Another addition in the what was she thinking series

I was straightening up my sewing room yesterday and putting away the vintage pattern I used for the solidarity-with-the-Libyan-people-caftan (earlier post).  I had the pattern in one hand and in the other was some Depression style cotton that I bought a long time ago in a period when I was under the impression I would one day make a Depression style quilt.


That's a thing to do you know, spend a huge bunch of money on fabric that looks old style so you can copy the work done by women who had next to zero disposable income and resorted to making quilts from cut up old dresses and skirts.


My own grandmother was a quilter of that type and that generation. Her quilts are now with one of my sisters who moves particularly fast and is a wonderful quilter herself. In fact this particular sister and I were once going to make a joint quilt together. I did my half of the blocks and sent them to her, she sent them back. This gives you some idea of my quilting aptitude.


Back to my grandmother. 


Those ladies used everything. I remember one winter quilt  was made of the leg parts of socks she had knit for my grandfather once the feet were past darning. She crazy quilted and embroidered them over with left over sock yarn (I remember once as a teenage sewer having her nearly stroke out on me when she saw me unwind some thread off a bobbin so I could wind a new colour on - I was Wasting Thread). I also remember a series of quilts she made by going to a tailor and asking for the squares of fabric he used as suit samples. She stitched those together, interlined it with an old wool blanket, and backed it with flannel.


We used to take one of those suit wool quilts with us when we were camping as kids. We hated it. It was like sleeping under a sidewalk. And if that thing got damp it took the rest of the school year to dry out.


Back to me and quilting.


Well, yesterday I looked at this piece of Depression print and accepted that there was no way I was ever going to make myself any Dresden plate quilt. Or a Sun Bonnet Sue. 


If it doesn't have sleeves and a hem it just isn't my kind of sewing.


But I still had this fabric and when I looked at it I thought "what will I ever make from it? It just looks like some old housedress."


So that's exactly what I decided to do with it - using my Bedouin pattern without the sleeves creating a sort of Solidarity-with-women-who-used-to-be-given-housekeeping-money-in-change dress.


I will be stylizing this with red flip flops, if I can find them, and maybe few rollers for my hair and wearing it until someone in the family says to me "what the hell is that you have on?" And at that point I might cut it up and make a quilt.


But I had a lot of fun making it.


It's not all that serious. It can't be.

Shift work

Right now I am working on quick and easy projects, the kind of things I can fit into the rest of my life right now. Once I have this out of my system I will be going on to some more detailed projects, and yes, white shirts.


Recently I got it into my mind that I needed a shift dress for everyday wear. These things are appearing in the collections and on the fashion pages and they are wearable. I am not a T shirt and shorts summer person because I simply find dresses, even around the house, more comfortable.


I decided that a basic dress with front darts coming up from the waist at the side seam (what do they call those? it's not French darts) and a darts in the back would give me enough shape without having front, real French, darts at the waist. I also wanted a scoop neckline.


I wasn't able to find a pattern like this so decided it was time to try out something further in my Wild Ginger PMB software. The first pattern I drafted used the flared a.k.a. A line option but when this printed out I could see that the software added to the hem and then drew a line back to the waist and it really created a crazy extreme angle, like a kid would draw an A line dress on a mom. I can't show you this because I cut if off. I also found that the sleeveless dress version gave me essentially a dress with the sleeves just off, which meant a full shoulder and armhole that was a bit too snug IMO for a sleeveless summer dress. I found this out when the dress was sewn.


I have trimmed both the armhole and neckline in about 5/8" and will transfer this back to the software and will make this up in another version, already cut out, from an African print I like.


So essentially what I have here, in some patterned cotton sateen that I had lying around along with 8,000 other pieces is a wearable muslin that I will actually wear and actually is a muslin for future shifts.

Brunch coat

A bit on my mind this morning. I have a slight pause in the marking until the final deluge hits this week. DH, who lurks this blog sometimes, said to me the other day, "Why don't you get your marking done, instead of complaining about it on a sewing blog?"


Now there's an idea.


The answer to that is that I am increasingly stressed by all the things that stand between me and my sewing room. It makes me feel who I am, OK? Keep me too detached from that and I have to walk around feeling like I am stuck in someone else's skin and life. How can that be good for anyone? It isn't for me.


Now I love to teach, but need to get it down to something a little more balanced. That's on its way.


I also admit to being a bit anxious about a couple of contacts this week from former employers. Since a lot of my former life was involved with getting folks through crises, this is never a good thing. I have a couple of meetings upcoming and am rehearsing what I will say. Sorry but I'm going to be babysitting Miss Scarlett. Sorry  but my students are funnier than you are. Sorry but I am back going to sewing guild meetings. Sorry but I need to sew.


