Tag Archives: Cassie

May Day

01/05/2012 7:15 am \ 24 Comments \

… and the first day of Me-Made May ’12.
And thank you all so much for that lovely feedback yesterday!
I’m actually excited today and feeling motivated about taking the photographs again.  This is good, hopefully that tide of enthusiasm will carry me along for a while… 😀  I’m also very keen to see everybody else’s outfits over on the Flickr group.  Thinking about that,  I decided it would be sensible if I made a further addendum to my pledge; that I try to incorporate mostly garments that have been made since the last me-made challenge, so that I am not going over old ground, so to speak.  Don’t want to be boring, hehe…
Today is a beeautiful sunny autumn day but with a bit of a nip in the air; so I am wearing my chiffon maxi-dress made last October, and my little black snakeskin cardi, that is a few years old now but is a good match shape-wise and style-wise for this dress.   Actually, I experienced a marvellous moment this morning; marvellous, that is, from the point of view of a middle aged woman such as myself.  A young twenty-something girl stopped me in the street, and said “That is a completely awesome jacket!  I LOVE it!”  Oh, man, call me sad, but that moment really made my day.  So sweet!  Which made me think; unprompted compliments, and especially when they are about something one has made oneself (not that she knew that) do give such a disproportionate lift to the complimentee, over and above the good intentions on the part of the compliment-er.  And the importance of paying that forward.  So, when I trotted down to the supermarket later I said something nice to an elderly lady about her hand-knitted cardigan.  Her bright happy smile made my day even more bright and happy too!
Zoe upped her pledge by stipulating that someone in her circle would also be wearing something made by her every day this month, as she sews a lot for others.  So, imagine my joy when Cassie emerged this morning wearing this calico jacket made by me (below).  I can’t promise that this sort of synergy is going to happen very often since I have absolutely zero say in what my family wears any more, but it is good fortune that someone in my family is wearing something made by me on this first day of me-made May as well.  It is a sign!

Details:
Dress; Vogue 1355, polyester chiffon, lined with lightweight cotton, details here
Cardigan; plastic-coated jersey knit stamped in a snakeskin print, my own design, details here
Sandals; Joanne Mercer for Micam, Hobbs shoes
Nail varnish; self-mixed , ruby-red with gold

Cassie’s jacket; my wearable muslin of Vogue 8333 sewn with all the hand-finishing details, calico, details here (which reminds me, I really should get onto my real version of this pattern…!)

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Mum’s silk kimono

27/04/2012 7:47 am \ 29 Comments \

With thoughts of self-stitched sleepwear ricochetting about my recent consciousness like a pingpong ball being batted about by a playful pussycat… as well as unique and beautifully artistic garments that delight and inspire us creative types….
This is a silk kimono made by my mother.  Anyone who has been reading my blog for a while might remember that my mother is highly accomplished at all forms of textile art and has made many many beautiful works of wearable art.  Her creations are truly something to aspire to!

This kimono has been hand-dyed! hand-woven! AND hand-stitched!  All by my talented Mum. 

Mum hand-dyed the skeins of ivory silk for the warp of the cloth in the ikat technique, in a divinely subtle rainbow of shades.  She then wove the silk on her loom, and then made the kimono from the resulting fabric.
Isn’t it utterly beautiful?
The kimono was made in 1984.  I do have nebulous memories of its creation in our laundry, even now I can remember it as a labour of love, a project in which Mum aimed high and effortlessly achieved a remarkable outcome that still inspires my awe and admiration  🙂

Mum does still wear it, but since it is not so much a throw-on thing so much as it is a unique work of art it has been well looked after and is of course in immaculate condition.  However, she did not wish to model it for my blog, so Cassie has stepped in.  But I can assure you that she looks just as beautiful wearing it as Cassie does here!

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Fashionary

10/02/2012 5:18 am \ 23 Comments \

Thank you for those compliments on my sketch in the previous post; but I have to own up right now that I’m not really much of an artist…  I cheated!  🙂
My “artistry” is all thanks to the Fashionary….

