Birthday Xerea

Hallo, How are we all? I am doing well, tired but well. Little E went through a stage of sleeping for long periods of time recently. They call this sleeping through, it's not exactly a whole nights sleep but it's certainly better than nothing.

However, last night she was restless from about 2.30am so I'm pretty tired! However, I am very much enjoying baby time. We've been going to groups in the local area, I've met lots of lovely mums and am beginning to feel more like myself. I am however both an introvert and extrovert (I always come out exactly in the middle on those personality charts), and though I am getting lots of quiet time, it is not truly relaxing alone time. I'm not sewing or chilling, taking a bath or being calm. I am keeping active, trying to fill Baby E's day with interesting things which is its own kind of exhausting.

That's why when Mr T takes the little one out for an afternoon, it is the most relaxing time I can have. My shoulders relax and I feel like myself for a little while, and I get to sew! I've made a couple of things this way, and will have those to share with you in the future.

For today, I want to show you the last piece of sewing I did before Baby E was born. A birthday dress! At the time I was struggling with understanding what to make for breastfeeding, and had been making bigger and bigger maternity clothes. I was fed up of constantly making the same thing and was itching for a different silhouette. When I saw the new Pauline Alice Xerea pattern it answered my prayers, a completely different silhouette, but it looked like I could fit it over the big ol' bump.

I bought this fabric at the knit and stitch show that was on at the same time as the Sewing Bee, I walked around with Ryan and chatted with lots of enthusiastic people who commiserated with us, and told us all about their sewing lives. It's one of my favourite memories of that time, and now I have a dress that represents that time for me. 

Because I had such a big bump when I made this, the skirt seemed pretty short, so I added the gather panel at the bottom. To make this more of a feature I added lace along the edge. I'm not sure if it has now made it a bit long as I'm no longer bumpy, but I think I need to wear it a couple of times more before I decide. 

When I printed it, it was wrong by about 1cm off, so I tried to adjust it. I shaved 1cm off the pattern on all pattern pieces, but it wasn't the most accurate of adjustments, so I think the yokes at the top are a little too wide for my shoulders and neck. So I'll probably reprint the pattern for future makes just to make sure I get it right. 

Well, Baby E is making those... I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad noises so that's my cue. Hope you're having a lovely weekend guys, happy sewing!

Breatfeeding Dress DIY

Hello everyone! 

I’m here! I’ve made it back to the blog! Spud has fallen asleep on the sofa, and did not wake up when I moved away from her! It’s a miracle of epic proportions.

Life is very different here, I seem to be feeding almost constantly, did anyone else realise babies feed basically constantly?! I tend to do this lying down, I think I mentioned on instagram recently, this is mostly as I am lazy but also because it seems that Spud feeds better that way. Plus there is always the chance I can creep away from her if she's nodded off and quickly fill the dishwasher, start tea or put a wash on. These are my main life goals at the moment and I’m pretty happy with that. Mr T gave me some time to myself for the first time on Saturday and it was pretty brilliant, I made my adapted Coco pattern in 2 ½ hours! I surprised even myself.

I have decided to start something called #speedysew. This is my programme of sanity building whereby I'll work on my sewing in five minute dashes. This will necessarily mean leaving things out on the sides, but if I get five minutes in which to do anything, sew a single seam, or cut out one pattern piece I will still keep moving forward with my sewing, and watching my fabric pile whilst feeding won’t be quite so painful.

Today I'm going to show you my solution to the breastfeeding issue... how do I get at my boobs? I'm still figuring this out, it's difficult to find things that cover skin but give access to your boob. But when I went to Mamas and Papas to get a car seat for Spud, I found a super amazing black and white dress which had overlapping layers, and a top that folds down over it. Difficult to explain but take my word for it, it's the best. Inspired by this, I've made the following dress!

I decided to take some jersey tops that I no longer wear, and create some dresses with boob access. This is the first of this batch, the hem fabric is a piece that I bought in Abakhan when I used to work there, that's quite a while to stash some fabric! I never knew what to do with it, but having plain black fabric and piecing this together into a border print has made a beautiful fabric in itself. 