I actually like these people, but I have things to do. I might even write a sewing booklet. I am not sure many politicians would understand that.


Maybe they just want to say hi.


OK.


Onto what I am doing.


Thirty years ago I had my first baby. 


I needed maternity clothes and at that time when you got pregnant you had to start dressing like a baby. Stuff with duckies on it. I am not kidding.


In desperation I looked for simple patterns with A shapes and made those up. 


In my vintage pattern collection my wonderful neighbour gave me I found my favourite of these patterns. To me this is all part of some karma thing I am going through where I am returning to myself. Here it is:

Last night I decided to make a short of housecoat thing from it, for wearing when my husband comes home and hopefully makes me coffees and nice breakfasts. That's my plan. When the marking is done.

I used some very weird cotton that I got from Fabricmart, which has provided me with some real character pieces over the years, added a freehand mandarin collar, and a zipper down the front.

Just call me Doris.

Here we go:

Beyond the pattern

The other day in class one of my students was talking with one of her friends about an outfit she had made to go out. Seems she had bought two dresses and cut them up and sewed them together to make one dress that was exactly what she wanted.


I, of course, couldn't resist going off topic and later asked her more about her sewing. She explained to me that her mom had sent her to kid's sewing classes, that as a teenager she had moved on to the Big 4, but of course now these days, because she had been sewing for such a very long time, she was "beyond the pattern."


She is 21.


This made me wonder at how pattern dependent I am, although I am dipping my toes in Wild Ginger's software.


So I decided yesterday to make something patternless.


I pulled some wild silk charmeuse that I have used before to line things, made a gathered tube for the body and another smaller tube for my upper chest, attached a couple of purchased bra straps that I have collected in one of the million grab bags I have purchased in my life, and stitched those at the top. 


And now I have a new nightgown.

 I know from past experience that those silky type straps are hopeless for sliding around when you sleep and getting wrapped around your neck so I was pretty pleased with the bra strap idea, and of course that they are adjustable.

A little wild, but hey, I didn't use a pattern. (Or a lot of taste my DH is probably going to think.)


Not to worry, it is super comfortable and I sure like it.


Now a housecoat to match ....

Sewing what I feel like

In the last few days, in breathers between marking (you learn to take a break when you find yourself wanting to write "You have got to be kidding" at the end of a paper), I have done some quick and easy projects.


Wide linen pants.


Knit shorts.


A sort of caftan 80s thing.


I am severely photographically challenged at the moment. 


My photographers are AWOL, and since the only interesting thing about the pants and shorts is fit, there doesn't seem to be much use in posting a hanger shot. I will have to keep cornering family members and emailing my DH that I really need him at home.


In the meantime I am going to go ahead and show you my caftan thingy anyway, on a hanger.  My daughter told me when she saw it that it looked awfully Bedouin and North African, and of course I did make it while watching CNN, so I think I am going to call it my In solidarity-with-the-Libyan-people outfit, documenting once again how shallow and impressionable I am, and which sounds better anyway  than housedress, which is how I will wear it and what I had in mind when I made it.


To me this garment will fill a specific wardrobe gap in the upcoming trans-seasonal early spring/summer period. I will wear it:

• blogging on Saturday morning, or more likely reading other people's blogs when I am avoiding the dishes
• running out very early on Wednesday mornings in a race to the curb with my blue bags just ahead of the recycling truck
• over a bathing suit to the pool on not so hot days
• as something to put on after a bath when it is too early to go to bed and too much trouble to put on real clothes but when there might be other people around
• when I am feeling lazy, which can occur at any time

Here is the original pattern found in the massive collection of vintage patterns given to me by a neighbour:

Of course I had to add in a major way to make it fit my no longer 1982 body, but this was a nice, fun, well-thought out pattern to make.

The more I look at these old guide sheets I have to tell you I am absolutely convinced that the quality of pattern instructions was about 1000% better when I suspect they had sewers who were actually considering the pattern in front of them writing the instructions, rather than the generic cut-and-paste stuff we get today. I don't know about you but increasingly I don't see any mind at work in pattern instructions, just some word processed default instruction for a detail slapped in without any effort to make sure the method chosen is the best one for that specific garment.

At any rate here is my version of this old Butterick, in striped linen, which eventually I will get someone to photograph on me someday when I am in action lounging around not doing anything useful - which is exactly the occasion I had in mind when I made this.

Playing hooky

OK I did it.


