Happy Friday + Five and Ten Designs

Happy Friday, friends! I have a special, unexpected K outfit for you today. A little while ago, Heidi of Elegance & Elephants generously bestowed me the fabulous Five and Ten Designs Volume One ebook. I’m sure you’re already familiar with it. Oh, it’s so genius: take five basic pattern pieces and make ten (or more if you so choose!) looks from them. This book is so drool-worthy – gorgeous photography, beautiful styling, and of course, wonderful designs by talented designers, Heidi being one of them. The size range is from 12 months to 10 years, so you’ll be able to use these patterns for a long, long time.

I was in a quandary though. A few other lovely bloggers have been posting their creations from the ebook, and I noticed that the look I wanted to sew was getting featured all over the place. This gave me pause because I don’t like to feel like I’m copying…but in the end, I went with my first instinct and made look #2. I LOVE it.

The ruffles! That back with the ties! I can’t stand how adorable this top designed by Jessica of The Sewing Rabbit is.

A side note: two of K’s close buddies suffered broken bones this summer (the right hand for one, the right arm for the other — what were the chances?) and she’s been slightly obsessed with the idea of casts and slings. Hence, the fake broken hand/arm shots:

The sling is the linen infinity scarf I made earlier this week – very resourceful of her. And that would be FOE (fold over elastic) on her hand.

The instructions were excellent and I followed them almost exactly. I made the ties thinner, and did the binding a little differently. It should have been smooth sailing. However, there is something about this (amazing) Nani Iro fabric that caused my gathering baste stitches to get stuck, so I had the darnedest time getting the ruffle to gather. What should have been a quick project turned into a bit of a nightmare, especially since K decided to have a meltdown of epic proportions while I was finishing it up.

I used a size 8 (K normally wears a 7), and originally meant to make it a dress-length but didn’t have enough fabric. I do wish I had added just a little more length, but I think with the 10-minute linen-blend skirt that I banged out on the fly, it looks oh-so-chic. Very French, non?

As always the barometer of success is K’s reaction and the verdict? “Is this for meeeeeee???? Yay!” She has been wearing it non-stop.

I’m so honored to have been given this chance to try out Five and Ten Designs, and I can’t thank Heidi enough. I’m a huge fan of her work and will definitely be stitching up her looks and the others from the ebook in the coming weeks! Please note, I almost forgot to add, that all opinions are 100% my own.

Have a lovely, lovely weekend everyone! See you on Monday, and signing off with a haiku:

Next week is the start
Second grade is here at last
Our fluttering hearts

 

Sewing for Me: So-So Tees (it’s about the scarf, really)

Whenever I work on putting these Thursday outfit posts together, I feel very self-conscious and sort of ridiculous as I go through dozens and dozens of pictures of myself. I wish I could be blasé, but I’m really not. It’s so very out of character for me to do this. The other night a friend invited me to an event and I ran into someone who told me she reads my blog. I was surprised and turned bright, bright red, and all eyes at the table were on me. Immediately, I thought of these awkward photos plastered all over the place and I wanted to whip out my ipad to delete the posts.

But the moment passed, and no one gave a fig newton about my blog (though the woman who reads my blog was very kind).

And I have to say, I am much more comfortable in front of the camera now, and I like being able to look back on all the things I’ve been sewing/creating for myself. It’s fun to see the progress (if any) I’m making, the successes and failures and everything in between. And these tops I made are smack-dab in the “in between” category.

So let’s talk about that. I used Butterick 5335 for these simple, raglan tees. They aren’t knocking my socks off and a lot of it has to do with the dreaded waviness at the hems that I couldn’t iron out (I tried, oh I tried). Still, I don’t think they’re horrible. They’re just not all that great.

I made the navy one first and used some tissue weight jersey knit with lovely drape. The curse of the crazy long torso resulted in basically a cropped top, and I wore my high-waisted jeans (aka: my mom jeans) reminiscent of the 70s in order to avoid flashing you with my belly. See the waviness at the sleeve and bottom hem? Shudder.

