butterflies

Kitty has fully embraced being two.

Which means that when I try to snap a picture, this is usually what I get, accompanied by shreiking and those earthy toddler belly giggles.

I managed to trick her into one or two poses where you can see the dress. Here is another roller skate dress in a cotton voile I found at Joann. Yes, Joann! It's lined in a plain, gauzy cotton voile - perfect for summer.

This dress is so easy - easy to sew, easy to wear and easy to get good results. I really really think it will probably look sweet and charming in any fabric you could find from silk to burlap. If Washi is fast becomming my uniform, this one may well become hers.

Even though she ran away every time I tried to catch her sweet face, she is thrilled with this dress. She has been asking me for her butterfly dress for days, waiting patiently to wear it to her playgroup. She seems to think she'll have a new dress every single week, exactly how she wants it. And she loves them all so much, it's pretty hard to say no!

urban babies wear black

Earlier this week, I was staring at a few scraps black rayon challis left from a black maxi dress I made for myself. You know the conversation: can I really use these for anything or should I toss them? Often I use my scraps for K, but black? Then I remembered that actually I quite like her in black.  

Then I thought it would be awfully ridiculous if she had a black maxi dress too.

And I remembered this silly gag book. And I thought about how even more hilarious it would be if I photographed her in the dress doing the stuff in the book.

So here is my urban baby wearing black and drinking a latte.

I don't have to tell you it's not really coffee, right? It's apple juice. Organic, obviously, because we're urban.

And here's my urban baby on the way to the playground.

(OK, the playground isn't actually in the book, but urban babies do in fact go to the playground every day.)

And here she is taking a taxi at the end of a busy day.

(OK, we actually walked home, because that's what urban babies do, but I knew at this partcular time of day, ie prayer time for the mosque around the corner, there would be cabs parked outside our house and I couldn't resist staging it.)

So is this the most ridiculously impractical little thing you've ever seen or what? But otherwise the fabric would have gone in the trash and the popover pattern is so very easy, I thought it was all worth a little fun. And in her hair is a matching hair bow, because everything we do now has to have a matching hair bow.

Happy Easter!

Easter was a dreary affair this year, so we don't have any grassy Easter-y pictures of the dress. I kept it a little simple this year with a dress in some Japanese lawn from my stash. The fabric's sheerness did nothing for the print, so I paired it with some soft yellow shirting to enrich the color.  

 The facings and construction of this dress made lining it seem a little complicated, so I underlined the entire dress in the yellow shirting, which gave it a hand similar to double gauze. I used French seams throughout and clipped carefully at the inside corners. The facings are in the dress fabric edged with a little strip of ivory voile bias. It's as lovely on the inside as the out, so I can't imagine why I didn't snap a picture of the inside. I used simple shell buttons down the back.

The Birthday Party dress is actually a perfect Easter dress. It's generally chillier than you'd like and you have to cover the pretty dress with a sweater, which stinks if you have a nice bow in the back. But the Birtday Party dress has all the lovely details in the front, visible even under a little sweater.

We even found a matching ribbon in the stash.

The gloomy weather did nothing to quell the children's spirits, though, and they even managed to have a super quick egg hunt before the rain really came down. Thank you, Easter Bunny!

THE dress

A while ago, I found this question posted on one sewing forum or another: “what is your ultimate sewing goal?” I haven’t spent a lot of time here posting about why I sew or what exactly I get out of it, but this question has been in the back of my mind all along, working itself out. I think it’s now time to tackle these big questions. I could give you the popular answers - satisfaction of handwork, antidote to a mass produced world, feminism, positive body image, etc. Those are all good reasons and true for me too. But if I have to really to boil it down, I think I sew for the same reasons I bake, more or less: I bake because I love chocolate cake. I sew because I love dresses. True, I try other things – a strawberry tart here, a really cute pair of tiny shorts there, but the very best thing to bake is chocolate cake. The very best thing to sew is a DRESS. I’m starting to think that I when I deprived myself of a real wedding, I left a great big gaping hole in that place where the dress of a lifetime should happen.

Lately, as I learn to adjust to an aging body that has borne and nursed three children, I have regretted our wedding. Specifically, I am a little sad that our quickie elopement, though romantic, didn’t include one of those pictures of me wearing THE dress, looking forever young and impossibly skinny. How many occasions are there in life to have hair and makeup professionally done and a dress custom made? How many times will you have the motivation to get that skinny? My skinny body is long gone and I really wish there was some a record of it. A beautifully photographed, white, silk enrobed record.

When last spring’s school fundraiser loomed, I got motivated to really drop the last of the baby weight for good and get slim – not skinny like when I was 18 or anything, just healthy. And then to wear a dress that makes me look as skinny as I could, that gives the illusion of a teeny waist. Trouble is, dresses like that don’t fit me off the rack any more. Like most of us, I’m a little thicker at the waist than before and everything is a lot less perky than it once was. The sway of my lower back is now even more pronounced and affects the way even loose tops fit me. My bust line has more volume than it ever did before, so much so that the ready to wear standard B cup no longer fits me either.

Good thing I sew, I guess. But I don’t want to hob nob at a swish cocktail party in anything that looks like a Home Ec project. That’s what my sewing goal is, I guess. I want something well made and well fitted. I wasn’t sure I was quite ready for the challenge. But shopping is just as stressful really, with much less control. After a few attempts to find a dress retail, I took the plunge.

