10 things

• Graham and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary.  We went camping again - and Olivia insisted on doing a photo shoot of us snuggling up on a bench together.  She took close to 400 photos, just by holding the button down on my phone camera and telling us to smile.  There was just one I liked.  We took an anniversary selfie instead, which I am much happier with.  Sorry, Olivia!

 

• The children and I went to Brick Lane, ate pakoras in the sunshine as we wandered around, and came home with a huge bag of bagels for the weekend.

 

• Cam likes his bagels with kippers for breakfast.  I like mine with avocado.

 

• I did my first parkrun in my new running club t-shirt this morning.  Rumours that I chose this club because I find the shade of blue on their shirt particularly pleasing, are entirely false.

• We have a new dishwasher.  It is so quiet, it purrs.
• Olivia sewed herself a top.  This is the first time she has done any dressmaking, and I was so impressed with the results.  She did everything herself, and all I did was explain some unfamiliar terms on the pattern.  The pattern is the Oliver + S Ice Cream Dress/Top, in the age 12 size.  It comes out quite short on her - she is a couple of months shy of turning 12, but is very tall.  She is keen to make another, and add a few centimetres onto the length.

 

• I did some dressmaking too, and made myself a new dress - another Lisette Portfolio dress.  It has a seagull ribbon trim on the hem, which I bought in Whitby, and contrast fabric inside the pockets.  It may be my most favourite dress I've ever made for myself - or it may just be that whatever I've made most recently is my favourite.

 

• I am keen to make more clothes while I am still on my long summer holiday.  Perhaps the Lisette Diplomat Dress, which I have the pattern for, but have not yet made.  Or maybe this Everyday Skirt?
• My sister and her two small girls came for a visit.  The littlest cousin was completely unfazed by the two big teenagers thrusting their cameras at her every time she smiled, did something cute, or moved.

 

• I made 22 raspberry madeleines yesterday afternoon.  There are only five left this afternoon.

    

A floral Japanese dress

A couple of weeks ago, I made a second Japanese dress (here is the first one, which turned out to be a tunic for reasons of public decency).  This time I added 16cm to the length and  graded the side seams so that it continued the full, swingy shape.  This one is the perfect dress length for me - it falls a couple of centimetres above the knee.

I bought the fabric from Stitch in Wanstead, which is a wonderful fabric shop specialising in dressmaking fabrics.  The staff in this shop have so much knowledge, and are happy for fabric ditherers like me to prowl around the shop for hours before finally purchasing something.  It is a cotton lawn, with a fine, light crispness which I love, and only cost me £8 a metre (I bought 3m to be cautious, but totally could have got away with 2.5m).  This makes the dress incredibly good value.

I absolutely love how the dress turned out, and I wear it often (as I do the first tunic-length attempt, which looks great over jeans or leggings).  The shape is full, but there are enough details to make it look stylish and not sack-like.  The pleated bodice is particularly pleasing.  This time I added a narrow velvet ribbon hem on the bottom, which is definitely my favourite way of finishing a hem on a dress, tunic or skirt (I learnt the technique many years ago, from this free Oliver + S skirt pattern).  Both this dress, and also the first tunic version, have attracted so many flattering comments from random people on the train - and even two policewomen walking past me in the street.   I love how both the style and the fabric are such a long way from anything you'd ever find in a shop. 

For my birthday, my father gave me a second dress pattern book by Yoshiko Tsukiori (this one), and I have spent a great deal of time happily immersing myself in the book, and deciding what I want to make next.  This one, pictured below, is the most likely contender simply because of the delicious neckline. 

This stage of planning and thinking is possibly one of the most enjoyable parts of dressmaking for me.  By the time I am ready to sew I have a very definite idea in my head of how the garment is going to turn out.  Then I'm just so eager to get on with the sewing so that I can start wearing it.      

A top in blue voile

As well as the children's exams, I am also starting a new placement and embarking on the nerve wracking process of job hunting at the moment.  

On a day off on Monday I decided the best thing I could do to create some calm and light relief in my week was to embark on some sewing.  Inspired by all the beautiful clothes appearing in my Instagram feed for Me Made May (and especially those put up by Liesl and Suse), I cut into my precious piece of Anna Maria Horner's Little Folks voile and made myself another Lisette market dress tunic.  I wear both the ones I made earlier in the year constantly; they look so good with trousers and a cardi or a scarf.