I first heard of the Fashionary about two years ago and immediately got one for myself and one for Cassie that Christmas (and posted about here).  I bought them here; and if you click on that link you can see how other truly artistic people are producing absolutely beautiful fashion drawings like mini works of art in their Fashionarys, compared to my very basic sketches depicting my prosaic little sewing plans in a practical manner without frills nor spills.  That is pretty much why I do not usually post my pictures of my own rather ordinary sketches up here….
But I still use it to mock up most of my ideas before they get made, and I looove to play with it!
Why?
well first and foremost, it is fun!  It’s like being in kindergarten all over again, except in a grown-up and (ahem) acceptably adult format….  It caters to that wannabe fashion designer inside of me, yet dispenses with that pesky requirement to have any actual drawing talent…  
Since it is so easy!  Just like doing dot-to-dot drawings when you were a teeny kiddy…
Most of the notebook comprises pages of these templates of figures; 3 to each single page.  You can get a female one or a male one.  They are drawn in with very faint red dots; like so…
and since I realise they are very faintly drawn in and you might not be able to see them very well, I have pencilled one in to show it off better…

When a new sewing plan or outfit or something starts to transpire in my head, or maybe if I am toying with ideas, then it is sketching time, and even better; colouring-in time…
Here’s one I prepared earlier  🙂  (it’s unrecognisable, but the one on the left is supposed to be my Sunset maxi-dress, lol!)

And a hint of autumnal things to come  😉

Cassie, a far more well-organised person than her mother, also keeps samples of the fabrics along with her sketches, and actually remembers to take it shopping with her.  This is an excellent idea that I really must adopt too… would take the guesswork out of thread and button matching…

I find my Fashionary useful to keep me on the straight and narrow, to keep me to my fabric and sewing “promises” to myself if you like.  The act of drawing up my design sort of commits me to it.  Like, there it is all drawn up and coloured in, now I have to make it happen!
Once I’ve completed sewing the garment I put a little tick beside it, thus satisfying my list-keeping-and-ticking-things-off tendencies.
And, did I mention it is fun?

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Cassie’s dress

28/12/2011 12:39 pm \ 53 Comments \

I made a dress for Cassie.
Soooo, in clothing my boys I have played about as much as I dared, adding fun little details and extra bits and bobs here and there to their handmade garments, perfecting the tailoring…  but the fact remains that  the most glorious and drool-worthy fabrics, the ones I get really excited about when I enter the fabric store, are usually best suited to girls.  It is so much harder to find really exhilarating fabrics for boys.  A daughter is such fun to dress up, and I have dressed Cassie up her entire life.  And I am still indulging in lovely fabrics and designs just for her as often as I can!
This fabric always called to both of us whenever we entered Fabulous Fabrics.  If it looks anywhere near half-divine in these pictures then let me assure you it is ten times more divine in the flesh.  So to speak.  (In the “fabric”??)  It is a fluid silk printed with an other-wordly underwater design of strange and disharmonious hues; impressionist seahorses suggested in blotches of emerald, lime and crimson, floating in a deep khaki tracery of seaweed, itself stark against a watermarked sea of unlikely cloudy pink, mauve and royal purple.
Quite beautiful, no?
To make the most of the print, I started out with a real oldie pattern that I have had for a few years, originally a gift from my friend P from her mother’s stash.  Vogue 7610 is a very simple shift dress with straight side seams (the reason I chose it) and adapted it as follows; 
(Warning: dressmaking details following, boring to anyone not interested in dressmaking)
The design had wide front shoulders gathered into the back shoulders; I redrafted these to be the same width so as to eliminate the gathering.  I decided that gathering would detract from the print and only the plainest of designs would allow it to shine as much as possible…

I laid the front and back down together, overlapping at the right side seam, and cut out the dress as one whole piece, eliminating the right side seam.  Again, to preserve the print intact as much as I could…

Instead of four separate little neckline and armhole facing pieces (unnecessarily narrow and awkward little things if I ever saw them), I cut a whole bodice facing, again all in one (pictured above) and eliminating the right side seam. I left the natural fabric selvedge in place to act as the finish to the lower edge of the bodice facing.
There was just enough fabric to make a kind of narrow obi belt with long skinny ties, but she can substitute one of her long skinny leather ones that wrap around several times about her waist if she wants to dress it down.

