She Sews

April 4, 2011

A couple weeks ago, Andrew bought me a sewing machine.

I had been talking about getting one for quite some time now and one day, Andrew had enough of my talking and went out and bought one for me. He's a get-it-done kind of guy. Most of the time ;)

He chose a pink one for me. It matches our pink iron.


After a lot of huffing and puffing, I finally worked up enough courage to cut some fabric for a project. Then, I sewed, pressed, sewed, and pressed one more time and voila! My first piece was complete.

It was far from perfect.


In fact, it was quite atrocious on the inside.


See? "It's little, and broken, but still good. Yeah - still good." (Name that movie!)

But the next night, I went right back to it. I chose a different project. This time I made a passport sleeve. (Another super simple project with a really cute tutorial!)

I even put a little ninja on the front for fun. It's a little snug but my stitches were a lot straighter.


I forfeited a lot of sleep for this one, but it felt really good to make something useable and cute.


The night after that, I got a little ambitious. I cut enough fabric for 5 passport sleeves. Five!


My first one was a little big. I was super excited about the colour combination of the fabric and didn't want it to be too small so I cut it a little larger. It was a bit too much. It took me a long time to decide to rip the seams open and try again. But I did it and it was much better.


The rest have to wait for another day. I have tons of designing and sketching to do.

Prewashing Fabric

April 2, 2011

When fabric comes with prewash instructions, suggesting you hang the fabric to dry, and to not tumble dry, it's probably a good idea to follow those instructions.

Even if you think it'd be a better idea to tumble dry because it's faster.

Especially if you're new to this fabric/sewing thing.

Case in point:

Whoops!

* * * * * * *

I was up at the crack of dawn this morning with Caleb. Not wanting to wake up the other boys, I got a little bored. I wanted to embrace the early morning sunshine and the fresh air that comes with it. It was a beautiful day.

Ever since we moved here, I've been fighting my urges to fling the sliding doors wide open in fear of bugs and other creatures making their way in. But bugs and creatures will find their way in if they want to. A doctor told me so*.

So I abandoned my fears of bugs entering our home, flung those doors wide open and welcomed the cool morning breeze in.

It was so refreshing and beautiful. Caleb loved it.

But even that wasn't enough. Being on the balcony wasn't enough. So for the first time since landing in Australia, I put my running shoes on, put Caleb in a carrier and took a walk around the block.


* * * * * * *

Before I left for my walk, a fly flew in.

I quickly re-evaluated my leap into Australian-ness and closed all the sliding doors. I mean, you can only take things so far before they get out of hand.

* * * * * * *

We met up with Rani and Philip at South Bank today. While we were talking, I mentioned that geckos have been entering our home and I have no clue how. All our doors have been closed (well, until today...) and it's not like we have insects that they can feast on inside.

*Philip mentioned that windows and sliding door tracks here tend to have a bit of a gap to prevent air pressure build-up in case of cyclones or things of the like. Good to know!

* * * * * * *

Throughout dinner, I heard the fly that had entered earlier today buzzing around us. But I couldn't see it. Then after dinner, I saw it fly into Daddy's Dungeon. I had to put an end to this annoyance.

I went in, closed the door behind me and yelled to the boys not to open the door. There was work to be done.

It was me versus the fly.

I quickly closed the mirrored closet doors so I could have an even better view of the room.

I pushed the chairs in so I could get around the room faster.

With a rolled up magazine in one hand, I watched the fly as he buzzed around. He knew I was coming.

I missed a few times, then finally swatted him down mid-air. As it lay on the ground, I prepared to give it another swat but was distracted by a voice calling from the other side of the door. Andrew suggested that we trade positions and that he go after the fly and I hold Caleb. But I refused. I let the fly in... I would get rid of it.

Refocusing, I watched the fly buzz around again. Then, it landed on the mirrored sliding door. I knew I had it.

With one solid whack, I hit the fly! And all my courage instantly disappeared and I ran out of the room screaming and jumping around because the fly had gotten squished on the glass in a nasty wet mess and the mix of adrenaline and victory was too much for me to handle.

Gross. Gross. Gross. Gross. Gross. But I got it!

Fabric Shopping

March 30, 2011

I took full advantage of Andrew's break last week and asked him to watch Caleb one morning so I could go fabric shopping after I dropped Nathan off at school.

It's so much easier to shop without Caleb hanging off the front of me, and without having to worry about getting home quickly so he can have a proper nap before it's time to pick Nathan up.

Anyway, after a few circles, here's what I picked up. I have some ideas of what I want to make but I'm still in the brainstorming/planning phase. Stay tuned to see what these get made in to!



* * * * * * *

While the lady was cutting my fabric, I took the opportunity to ask about interfacing. She asked what I had intended to make, and suggested I go have a look to see how thick I wanted it to be. Then, as I paid, she told me how to adhere it to my fabric. It sounded simple enough.