The voile is sumptuous - soft, drapey, feminine and luxurious.  It is also surprisingly non-sweary to sew with.  It feels as though it should slither all over my table, but it doesn't.  Pleasingly I also found a length of narrow velvet ribbon which my grandmother had given me, in exactly the right shade of yellow to match the centre of the flowers on the fabric, so I hemmed the top with that.

A happy few hours sewing, and a luxurious-feeling new blue top.  I just wish it was easier to find a place in my house to take full length photos of myself (and a clean mirror!).

Two new tops

It feels like a long time since I made any clothes for myself.  When I checked on my blog I discovered that it was indeed a long time ago - May 2012, just before I applied to University and started my nursing course.  Dressmaking takes time - even the simplest piece of clothing is a challenge to make in one day when you've also got to cook tea, take someone to ballet, clean out the chickens, draft an essay and read a couple of articles on diabetes.  I used to set aside whole days at a time to making new clothes, but I just can't do that any more.

So I've approached it differently.  I took my time, did a bit of pattern tracing one day, and had a happy few hours choosing fabrics the next day.  Then I had a couple of days at University and some more studying at home, before I spent another few hours pinning and cutting the fabric out.  The next weekend I sewed everything together, and finally finished the hemming as I waited at the station to pick up Olivia a few days after that.  Of course I can still make clothes when I am working or studying.  It seems obvious now I write that, but having been given the luxury of staying at home the last few years, it took me a while to understand how.

Over the past few weeks I've made myself two cotton tops.  I used the Lisette Market Dress pattern, Simplicity 2211, which I just discovered is now sadly out of print.  I bought the pattern when it came out and just hadn't got round to making it.  I made the first version exactly as the pattern directed, except that I left off the strange fake button placket down the centre front.  When it was finished and I wore it for a day, I had a number of issues with it.

• it has rather a boxy shape on me - snug around the hips and too roomy around the waist.
• the puffed and gathered sleeves look too babyish on a woman of 41
• the interfacing I used on the contrast fabric around the neck and sleeves, left the top feeling a little too stiff at these points.  The neck is very high anyway, and the interfacing in it made it sit very awkwardly on me.

Version 1 - not bad, not great

Hemming the first top, waiting in the car to pick up O

So, I embarked on version 2.  This time I left off the interfacing, left off the cuffs at the bottom of the sleeves so that they were no longer puffed, and took the side seams in at the waist and out at the hips.  I also bound the bottom edge with ribbon rather than hemming it.

I am delighted with this version.  Leaving off the interfacing made the process of putting on the neck much more sweary, as the fabric really takes some serious manipulation in order to lie nice and flat.  However, my patience (and swearing) paid off as the resulting neck is still neat and clean, but much softer to wear and somehow a little more casual too.

Version 2 - much better tailored to my shape, and with more grown-up sleeves

Thick, richly embroidered Swiss ribbon

For both tops I used fabric that I absolutely love.  The first one uses a wonderful spring-fresh quilting cotton from Amy Butler and the second one is an insanely patterned printed cotton which I bought in Switzerland in 2010.  It has little scenes of Switzerland on it, including my favourite - a tiny fondue pot!  The ribbon on the hem is also something I bought in Switzerland - a traditional Swiss, floral, embroidered ribbon.

There will be a third version too - incorporating all the changes I made for the second one.  I am just dithering over fabric choices at the moment.  A home made top deserves distinctive and beautiful fabric, and one of the reasons I love making clothes is that I end up with something you would never be able to buy in a shop.  I wear jeans a great deal, and their plainness is off-set nicely by a fancier top. 

This term at University we've been talking a great deal about how we will cope with the stresses of the job once we qualify, and one topic that keeps coming up is that of hobbies and interests outside nursing.  Mental wellbeing is something I wrote about a little bit on this blog back in October last year, and I now consider my mental health much more than I used to.  I am beginning to realise that although I love having new clothes to wear, I actually love dressmaking just as much for the creative challenge it provides.  All the measuring, adjusting, fiddly lining up of notches, pinning, overlocking and stitching requires just enough concentration to take my mind off whatever else is going on around me.  And now that I spend my working hours in a uniform with a high polyester content, the importance of beautiful, well-made clothes in natural fibres becomes even more significant.

The best tailor's chalk in the world, ever

Ready to set the sleeve

10 things

• I am not feeling the running love at the moment.  I am finding it hard, I'm getting tired of my usual routes, and I ache.  But I am still running, and for that I feel very proud of myself.
• I just found out my next placement is in A and E.  As someone who has watched every episode of every series of 24 Hours in A and E obsessively, this is one of the most exciting things that's ever happened to me!  I start in a month's time.
• I am so sick of this rain.  We are fortunate not to be living in an area that has been wrecked by floods, but oh. my. word.  This rain just goes on and on.  And on.

