Handmade by Carolyn

Me-Made June; a new challenge

12/05/2011 7:05 am \ 15 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve signed to take part again in Zoe’s seasonal challenge, this time to be called Me-Made June 11.

I, Carolyn of “Handmade by Carolyn”, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-June ’11. I endeavour to wear as much handmade as possible each day for the duration of June 2011′

And I’m not going to be so hard on myself this time; I will not (sternly shaking my finger at my always-makes-things-too-hard-for-myself self) make too much of an effort to not-repeat. Just maybe a small, teensy-tiny effort, to stave off boredom. Hehe…
And since June is newly winter for us southern hemisphere dwellers I may have to pop on a few RTW thermals or Tshirts once in a while for a bit of extra warmth! I may need to, I may not. We’ll have to see how we go with that one.
See, here’s the dilemma, the same ol’ dilemma. I have a collection of perfectly serviceable Tshirts and cardigans. I like challenging myself to wear all me-made, but I still have to make use of the garments I’ve got, right? Otherwise, I am just being wasteful of my current resources, er wardrobe. It’s silly for me to go out and, source, say, black stretch fabric to make myself useful black Tshirts and cardigans, when I have some RTW ones already. So, yeah…
And yesterday, with all the new technological lessons being introduced into my sad, old brain such as a) how to film myself, talking all by myself and b) learning how to upload a video onto YouTube (they didn’t teach this in school in my day), it slipped my mind that I had taken an outfit photo on our walk that morning. So there it is, what I was wearing yesterday. In the vlog too. I’m just putting it in here, just because. The weather has been such that one has to start the morning with a cardigan, but before one has got more than 100m on one’s walk one needs to take it off. And then one needs it again as the sun drops below the yard-arm (there’s that random saying again, what does that even mean?)
And sewing-wise, I will just hint that I have been sewing up a veritable storm lately! I have lots of newly constructed stuff to show, with which I’m extremely pleased… but I’m waiting for the right moment. You’ll see soon. Promise.

Details:
Dress; Vogue 1152, cotton chambray, details and a review of this pattern here
Scarf; re-fashioned from an old Tshirt, tutorial here
Cardigan; Country Road found secondhand, and dyed yellow by me here
Sandals; Anna, from Marie-Claire shoes

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: daily outfit, MMJ11, Sienna

My Voice!

11/05/2011 12:38 pm \ 32 Comments \ Carolyn

Inspired by Tanit-Isis I have added my bit to the dialect and accent vlog that has been going around a bit over the last few months? (or longer??)
While of course this has nothing to do with my usual sewing or fashion-y stuff I really enjoyed viewing other people’s vlogs, devoting some time to tracking back links and viewing a whole lot of them last night. It’s addictive! So I decided to do my own. It’s nice to have a real voice, not to mention a real accent in your mind which can add a whole new dimension when reading static written words!

The list of words is:
Aunt, Route, Wash, Oil, Theatre, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, Toilet, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Spitting Image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pyjamas, Caught
And (face-slap) the word “Probably” is supposed to be in there also, but in my stage-fright and nervousness I forgot to read that one! Woops!
Plus I added a few bonus words for fun:
About, Aluminium, Apricot, Schedule, News

And the questions are:
What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
What is the bug that when you touch it, curls into a ball?
What is the bubbly, carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval shaped body and extremely long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you change the TV channel with?

I hope you enjoy this, in spite of the fact that apparently I look a bit self-conscious according to the family… nerves! Also I’d like to point out that I said “…a series of questions”, not as it sounded “…. serious questions”, which would be a bit silly, no?
I hope to see some more of these out in blogland, please send me your link if you choose to do one of these yourself. It would be fun to compare all our various manners of speaking, and I would love to see some other accents joining in here!
Some others I’ve seen:
Louise
Steph
Franca

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: random life stuff, vlog

Cathedral window cushion

10/05/2011 3:15 am \ 11 Comments \ Carolyn

This is a cushion cover I made for my mother a few years ago. Actually more than a few. I think it was for a mother’s day … oh btw, Happy Mother’s Day for last Sunday to all you yummy mummies out there! I’m sorry I didn’t manage to blog this cushion cover for that day as I intended, but I’ve been having a few problems with Blogger… (grrr)

When my Granny had to move to a home, and after we had finished cleaning out my grandparents’ house we had a big pile of things to find new homes for; many really beautiful things that found instant homes in the children’s and grandchildren’s homes, some things for charity, and some things that were too personal and beautiful to toss out, but really had no useful purpose for anyone…. one of those items was a beautiful paisley silk tie once belonging to my grandfather. Mum gave it to me, saying something like “here, you could use this lovely fabric for something or other if you like”.
Obviously I wasn’t going to toss it out but equally obviously you can’t just drape a tie over your couch as an ornament. But I still felt like it was important and needed to live on somehow. Bit of background applies here; my grandfather used to own and run a highly respected menswear store in London, and later here in Perth, so he always wore the most beautifully tailored suits and shirts. So to me this wasn’t just an old tie really, but much more; a symbol of intrinsically who my grandfather was, a representation of his life and his trade.

