Lemon-aid

The weekend's been and gone again. The weather here fluctuated between heavy black clouds bringing driving rain, and hot belting sunshine with airless humidity.  Yesterday we were sweltering and seeking any shade we could find at Brisbane's annual multicultural festival, today its back to grey skies and rain.

In an attempt to channel more of the sunshine and less of the rain I'm going for sunshiney yellows in the sewing room this week - first up is a lemon and mauve custom order.  This little pinafore was requested to have an Easter theme.  Yes, you read correctly - Easter.  I'm quite happy to pretend we skipped over Christmas and came out on the side of Easter for a few days while I am sewing with these lovely soft colours.

I'm also dying to cut into an outrageously yellow vintage sheet to make a little top, probably my brain is getting ahead of me there right now though!

Perfect

I've had tonsilitis this week, so I've learned to be a woman of few words.

The pants.

And the toes.

That's all.

I'm playing over here today.

Free at last

I've lately been through a weird patch with my sewing - making under pressure.  Even though I have had practically zero time to do any sewing at all I have managed to complete quite a few projects that were either hanging over from before the baby made his surprise arrival, or were requested shortly after his arrival.

I've managed to finish making a cover for an Ikea chair (my late pregnancy foray into upholstering shall be the subject of another post, another time), I made two little pinafore dresses that were requested by a lovely local customer and I also made a baby blanket that was requested through the shop.

Phew - exhausting, yes? Now that's all out of the way I feel more of a lightness and a freedom to start creating again without any timelines or pressures to finish something by a certain date, or because I promised someone it would be done.  I feel like my slate is clean.

Now there's a half finished toddlers dress in the sewing room, and there's no pressure to get back to it until early next week when a sleeping baby and a five year old at kindergarten allows me some breathing space to snatch a little creative time.  I'm also starting to get a list of things I want to make ticking through my mind again, which is a good sign.  All I need is time.

More creativity over here.

Pants

This weekend is all about pants for the boys.

At the start of the year I made shorts especially for my son to wear to kindergarten.  But no, I'm not doing that again now the warm spring weather sees him back wearing shorts.  The reason is "the digging patch" at kinder.  It sounds quaint but it may as well be named "the great big, dirty pit of brown, stinking, staining mud".  It has been totally wrecking havoc on my son's clothes, requiring lots of soaking in buckets, scrubbing and washing to get them clean week by week.  I also expected a pair of newly bought tracksuit pants to last longer than a 10 week kinder term.  I admitted to the kindy teachers that I fully intended to throw his track pants in the bin at the end of the term and they said, "Oh, dont! He's still going to get dirty next term."  That got me thinking about kids and mums and dirt - an often fraught relationship.  The kinder teachers were so right in pointing out that kids need a set of "dirty clothes", something I had lost sight of in this sanitised and clean upbringing that is now the norm - kids need to get dirty, mums need to relax more.

So I've changed my attitude to dirt and washing, am not throwing out the pants, and am not going to be overly fussy in washing them.  I did this:

Trackie shorts! I didn't measure anything, just made sure I cut this bit at the knees off:

You can already tell from the top photo that one leg might be a bit shorter than the other.  I'm banking on nobody noticing that when they're being worn.  I'm going to zig-zag around the raw edge, turn under a centimeter or so and do a double seam to keep it all in place.  And there you have it, shorts for dirt play.

I'm also dying to have a go at making these baby pants from Made by Rae for my new boy.

With some gorgeous planes, trains and cars vintage seersucker that a friend gave to me.



Just now, while the babe is asleep, might be my moment to pin and cut!  I'm off then!

Delivery from Paris

Since the new baby came into our world and the big boy turned five we have had post from Bulgaria, Holland and the United Kingdom - its been quite exciting getting all these international packages, even if they are all for the youngest members of our house.  But one morning last week a parcel was left at my front door from "La Poste" - this one was for me!

I've made enough money from my selling my wares online to have a healthy enough Paypal balance for me to treat myself to a new bag.  I wanted a bag that could function as a baby bag, but not look like one, a bag of modest size and one that I could adjust to either sling over my shoulder or over the pram.  Finally, while I like to use tote bags a lot of the time I am always losing my stuff at the bottom of them, so some pockets for organising "stuff" (babies and mine) were a must.  I found the perfect answer at a French Etsy store called Ikabags. 

