Lucky socks

Once in a sewing class I took, a woman shared a post-Christmas story about cleaning up after her grown-up sons had gone home.

She always found the present she made them left behind.

This story was like a stab to my heart and to every mother and sewer who has wondered if the gift you made yourself was really what they wanted. I know I felt like that the year I made everyone a quillo.

Male relatives, sons, husbands, brother-in-laws, fathers, nephews and the rest of them can be just so difficult to buy gifts for. The trouble with most men is that despite the fact that they can be the plainest, or worst dressers, on the planet they are highly particular about how they do this, not to mention they usually like to buy exactly what they want for themselves.

Upgrading and treating are not things they understand or appreciate. A man my husband works with confessed that his wife had given him a pedicure for their anniversary (these guys work outside on an environmental engineering project) and I don't want to know the back story there. You would think she had suggested a sex change. And last Christmas I gave my spouse silk PJ bottoms (I thought because he likes silk on me he would like it on him) and he gave them back to me last month, unworn, because they make him nervous.

Woman are so much easier. Most woman have a huge list of things they would like to buy for themselves if they could and basically feel totally comfortable with whatever luxury they can get their hands on.

Which brings me to socks.

So far I have not knit myself socks but have been knitting them for the men around here. Husband, son, son-in-law, nephew. They actually like them, no they love them. All men wear socks, everyday most days, and apparently hand knit socks are comfortable. They actually prefer my socks. I have orders for more.

How about that?

Even my surfer youngest son who is usually totally indifferent to things material wore his, for three days straight actually until I caught him at it. He said they were his "lucky socks."

Pictured here is my 13 year old son, Nick, Nancy's son, in his lucky socks.

I actually think the lucky one is me.

My sister Nancy

One of the people I am visiting here is my sister Nancy. She is one of the most remarkable people I know.

Nancy has a gift. She has the ability to make something out of nothing, to find the humour in everything, to make the best of any challenge.

She is ingenious.

Her house is beautiful and decorated in old furniture she refinished (some of which she has found in the back lanes), things she has made, and things she has invented.

Which brings me to these shoes. Nancy is a home-based floral designer and one day in the winter she said she just looked at some old shoes and decided to make something out of them. The result was these crazy floral shoes (many of the flowers are handmade) that she has placed in shoe stores and bridal salons.

I had to share them, and her, with you.

Family visits and fabric

There are no pictures with this post as I am writing it from Winnipeg on a borrowed computer. I am here with my DD and Miss Scarlett visiting my mom, two of my sisters and nieces and nephew.

It is nice to be here. To open the drawers and see knives that you remember from your childhood, to revert a little bit to that feeling that you are in your parent's house and not quite totally responsible. To walk on sidewalks your father and grandfather walked on. To be amazed at my mother who is handling 82 by proceeding with a schedule and a life of someone who is about 32. She is at all kids events, still tutors reading at the school, reads the paper before I am even up and then wants to discuss it.

Of course having a baby here has revived extensive discussions about the babyhoods of everyone in the extended family. Who was a good sleeper and eater. When who crawled and walked when. Nearly every story is exactly the same, how some child was totally hopeless and some mother did the wrong thing, but always that the kid turned out just fine.

I also realize that to my family the real me is the sewer. I sewed all the time I was growing up and they are used to my mammoth fabric purchases. All the other jobs and things I have done don't really matter, to them I am the sewer. In the first hour I was here my sister gave me a skirt to make a pattern copy for her from, in the first morning I was off to the big discount fabric place here that I traditionally visit every day of every visit. Lingerie elastics for next to nothing, knits, cottons for tops and most importantly some African cotton for a summer dress. I love, love African prints. I am a bright colour, geometric pattern not flower type of girl, not being a small person, and African cotton is nice to sew. I am pretty pleased with this.

Oh and the baby story about me?

I didn't crawl until I was a year old and walk until I was 16 months old. But before my first birthday I was way ahead at what I liked best - sitting behind the curtains and unpicking the hems.

And I have had a seam ripper in my hand ever since.

Do you make a muslin?