I took this last weekend off from working/marking. A reckless thing to do, and I got up at 6:00 this morning to start and catch up, but I sewed instead.


I just needed it and figure the week is about working and I needed some time off. I have been marking/working every weekend since I came back from Tennessee on spring break.


I am rethinking my sewing and just wanted to implement that rethinking.


I am realizing that when I go part-time soon I will be working at home a lot more and only teaching two days a week. I'm feeling the need for comfort clothes, but not messy clothes. My sister called me over the weekend to tell me she went to a funeral and the middle-aged daughter of the elderly neighbour who died showed up at church in pants and turtleneck and an old sweater. We decided that the trick to keeping yourself up is to make sure what you are wearing at home is nice, otherwise it can get too easy to just run out (even to your own mother's funeral) in what you have on.


So on that theme, and because I am only sewing what I feel like, I made a pair of very, very wide leg linen pants from my Wild Ginger basic, adapted, since they seem to be one of the looks this spring and generally comfortable, and I pulled out a vintage pattern for a sort of caftan/dress knee length thing I made up also in some striped linen. I am getting pictures taken by my daughter the end of the day.


I really enjoyed myself and intend to do more of putting things aside when I need to sew. I am so much happier this Monday morning than I would have been otherwise.


Now back to the marking.

A change of seasons

Spring officially begins tomorrow, but I have already declared it here. 


It has to be.


This week I purged perfectly good winter clothes that I was sick to death of and put them into a big garbage bag. I took it down to the diabetes society bin and threw them in and let the metal drawer close before I could get sensible and drag them back out.


This week I also decided black is no longer, after my whole working career, my basic. Black and grey make sense of course when you are traveling for work, or downtown in buildings, but my life is changing. At the end of April I become a part-time teacher and that's it. My private life or the classroom, no more meetings, no more pitches about projects people are "so excited" about.


Black is so sensible when you need to stretch a wardrobe but there are a lot of cool colours that you can't wear with it. OK white, sure, and primaries and red and grey but it is not so comfortable with anything quirky or individual IMO. So I am going to go in other directions now. Indigo navy, who knows what else.


This week I took my partially completed SWAP that was based on black and white and red and winter fabrics and bagged it. Put it away for next fall when I am likely to change my mind again and need those clothes.


I refuse to do any duty sewing. Ever. OK except in emergency, family situations. But never, not for myself.


I am done sewing a wardrobe. It's time I sewed a life.


And where does this leave the White Shirts? Right where they should be. In the department of I will make them when I get up in the morning and decide that's what I want to sew. And I will. I have collected some wonderful fabric and patterns but the long sleeved versions will be waiting along with the old SWAP for cold weather. The seasonal white shirts will appear not when required, but when desired.


On the subject of seasons I was killing some time in my office this week between appointments and read CNN for news. I got distracted from even that by an article on midlife etc. etc. A question posed was that people tend at mid life to think of all the things they would like to have done, but haven't.


So I wrote that down and thought about it. I was surprised at how short the list was, but it was important to me, and some of it I note had to do with things. Here goes:

• I would like every single thing in my wardrobe to be a "piece" I love
• I would like my house to be really clean, every day. (this will require getting rid of some family members and the dogs, and will bite into my sewing "pieces" time, oh well maybe next life)
• I would like to have a big laundry sink. You know for dirty paint brushes and muddy boots and big things that you want to soak. Somebody ripped out the old one that came with this house and replaced it with a bar sink. All you can put in that is a teaspoon and a shoe lace.
• I would like to be able to say I am in the best shape of my life. This probably isn't as hard as it sounds considering I have never even tried to go there so far.
• I would like to write a book, OK, even a booklet. On sewing.
• I would like to have the same number of towels in my cupboard at the end of the year as at the beginning. Why does no one ever know where the towels have gone? The same people, incidentally, that want to know what I have done with the other sock.

That's it. I realize this is a weird list. Not on it are family or travel I notice. I have done a lot of traveling in my life and worked in other countries and any more places I go to are a bonus. I have a husband I really like, and will like even better when he comes home in  few weeks. I had three kids and I am glad about that. Two boys and a girl. I used to wonder if I should have had another girl, but then now I have Scarlett so that's fine. As to working I have had some tough jobs but at the end of my career as a teacher I am doing the best job of my life. I am glad I will be finishing work this way - imagine if the best work of your life had happened at the beginning and the tough jobs came after? 

I don't wish I had a big house. I can hardly keep up with this one. I don't wish I had more money. If I have a fabric budget and can afford to go visit my son in the States and my family in the rest of the country I have all that really care about.

And I want spring to be here, really here. It's change time.