Staycation summary

I started my stacation in workplace mode, with a huge to-be-accomplished list in my head, with a very clear idea of what my ideal output at the end of the week should be. What I achieved in the end was quality, not quantity, and that was a lesson in itself.

In my sewing life this is what I did:

1. Perfected a really nice dress pattern. In fact I have decided that if I sew only this one dress pattern this summer, with variations I will have all I need to wear to teach my summer courses, plus a few separates and what I already own. It is still February. I can actually see a summer wardrobe of all I need (these are the operative words and suitable for these times I think) within my reasonable grasp. Anything else I make will be just for the fun of it. I have decided, really decided, that I am tired of always feeling that I am working behind deadline in my sewing life, I feel enough like that already in the rest of my life. My new aim is to live so I can feel caught up, rather than live always feeling like I am behind, in more areas of my life - even if to achieve this I have to simplify (patterns and pattern ambitions for example) and attempt less.

2. Cut out and serged, and in the floral case already posted, underlined with more China silk, four more dresses in the my really nice dress pattern. Fabrics are posted. You can see I am still going on my bright theme. I lay in bed this week when I woke up and looked at my winter wardrobe hanging in the closet. All so dark, like a nun (no offense to nuns and I note that even they are wearing colours these days), or a postal worker, or like the meter man, or meter person I should say - why go institutional when life is so short? Uniforms after all are the ultimate classic. I'm thinking it's time to bring back sharp.

On the thinking-about-life front my sewing time also gave me the time that I realize now was so so overdue to think about larger issues. The incoming recession/depression was one of those issues. Like everyone else who was counting on investments to fund at least part of retirement I realize that there will probably not be all there what I had planned for (spent a bit of time with the calculator beside my sewing machine - trying initially to figure out when I could retire sooner so my staycation life could become my whole life - last kid to get through school still though and bills still to pay). However I realized this:

I love being at home in my own environment sewing along, cleaning and cooking when and if I want, visiting by email, in my sewing group, by phone and in person with friends and family. If that's where I am headed, with a few trips a year to visit family in other places, and not on cruises and big trips, well that will be just fine. Just fine. I realize that the people are my real adventures and my real aim is just to have more time for them, not places.

I have reached a time in my life where I understand exactly what makes me happy. How good is that?

Sewing settles me right down. Having time to sew, not under the gun with the thought I should be doing something else, rights this boat. I don't know any other way to explain it but having a free week to sew has made me feel twenty years younger, more like myself than I have felt in a long time. I am teaching a lot right now, course overloads in fact, and with all the other things that go on I feel like I am giving out every minute I am awake. I really needed to reel that all back in to the centre where I discovered I still am. Intact. I have to schedule more mini-staycations into my life. I will let you know how I manage that.

I also need more fabric. Yes that is right. An order from Fabric Mart arrived in the middle of my week (see cut out fabric above) in record time and I was so glad to see it. For the very first time in my life I am now finding myself wanting to make something but unable to find the fabric I need to make it. I am out of China silk for example. I have a trip planned to DC/Baltimore in April and that will be very fabric focused.

And finally more than anything I realize how much I needed this sewing staycation. I am going to look at my calendar for the rest of the year and see where I can find more.

How about you?

On dresses and staycations

I have just posted a new picture of my underlining baste-and-then-cut-out technique which should give you an idea of how bright my staycation sewing has been, despite the relentless grey, ice and cold of the outside.

I really decided this week, as is obvious, to leave aside the should dos for the want to dos. Despite some hilarious suggestions from my husband along the lines of "gee since you are at home this week this would be a good opportunity for you to paint the bedroom, move all the junk from the basement to the garage, etc." Needless to say those jobs are for another time, along with the curtains.

This week I had the extreme pleasure of sewing without interruption, unless I wanted to like a matinee and swim with my daughter, and I realized that it has been years, and yes I mean years, since I have had a chance to sew like this.

Years.

Too often my sewing now is bits fit into weekends or evenings done with the uneasy feeling that I should be doing something else, and there is always something else, and usually on a project that I need to wear. Obviously in February in Nova Scotia my staycation summer dresses are not under a deadline.

What a difference that makes.