This weekend my sister asked me if I make many muslins since I am for this current project. The answer is no. I just doesn't suit my crashing through life with enthusiasms personality. I mean the hardest thing for me about knitting is checking the gauge, which is about the best advice anyone can give you and I have a six foot long Christmas stockings to fill every year to prove it.  I curse myself for not checking my gauge every year as I realize I have been reduced to looking for stocking stuffers of volume not of quality (carmel popcorn anyone? Six packs of sport socks?)

My sewing time is precious and the thought of making every garment twice makes me crazy.

However there are some occasions when a muslin becomes a time saver and not a time waster. This particular dress project falls into that category, the category being:

1. It's a style you haven't worn before, or has details like this asymmetrical front that you just can't visualize without working with it with your hands. Sometimes you can find something similar in the stores and sometimes you can't. Plus you have to find parking and if you really liked trooping around the stores that much you wouldn't be a sewer.

2. The fabric is something you would feel really bad about wasting. Check.

Now once you get your head around the time investment here are a few other advantages to muslin making:

1. You get to burn through some of your more hideous fabric and can get it out of the inventory and out of your conscience, guilt-free. I would never wear this loud print and you know it's been eaten up by the process and now I don't have to.

2. You can also get rid of dumb zippers that you can't even remember why you bought them (for me because I am now invisible zipper only these days I can get rid of all my old school zippers.)

3. You can clean up your old bobbins and ends of weird threads that you bought for just one mending job. I have sewn through the ends of six bobbins to do this muslin.

4. You can sew like you were in grade nine again. No seam finishing, marking with permanent markers. Write advice to yourself right on the fabric.

So yesterday I made my muslin which just goes to show that different bodies react differently to the same pattern. For a real pro job on this dress, beautifully finished, go to the Sewing Lawyer for her version. I note that Sewing Lawyer and I  didn't have the same issues, which is another reason to make a muslin when the garment counts. I also see she interlined her's with silk organza and I will be doing that too, it seems to have worked so well in her wonderful version.

This is what I found out about Vogue 1182 on me that I would not have known otherwise, or known too late, if I had gone directly to the fabric:

1. It is too short. I am 5'9" and add 3" and the raw edge, so unhemmed, is still hitting me just at the top of the knee cap. I am going to have to add a surprising 5" to this dress just to get it to mid knew which for this event is where I want it.

2. I was concerned that this large open collar would gape since the one part of my body that is scrawny is my neck, so I cut the top a size 12 (I am not a size 12) and that proved to be a good call, and I am happy with where this sits. However being a tall person who teaches I spend a lot of time bending over and my neck bends forward, not that attractive I know but that's the way it is for us tall middle-aged women. As a result the large collar at the back sort of gaps and stands away from my back neck and I note that the centre back seam actually curves out a bit. I curved it back in at the top 5/8" and trimmed the same off the back of the collar pieces. It would have driven me crazy ever time I looked in the mirror to see the back of that neck gaping.

3. OK ease. I am a size 16 hip and a size 18 waist so obviously knew I had to add to the princess seams to make this size 12 fit. I did that and the result was humungous. The fact is that this pattern has 3 1/2" ease built in at the bust and 4 1/2" at the waist and hips and IMO that is just way too much for this fitted style, even when you take the pleating into account. I also think that too much bust ease would make it harder to hold the wide low neckline in place. So the real version will be cut for 1 1/2" ease at bust and waist and 3" at my hips which is plenty. I restitched the muslin and this works. I am also going to lower the side seam shaping an 1 1/2" which I should have done in the first place.

Off for five days to Winnipeg now for family and fabric,those two closely related activities, and will be eager to start this dress in the final version when I get back.

Up next

I have decided I will go to the event with HRH and need something to wear. 

Of course.

My stash has increasingly become a sort of primeval bog that spits up artifacts from the past (you know those movies, those black and white shots of quicksand with chair legs and things bubbling to the top, or maybe only I saw that movie when I was eight). Well this week while searching for something else it spit up about 5 yards of merlot coloured silk shantung, and I looked at it and thought "party dress" so I RSVP'd.