Lessons learned:

• Choose interfacing based on how stiff you want your material to be
• Fusible (aka iron-on) interfacing is the one with the shiny stuff on one side

Sewing Project #1: Felt Ninja

March 28, 2011

For my first project, I needed something simple with a short time commitment so I could actually complete the project. If there's one thing that working with kids with disabilities taught me, it's that it is important to build behaviour momentum with simple achievements.

I also need something that, even if I did make a mistake, it wouldn't have detrimental long-term side-effects. If mistakes did happen, I needed a resolution that was easy, or it to be so inconsequential that I could overlook it. That's one reason I refuse to learn to hem my own pants.

Through my years of perusing craft/design-y websites, I've come across quite a few super cute felt creations. One that stuck out in my mind recently was a little ninja. Does that surprise you?

So I set about making a little ninja template.


I had to cut out separate face and eye pieces to trace because I couldn't bring myself to cut Paper Ninja up.

Then, I pinned him to a piece of black felt, making sure I didn't actually pin him.


At this point, I'm sure you think my affinity with Paper Ninja is getting a little out of hand. I assure you, it's completely healthy. I think.

I cut his body out of the black felt, twice, slightly larger than the template.


Note: You need to reserve some space between the edge of the fabric and the actual outline of your creation. I believe this is called the seam allowance.

* * * * * * *

Sewing intermission!







* * * * * * *

And we're back.

Once you've cut out all the pieces, it's time to sew! Put your pieces together so you can envision the final product if you need a little bit of motivation.


I used a blanket stitch to sew his eyes to his face, then his face to his body.




I used a whip stitch to sew the front and back of him together.


Then, very carefully, I flipped him inside out.


And then because I didn't have stuffing, I let Nathan pretend he was a puppet.



* * * * * * *

Lessons learned:

• I can cut fabric (or similar material) without having a panic attack
• This is now my favourite way to knot thread
• When using embroidery floss to sew/stitch, you separate it and use only 3 strands (or less if you want more detail)
• I now know how to do a blanket stitch and a whip stitch

I am an incredibly visual and hands-on learner and I highly recommend the tutorials I've linked. They were totally helpful to me.

Learning to Sew

March 18, 2011

I've been itching to sew since last year, when I wrote my 101 in 1001.

I had dreams of sewing all sorts of awesome (and useful) things for myself and our home. And when Caleb came along, I had dreams of making my own baby blankets and bibs. Then, I figured being unemployed here in Australia might be a great time to learn. Somehow, some (sorely misinformed) people convinced me that I would have a lot of time on my hands with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs.

Then reality came along to set me straight.

When exactly was I going to learn and actually do all this amazing sewing (plus all the prep work that's involved)? This mama doesn't have a lot of time on her hands. How, exactly, was I going to sew these amazing things without a sewing machine? I know hand-stitching is an option but like I said, this mama doesn't have a lot of time on her hands.

Reluctantly, I put that dream on the back burner. It was a really tough decision and I really struggled with it. But taking care of my family comes first and my dreams can be realized later. There's no point in buying all the material and letting it collect dust because I don't have time to work on it, right? Besides, I already tried that approach with paper crafting. So I let it go.

That was a month ago.

For a month, I held myself back from buying anything, and for a month, I read up on sewing as much as I could. Then, yesterday, I couldn't hold myself back any longer. Even if I couldn't make some awesome blankets, bibs or bags, I had to do something with my hands.

So after dropping Nathan off at school, I went and bought some felt but haven't really decided what I'm going to do with it... yet.

Boo!

October 30, 2009

Nathan wanted to be a ghost this year.

I tried making other suggestions, persuading him to be something else, but he wouldn't budge. He wanted to be a ghost and that was final. That was good news to me - none of that last-minute changing of minds.

I was determined to make the coolest ghost costume ever. Ghost costumes are pretty simple - just toss a bedsheet over the child's head and you're done. Right? Wrong. Don't believe anything anyone tells you. It's all lies. Lies, lies and more lies. (Ahem.)

Since he had made up his mind early, I figured we could get the costume done early as well. But then I got sick. And by dinner time last night, he still didn't have a costume and his party was today.

So guess who stayed up into the wee hours of the night guessing at measurements and hand-stitching the ghost costume so that the eye holes (yes.. eye holes. Not a face hole as that would "ruin the holidays" according to my ever-so-eloquent 3-year-old, eye holes.) would stay in place when he moved around. Then I had to sew around the eye holes to reinforce them so that they wouldn't fray and become the face hole he dreaded.

But in the end, I persevered, and my son got a half-decent, made in 3-hours ghost costume.


He looks alright, doesn't he?

Ahh, whatever. You can't even tell it's him under there.

Boo.


Note: If you look really closely, you'll see that he's sad and his costume is tear-stained because he doesn't think it's a fun idea to wear a costume and it's too dusty. (sigh.)