I took my time to perfect the fit on one dress pattern, it took three versions to get it right and then went on to make one in linen, black and white shown here, underlined in Bemberg and silk in the bodice, and for once I have what my mother and grandmother told me to aspire to - a nice on the inside as on the outside.

Underlining technique

Made some careful progress on my two-tone black and white (please see picture on the pattern envelope- I am so creative) linen retro A line summer dress today. Tested top-stitching for the seams down the front- used white buttonhole twist in the top of the machine and the same thread in black in the bottom, loosened my bobbin tension a lot and tightened the top tension which means that some of the bobbin thread shows between the stitches on top so it sort of looks like a hand saddle stitch. Felt clever. 

Then I tried really hard to find a way to underline the white linen bodice so there would not be a lot of show through from the darts etc. (if you make this dress the darts are deep and short and the only way to get them to press properly is to slice them open almost to the point). The interesting thing about white fabric I found out is that you can line it with 75 layers and you will still get show through. Finally I tried fusing a tricot knit interfacing to the piece I was going to cut out the bodice from and that worked very well. The tricot is dense and it does the trick, plus it is laminated on. It will also help the linen bodice with those assertive darts hold its shape, and as this is only one small part of the dress it will still be able to breathe, something I like to do myself in the summer heat of the city.

Which is why I love linen. Nothing to my mind is as cool and it is lovely to sew and press. But there is that wrinkly thing. The only way around it I decided was to wash the fabric once, which I did, and to underline each pattern piece, in addition to the tricot I put into the bodice. I have some Bemberg rayon in black and some nice China silk in white. It is actually amazing what my supply shelves are capable of spitting out, and I am trying to work with what I have.

Now the only problem was that  I hate working with lining, lightweight fabrics, China silk in particular. I once made a silk chiffon blouse and it was undoubtedly the worst experience of my life. And that includes child birth. To my mind it is like cutting and sewing dust and about as controllable. And I have no intention of emerging from my staycation down to my last nerve. Also underlining is tricky stuff. No matter how carefully you cut both the fashion fabric and the underlining it seems that in these hands at least, the two are never quite the same size, they slide away from each other when you try to pin, baste, serge them together and the end result is often a little buckled.

Plus I hate cutting out floaty fabric. I believe I have mentioned this.

However I had a brain wave this morning (I really needed this time off) and this is what I did and it worked.

Here we go:

1. Cut out the fashion fabric pieces.

2. Lay these fabric pieces opened out and single layer on top of a single layer of the lining/underlining fabric.

3. Pin the fabric pieces to the lining/underlining. Use a lot of pins.

4. Quickly baste close to the edge of all garment pieces through all layers.

5. Then, and only then, cut out the lining/underlining carefully around each garment piece.

6. Remove pins.

7. Repin pattern where necessary and add markings to underlining side.

Each garment piece will be then be underlined, to size and without any wrinkles or buckling. I then treated each laminated piece as one and serged all edges that would be exposed in seams, the necklines and armholes were already attached with the basting.

Really easy.

Tomorrow on to sewing this dress up.

Day one of the sewing staycation

For some reason my camera isn't working this morning; it keeps saying that there isn't enough light. Obviously it has joined the rest of us in mid-winter, February light and colour depravation. The kind of problem I can hand DH when he comes in the door.

This is Monday and the first day that counts in my staycation as it is the first one where I would be at work.

Over the weekend I warmed up by working on a TNT version of the previously posted Simplicity retro A line shift. Version one, in shocking pink cotton twill, my tester, was great apart from some tightening across the bust as I cut out a smaller than usual size to try and fit my shoulders. Version two in denim that I had kicking around added a FBA (thanks Debbie Cook) which was great but that added a bit too much to the under bust seam, so yesterday I rotated half of the below bust point width into the side bust dart.

We will see how that works today in a more final version in black and white linen, underlined.

More later, I have a lot of sewing to do, then off to a matinee with my daughter, who is now undergoing shift from too sick to eat to eating everything that isn't nailed down. 

I am looking forward to a nice day. I now really understand why retired people look so happy.

Happy Valentine's Day Two, on the TNT

As I write this my husband is shelling lobster to make a special pasta dinner for us for Valentine's day. After an extremely busy couple of months and lots of eating out we are going to spend the evening together, watch "W" on the DVD and maybe hold hands until I decide it is time to knit and Rascal jumps on my husband's lap.