Now, a tie has only a very small amount of fabric in it. Not enough for anything much. I thought about what to do with it quite a lot, before deciding to be brave enough to cut it up…

And I made a cushion cover for Mum to have, so she could still have the fabric there to look at as a little memento of Grandpa about the house. I took this picture of it in Mum and Dad’s house the last time I was there.

So this is a patchwork design known as Cathedral Window; used to showcase small pieces of really beautiful fabric like this. The backing fabric is calico. The design is interesting, because you end up needing like three or four metres of calico for one little cushion cover, and just mere scraps for the “showcased” fabric. You cut huge squares of the calico and fold them in an intricate origami style design, down into much smaller squares in which is sewn the little pieces of beautiful fabric. I remember having to be quite clever to cut the tie strategically to get sufficiently large squares for the cushion. It measures 50x50cm, and has a cream coloured dress zip on the back for a cushion insert. The top is completely hand-sewn.

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: handcrafts, home wares, patchwork

Girl-y, with a bit of white

06/05/2011 11:36 am \ 21 Comments \ Carolyn

Like yesterday…. but super-creatively (hehe) substituting white accessories for black.
I wore this to the Alumni High Tea up at the college today. A lovely afternoon of tea, tiny sandwiches and miniature cakes and lots of catching up with friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in a while.
The only just slightly funny thing was the flute of champagne on entry. You always get presented with one upon entry at things now. What’s with that?! There’s something incredibly decadent and naughty about a glass of champagne in the afternoon, no? When I attend a tea I really expect tea, not booze. Nonetheless everyone at our table enjoyed the champagne too…. 😉
Now, tell me what you think… taking photos in Perth can be really challenging at times because the sunlight is soooo bright here. Forcing the amateur DIY photographer like me to seek out shady spots as much as possible… Apart from cropping which I always do I don’t normally alter my photos a lot. I once blurred out a person in the background, and once a stray bra-strap, but usually the photo is as is. Sometimes I reduce the exposure, because of the aforementioned brightness factor. Today I tried experimenting with the contrast to get a sort of washed out antique-y look. My children like the original (above), I thought the altered one below looked more interesting as well as showed off the outfit better which I think should be the point… which photo do you prefer? I would love to have photoshop to play with, but I don’t want to present a false picture of my work or myself… Opinions?
Do you prefer arty, or true-to-life?

Details:
Dress; adapted from Vogue 8555, printed cotton, bodice of my own design details here, and a review of the pattern here
Cardigan; Picnic
Necklace; Diva
Sandals; Franco Burrone, from David Jones

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: daily outfit, photography

Girl-y, with a bit of black

05/05/2011 10:04 am \ 12 Comments \ Carolyn

My sister in law S’s birthday today, so I took her out for afternoon tea; cake and a chin-wag. Girly stuff. We would have liked to squeeze in a bit of shopping too, but we both had had a jam-full day… hopefully next time.
So far I’ve just worn this very girly pink lace dress with light soft neutrals for spring and summer, and I wanted to see how it stood up to being mixed with darks, for the cooler months. I think it works OK with charcoal and black, what do you think? I think the trick to mixing a powder-pink very delicate spider-webby lace like this with strong darks is to keep the touches of charcoal/black equally as light, delicate and feminine as possible, because a dress like this could easily be overwhelmed by strong colours. So I picked my strappiest black sandals, a very light and little charcoal cardigan, and my necklace of graduated polished iron-ore balls, a noir twist on the more traditional ladylike pearls.

And for Perth readers, Janet very kindly left me a note yesterday to say that Pattern Magic 1 and 2 in English are available at Subiaco Books. Thank you so much for your comment, Janet!
I will add that I have also seen the English version in Dymocks in Melbourne, so maybe they are in the odd Dymocks store elsewhere too… It made me smile to have a look through it, as I have only the Japanese version myself. All those mysterious and very intriguing Japanese notes and instructions dotted everywhere throughout the book, which seemed to promise in the artistry of the script all the secrets of sculptural pattern manipulation and Japanese couture that I felt if only I could divine their meaning I would gain some sort of sartorial enlightenment and rise up to a new higher plane of sewing mastery… Well naturally upon reading the English version I was highly disappointed to find out actually translated to things like “back”, “dart”, “fold” and “cut 2” and so on and so forth. Absolutely no earth shattering to be had… Laugh!
But seriously I still recommend this series to the serious seamstress. The garments are not all conventionally wearable, but that is not the point. I think of them as like sewing textbooks, akin to a musician practising scales to improve technique. Working through the Pattern Magic books is sure to increase your pattern manipulation and adaption skills, as well as understanding the ways in which interesting sculptural details can be incorporated into a garment.
Also thank you to everyone who has left a link to the pattern for Pippa Middleton’s bridesmaids dress.