• I have enjoyed another run of good books lately: Where'd you go, Bernadette, The Ship of Brides, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and my current read, Man Belong Mrs Queen.  I am panicking that this run of success is going to grind to a halt after this book.  Four great books in a row is pretty lucky.  Can my luck continue?
• My mother-in-law had a landmark birthday, and to celebrate the extended family plus friends all gathered together in central London for a magnificent cookery lesson at La Cucina Caldesi.  I learnt how to make pasta, and I am now scouring eBay for a pasta attachment for my KitchenAid.  It was a wonderful day.
• My sister's baby arrived and I am now an auntie for the seventh time.  I made my new niece a little quilted blanket out of some Ed Emberley fabric I bought years ago and never used.  I think it was waiting for R's arrival.

• My next exam is a drug calculation exam.  I need to get 100% to pass - you can't have nurses getting drug calculations only 90% right.  I like maths though, and I like learning formula and practising sums, so it's not too daunting at the moment.
• If you haven't already found them, take a look at the Metropolitan Police helicopter crew on Instagram and Twitter.  They take the most incredible arial photos of London, as they're travelling to and from jobs - often on just an iPhone.
• I have been cooking dumplings often this winter.  They cheer me up and help me to forget about the rain.

• I am listening to Sophie Ellis Bextor's new album, Wanderlust, and loving it. 

It's quilt time again

I don't have time to make quilts any more.  And yet mysteriously there appears to be another quilt-in-progress on the sofa this morning.

I have been yearning for a Kantha type quilt for ages, and last night I just snapped and  pulled out my sewing machine, grabbed a fairly random selection of fabrics off my shelf, and began cutting and sewing.

Kantha quilts are traditional Bengali quilts, made from large blocks of bright sari fabric, stitched together with tight rows of running stitch and other embroidered motifs.  They're all about colour and embroidery.  They are also made without wadding - just from layers of cotton cloth.  This is one of the reasons I wanted to make one, because even though I used the lightest wadding I could find for my quilt, it is still too warm on top of a duvet.

My new Kantha quilt is simply a top pieced from a mixture of vintage and quilting cottons, and a back of plain, unbleached calico.  No wadding in the middle at all. I sewed the top and back right-sides-together and left a gap for turning, so there is no need for binding either.  The top is nice and bright and true to the Kantha style in shades of pink and blue, but I left the back deliberately plain because I think when all th embroidery is done, it will show off the stitching beautifully.  Plus I love the way that plain calico shrinks and puckers when it is washed - it will really add to the wrinkly, faded feel of my quilt.

I have no doubt at all that I will spend years doing all the embroidery; the quilt is massive.  But I can use use it in the meantime, because it doesn't need binding and there are no pins in it.  I spread it out over my side of the bed last night, and I wasn't too warm at all.  It made me smile this morning too, when I woke up to to rain and wind lashing against the windows but sunny pink fabric spread out over me, as if spring was already here.

10 things

• I was going to make a mixed berry cake. The children said they would do it for me. They separated the bowl of mixed blueberries and redcurrants into two piles and turned it into a Union Jack cake.

• Yesterday we celebrated our first wedding anniversary.  First anniversaries have the theme of paper, so Graham gave me an anatomy colouring book, which I have been longing for ever since I first applied for my nursing course.

• I start three weeks today.  THREE WEEKS!
• Tess has fueled the excitement further still, by sending me this wonderful Ladybird book as a Good Luck present.  I adore all the 70s and 80s uniforms in it, and desperately wish that an old-fashioned nurse's cape with red sashes was part of my uniform.

 

• I have four litres of homemade chicken stock sitting in the fridge, after roasting a chicken on Saturday - two litres of giblet stock, and a further two litres from the carcass of the bird. I am compiling a list of favourite soups, which is getting longer by the minute.
• Although, actually, I think really good chicken stock is best used in risottos, where its flavour can shine through.
• I have a long list of favourite risottos too.
• I finally found the pink aircell blanket that Olivia had as a baby, and bound it like the blue ones I did last winter.

• I am reading Almost French, by Sarah Turnbull and enjoying it enormously.  She writes with both love and honesty about living in Paris.  I'd love to live in Paris.
• London is pretty wonderful though.  There is a growing sense of expectation about The Paralympics, which start in just two days' time.  Olivia is the only one in our family who has tickets this time (she is going with school) - and the rest of us are all rather envious.