Now I have been thinking about patterns. I note that my fashionista diva Erica B has said good things about Kay Unger and since Erica always looks like she would be up for cocktails with the Queen, and dressed perfectly for it, at anytime anywhere,  I took that as good advice. So I did some searching and found this great dress and review by Victoria in Savannah so I decided to turn my dark red silk into a Vogue 1182. I had already decided against an LBD because guaranteed that's what everyone else will have on and if I do some colour there is a chance that this dress could be wedding or party useful for some other occasion in my action packed social calendar. You know those events once or twice a year I go to that don't involve Rascal.

Of course this is going to call for a muslin and I will start that this weekend, putting aside all my numerous other more mundane projects. With the pleats and everything this looks a like complicated one for alterations.

Now I have a question for you.

Do you too have the most trouble when coming up with the best pattern and idea for special events? I can sew all sorts of everyday clothes and do just fine, but throw a New Year's Eve or a big party, or even a wedding at me and I just freeze. Maybe it's the pressure of feeling you have to do your best work and make all the right choices, maybe I am not enough of a fancy dresser (I lie I love to get all dressed up, just can't decide what to wear).

I rarely make a good outfit that I am totally happy with but I have hopes for this one. I feel I am sort of due.

The Queen and sunscreen

A few days ago I had a bump burned off my nose and was sent home with instructions to stay out of the sun, wear hats and cover up. This was hugely dramatic news for me because of what it meant to my summer wardrobe. I went out of course and bought 5 hats but realized that hats, particularly the big ones, don't go with much. So I am thinking more summer dresses and of course gauzy type things. Yesterday I watched CNN and the oil spill and of course the reliable stash spit up about 10 yards of white crinkle cotton (amazing what I have literally stashed away around this house - this stuff was tucked away in a dresser behind the furnace) so I cut out a long sleeved sort of caftan type dress and then a top and pair of drawstring pants (don't laugh but this is my wearable muslin of my Jalie pajama pattern for me - I made DD a pair for Christmas and on her they were a great hit). It will be interesting how I get some style going on this.

Yesterday we went to our local swimming club (three outdoor salt water pools, that's where all the kids have learned to swim) with Miss Scarlett and all I had to wear was the hat, a long sleeved floral patterned blouse from whenever, and some loose linen pants. My DD said I looked like a some crazed gardener - not my look - so I have to get sewing.

Actually to join them yesterday I was a no show at the Lieutenant-Governor's by invitation only garden party which I suspect a former boss got me invited to (he's the premier - for those US readers this is the same as the governor- he always remembers me and I think sometimes wishes I was still there working myself to death for him) but I have my priorities and that Miss Scarlett is pretty interesting. The L-G is a bit of a character though and it might have been fun. One of the things she did when she became the Queen's rep in Nova Scotia was to get her own coat of arms made and at the top of it she put her house cat, who is her best friend. And I wouldn't joke about a thing like this, I mean if it was me I might work Mr. Rascal into the heraldry, as significant as anyone else.

However in the mail this morning I have another invite to a reception with the Queen when she is here the end of the month which I might go to. I hear she is large busted and always, always wears princess seams and essentially the same TNT. I would like to know if that is true. The invite says "semi-formal with decorations" and it's for 8:00.

I suspect what they have in mind as decorations aren't wearable art, which actually was the first thing that popped into my mind.

So if I decide to go what should I wear? What would you wear?

I am thinking probably not the Jalie jammies.

Sewing and feeling good

I have been making a real point in the last month about enforcing more dedicated sewing time, even if it is sewing on a button, every day.

You see I am thinking about this transitional stage of my life and looking back I realize that the times in my life when I have felt most together and content have been the times I have done a lot of regular sewing.

It's not just about the clothes, there is something else going on. I speculate that if you have the creative need and it doesn't have an outlet it sort of backs up in you and gets a little toxic. I wonder if doing something for yourself when life seems so much about doing things other people want you to do is somehow centering. I consider the possibility that with our busy lives when it is hard to feel much of a mastery at anything, if turning to an activity where you really can see your skill produce something beautiful is just necessary.

Or maybe it's all about something that I don't really understand.

What I do understand is that it does me good and some times call for the deliberate seeking out of the things that do you good.

I know a yoga teacher who does her positions and stands on her head like a religion every day and it's called doing her practice.

Well sewing is my practice. And that's just about all I can say about it.