The denim alarm went off

My spouse and I were out and about a few days ago and I suddenly made him turn around and drive to Fabricville.


My denim alarm had just gone off.


Don't ask me why.


These things happen to sewers. Suddenly you are hit with craving for something, a colour, fabric or pattern out of the blue and you don't know where this has come from.


In this instance I don't know either.


Maybe it is the season and a renewed and annual appreciation of sewing cotton. Maybe it's the desire to sew something that doesn't need to be lined and can stand up to everyday life.


I don't know.


Thing is I never sew denim. Maybe I wore too much of it when I was younger and it has taken this long to get over it. Maybe it was too long in jobs where I had not to dress in denim.


Anyway the alarm went off and I am going to cut out Vogue 8810 today. I have had a look at the pattern, I can already tell you that I am going to be wearing a belt not a denim bow over my belly, and think I have the alterations straight in my head.


If all goes well I may even more on to a denim skirt, bought enough fabric.


Any of you ever been hit with a fabric specific fever?

My apologies to Nova Scotia

I feel bad sometimes when I post from northern Florida in raptures about the climate, the beach, and the wildlife.


I usually throw in an I hate winter comment and am probably not doing an ad for Tourism Nova Scotia when I do that.


There is another truth and that is that when it is not winter this is a beautiful province. 


Unlike a lot of Maritime provinces, and states, Nova Scotia is as beautiful, some would say more so, inland as it is on the lighthouse picturesque coast.


I decided I owed it to home to show you some of that.


These pictures were taken last weekend by a family friend, Doug Townsend, at Milford House a fishing camp type place our family has been going to for years. In fact my daughter had her wedding there.


Basically it is a collection of little fishing cabins built over a hundred years ago around a lake. Unchanged really since then and I am not kidding about that. OK, they have plumbing and running water and simple cooking areas and the sheets have been changed but that's it. Each cabin has a dock and there are canoes.


As a mother I liked it because there is also a main building where local women cook a country breakfast and dinner largely based on whatever there is in the garden. 


It's not the kind of place where you ask if there is wireless.


It is however a place for kids to spend afternoons poking sticks into the water, for canoe trips, and for reading paperbacks in chairs that were put on the porch an hundred years ago.


So here is my Nova Scotia, at least one part of it.

On aprons and destructions

I am sorry I went AWOL on you, but this week has flown by.


I needed to take some recuperation time.


I needed to get two new classes of totally disorganized online students up and running for the second summer term. I love them dearly but these guys are all over the place in all senses of the word. 




Help!!!! I am not in your course!!!! I really need this to graduate!!! I think I forgot to register!!! What do I do????!!!!!


Register.


Thanks!!!!!


In between all this I knitted. 


If anyone in the family is fed up with my socks they better tell me now.


Actually it's too late.


And I sewed.


Another apron, and one that makes me first want to detour to an interesting conversation that has been going on at Bunny's blog. 


I won't try to rephrase what has been said so well there, but do suggest you hop over and read it.


The gist of the discussion was the proliferation of instant sewing experts and sewing celebrities who maybe are presenting themselves sources of direction to new sewers when in fact they might have been passing on less than the best advice.


Surely I am not the only one that has noted one class for a tailored garment that made me want to wonder if the instructor really knew how to work with hair canvas, or in fact owned an iron, but was still charging for information.


 So I think I understand some of what prompted this lively conversation.


That said I am generally amazed at the quality and quantity of work being done by new bloggers and new sewists - and am quite sure I wasn't that good or as skilled at their age. 


And I do believe that sometimes breaking the rules is an effective route to real creativity.


Look at Kenneth King or March Tilton as examples of this in action.


And I believe in nurturing new talent, new enthusiasts, and younger sewers. As a teacher in my other life I can tell you that the best part of teaching is you learn more from your students, the ones that register, always than really you have ever taught them.


This is leading somewhere.


To an apron in fact.


Some time ago I bought a hip looking apron pattern from an Etsy designer. I wanted something different, wanted to support a new designer, and I wanted something I could make for my middle son's wonderful and very hip girlfriend.


This was one weird pattern.


I am not going to identify it because that seems sort of mean spirited, and the shapes weren't that bad at all but the construction advice, what a friend of mine calls the destructions, made me sad.


Not sad so much for the designer but for the poor hip young sewer who would be trying her best and leave the experience disappointed in the results, frustrated and upset, and worst of all disappointed in herself.


What if this pattern made her give up on sewing?


When a pattern instruction gives the sewer the hardest possible method (the long edges of a tie were to be sewn together with the "ladder stitch" by hand, a stitch that is used to butt pieces together invisibly most often in needlework), pieces that don't fit (the gathered bodice was lined with a piece tucked in by what were referred to as darts and absolutely didn't fit the outer piece) - well I could go on and on. 


I figure if you followed this route you could make the apron in about five hours with breaks off to cry.


It was has if Harry Houdini had written this instructions, no disrespect to anyone who can tie themselves into knots.


Needless to say I threw out the instructions, and regrettably the pattern too, and put it together with intuition.