I left off the pocket.  I had not enough fabric.  I was left with literally tiny scraps totalling up to about 15cm square when I had finished.  Fabric efficient, or what?!
After a spot of secretive measuring of her existing dresses, plus a few surreptitious try-ons on myself, I determined that the left side seam could also be sewn up and no zip would be necessary for closure.  So simple!  So basically this is a two piece dress, with no closure.  The facings were under-stitched (in pale pink) as much as possible, the raw edges overlocked to finish, and the lower hem hand slip-stitched in emerald green.  I agonised somewhat over the thread colour here, but I think the stitches are happily near-invisible, yes?  Along with the horizontal placement of the pattern piece onto the print, achieving the perfect hem depth was the next most agonising detail; it is deep enough to make the dress short enough for her tastes, but not so deep as to cut into and unbalance the overall print placement on the dress.

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Introducing Fabio

26/12/2011 3:03 am \ 14 Comments \

After our Christmas lucky-dip yesterday I have become the custodian of a funny little fellow

He has been christened Fabio.
After an eventful Christmas day, Fabio is having a quiet one today, as is the rest of his new family.

On the other hand, guess who plucked out the silk scarf that I made?
I promise there was no collusion; it was the last pressie left in the bag and she was the last to “dip”!

I reckon my husband (once again) thought of the best Christmas gift idea.  We each opened something like one of these.

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Aquarama

02/12/2011 1:23 am \ 29 Comments \
I made a skirt for my daughter…
I used another piece from the bundle of fabric given to me by my friend C, from her late mother’s stash.  Going by certain clues (only 90cm in width, a stapled-on tag from a long-gone local store with imperial measurements penciled on it) this piece must be at least 35 years old, and probably the loveliest piece of the lot; densely woven, light/medium weight and slightly crisp with a matte crepe-y texture.  It cut like butter and sewed together beautifully.  I don’t know if it was expensive, but it feels like it could have been quite expensive… and I even started to wonder if it could be silk so I did a burn test on a scrap.  Well, it shriveled up faster than you can say “omg, where has my skirt gone?!”  
SO, a fairly important modesty as well as a safety tip there for Cassie….
The print, of random wave-y rows of organic turquoise blobs on a snowy white ground is pretty cool… don’t you think?  Lava lamp-ish, sorta.  Optimistic and space-age-y both, just like the 60’s and 70’s were.  So a bubbly kinda print for a bubbly kinda skirt, y’know.  I think it works well, stylistically. And she likes it!
I used Burda 7370, the 2-layered skirt in view B but without the extra insert bits.  I knew she liked this shape, since it is a pattern we bought together for her recently and she has made one up for herself already in a denim-blue burnt-out jersey.  Having Cassie’s perfectly custom-fitted version for comparison made this second version an easier job for me….  Incidentally, I think it is interesting that Cassie has exactly the same fitting issues as me; taking in several centimetres off the waist is a given in any skirt pattern.
The skirt lining is of pale blue shot cotton in Ice, hemmed by folding in twice and machine stitching.  All the raw edges inside the skirt are overlocked to finish, and the hems on both layers finished with the rolled hem on my overlocker.
Details:
Skirt; Burda 7370 view B, turquoise and white print synthetic crepe, at least 35 years old
Camisole; Country Road
In twirl mode…
Pattern Description:
Flared skirt, either two or three layers, two yoke variations and side zip
Pattern Sizing:
European 32 (US 6) to European 42 (US 16).  I made the size 8.
Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it?
Yes, except that I left off the extra inserts.
Were the instructions easy to follow?
very easy
What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern?
Love the cute flippiness of this skirt, a perfect dancing skirt for a girl who loves to dance like my daughter.  It looks adorable when on, swishes about gloriously and accentuates her waist beautifully.
I’m not thrilled that it requires such a lot of fabric, but that is just stinginess talking…  The first time she made up this pattern and we were buying the (not particularly cheap) fabric that she had chosen, I really had to bite my tongue at how much it was costing!  However she did a superb job of making it up.  And she’s worn them a lot.  This version pictured here is the second skirt using this same pattern.
Fabric Used:
Light/medium-weight synthetic crepe
Pattern alterations or any design changes you made:
The pattern is gorgeous just the way it is.  The only alteration to the instructions I would suggest is my usual one; when inserting an invisible zip I get a much better and smoother result by sewing in the zip BEFORE sewing up the rest of the seam allowance below the zip.  This requires some careful measurement to get the lining and skirt seams lined up and sewn up perfectly, but is worth it for the superior finish. 
I finished the lower hem using the rolled hem stitch on my overlocker.
Other than that, the only adjustments I made were just custom-fitting issues, taking in a few centimeters off the waist.
Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others?
Probably will sew this again for my daughter.
If you love to dance and twirl about then do I highly recommend this one!!  My daughter cannot resist sashaying about, just by putting this skirt on! 
Conclusion:
Uses a lot of fabric, but is so cute and feminine and so darn flippy that it is well worth going there.  My daughter went out dancing with her friends, was the only one in her crowd not wearing a miniature mini dress, and the only one who didn’t have to worry about constantly pulling down said miniature mini dress whilst on the dance floor.  She enjoyed that freedom, and said that she got lots of compliments… win!  Apparently she got offered lots of free drinks too… hmmm
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Old things…

