on the maternity sewing binge, because of course there aren't any maternity clothes in the stores at all now. Unless you count the ones made of polyester and I don't.

This week I used two Patterns for Pirates patterns - the for purchase pattern Cocoon cardigan and the free pattern for leggings, the Peg Legs with the add-on that includes a gusset the maternity add-ons.

Here are the pictures but really you should go and click the links to see how these two patterns looks on every body type - something the indie patterns do so well and the Big 4 just doesn't.

Also a giant shout-out to P4P for their wonderful range of free patterns, really quite impressive, and there are a few more of those I want to try out this summer:

Now I don't really have my pictures of my versions yet, I just passed these onto my DIL before they left for the wedding, but those will come.

So all I can give you here are some shockingly bad hasty pictures of the leggings snapped on hangers on the back of a door. Hopefully they are just barely clear enough for you to see the shape of the over the belly version we decided we like best. I made Maddie three pairs initially with three different waists, these ones and two under belly bands, but she found the over the belly most comfortable.

This is a side view showing how the front slopes up

This is a front view showing as well how wrinkly cotton lycra can get

Now you know I loved my Jalie Clara leggings so I want to point out a difference between the Peg Legs and that pattern. I would describe the Clara's as more of a real workout legging, a close fit definitely with some caution that you need a really stretchy two-way knit to make these work.

The Peg Legs are not quite as fitted, still leggings of course, but with more room in the thigh definitely which is why I thought they would work for maternity adaptation.  I would describe them as more everyday around the house leggings with not quite as strict a requirement for super stretchy fabric.

I am thinking though that there is no reason why I couldn't just sew that P4P over belly waistband onto the Clara's (they stop with the waistband seam at roughly the same place) and will turn that idea over in my mind, probably around 3:00 am.

So there will be some follow-up on this post, probably with some pictures even of my own cocoon cardigans, let's look for that.

P4P cocoon cardigan

Continuing my commitment to sew more Indie patterns this year I put together this little number, the Cocoon Cardigan by P4P  in the RV last week.

This was the cardigan I cut out at home and then left the fronts somewhere in the house back in Nova Scotia (I am in Texas now long way from those pattern pieces). 

The cardigan had originally been meant to be made entirely out of black and grey stripes. Absent the fronts I picked up some mottled grey with flecks sweater knit at a drive by Joann's and tried to improvise rather than waste what I had.

Once into the swing of piecing I made some cuffs out of some of the bamboo knit I had used to make the head wrap thing a few posts back.

I am not a great colour blocker. 

I reminds me too much of those bright squares of colour blocking that get old so fast when you wear them, and I have never been particularly good at fabric pattern combining, probably because I have never tried it.

However necessity and improvisation is at the heart of most creativity. And it turns out that this cozy cocoon cardigan really is cozy and that I really like the way the different fabrics worked together.

I am probably going to be cutting up different fabrics on purpose from now on.

The pattern is a little different from other cocoon cardigans I have sewn. The body is classic, sort of a big dolman that doesn't meet at the front, but there is an option for slim sleeves to be added for 3/4 and full length versions, and there are several cuff finishes too.

Most interesting to me were that there was a tunic length version and that, in addition to the standard sized band, there was another possibility - a super wide (finished width 6") "shawl collar" version.

This last idea was different enough that I wanted to try it.

Here is the pattern cover shot and the line drawings to give you a better idea:

I decided to try the patch pockets, because it was another fabric change up possibility, rather than the inseam pockets.

Here is the garment on a hanger on a tree in the state park. This should give you a better idea of how it is constructed and how wide the bands are:

On my body, as you might be able to see from the top picture with me in it, the band folds over in half lengthwise down the front and sort of scrunches a bit at the sides and opens up again at the back. Because the knit is so soft it really drapes and the pocket bags droop a bit and are baggy, not surprisingly. This probably looks even worse I realize because I have my hands in my pockets in the picture at the top of the post.

I am sure with the narrower band or a less soft fabric this might look different.

However these are details. 

Unlike most other cocoon cardigans, that are really more a layer for fashion than a layer for warmth, this one, because of the bands and longer sleeves, really is a good wrap for when you need to keep warm. The fronts can be well overlapped if you are really cold and all the fabric of the collar band around the neck is nice and comfortable as well as comforting.

Really I have been very happy to put this one since I made this cardigan. I feel both well-assembled and snug in it.

Definitely a pattern I will be playing around with again in future.

A day of much weirdness

I am back in the rv after a trip to Winnipeg for my fabulous mother's 90th birthday. I have posted pictures of that trip on my Instagram.

After a busy time I was looking forward to walking the dogs, talking to my husband, and a little sewing.

Things didn't turn out that way today.

Instead a man I know well and like a lot, a former head of a political party at home, had to resign because of allegations of sexual impropriety with a staff.

Yes I know. Him too.

This meant instead of a nice quiet day I had to do some radio commentary and a TV interview via Skype from the rv, with my husband frantically running around to get me set up and to keep the dogs out of the shot.

If you are interested, and you are probably not, here is a link to the TV interview.

The day left me rattled, as far as I had known, this was a decent man, nice wife, lovely daughters.

I needed to sew to get myself settled again.

So I pulled out a cardigan I really wanted to make and had cut out at home before we left. 

Turns out that I also left the front pieces back in Halifax, probably in the garbage, probably long gone to the landfill.

So. 

Well some days its best not to expect too much.

Appreciating that this was not a point in time to raise my expectations I settled on making myself a head band unit I had made for my daughter, DIL, and niece for Christmas.

My hair is nothing to write home about at the best of times and camping hair is the sort of thing you want to cover up. 

It seemed a good day to make a head wrap so I did.

Here is the terrific free pattern I used from Patterns for Pirates. Super easy. PFP has some other cool free patterns too - all worth a look.

This headband can be worn as a head wrap, a slouch hat, a neck cowl, and well as, well a headband.

Here is me in some of those versions, artfully shot in the inside of the rv with my frazzled self inside. The fabric is a lovely bamboo knit from Fabric Crush:

I am pretty sure all I want to happen tomorrow is,

Nothing.

Might make more of these though.