What's On Tuesday.

We don't do casual Friday, we actually have to Dress Nicely for school every day. Something to do with public expectation of a school in our position. Fair enough. But today was a Sports Day and as I was destined to spend it at an athletics stadium with 500+ over-excited tweenage sports nuts, I dressed down.

After failing at several attempts to sew a draped-neck top, this is the pattern I went out and bought. It's great, very easy to follow and has the cleverest trick for sewing the neck and arm facings so nothing shows.

I made it up in a piece of silky jersey that I've been saving for a few weeks and I actually used the fabric inside out because the colours were softer and brighter that way.

Great with jeans and perfect for a warm, summery day at the stadium. The chunky beads I wore for the photo shoot - you didn't think I'd wear those while measuring the discus did you?

And something I thought I'd never see... a certain tweenage sports nut we know reading a book at an athletics stadium while there were races in progress.

Those glasses really have changed her life.

People At Work Wear Black.

So I've decided not to this week. It's going to be a week of colour, starting with a bit of red and blue. I've had this wonderful piece of dotty linen sitting around since Tauranga in January. It was only 90cm wide but, inspired by Elsita, (boy, does she do great twirly skirts!), I wanted to make it into a skirt as full as possible. So I folded the fabric in half and drew the biggest circle I could manage straight onto the fabric. Then I drew a smaller circle for the waist and cut it out.

I stitched a zip into the side seam and bias binding-ed the waist and hem. It wasn't very long because it was such a small piece of fabric so I chopped the 'petticoat' out of a Red Cross skirt and stitched it inside the dotty blue skirt to add a bit of fluffy length. The fitted red shirt is a $4 special, also from the Red Cross.
It falls in lovely folds and it swirls quite nicely too. I swished my way around school today, floated up and down stairs and twirled gracefully from one sewing crisis to the next.

Just imagine how great it would be with a real sticky-out petticoat...

A Bit More Sewing.

I went to Fabric Vision yesterday for a tiny piece of linen and came home with a whole lot of other stuff. Their remnant sales are just too good to be true sometimes. One thing I found was a pretty, open-weave cotton (only good for 'loos garments' according to it's tag) which I thought would make a lovely drapey scarf but after a conversation with the shop owner, who was insistent on knowing exactly what I intended to make because he'd had complaints from several customers who tried to make pencil skirts instead of loos garments, I bought a bit extra. He convinced me it would be perfect for shirring so I thought I'd try a loos flowing skirt as well.

Style 2254 from 1978. This garment is either a skirt or a dress, depending on where you wear the shirring. I thought the ruffle was a bit much and lengthened the pattern instead. Everyone must have known how to shir elastic in 1978 because there were absolutely no instructions at all. Just "6 lines of shirring around the top edge". So I checked with Sandi Henderson and pretty much followed her advice to the letter. It's so easy! I could go a bit mad with this over the summer...

I knew it was going to be incredibly see-through ... like Lady Diana but without the great legs... but I couldn't find the right colour to line it with.

Tracking down the right colour and length of slip will give me something to do this week. You know, just in case I get the thousands of reports which are due on Friday finished early!

Old Sheets.

I always buy pretty sheets when I see them because I use them for making mock-ups. Saves me ruining a perfectly good piece of fabric on something that doesn't fit right and it's a whole lot more interesting than calico. At the $2 place a few weeks back I found 4 perfectly lovely pure cotton sheets with a sweet pink-and-blue design and still fairly crisp as if they'd hardly been used.

I cut into one on Monday night and quickly sewed up a pair of Amy Butler lounge pants. I love this pattern because it fits me just right around the waist and hips. I make the legs a bit narrower and I use the lounge pants for pyjamas and, well, lounging around the house in.

The other reason for making a mock-up is to see if the style actually looks ok on me. There are some darn cute patterns around blogland but I know that they just wouldn't suit my figure - or lack of it! I've been procrastinating over this one for a couple of years but decided if it didn't look good I could always wear it with the lounge pants and say it was pyjamas.

