Baby nightgown

I promise that I won't do only baby garments forever but this morning my DIL sent me this picture and this gives me an excuse to show our latest and also a great pattern.

The fabric is some bamboo jersey I got at my local Fabricville (on a whim just checked and this fabric is actually on sale in their online store)  and is incredibly soft. I also made some burp cloths (free pattern from P4P) and a nursing coverup (from SUAT here, I am ashamed to say I paid for such an easy pattern but I was on a late night roll). BTW the cover-up and burp clothes make for a great insta baby gift if you ever need one.

Here is the nightgown pattern from Peekaboo:

Like all Peekaboo patterns it was an easy sew but, as I mentioned before, I found there was too much bulk in a small area around the neckline with those lapped seams when I serged them and in subsequent versions of this nightgown I used a small zigzag instead and I was much happier with it.

I have to say I as pleased when my DIL said she liked nightgowns. I remember myself how easy they were for night time changes on really little babies and the elastic bottom keeps them from riding up.

I am having a lot of fun over here.

My apologies to the fruitcake

I read this on the local news this morning and just had to share.

Who can dis the fruitcake now?

Baby clothes

Here are a few things I have made for the new baby with some links to easy patterns.

Now I do know of course that this baby undoubtedly is fully outfitted. My daughter-in-law in no slouch, but making this tiny garments is good for me to do. Sort of an act of synchrony across the continent.

There are numerous things that have been made and sent but here is a sample, more pictures as I go along.

The first is a little Christmas sweat pant set for hanging around the house during the holidays. I just had a small amount of this very soft fleece but got the two pieces out of it, even with the top with the lapped collar.

Both of the patterns for the top and for the "leggings" are free from Patterns 4 Pirates.

P4P really have so many nice free patterns, so many of them perfect for quick Christmas, gifts and all so easy to sew with great instructions.

The same can be said of the Peekaboo patterns I have used.

It is kind of nice for an long time sewer to use some of these excellent indie pattern companies. These folks gear their patterns to fairly new sewers so the instructions are so clear and the sewing so relaxed. It is also worth noting that the pattern testing process, which I participated in when I test sewed Love Notions Duet pants, seems very rigorous. In that experience multiple sewers made 4-7 versions of the pattern, all in different sizes, and the designer was very responsive to feedback and fine tuning.

It does seem to me that the indie companies that follow a process like this really do produce some very nice patterns. I feel really strongly that it is unfair to group all indie patterns together, which some of us often do, -  there is just so much variance in design process, designer skill, and quality of the product.

It has also occurred to me how different the Big Four patterns would be if they pattern tested like this with ordinary sewers. Can you imagine how much they would learn if their patterns and instructions were test driven like this before they were put out into the market? Probably not feasible of course for the mass production pattern companies but still, it would be interesting if they did this even occasionally. Would do them good IMO.

Back on topic Babs.

I have made several Peekaboo patterns and enjoyed sewing them. Pretty simple sews and in the kids lines in particular the styles and fit are really comparable to RTW.

Here is a sleep sack I made this week. 

My daughter and I have been debating on how warm to make these clothes for this California baby. My impulse as a Canadian mother is to focus on the staying warm part and I realize that this may be overdoing it for California. So my compromise is that I am going to make three sleep sacs in three different weights. This one is the lightest, in a substantial cotton interlock from the l'osieau fabrics - you will probably recognize the fabric from a top I made myself:

The pattern for the sleeper is of course multi-sized and includes a footed version for older kids.

A few comments about constructing clothes for newborns.

Both patterns called for the entire garments to be serged, and the instructions illustrate that, but after the first garment a while back, I decided that in many cases all that serging, particularly when there are layered seams at the necklines, were just too bulky for new skin.

As a result I moved back to my sewing machine and a tiny zig zag for the top and pants, and although I serged the seams on the sleep sack, I actually sewed the neck binding on single layer and turned and hand stitched it around the neckline rather than having a raw serged edge.

I just think it is smoother and as a grandmother I can get fussy like this.

More of these mini outfits coming, but just a sample of what's going on down the sewing room at present.

I will be teaching in Tulsa Oklahoma in April

I have a few things coming up I am working awayon in the background right now.

One of these is participation in Vintage Sewing Adventure in Tulsa April 6 and 7th, 2019

I will be one of the folks meeting fellow sewing people and maybe signing a few books on the Saturday night and will be doing some teaching on the Sunday.

