Ancient pyjamas

Today I finished something that had been languishing in the UFO zone for about the last 17 years! I was making a pair of pyjamas for my son when he was a teenager. I think I finished the trousers but never got around to making buttonholes or sewing on the buttons on the jacket. That was all that was needed to be done! Well, I finally did them and I now have a comfortable and warm, dark- turquoisey shirt for slobbing around the house in or maybe for putting a belt on and wearing for work. I'm quite pleased with it anyway and it's very satisfying to finish something that has waited so long to be completed. I also finished a scarf, which has waited five years to have its ends sewn in- a mere stripling compared to the shirt!

Then I went on to give myself backache by making great inroads into the Prague skirt, as it will always be known. We spent a few days in Prague this summer and loved the place. I have lots of pictures and memories but I'm not big on souvenirs (there was a lot of tourist tat there) so I bought a remnant of purple/green wool mix boucle fabric from a department store (which had run out of things to sell by the fourth floor). The skirt is looking good with only the yoke to finish, zip to insert and hem to turn up. Maybe eventually I'll get around to putting up pictures and doing proper reviews!

It will be my last free Monday for a while (apart from next week which is half term!) so I thought I'd make the most of it but now I need a soak in the bath and maybe some Ibuprofen.

Catching up

Well the party in Zwickau went very well although it was the hottest day of the summer. Emily and I did our singing bit with Marcel and Marcus's help but it was in an Anthropologie dress not the pale yellow linen one I had intended to wear. (Just me in the Anthro dress, not everyone- that would just be weird!) I did finish the yellow dress when I got home again (I made Simplicity 2648 in the end) and I'm quite pleased with it- it fits well and seems to look good with every cardigan I possess (that's a lot of cardigans, by the way). It is thin enough to count the polka dots on my knickers though so I now have to make a slip to wear under it. Grr.

I have done quite a lot of sewing recently that I haven't written about here and I'm determined at some point to organise pictures and proper reviews of patterns. I finished a skirt (Butterick 5566) today that I started 4 months ago from fabric left over from making my mother a skirt about 27 years ago! I am always surprised by fabric's ability to transport you through time. I remember her trying on the original skirt and her positive reaction to it. Mine doesn't suit me as well as hers suited her but it will remind me of her when I wear it anyway.

Birthday dress

I had a lovely weekend with the house full of family. Now Monday seems grey and cold and too quiet, apart from the wind whipping through the trees that is. But it did bring it home to me how soon my holiday to Germany is. I'm going to my son-in-law-ish's father's birthday party in Zwickau in a couple of weeks and so a posh frock is called for. My daughter with whom I will be doing birthday singing is wearing yellow so I've just preshrunk a piece of lemony lineny type fabric ready for making this. http://voguepatterns.mccall.com/v7762-products-4349.php?page_id=855.

Unfortunately, the piece of fabric looks much smaller now I've washed it (I don't think it shrank much, I think I just overestimated how much there was of it- it's been in my stash for at least ten years). I might get a sleeveless one out of it. Or I might have to have a complete rethink and make something out of the white and bright Ikea cotton I bought cheaply recently. But whatever I do, I need to get on with it!

It's curtains!

I made curtains yesterday (remade actually)! I know in the great scheme of things, sewing a few straight lines hardly constitutes haute couture but I do now have curtains for my dining room window. It only took 20 years. Actually the fabric is even older than that. When we lived in the States in the lovely old house in 1982-3 these curtains graced the library (we had a library but not many books). I remade them for the dining room here (lots of books but no library).

I have made some clothes too and am participating in me-made June but didn't join officially, being new to these things, and scared. It's fine when the weather's chilly as I have half a billion me-made sweaters, but more difficult when the weather's good. Some things are getting worn A LOT! There will be pictures eventually. I might even get around to working out how to do reviews!

Essay finished but still procrastinating

The black cloud that has loomed over me for the last few weeks has finally lifted with the completion of the last wretched piece of work of any length for my teaching qualification. There's still a lot to do and no doubt I'll carry on putting everything off until the last minute, driving myself into a blue funk, avoiding everything and everybody until the last lesson plan and evaluation has been wrested from my brain. I have to say though that I feel a lot better this morning! Looking through patterns, which I've been doing a lot of (it's great procrastination) has taken on a feeling of possibly allowing myself some time to actually make something rather than just staying in the fantasy world of mentally pairing up stash and patterns.

I have a Burda World of Fashion skirt cut out in some ancient leftover apricot cotton twill but the fly fastening is putting me off starting it. I've even cut the facings out of a lovely Liberty cotton lawn. I have the zip and the thread and everything! Ok, let's make a plan. Today I'll go to the University and drop off my assignment, come back and write lesson plans for tomorrow and then do a bit of housework (yeah right!). Tomorrow, teaching, including an observation, then Thursday..... sewing!! Definitely! (Probably!)

Procrastination part 1 (there will be many more!)

I'm nearing the end of a teacher training course so I should be writing lesson plans and essays and evaluations and sorting out my files but instead I'm surrounded by my stash in piles on the floor because I suddenly just HAD to know what I had in the trunk. I'm making a spread sheet even!

I also seem to have developed a system of preshrinking them when I have a minute and from that point, they go into a huge green "pending" bag so I can just grab something from there and sew something, if I ever get a minute. Unfortunately, the green bag is now also bulging. Maybe I'll have to make things out of the thicker fabrics first, just to free up more space. I would take pictures of all this if I could find the instruction booklet that came with my camera so I could work out how to download images to my computer.

Actually I have done a bit of sewing this week (well some of it was last week, but it's certainly recent). I bought Simplicity 4076 a couple of weeks ago and had to make something from it straight away and join the ever-swelling ranks of pattern reviewers to love it. I made the first one from a piece of white cotton or polycotton interlock leftover from making baby shirts for my son (he's now 30- I don't throw things away) and then two days later made another from a damaged bit of stretchy stuff I bought at Abakhan for about £1.50. So, two tops for next to nothing! And I like them too! I bought a long sleeved top with a similar twist arrangement from Boden in their last sale for about £20 I think. And I like mine better. Unfortunately the damage on the second one is in the most obvious place (I will put pictures up when I can) but it's still wearable and wasn't noticeable by the person I asked. (Male, polite, not wearing his glasses and asked to look at my chest- what else would he say???)

I also made an eight-gore skirt out of some fabric leftover from making a roller blind in 1981. My stash goes back a long way. I'll write about that another day when I've had a cup of tea and dealt with all these piles on the floor. Revisiting my fabric is like getting reacquainted with old friends. But without the awkward conversations and embarrassment when you can't remember their children's names or where you know them from. Actually with fabric I usually DO know where I know them from!