This is Vogue 8409, in an Italian cotton voile underlined with batiste and lined in Bemberg rayon. Read my pattern review here. While working on this, I enrolled in Susan Khalje’s couture dress class on Craftsy. I can’t recommend this class highly enough. I learned ever so much! I was sewing to a deadline with this dress, so I couldn’t employ every couture method, but I now have many more skills at my disposal. What I learned about the philosophy behind couture methods was nothing short of a revelation.

I worked carefully on this, spent a lot of time puzzling out how to make a full bust adjustment on a wrap front, made several good muslins and didn’t take any shortcuts. I hand stitched a lot of this, including the zipper. It was good motivation to shed pounds! I was even able to take the dress in at the last minute. The night of the event last April, I felt pretty confident about it. Only one or two friends at the event knew that I made this, but I received a few compliments, including one from a very stylish Paris- shopping woman. It felt wonderful! I'm not sure this one is my dress of a lifetime, but I feel one step closer to it. And I know this is really where my heart is and has always been: beautiful dresses.

For these great pictures, I’m grateful to my favorite team at George Aubrey Photography.



I've got a brand new pair of roller skates*

Saturday morning, I had a photo shoot for that big project I've been working on and only hinting at here. I was anxious to spend the rest of the weekend working on the Easter dress K has been asking for. But on Saturday afternoon, my new patterns arrived ahead of schedule and so I had to quickly whip up this little confection.

The new Oliver + S Roller Skate dress is my new favorite. It was the perfect antidote to the long, complex project I'm finishing. Even with matching stripes and French seams, this project only took a few hours. Yet, it's  absolutely charming. This is instant gratification at its best.

When I handed this to her last night, K squealed, grabbed the dress and hugged it close. When she got up this morning, she put it on right away. So here it is, a little rumpled, in action.

This soft, stripy shirting is by Moda. I scored it from fabric.com on clearance some other spring. I thought stripes would be nice for something, but every time I pulled it out, I found it just a little too saccharine. Just a little too much like a candy cane. When I saw the roller skate design, something clicked in my head and I turned the stripes sideways. Suddenly, it seemed very of-the-moment. I lined it with some soft bleached muslin because that's what I had and added twill tape bow. I didn't get a shot of the adorable chevrons formed at the shoulders.

In size 3, this takes only about 3/4yd of 44" fabric. The tunic version might only need a half yard. I have a stack of 1yd cuts bought when she was a baby that aren't usable for much anymore, so I've given myself a stash busting challenging for this spring. This dress will be key! I simply can't imagine a fabric this wouldn't look good it. It's a perfect canvas for bold prints you want to show off, or for embroidery or applique or any other embellishment you could dream up. Yet, the neckline and cap sleeves are charming enough details on their own with more restrained fabrics. The Flickr pool is quickly filling up with fabulous renditions. This is the new star in the Oliver + S line up.

*the name of the dress reminds me of this song by the 1970s folk singer my mother liked.

lounging

Lately, I've found that big projects benefit from a break here and there. So, I trace off patterns that are next in my queue, cut some things out or even stitch them up if it doesn't mean too many thread changes. Last weekend, I banged out pj bottoms for P from the Sleepover pattern.

I haven't sewn pjs for the kids before, though so many people like this project. My boys go through pajamas faster than just about any other kinds of clothes. It hasn't seemed like a good use of my precious sewing time to make something that will get quickly destroyed. However, it's become difficult to keep my oldest in pajamas because the crazy laws in the US regarding children's sleepwear.

So I took the plunge. After all, few things are easier than a simple pair of elastic waisted pants. If he likes them and they don't wear out immediately, it would be a good use of my time. I had some cheap shirting in my stash from some Joann sale that I would probably never use for anything else. I drafted P a 10slim by cutting 10 at the waist and length, but 8 at the hips. He's 53" tall right now after a recent growth spurt, but it turned out the 10 was still way too long. I cut off the cuffs and turned up a quick and dirty hem. If they last long enough to need extra length, I'll add cuffs later.

He has worn them to bed once or twice and you can see they also work perfectly for playing angry birds on the iPad. He also chose some shirting when we were at Joann for another pair.  I want a shirt too, Mom! Sheesh, my bad.

the 100 calorie ice cream dress

There are some big and exciting projects in the works here and while I look forward to telling you all about them, in the meantime I have very little else to share. However, I sometimes find that a big project needs to be broken up a little. Yesterday, the Friday spirit hit all of us, even though we were forced inside by the bitter cold. The boys worked on a giant train/Lego city while K and I got to work on some dollie clothes.

It took an hour or two of drafting, a little trial and error to fit, but it wasn't long before I had a tiny prototype.

I worked from an exsiting doll pattern for the neckline and scale and looked at the original pattern pieces of the Ice Cream Dress while I drew. The little baby dolls need certain fit adjustments to cover the cloth parts, so the little notch won't really work for them.

You probably already know how difficult it can be to pull the Ice Cream Dress over a toddler's big head. I always enlarge the opening for K. My dollie version opens completely in the back for ease of dressing. I closed it with a snap, but this would also be a great way to use up tiny spare buttons.

This prototype needs more room in the armscye for the chubby arms and the neckline needs to be a bit higher to cover the cloth body. I think room for a deeper hem would be nice too. I've already made those changes and I foresee some further pattern testing tomorrow!

Little Fiona seems happy enough with this one, though, doesn't she?