I opened the postage box to be treated to a beautifully presented purchase.

A package wrapped up in green paper and ribbon.

Neatly folded and tied with string and business card.

My new bag - blue/grey and cream stripes, with a cream lining and adjustable strap - perfect!

Handmade of course - the construction and finishing are absolutely faultless, very high quality work. 

Filled with a few baby things - wrap, blanket, nappy/wipes wallet and the like - which I realise are majority handmade :) 

I know I'm going to be using this bag for a long time to come, and when I make more money, perhaps I'll be buying myself another bag, in another colour - you can't have too many, can you?

Old towel, new tricks

At the back of the linen cupboard I found an old towel.  An odd sized, well used, pale green towel with a few stains here and there.  I washed it and cut it in thirds.

I went to the fabric store and bought half a metre of flanelette for $3.  I cut that into thirds.

I ventured back down to my sewing room and in a few stolen moments during the week I sewed towel and flanelette segments together (sewed the stains on the towel to the inside!).  Now I have three lovely and functional "burp cloths" (not that I set much score against "burping" my baby).  They're certainly not the neatest sewing job I have ever done (a bit of speed sewing required to finish off seams when baby started crying), but they're perfect for putting under his little head in the pram, over the bed sheets, on my lap or over my shoulder after a feed.  Baby can now have a little dribble or overflow of milk and I stay clean and dry and then just throw these little cloths in the wash when needed. 

But of course, sometimes he misses the cloths, and I get sicked on, and thats OK too.

Finished size if you are interested: 50cm long and 25cm wide

Meet Mateo

Born 1:54am on Wednesday 24th August 2011, taking everyone by complete surprise at almost three weeks before his due date.

He's really a spitting image of his older brother - full head of hair, similar birth process, born on the 24th of a month. Our big question is: will he have blue eyes like his brother and mum, or brown like his dad?

After the hectic hustle and bustle of the hospital we are settling in at home beautifully.  Thanks to everyone for their well wishes and congratulations.

Stopped

Wow, no blog posts from me since early August.  Where did I go?

Over the last month I have felt like a clock winding down.  Strangely and slowly I stopped spending time in the sewing room and visiting blogs online.  I finished a few projects in the works and despite having a million ideas in my head of things to sew I just didn't find any get up and go to start a single one of them.

I finished a custom request for a cuddle owl.

I finished one pinafore for the shop.

I finished making a pram liner.

Then I turned my attention to bugging my husband into getting a shelving unit from Ikea so I could organise the baby things in it.  Mum and Dad came around to help assemble the cot and re-arrange our bedroom funiture to fit it in.

Then last week my waters broke...

His 'n' hers

Two cuddle owls in progress today.

A "his" version:

And a "hers" version:

These take so much polyfill that I ground to a halt with my making yesterday and I had to go out for fresh supplies today.

My boy is totally smitten with his, he said "Mum, you can make anything!".  Well, I do try...

Scraps: all things to all people

I'm softie making this weekend - one made to order for a friend, and one for my little mister because he's been begging me to make him an owl "just like I made for Scarlett".

Mostly I make these kind of things out my stash and scrap bag.  Finding little bits of suitably co-ordinating fabrics and of just the right sizes is part of the fun of making softies this way.  I like the way I have to look at colours and really notice their hues, and decide things like "this blue matches nicely, but this one is the wrong shade altogether."  You stop and realise that sometimes blue is not just blue, and yellow is not just yellow, and so forth.

But the mister saw something entirely different when I brought the scrap bag up onto the back deck for sorting through.  He stopped his scootering to make a closer inspection of play possibilities.

At first he fiddled with winding bits around his feet...

...then he discovered that superhero like wrist ties were really the way to go. 

So far these bits of fabric have also been police handcuffs, a collar for a toy dog, flames of a fire and probably another dozen things I haven't been privy to over the weekend.

Lucky I have a big bag of scraps to suit everybodies purposes!