A kimono for my niece

I have another new niece on the way.  It is The Year of New Nieces, because Miss A arrived in early February, and Miss M is due any day now.

I've been thinking for a while about what to make her.  A June or July baby doesn't really need a kicking bag like a winter baby does, and I also had an urge to make something I hadn't done before.  Eventually I decided that what every summer-born baby girl needs is a floral, lace-trimmed kimono.

The pattern is from Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross - a book that is certainly the most used of my many sewing books.  I added vintage lace, which was given to me by my grandmother, as an additional trim onto the bottom.  I like the idea of passing a little bit of lace trim down to a fourth generation.

All I need now is the baby, and some greedy-Auntie cuddles with her.  I can't wait.

From pink to purple

Olivia's pink phase has come and gone.  Pink is now Not The Thing at all.  The 9 year old girls I know are all about purple these days.

"My favourite colours - in order"

She asked me to make a purple patchwork cushion for a friend's birthday this weekend.  "My friends are all VERY into purple too," she informed me.  So I did, and while I was making one purple cushion I thought I might as well make two.

A birthday cushion for J

Olivia now has a purple cushion on her bed, next to the one I made for her when she was in her pink phase.  "The purple one is closest to the top, because I like purple best," she told me.  I now want to make her cushions in every colour on her list, just so that I can see them arranged - and re-arranged - along the edge of her bed in order of colour preference.

The pink has been demoted by the purple

Summer sundress minus the summer

I finished the second of my summer blue tops last night, and this morning balanced precariously on another chair in front of another mirror to take photos.

This is made from the same pattern as my last top, but at full length.  This version has lovely deep pockets, and a sweet A-line shape which I adore.

There's still nor much sign of summer warmth here in London, so it will be a while before I can wear it without a pashmina around my shoulders and leggings and a jersey top underneath.

 *A special Thank You to my friend Kristina, for so generously giving me the fabric, which is a really calming Amy Butler print from a few years back. I am delighted to find it matches my favourite blue pashmina so perfectly! xx*

Three blue tops - one of which is red

I'm making new tops for the summer - because I fancied doing some sewing over the weekend and also because I yearned to see something different in my wardrobe.

Pattern adapted from Trapeze sundress in Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross

This red spotty top should have been navy blue and floral.  The fabric which I used as the trim, should have been the main fabric and the red spots should have been the trim.  But as I pinned and cut the beautiful blue fabric so enthusiastically, I failed to notice that I had pinned the front piece with the wrong edge against the fold.  When I unfolded it I realised what I'd done and that I had wrecked the whole metre of fabric.

I stared at what I'd done, willing the fabric to knit itself back together as if by magic and present me with a whole, uncut piece again.  But I don't have those sort of powers, and the blue fabric remained ruined.

Fortunately I had plenty of the red spotty fabric, so I switched things around and it became red with blue trim rather than blue with red.  I like it, and I've cheered up now.  I will wear this all summer - it looks great with jeans and I have cardigans and long sleeved tops which match it.

But...it still should have been blue.

I'm taking MUCH more care over the cutting out of my other blue tops-in-progress.

The pastel, scalloped fabric in the picture above is going to become a summery sundress with nice big pockets.

This very precious, and strokably lovely, Anna Maria Horner voile is going to become a floaty, raglan-sleeved top.  I will check about ninety-five times before I cut it out that the pieces are on the right way round. 

I will also remember to add seam allowances before I start cutting, because I will be using an Ottobre pattern where the seam allowances are not included.

I WILL remember.  I will.  Definitely.

A tunic for Spring

I wanted a new top, so I sat down and made one.  Sometimes the simple, non-dithering approach works well for me.  I started cutting out the fabric at 8pm, and finished the last stitch of the hem at 1am.  G was away so I had rubbish tv and some good podcasts for company.

This morning I am incapable of taking a decent photo.  I am sporting dark shadows under my eyes but also a funky, slightly psychedelic, new tunic top.  I'm happy.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sewing notes:

The pattern is the Portfolio Tunic from Lisette (Simplicity 2245), which I have made twice before.  This time I left the collar off and finished the raw edge with bias tape, because the collar comes out very high.  I much prefer the lower neckline this way.

The fabric is quilting cotton from Amy Butler's Soul Blossoms range, and I think the colours and swirly flowers are very reminiscent of the 1960s.  The relatively heavy weight of quilting cotton works very well with this pattern.  The previous two versions I made were from much lighter cotton lawn, which are cool for summer but crumple more easily and don't hang quite so well.