Details:
Dress; modified Simplicity 3745, pink lace and pink border lace, sewing details of dress and petticoat together here
Petticoat (underneath); Burda 8071, pink silk satin
Cardigan; Country Road
Sandals; Micam by Joanne Mercer, from Hobbs shoes
Necklace; iron ore orbs, souvenir from Egypt
Bag; Louis Vuitton
Nail varnish; Blackest Black, Revlon

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: daily outfit, Pattern Magic

Red leggings

04/05/2011 4:46 am \ 14 Comments \ Carolyn

Something new, a quick fix project and nothing very exciting, but practical…. the evenings are getting that little bit cooler and when the sun dips below the yard-arm (whatever that means, really) my legs need some coverage. Hehe, since two days ago I posted our current temperatures no doubt hardier Canadian and New Zealand people are going to get a laugh out of that one, but I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to the cold. I really feel the cold. Even our mild Perth winters are often too cold for me. Yah, I know, pathetic, right?
So I made some leggings, using the pattern I made custom fit to myself, here. It’s pretty easy to make your own leggings, the only challenge being to get decent fabric. The usual challenge. The fabric I used is the last bit of red jersey I had left, after I made my gloves, here. It isn’t very good for leggings, having not very much stretch … but they will do for as long as they last. Hopefully the colour will go some way to cheering me up on a cold grey winter’s day, although one of those seems ridiculously unlikely right now I expect we will get some.
The backpack is not my daily handbag … I have let this backpack appear in a few other photos before; I use it to carry my camera, tripod and shoes along in if I want to take a photo when I take my dog walkies in the morning. It really belongs to Sam, but I borrow it sort-of temporarily on a permanently on-going basis for a few mornings a week, if that makes any sense. It’s the perfect size to fit in the aforementioned goodies. Compare this compact light little thing to the backpacks we carried on our hike last week, below!

Details:
Top and cardigan; Metalicus
Skirt; Vogue 7303, olive green corduroy, styled in 6 different ways here
Leggings; own design, red cotton jersey, tutorial on how to make your own here
Backpack; souvenir from Santa Fe
Shoes; Perrini, had forever

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: own design, tights/leggings

Tim’s 2nd birthday outfit

03/05/2011 5:52 am \ 8 Comments \ Carolyn

The main problem with my attempt to document my handmade stuff, including some of the things I made for the children way back when they were little is that I neglected to take good pictures of things. Things, some of them perfectly lovely, of which I was very proud, and which I no longer have in my possession. I do have an excuse; my younger self was blissfully unaware that my older self would be wanting to do this blog one day…. I know, lame excuse. But it’s the only one I have, so I’m going there.
So one can blame my lack of future foretelling ability for the poor illustrative quality of these photos with relation to how well you can see the actual clothes; ie. not very well. Hopefully you can still get a vague idea how cute this particular ensemble was…
I made for Tim this outfit, for his second birthday; comprising checked pants with contrasting red pocket yokes and a red hoodie with flannelette teddy bear print sleeves and the same fabric lining the hood. Both pants and hoodie patterns were from those marvellous Topkids magazines. It was a sweet outfit, I was pretty thrilled with how it turned out (my first attempt at a hoodie if I remember correctly) and he wore it a lot. Even Cassie wore it when she got big enough to fit into it! (see below) It had two asymmetrically placed decorative patches on the front of the hoodie ( hey, this was the early 90’s, when random asymmetry was in and actually done on purpose sometimes…) around which I carefully stitched frames of matching royal blue rick-rack.
I wonder where it is now…
The hoodie…

a better view of the pants… (goodness knows what possessed me to put this horrible top on him, doesn’t go at all with the pants…. I must have just grabbed something clean that day with absolutely no thought as to whether or not my son looked sharp, tut tut)

Cassie wearing the outfit…

And yes, I made that sad excuse for a birthday cake above too… well, I do not claim to be either a great cook or cake decorator! It was a clock face, and the time was set to 2 o’clock, for a 2 year old of course!
If you’re interested, my little boy looks like this now, and my little girl with the cheeky grin looks like this…

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: ancient history, childrens, Tim, Topkids

Back to my usual haunts…

02/05/2011 5:20 am \ 9 Comments \ Carolyn

… and back with my usual walking companion 🙂
I think she’s missed our little outings. She sure was happy to get out and about this morning, and was quite the scamper-puppy.
It seems to me, from casual convo’s with my friends, as well as reading opinions from out there in blogland, that autumn is possibly the most favourite season of the general population. It certainly is mine. This kind of weather is just so glorious one becomes stuffed full of feelings of goodwill and joy and love of life just by the simple act of going outside.
It was unsurprising to learn that we have just had the sunniest April on record (after a completely sunny March also), and that more of the same is on offer. And a bit amazing, since we got rained on so heartily the last few days of our walk, well c’est la vie… So ironic, no?
Not that I’m aiming to gloat about our lovely weather, well, not intentionally anyway, but take a squiz at our weekend’s 7-day forecast below… I’ll have to make more excuses to get outside this week, which is going to take some doing given that the office needs opening up again, and sartorially I have a ball-dress to plan… eeek!

Details:
Shirt; adapted from Burda 7767, cotton chambray, details here
Skirt; Vogue 7303, orange hessian silk, details here
Belt; Country Road, had for yonks
Necklace; made by me from knotted rope, tutorial here
Shoes; Betts&Betts, had for yonks
(temperatures below in Celsius, natch!)