In order to do this yourself, I have taken some step by step photos for you. I (again) used the Washi pattern to identify the length of the top half. Apologies that the black doesn't really show up the cut lines that well.

This is the length that I cut it to, it should fall just under your chest.

Trying on the top, I pinned where the cuts will have to go, so that they fall right over your nipple

I then cut these as in the photo below, and then overlapped the two cut layers.

Stitch with a zig zag stitch two inches up from the bottom, and two inchess of the overlap from the top. 

I hope that makes some sense, here is a flash of bra to give you a better idea. Don't say I never treat ya.

I flipping love this dress, it's so comfortable and I feel really glam in it! I'm not having any excuses to be so glam at the mo... plus I look kind of tired in these photos... and my hair is all sorts of mess. 

But I kind of like that. I look how I feel, a bit tired, and not caring about my hair. I have other things going on! I want to be honest in this blog, I don't want people to think I'm breezing through this motherhood thing. I'm having a good time, but it's a tiring watching four hundred episodes of Stargate with a baby attached to you kind of good time.

In that vein, it has taken me three goes at writing this blog post, but I've done it! Niiiiiice. No promises about when I'll be back, but I hope it's soon.

Start Something Good this Wednesday

Hey everyone! Bit of a break there, but I'm sure you can understand why ha ha. I'm not gonna go into detail about life right now but it's all going well. I managed to get a bit of free time on Sunday, Free time! Woop! and took pictures of some things I've made Yay! So I'm gonna do a catch up pretty soon. 

But today I want to talk about something that I have been lucky enough to be asked to help with. M&S are launching a #startsomethinggood event in Manchester! The large store on Market St will be host to a sewing workshop on 7th October, where you will make personalised care bags for the Macmillan Supportive and Palliative Care Team in Manchester.  The bags will be used for patients undergoing Cancer treatment to carry sensitive medical equipment.

I will be there from 2pm on the day helping out with the stitching, and any embellishments you might want to make to your bag. This is such an important project, I hope you guys can make it along.

To come along you need to book your appointment at: Spark Something Good and select Making for Charity. And don’t worry, if you can only come in the morning, you will have the equally good opportunity to meet Paul, my super lovely fellow semi-finalist from the Bee. I’m sure he will be regaling all in attendance with his amazing makes, and he’s just started his own blog, so go take a look! Sew the Rainbow

  

Our beautiful daughter

Hello all!

Those of you following me on instagram may have spotted that we have had our little baby, Evelyn. I am ecstatically happy (and hormonally emotional) in equal measure. We are getting somewhere with claiming back free time but obviously we are tired and making the most of this time with our little one. Of course I am dreading Mr T heading back to work, but we will make it through, there is light at the end of week one :-) not to mention the beautiful little face we made! So strange, I can't believe how much my stomach has deflated, probably in equal measure to how much my boobs have inflated. My body is very confused right now ha ha.

We have decided to hold off for now on sharing baby pictures to the wider blogosphere/ internet. We aren't sure how we feel about sharing our baby with the world, but also it feels strange that they can't consent to their pictures being posted to the world. Of course this is no damnation of those who choose to put pictures up of their own children, and we have put pics on facebook... we will probably even change our mind in the future but for now you will have to make do with pictures of our lovely new nursery.

This is the first room Mr T and I have decorated together and I really enjoyed the process. The triangles are done with masking tape and paint sample pots, and the chest of drawers were painted with Annie Sloan chalk paint. 

I'm going to try and keep up with posting, but I have no idea what the next weeks hold so no promises. I'll see you on the other side lovely people.

I'm teaching at the Handmade Fair! Squee

Hello all!

I've got something a little different to talk about with you today, though disclaimer there are no new makes so if you're only in it for the pretty dresses feel free to skip this one.