I once asked my husband why he married me. 

When we met I was a frazzled 45 year old single mother with an old dog, three teenagers, and a house that had been only partially renovated and then left. When I asked him this he just looked at me like I was crazy and said "I figured I had better marry you before you got snapped up." 

He has no idea.

What I would say about my husband is that he is the kind of guy who always comes through for you. You can count on that, you can count on him. I have to say that it makes an enormous difference to have that in your life. All the difference in fact.

Another thing my husband has brought to this house is his cooking. He feels about food the way I feel about sewing. But he does it differently.

When the  DH gets on to something he doesn't let it go until it is perfect, and only then will he move on to something else. Like the time he wanted to perfect his pizza crust and we had pizza every night for three weeks, with different things on top of course, but we had so much pizza the kids were bringing home extra people to eat it. We were giving it away. Of course I have to tell you it' s the best pizza in the world, and that's a field with no small competition.

And then there was the pita phase, the bagel phase, the halibut phase, the duck phase... 

I think you get the idea.

It has finally dawned on me that what this man is doing is perfecting his TNT patterns. Once he has the recipe all ironed out it goes in the inventory and it's there to be pulled out when that is what he feels like on the day, and he knows before hand that it will turn out exactly how he wants it.

Contrast this with my own style of cooking that is more random and involves new recipes picked up and let go before I understand them. Much like how I sew.

I need to do some more figuring out on this one.

In the meantime it's time to eat. My dinner is calling.

Happy Valentine's day. Who would have thought, at this stage of the game, that there would be so many nice surprises.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I have had a week. First of all just let me say this:

Pinwale corduroy

Seersucker

Flannelette

Snaps

Bamboo knit

Prints

Pastels

Terry towel

Gingham

Swiss dot

Eyelet

Velour

Houston, we have heartbeat.

It has been confirmed. My daughter is pregnant and I am going to be a grandmother. My DD has had some problems in the past but it looks now like things are going to work out. I am delighted, she is too but not feeling all that great, but this too should pass.

I volunteered to do maternity clothes (they don't do that anymore apparently, just wear everything really tight, like T shirts with Baby printed on them and arrows) but have the OK for baby clothes.

Excellent.

I have realized, and my daughter is just understanding this too, that pregnancies are a community thing. It takes every woman back to where she was once herself, erasing all the years. Daily calls from my 81 year old mother who when she was pregnant with me was a public health nurse in the toughest neighbourhood of a tough town, a job she still misses by the way, "And then I got off the bus and threw up behind a lamp-post, and your aunt used to keep soda crackers in the O.R., and your mother wasn't sick but she ate all the time and was huge ..." Every day some new piece of family experience to recall and revive.

For me I am remembering my first SWAP.

I am realizing now that in all my sewing career the wardrobe I was most happy with was the one I made for my first pregnancy, with this daughter actually.

I was tall and I was working in Australia and at that time it seemed to me that all the maternity clothes were designed to make you look like a child yourself. All that was missing was the Choo-choo trains on the pockets, although I am not sure I didn't see those too.

Peter Pan collars, tiny florals (which might have been fine if you were a tiny flower yourself and I never was), puffed sleeves and lace trims and billowing gathers. And all way too short, so short that a person's belly showed out under the bottom of the tops, not a cool look at the time. This is now, that was then. 

So I made all my own clothes and I could tell you in detail what each garment was, the fabric, the patterns, how I altered non-maternity patterns to work for me.

I realize that this was my first SWAP. I made a complete wardrobe, every thing in it, and I kept it small and deliberate, and colourful and fun because I knew that before the year was out I wouldn't wear it again (it was all worn in fact by many other women on a rotating basis). There was a real freedom to sewing like that and I only made things that were fun to sew and didn't necessarily have a future. It is interesting to me that of all the hundreds of wardrobe builders, classics and good clothes I have made since then nothing has satisfied me like my first SWAP wardrobe.

A 56 year old woman has just swum across the Atlantic ocean

OK so maybe I can make those curtains.

Now if I can persuade my husband to sail along side of me and throw me food and drinks ...