17/11/2011 8:13 am \ 18 Comments \

… this will be the very last of my “old things” posts.  I promise.
I’ve done a mammoth sort-through of the photos and I think this is it!  (heaves a sigh of relief…)

Firstly, since this is the only garment in this post still in our possession (apart from the Grim Reaper come burqa outfit, that is); a cardigan I knitted for Craig.  It is knitted in the fair isle method.  Above is a picture Craig took of me wearing his cardigan on a holiday last year (isn’t he sweet, giving his cold inadequately-dressed wife his nicely pre-warmed cardigan to wear, hmmm?  What a gentleman!)
And some close-ups of the cardigan I took today…
showing the right front, and at right the wrong side of the fair isle knitting… (as is correct, the yarn is carried over at the back with no weaving in, only if the distance is four stitches or less…)

Now, some costumes…
Sam as “Link”.  I thought he was so cute in this.  He loved this little outfit and often wore it just for everyday wear.  (if you would like to see what this cute little jigger looks like now, go here…)

Sam, as… guess who?  Hehe, the famous Harry Potter, natch, compete with broomstick and Hedwig the owl.  
On that note, a black cloak is such a useful thing to have in the dress-up box.  It can be the basis for so many costumes.

Here is the same robe again, worn by Cassie as Hermione, complete with Garfield Crookshanks the cat… I threw together the skirt and tie as well, but they do not bear close inspection…!)

(I’ve shown this picture before… but here it is again just to illustrate the versatility of the plain black robe as a costume), Tim and two of his mates as Grim Reapers.  I made all three of their costumes.

Tim’s same costume again, this time worn by me to an Arabian Nights party.  I didn’t want to hire an outfit and I didn’t want to make some bejewelled thing I would never wear again, and as every single female I have seen in the Arabian region is dressed something like this, so I was like, yeah this’ll do.  I naively assumed other girls would have the same idea…  As it turned out I was literally the only female dressed (I thought) anywhere near authentically!  Also the only one not heavily sequinned and baring plenty of belly-flesh…  I confess the costume was abandoned when we decided to start dancing!  Don’t worry I had a skirt and top on underneath…

So, away from costumes now, and a ball-gown of my own design that I made for balls in years gone by (Sorry for the headless shot but my face and my hair look awful in this picture…!)  It is silk organza, overlaying silk and silk jersey layers, three layers in all.  It had a beaded and embroidered neckpiece, both beaded and embroidered by me, that is…

A dress I made for Cassie for her graduation dance at the end of primary school.  It was a simple turquoise cotton halter neck dress, the fabric had metallic gold lines randomly strewn across.  I also made her jewellery, of turquoise glass fish beads and strands of gold wire.

Some rather lovely (if I say so myself) wide-legged white pants that she wore almost constantly for a summer, and a little white broderie anglaise blouse.  Both my own design.