Here's the shot, taken  in front of the spouse's motorcycle which for some reason he considers the world's most interesting back drop:

Now I may try to make my own pattern, for my own use, because the idea is a good one.


But.


In the meantime if you are a new designer and want someone to proof read pattern instructions, someone who has about 50,000 hours of getting it wrong herself and knows every way a sewer can be confused well,


You know where to find me.


I mean that.

Knitting big and knitting little

I finished my youngest sons's socks and here they are. Yes, I know the stripes didn't turn out exactly the same and this was me really trying.

He will be happy with them this way and will probably lose one pretty soon and wear it with an orphan from another pair I knit.


More organic this way.


Having a party for him here today, and as there will be a few folks, I am ordering in. Birthday boy's choice. I am suppose to phone up the Jerusalem Cafe and say the guy who loves fava beans wants enough food for a party.


We should be good and if he doesn't dig up the front lawn to put in a garden so I will be food sufficient things should go as planned.


Seriously, he has put in several gardens of his own and can grow anything. None of his vegetables ever have so much as a bug bite in them. This green thumb thing, which I don't have, is no joke.


Some people can just grow anything. He hovers and I think that helps. Those plants know he is watching them every second so they are careful.


What makes a 26 year old kid garden?


Your children always surprise you and that's the best part.


Whenever I finish a pair of socks I am left with a small ball of sock wool. I have saved many of these and even went so far as to download a patten for knitting little tiny squares that would, in about a century, become an afghan.


I can kid myself a lot but even I could see this was never going to actually happen.


But that still left me with a huge collection of sock wool scraps.

Then it hit me and I remembered the "Bag 'o Barbies" I picked up in Florida for $6 for the little girls.

Now I am fully aware of the gender issues involved with Barbies. I know more than a few mothers of my daughter's generation who have banned them and I see why.

I really do.

There is the giant boob issue (although the new Barbies have gone down a couple of cup sizes) and the fact that she represents a woman who is largely over involved in her wardrobe ...

However I wonder if those who have banished Barbies ever really played with them.

Ken was just a prop.

Someone to walk across the floor in little bouncing steps to say in a fake low voice "Barbie let's go on a date" and then went back into his Ken coma.

Barbie always replied to this invitation with "First I have to change."

That was it. 

It was all about changing Barbie into different outfits. It was all about the clothes.

Yes Ken was just a prop and if he hadn't had that one line to give Barbie a reason to get dressed up there would have been no Ken. I suspect he knew this.

It was Barbie the original single girl with her huge suitcase of clothes. All coordinated, all accessorized.

As one of four girls I have serious Barbie playing experience. 

We had tons of clothes. The best ones were from an elderly aunt or cousin on my mom's side who for some reason sent us once a huge shipment of knitted clothes. These were the best. The clothes bent, which Barbie's arms didn't, and they were easy to take on and off. No struggling with tiny snaps or pulling on a tight fishtail evening dress over those curvy hips.

I have to insert here that my dear mother made one giant mistake in her life, and I hope she still regrets it.

Somewhere along the line she decided we were too old to play Barbies so she gave away a highly developed now vintage collection that I am sure, if she kept it, would have bought us a condo in Florida.

I am still most mad about that red velvet flared coat with the matching pill box hat and matching shoes and purse. If I had a real sized outfit like that I am sure I would wear it every day and was confident when I was eight that I would grow up to do just that.

Side story. 

My daughter had her Barbies and inherited her mother's love of accessories. That aside one of most exciting moments of raising the current birthday boy was when, as an infant, he once opened his mouth when I was changing him and stuck out his little pink tongue on the end of which was a perfect little Barbie doll champagne glass. We had been wondering where that had gone.

Back on topic.

Barbie doll clothes are the answer, a fairly realistic answer in my view, of what to do with the left over sock wool.

See I have already started.

Through Raverly I have discovered a completely out of control Swedish site of hundreds and hundreds of free Barbie knitting patterns.

Check out the accessories page.

Not to be believed.

Flypaper thoughts

• Speaking of which.
• Have you ever noticed there is always one fly?
• In your shower with you, up and down in the kitchen.
• Until you get the Autochoice catalogue, then it disappears.
• It went to the bedroom.
• It's official.
• They should have stopped Mad Men at season four. 
• The clothes have gone downhill since they stopped with the Jackie O suits.
• The accelerator cable gave way on my husband on the way home from the golf course.
• All he had in the car was dental floss.
• You got it.
• He says you really have to double it up and pull on it out the window all the way home.
• Said it worked great.
• How do you think I would look in a Jackie O suit?
• Not like Betty Draper.
• Finishing socks for my youngest's 4th of July birthday.
• No son is interested in hearing where he was conceived.
• Even if it was in the US and isn't that cool.
• Take it from me.
• Apron sewing again tomorrow.
• What's with all the bias binding?
• Did my tax late today because I thought I was owed.
• And I have been busy.
• Added up to me owing them $7,300.
• In my condition. 
• Not fair.
• Turns out they owe me $370.
• Should have stuck with the math.
• Never have used that Latin.
• Hic est Britania.
• It's never come up.
• Only numbers I do are 5/8, 45 and 60.
• You got it.
• I can also do 115 and 150 but still have 5/8" seam allowances.
• Never adapted to celsius 30 years ago.
• 70 and take a sweater just in case.
• Only semi-multi cultural.
• I am considering fake fur sleeves on a black wool jacket.
• Was going to do a vest.
• Might look like Fred Flinstone.
• Not Betty Draper.
• Off to do a shopping list.
• I feel like a 15 1/2 year old boy.
• That desperate for wheels.
• Have something to add to the list.
• Dental floss.