I am pretty excited about this event.

As those who know me either locally or from the blog will know, my sewing life is situated strongly within the culture of sewing. I see the fact I sew as part of my heritage as a woman. My own part in this is me trying to pass on some of that culture to new and returning sewers.

Every day I often feel propelled in my sewing by a connection to generations of women who sewed before me -  who worked on kitchen tables after the family had gone to bed, or laid out patterns on the broadloom before the kids came in the door after school.

In my own sewing I wish these women could know I recognize the sewing they did. I wish I could tell them I understand how in those afternoons and evenings they were disguising a drive to express some creativity in their lives with what looked, on the outside, to be just a useful activity.

This is what vintage sewing means to me, so when I was invited to be part of this event, I signed right up.

I will be speaking on what vintage sewers could teach the modern sewist and also doing a workshop on traditional, and often quirky, sewing machine attachments.

I am also really looking forward to being in Tulsa which is a new city to me.

If you are in the neighbourhood next April, stop by and let's have a chat.

Flypaper thoughts mysteries of life editon

• There are still a few things I have yet to figure out
• Like what a dog is looking for when they spend 20 minutes circling around to find a place to pee
• It's 11:00 at night, a person is in her nightgown out in the yard and it's raining
• And still this production takes 20 minutes
• Sometimes you think that's it and they almost squat and then stop
• No not quite right
• All this delicacy from folks who eat paper napkins no problem
• Or the tops of pens that fall on the floor
• And even guys like my daughter's retriever 
• Who recently ate entire an pineapple including the green part
• And never even burped
• I would also really like to know why when your top stitching around a neckline 
• Goes wobbly for just a little 1/2" it is always more or less at centre front
• I mean when was the last time that your topstitching went off course and it happened say under your armpit or at the back of the neck
• I am still looking for this hands up
• Nobody?
• Always right in the middle at eye level
• Am I right?
• Only a month to Christmas
• A holiday I love
• Because I more or less like any kind of holiday
• I like to celebrate
• I had an aunt by marriage who understood this
• Named Auntie Bonnie but that was not her real name
• But she was well-know as a bonnie type by Scottish relatives
• Anyway when I knew her she was past her heyday which apparently involved something about white gloves and dances with airmen at the beach
• When I see her image now it was when I knew her and her stockings were rolled down below her knees
• But that's not the point
• Auntie Bonnie was famous for saying
• "You have to have some jazz band dancing in life"
• I think she was completely right
• None of us should ever miss out on our jazz band dancing opportunities
• The rest can wait
• Which is why I like Christmas
• Except for one part
• There is one thing about Christmas that I really hate
• And that is that you can never find the end of the sticky tape once you lose it
• And if you do and scratch at it for about ten minutes
• All you are going to get is a wide bit that quickly tapers into a thin strip
• That is completely useless when you are under the wrapping gun
• And puts you back to where you started
• I am getting ready to bake
• Remember fruit cake
• Who knows anyone who is not at least 80 and male who likes fruitcake these days
• I am beginning to suspect that having hair in your ears is a pre-requisite for an appreciation of candied fruit baked in a cake
• Which reminds me
• Out at dinner the other week my husband remarked that he figured he was pretty hot for a man of his age
• And he had definite evidence
• Looking around the dining room that was at the golf club and fairly specific demographically speaking
• Since we were eating at about 5:30 on a Sunday night
• He said to me "Look at these guys. I am the only one here without hair in my ears."
• "That pretty rare for a guy my age, pretty proud about that."
• Hold me back
• But seriously what is more irresistible than a man who can make you laugh
• All the time

And the beat goes on

And here we are, baby Anika.

Born in Berkeley California to my son and daughter-in-law a little over a day ago.

After a long and challenging labour arrived just perfect. 

I took the day today to myself to cut out little clothes and contemplate how lucky we are.

Flypaper thoughts Canadian basement edition, subtitle resilience

Well I don't know where to start.

Which means I better just start.

There has been so much going on around here, so many sewing projects made and mailed or distributed to local family, all on the kind of deadlines that leave no room for blog photos.

This blog isn't a slick operation that's for sure, but you already know that.

Right now a box of clothes and things should be on their way to California. 

Or they would be if Canada Post was not on a rotating strike. I have heard that there are 1.5 million parcels sitting in Toronto in trucks ... hope mine isn't one of them.

Some of that stuff is size 0-3 months so it better get there soon.