I have some very exciting news! I will be teaching a workshop at The Handmade Fair this year. This is a show a bit like the standard knitting and sewing shows, except the focus is on classes and learning new skills. I went last year with my Mum and Sis, and we had a blast learning all sorts of interesting skills like flower arranging, macrame, and we learnt all about the wonders of chalk paint that both my sister and I got very over-excited about and have started painting everything we own with the stuff. My Mum bought a hundred new hobbies as usual (sorry for telling on you Mum ;-) ), and we had Pimms and afternoon tea. I thoroughly recommend it for a day out.

So my session will be on these 3D flowers/ decorations, link here:

I have been making these decorations for years, they are a simple design that once you understand the concept can be applied in a massively wide variety of ways. I have made so many of these for a variety of crafts. We will be making them into brooches at the fair, but I wanted to show you just some of the ways that I have adapted this simple pattern into all sorts of different items.

There won't be many people (I'm assuming) who remember my craft fair days. This slightly creepy head was used to display these brooches in their alternate form as headbands. If you alter the dimensions of the template, and round off the corners you will end up with a more flower-like design that you can see here. Here I attached a grip on the back to attach to your hair, but I also sometimes used ribbon to attach this to your hair. 

We also used these flowers for a variety of things for my wedding. Above you can see the design used with scraps from the length of the bridesmaid dresses which we made into a flower each for the bridesmaid bouquets. This meant that they mixed in perfectly with the dresses, and they were a lovely keepsake using the fabric which probably would have been scrapped otherwise. 

A wide selection of beautiful fabrics will be provided on the day, just look at how different these can look in a variety of fabrics. Something different to do with those fabric scraps! 

I used a larger template, which included three petal sizes and layers of duchess satin and lace for my veil centrepiece:

And how about using them as decoration around your home? My Mum and I attached hundreds of them to chandeliers for my wedding features, and now lots of members of our family have them adorning their homes. It's lovely to go to someone's house and see something you made being used:

The potential uses for these flowers is seemingly endless. I'd love to make some up in rainbow colours and hang them as a mobile in the nursery, next project perhaps? 

I hope this gives you some inspiration on what you could make with these flowers after our workshop, you will hopefully learn a couple of new skills, and will have something pretty to wear on the day. Also, I can't wait to meet up with you and have a chat! If you've got any burning questions then once we get going sewing we can have a natter about all things sewing and crafting. Can't wait to see you there! 

Miss the link? http://www.thehandmadefair.com/skill-workshop/yarn-textiles/ 

Deborah

Big Brother Washi

Hey hey! So apparently being on maternity leave takes more energy than you would think! I've been sleeping lots, and having baths and painting chests of drawers, and buying copious amounts of small people things, and sleeping! Did I mention sleeping?

Monday was my birthday, which was really lovely. I didn't put loads of pressure on myself because, well I wasn't going to get any of it done so you can't say fairer than that. So my friends came to me, we sat in the yard on a sunny day and I drank No-jito. My new favourite drink. I got lots of lovely pressies, and even made myself a dress! The dress I'm talking about today though is not that dress. 

Remember this logo?

It's kind of creepy right? It's from Big Brother Series 11. Do you remember when Big Brother first started? It was supposed to be sort of a social experiment thing, maybe, and they were all fairly nice people who didn't want to evict each other and kept reminding each other that it was all just a game? Shame that didn't last, though I guess people would have bored of it pretty quickly. So anyway the fabric for my dress really reminds me of these logos:

It's another Washi! Surprise! Ha ha, I know, I'm a broken record but they really are one of the only things I can fit on myself these days... I got big! It's due date on Monday so not long to go, but could be any time really, before or after then. It's weird being off work for this amount of time, I'm well into my third week and I'm starting to fall into old habits like when I was on summer holidays back in the day. You remember that time? You get halfway through and your life starts to slip into a routine? You know what time of day Murder, she wrote starts? Although at the moment all I'm doing is powering through hundreds of episodes of Warehouse 13. Have you seen it? It's on Netflix so it does that dangerous thing of just lining up the next episode and before you know it you've watched five in a day. I wouldn't say it's great TV, but it's very watchable, which is all I'm after right now. Don't want to stretch my brain thanks!