Stitching some seams

I decided yesterday to start sewing again essentially so I wouldn't lose my mind. 


With this crowd no explanation necessary.


I wanted to just have a hour long easy project to do that would get me at the machine watching those lines of stitches form fast without a pattern or a lot of intellectual effort.


So I made up an apron from a random yard of cotton that I can't even remember buying or for what. 


I didn't have enough for pockets which was too bad, when I have an apron on I pick up pins and needles that seem to run around on the floors around here, and I sort of pleated the neck straps and the top of the bib so it wouldn't gape. 


See even aprons have fitting issues.


I tried to disguise this a bit with a foot of lace I will never use for anything else and a big floral button in the same category.


Listen I wear aprons all the time. All the time. 


I don't wear them as a political statement in solidarity with generations who did Women's Work, and looking around at the blogs I certainly don't wear them because of my alligence to the role of Submissive Wife, a concept I don't know much about and am not going to be exploring.


I wear aprons, to cook, to eat spaghetti, to clean, to wash the dog, because I am really messy. Sometimes I wear them in the sewing room when I am dressed in a dark color and sewing something with threads.


And there was that time in a former life when I tore down to the Legislature to a press conference I had organized and whipped of my coat, and there I was wearing an apron.


My worlds collide.


Of course the thing about aprons is that in their role as spill catchers they get kind of messy.


So a person needs a bunch unless you want to walk around your house in the stained version of some flasher's old raincoat. I have been meaning to make a few aprons for a while and for that reason, but since StyleArc doesn't have an apron pattern, and neither does Claire Shaeffer, I haven't got around to it.


But this seems like a current situation relevant project.


So here I am in the first iteration as non apron sewers say. I had a lot of fun making it.


And now I can say I am back on the horse, or in this case the pony.


More of these to come I think.

New clothes

Calypso Flowers left a comment on these pages that got me thinking. She reported that the sleepwear discussion of a while ago prompted her to make some new housecoats (robes to my American friends) and how much she was enjoying them.


That made me smile because one of the things I did before I went into the hospital was to go a little crazy buying nightgowns and housecoats. I became obsessed with wanting to look put together when I wasn't. 


Now I don't have a doctorate in psychology but you don't really need one to understand that I was channeling my awareness of things I couldn't control into something I could. I didn't spend a fortune, I Targeted, Amazoned and L.L. Beaned and continued with sewing projects I had on the go. I also bought new blush and lipsticks to coordinate.


It has really perked me up to have something new to wear every day.


Which makes me think about sewing.


The whole concept of investment dressing is interesting, I have written about it before. I understand that a cashmere and silk wardrobe might make sense for a certain kind of professional life I can no longer image, but can you think of what it would feel like to pull the same thing out of the closet every morning for five years?


I mean where is the kick in that?


Am I the only one who has ever sent something into the thrift shop donation bag just because she is so sick of it?


At various points in a woman's life she needs a bit of a lift to get over the hump or to feel less spiritually ragged.


When you come home with a new baby for instance and are not getting any sleep and everyone expects you to snap to it because this is all a natural process.


When your kids all leave home to start their futures and it seems like you are left behind when all the fun people have left the building.


When you have been in the medical system and it seems like your body has had strangers' hands all over it doing things that really are not how you would choose to spend the day.


When a career or partnership ends and you wonder what if those where the best years of your life?


Well let me tell you those are times when you really need new clothes.


My mom, an only child, lost both her parents when she was 16. She always told us that that summer the aunts got together and sewed her a new wardrobe, and put a red rinse in her hair.


And it helped.


I talked to my oldest friend this week who is planning on taking an earlyish retirement the day after her birthday this December. 


Her plan between now and then is to wear what she has, to buy not one new thing, and on her birthday to throw her entire wardrobe right out.


It's not that she has disliked her career, it is just that she wants to recognize that she is moving into a new phase.


So in all our earnest wardrobe planning we need to remember that maybe the objective is not an end point of a fully functioning closet - sometimes just to have something new is reason enough to sew.


On a side note I am going to have to sew something this weekend. My recovery is going really well and a lot of the credit goes to Big Nurse.


I am more of a run around than lie around kind of person and I am not really cut out for this but BN takes all orders seriously.


To give you an idea of what I am up against he has scales he uses to weigh what I want to lift.

The phone is to calculate the weight more exactly.

And he has been cooking treats for me. Coming home from work in the middle of the day to make cupcakes, with sprinkles, and even making home-made fish sticks as fish sticks are my secret comfort food ( we get pretty wild and crazy here in Nova Scotia).

There is a lot to be said for marrying an eccentric.