Right now this very minute that baby is being born in a Berkeley labour room, while I write this post, my phone beside me and my eye on the green message bubble.

A couple of things tonight.

For a start my daughter is doing well, physically maybe things have plateaued, but her spiritual retooling has been astounding. It's quite the thing to see the depth of wisdom of your own child revealed.

I am reminded right now of my favourite fact.

Darwin never actually said that the fittest survived you know.

What he said was that the most adaptable survive.

Lots to ponder there.

I just got back from the weekend in Winnipeg late last night.

My youngest sister, who is 55, just got married.

Julie is deaf and has cheerfully lived her entire life optimistically and kindly. Working all these decades for Canada Post, who upside to everything, kindly went on strike so she could have time to organize her wedding.

The thing is she got engaged about six weeks ago. That's when she announced she was going to get married in my mom's house, a 50's bungalow, and have the reception in the basement.

We pretty much all decided right then that this was not at all possible, or a good idea, or even something we could all imagine.

My 90 year old mother has claimed for years that she is a) "mucking out the basement and getting rid of all the junk" (not at all true btw, I mean this clean up has been going on for 18 years) and b) she is really good at laundry. meaning there are always a lot of ironing piles down there and hanging racks because my mom doesn't really trust the dryer.

I think you get the picture.

Not the first place you think of as a wedding venue.

I mean really. What kind of a destination wedding ends up in a basement in Winnipeg?

Now the concept of the Canadian basement in this cold winter country has a dense history. 

For a while in the 60s and 70s the big thing was to do up the basement and put in a bar. 

Sort of a really inappropriate bar, Kon Tiki in Moosejaw style, for a time when social life meant having your friends over for rum and coke and a cake mix. 

My dad and his friend did ours up big in the style of an English pub, which my father had actually not ever been in, in his life. They had a piano down there and when we were kids we had many happy evenings lying in bed listening to my dad's friend sing increasingly dramatic versions of the "Wild Colonial boy."

Good times in the basement.

Of course these older bungalows have now been bought up in most neighbourhoods.

The coloured lights have been taken down off those bars and treadmills installed instead, down in those basements directly under the open kitchens created by hipper folks who knock down the walls and put cilantro in jars of water on the counters where the Twinkle mix marble cakes used to cool.

Except in some houses the rooms in the basements, Canadians called them "rumpus rooms" and I am not kidding about that, have remained intact.

My mom's house is like that.

So it is in a house like that my sister decided to get married in the living room. The same living room where we nursed my dad until he died at home, the same living room were a million cups of tea have been drunk, and toys have been scattered, and newspapers read and phones have been answered.

But she decided these were exactly the reasons she wanted to get married there. 

So my sister went to work and transformed the house of our past into the place of her dreams. All by herself with the help of her friend from the post office. They draped the walls in the rumpus room with tulle, rented tables, and put up flowers.

And she did it.

It was an astounding achievement. 

The transformation of the living room into a wedding chapel, the transformation of the basement (and the bar once the ironing had been moved off it) into a community hall, and the transformation of my second sister and I into caterers.

And here is how it all looked, at the best and most authentic wedding I have ever been to, with the happiest bride and groom.

The wedding arch in the corner of the living room- we are still trying to figure out where the furniture went.

Julie and Bill. Her entire life ever since she was a little girl Julie has loved purple

The buffet table. My sister Dawn and I put together the food and ran up and down those stairs a million times. The food all turned out, although I realized too late that I had forgotten to put the parm on the chicken parm, but at least it wasn't dry and I had a lot going on at the time.

This picture absolutely kills me. The basement was full of these tables, about two steps away from the laundry room.

My mother at dinner, she says to tell you never throw anything out, this dress she once wore to a wedding 40 years ago. As long as there aren't shoulder pads you can keep it she says.

My niece and her boyfriend tending bar. "Basement parties are actually awesome" he kept saying.  Great guy. Stayed up so late being a DJ for the guests, most of who were deaf, playing music with a good strong bass.

So that was my weekend. 

Not illustrated was the part where I altered the groom's suit the morning of the wedding, or took in my niece's dress or sat on the floor hemming my mom's bedroom curtains because they were too long and the guests were putting their coats on the bed in there.

So right now I am going to sit up a little longer and wait for news about this baby.

And I am going to consider the fact that ingenuity and the sense to work with what you've got, can actually make the most unlikely situations well yes, awesome.