Evidence of my giantness, though this was a few weeks ago so again, imagine me bigger as I write this ha ha. These dresses are really misleading because from the front you don't quite look as big, then you turn to the side, and it's boom! Baby time ha ha. I can't believe I've made no adjustments to fit my belly into these dresses, I'm impressed! 

One change I have made is to add a zip down the front, this is for nursing. Thanks so much for your thoughts on this. I decided that I would start by adding in front access, so I can at least wear something other than pyjamas at home once Spud arrives. Then I went to Mamas & Papas recently for a car seat, and found a jersey dress that I like! That has clever parts for nursing after baby is born. I'm going to copy this for some new makes and will make sure I show you so you can do the same. It's great because it's somewhere between a dress and skirt and top combo... but still comfy! All will become clear I promise.

What do you think of my new background? This is the wall we painted for the nursery, we just used masking tape and emulsion paints and they came out way better than we imagined. The theme in the nursery is rainbow colours, and it's starting to look awesome. Once we have the chest of drawers all finished up and I can get some of the clothes away it's going to look amazing. We ran out of paint so it went on a bit of hiatus for a while. Back to work this afternoon though. 

So yeah, I haven't really said much about this dress but you get the idea right? I feel like I've talked the Washi to death so don't really have anything else to say. I reckon my shirring elastic game is pretty damn awesome now though. I sometimes wonder if I did the Sewing Bee now, how would I fair? I've got way more sewing under my belt, maybe I'd be more comfortable? Have different ideas? Guess I'll never know! See you on the flipside folks, 

Debs 

Post Number 100 and a Floral Flora

Happy Saturday puny humans! This is my one hundredth post woooo

I guess that isn't really that impressive as I've been writing this blog since 2010... but there have definitely been some large gaps between posts. I'm really enjoying doing more regular postings, and I now have a backlog to keep me going as I photograph in bulk, that's how I've finally managed to keep up momentum with the posts. So thanks world for sticking with me, and new readers... welcome!!

I'm at the end of my first week of maternity leave, what a week! I've been out for lunch a couple of times, bought a lot of things online, painted one chest of drawers, started knitting a blanket and still managed to keep my feet up. Feel very pro-active! Though I did have lots of appointments and lunches to go to so maybe I'll lose some momentum next week.

At the moment it's pouring down outside, so of course I've got a holiday summer dress to show you! This is the By Hand London Flora, I'd been obsessing over a wrap over style for a while. I have this idea in my head of a wrap top with floaty sleeves in a massively seventies style, so I thought I'd use the Flora as a base, and to create something floaty to wear for our holiday to Croatia (yeah... I'm a bit behind on the posting ha ha)

Unfortunately there are a few issues with the bust fit, pretty much the same issues I get with RTW (ready to wear) wrap dresses. It is all just a little loose around the top. Not sure where to go with adjustments to be honest, I know that a lot of the issues are caused by me stretching out the fabric as I stitched the lining to the main fabric. This fabric is very light and floaty, I tried to be careful but clearly I didn't do such a good job.

Also I think I could do with shortening the front bodice, I've added some ribbon here to get rid of some of that excess fabric, but it's something to keep in mind for next time. Other than that I'm not sure... maybe I should just go a size down? Ideas on a postcard :-) I've also made it maternity friendly by adding the Washi and shortening the under bust to lose the waist. Man, I can't wait to wear something with a waist again. I know it won't be immediate, but at least I'll be on the road to a waist soon!

The back fits really well though, so the issues are definitely all in the bust. I didn't bother pattern matching as this is such a busy fabric, I figured it would all get lost in there. I love this material, so hopefully I can make it a little more wearable (without the need for a safety pin) so I can wear it again before the end of the summer).

Hopefully I'll get some more sewing done next week, I'm still not sewing for the little one, but seeing as I have about 30 all in one bodysuits, and 25 vests I'm not sure it wouldn't be a waste to be honest. I can't wait to show you the nursery, it's the first time me and Terence have properly done up a room together and it looks so awesome!

Like I mentioned I have started knitting a blanket though so I don't feel quite like the terrible mother I could be ha ha. More dresses for meeeee