I left off all the lace and despite originally thinking I might use elastic around the neckline, I went with the ribbon as suggested on the pattern. I like it. It's really comfy and I think it's going to be great made up in floatier fabrics. Shorter sleeves too for summery tops.

Fabric: pretty cotton sheet, $2 from Toffs
Pattern: Style 1542, 1977, 20 cents from the Sallies
Ribbon: $1.60 from Fabric Vision

Stash reHash Part II

The advantage of buying only the one perfect piece of fabric at the Stash reHash a few weeks ago was that it was never going to sit around for very long.

With the final school disco of the year coming up, our 12 year old decided it was time to do something pretty special with it. Out came Style 3054 which, in a funny little coincidence, was printed in the very year that I was 12.

A bit of nipping and tucking - it's size 8 but we still had to remove 6cm from the chest - out came the zip and off with the dorky pockets. I'm sure they were cool in 1980 but they were not wanted on this very pretty swingy dancing dress.

Hanging with friends at school. It was a beautifully warm, still evening and the tweenagers grabbed the opportunity to sit outside and gab while it was still light.

Inside it was dark and hot and the music so loud you had to use sign language to be understood. There was a lot of jumping and bouncing. And singing. And screaming.

Fabric: pretty vintage seersucker, $5 from Stash reHash

Pattern: Style 3054, 20 cents from the Sallies

Buttons: 2 orange ones from Grandma's jar

Knowing that you made it yourself: priceless

Ain't The Internet Grand?

A few months ago I bought some patterns for school. The patterns are fabulous and the students I bought them for have made beautiful hats and bags. But by the time we took into account the exchange rate and then added international postage, the patterns cost almost NZ $30 each. Then there was the waiting for them to arrive... which turned out to be totally worth it as they are beautifully written and make a perfect product every time. But still, I can't justify spending that kind of money on only a few students.

Winnie's Garden Sunshine Hat

I am, however, completely sold on PDF patterns, either from an Etsy seller or from a trusted website. I bought the Jane Market Bag directly from Alicia Paulson and my poor relatives are being inundated with eco-shoppers.

I bought the Marvellous Mouse Boutique Mini Tote from You Can Make This and now Sophie's friends get their birthday presents in one of these cuties.

And this morning while I ate my breakfast, I fell in love with Mikey Monkey by mmmcrafts. Ten minutes later, for the cost of only NZ $11 and with no postage charge and absolutely no waiting time, the full-colour, full-size pattern for Mikey zipped into my In Box. And it's a breeze to give my students the link to something they really, really want to make and for an amazingly reasonable price, they can buy their own pattern and print it out at home.

This is Larissa's fabulous monkey.

Guess what all the little guys in my life are getting for Christmas? Maybe some of the bigger ones too. Production begins tonight!

One More Thing About James.

He's very easy to entertain. When he was little, he liked to go on trains. His uncle took him on a train into Wellington. When they got there, his uncle suggested Maccas for lunch. James just wanted to ride the train again. So they went home.

We spent the weekend in Akaroa for Grandma's annual Birthday Bash. The other kids went swimming/fishing/diving//hiking/biking but James just wanted to go to the library. So we did. Spent the morning there reading Asterix books. Then we went home.

James can multi-task. He made a bit of a sensation on his Ripstick - people kept stopping him to ask where he got it from, how to ride it, could they have a go. Not only can he eat ice cream and ride, he can also read and ride. He can't do all three. He has the grazes to prove it.

The hat and glasses are late birthday presents and are destined for his sailing box. It doesn't matter if they fall in the water because they are not the hat from Auntie Sus.

The house we stay in has a stream with ducks and eels and an outside bath. James is as big a kid as the rest of his cousins, jumping in and out of the water, building dams and fishing. The outside bath is fabulous. When you are frozen from splashing in the stream, you can jump straight into a hot bath. At night, when the stars are out, it's magic.