Going way back, and this shirt is from a Vogue designer pattern that I believe my mother still has my copy…  I know I also made and am wearing here the small-waisted and very flared skirt from the same pattern too…

I made both the skirt and top and also my necklace here.  The top was an experiment, I flipped the shoulders out in a twist to get this cowl-like effect.  It used to get a lot of compliments, believe it or not! (my friends are very kind)  We are sitting on one of our sofas in its first slipcover, made by me too…  (now looks like this)

Some more dresses.  I really regret now I never got any good pictures of these two.  The white and red one was rather nice; it was a dress, but looked like a matching skirt and camisole when I was wearing it, as it had layers in several graduated lengths.  My own design.  The patchwork dress, also my own design, took lots of planning; I bought the fabrics separately and cut and pieced them together, then made the dress.  It has smaller squares at the top, graduating to larger squares around the midriff, and then down to the largest squares at the hemline.  It is all on the bias, with a handkerchief hem, and I loved it!

A drop waisted, handkerchief hemmed dress of white dotted swiss voile, pictured against a famous backdrop.  I still have this Vogue pattern too, actually…

And that should be all folks!
From now on, I will only be showing newly made stuff here….

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Weddings, parties, and other special events…

27/08/2011 4:23 am \ 11 Comments \

… seem to be the only times we ever took any photos of our family.  So thank goodness for those!  
I didn’t do a heck of a lot of sewing when I had three tiny children.  I do have an excuse.  I had three tiny children…
But I did manage to churn out a few little things.  Oh including, come to think of it, the quilts for all our beds.  They were major.  So I guess I still got a lot done.
Here are some other things:
Book Week wasn’t a big thing when my children were little like it seems to be now.  But I recall a few sporadic requirements for costumes.  I didn’t make this fabulous dog costume, loaned from a friend, but I did make the little top and pinafore that my grubby little daughter is wearing in the background.  Another TopKids pattern.

Here on the left is an outfit made just for Sam (see, he didn’t miss out!), a tartan button-up shirt and some navy corduroy jeans with some of the tartan using in the detailing, to make it a co-ordinating “outfit”.  I was into “outfits” for my kids back then, and always made tops and bottoms to match each other.  Both were using TopKids patterns.

Following are three little dresses I made for my daughter, using the same Simplicity pattern, a very nice design which had a button-up front bodice, and a sash inserted in the side seams to cinch in the waist with a lovely big bow at the back.  Or a rough knot of some kind, depending on how busy her mother was that morning… 

I customised the pink gingham version with lace edged pockets.  It was one of my favourite dresses for her at this time. 

The blue one here had gold stars printed on the fabric, and I sewed on a single star shaped button at the top, like a brooch.  In this picture, her first day at pre-school, she is standing beside a white wooden chair that Craig made, and I painted.  It was made of jarrah, so it weighed a tonne!

And my brother and sister-in-law’s wedding… I made the two bridesmaids dresses and the flower girls dress.  And yes, now I do wonder at my own sanity at attempting this feat when I had all those little children underfoot at home…  but I managed it!  (Sorry about the grainy picture, but this is the only one I have of all three of us)

(This isn’t necessarily illustrating any extra in the way of handmade-ness, but I included it because I just really love this picture.  This is my wonderful family, including my parents, my two brothers and my two sisters-in-law)

 The two bridesmaids dresses were from a Vogue pattern, and had boned bodices, with a lovely and very flattering folded portrait neckline.  I hand-sewed on all that gold lace, and miraculously got the motifs to fit perfectly on the two different sizes so I would not have to chop any in half.  Cassie’s little flower girl dress was adorable, and had a miniature sweetheart neckline, big puffy sleeves, cascading ruffles down the back of the skirt and a big bow tied in the small of her back.  Sigh…  both my dress and hers have been passed on, and I only have C’s dress (the other bridesmaid), which is pictured below.  It is a bigger size than Bessie who is modelling it here, thus necessitating Cassie’s hand you can see there unobtrusively pulling it in at the back to illustrate what it actually looks like when it fits the wearer.
Of course now I look at it and see multitude little imperfections, but at the time I was pretty darn proud of myself.

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