Of course, I could have used wonder tape or other clever tricks to avoid the undulating hems, but could I be bothered? No, I just decided to add my favorite scarf to hide my lackluster tee.

I do like the raglan style and it’s so fast to sew, I decided to try another. I didn’t have much of the pink knit, and according to the bit of paper stapled to it, it’s a Michael Levine fabric. Super soft, very comfortable, really stretchy. I didn’t have enough for the sleeves, so I dug through my scraps and found the coral stripes I used for this top here. I kept my fingers crossed that it would look cute.

It’s kinda sorta cute, I guess. I opened up the neckline and added about five inches to the length and now it’s a little too long, methinks. And nope, still couldn’t get the waviness under control…

So again, let’s hide behind the scarf. The scarf. The moment I saw it last winter in a darling little boutique, I knew we were meant to be together. It’s a cotton/acrylic blend, and I usually avoid anything with acrylic – however, this is the softest, most versatile scarf I’ve ever owned. It’s basically a mini blanket/pashmina (without the luxe pashmina fiber content). It matches pretty much everything in my wardrobe, which, I guess if you only own neutral colors like I do, isn’t such a rare occurrence.

Anyway, it’s my fave. And I think the scarf may elevate the ho-hum tees to an acceptable level. What say you?

Fall Goal: Home Revamp

A while ago, I mentioned that I have a love of mid-century furniture. Much like my fabric dealer, I used to have a mid-century furnishing goods dealer, who was a former schoolteacher turned vintage furniture refurbisher, and he sold his wares out of his cute Craftsman house garage. His prices were incredibly reasonable and the quality of his products was topnotch, so I’ve purchased quite a few things from him.

For example, I got this great walnut credenza for a steal (about $200) and he had completely restored it to near pristine conditions and delivered it for free. I’m a fan of this era’s furniture because of their petite stature and often simple, streamlined silhouettes. They fit perfectly in our late 1940s townhouse. Sadly, he is no longer in the biz, and I miss him.

The lamp was a thrift store find for eight dollars. It was an excellent haul – I seem to have good thrift store karma because I usually find exactly what I’m looking for (I’ll have to show you my amazing mid-century dining chairs from Goodwill some time when I get a chance to photograph them properly).

I’m a fairly neat and organized person and I’ve been doing pretty well with the purging, but time and time again with my hectic schedule, the last place I focus on is my home and we still have so.much.stuff. I don’t want you to think my house is normally this minimalist (though I would love it if it were), because usually there are piles of bills, paperwork, my sketchbooks, my camera, both M’s and K’s parapernelia — they’re cluttering up the beautiful clean lines. Everything seems to end up on this credenza.

I’m excited for fall for a thousand reasons, but at the top of the list is that K’s return to school means focused time for me to get more done. And that means getting my house back in order. I need better organizational systems. I might even get all feng shui. I want to unlock the front door and feel like I’m returning to a sanctuary. I’m much more of a fall cleaning person than a spring cleaning one – I feel the need to massively revamp and organize and clean when the leaves start changing colors.

What about you? Do you have fall plans to organize?

 

Dancing Sparrows

 

This watercolor painting I did was inspired by a Japanese folktale. The story is about an old man married to a less-than-nice woman, and how she maliciously hurts his pet sparrow one day (cuts out its tongue!), causing the sparrow to fly away. When the old man goes in search for the bird, he discovers that the sparrow — despite its tonguelessness — can talk, and has a family in the woods that entertain the old man with food, drink and dancing. There is a moral about greed and cruelty, and the bitter wife gets punished in the end, but what I loved about the story as a little girl was the visual of dancing sparrows wearing kimonos.

I had lunch with a new friend yesterday and we were talking about how so many classic fairy/folk tales are filled with graphicly frightening stories. Modern day stories for kids are so often devoid of conflict with nary a scary or even truly sad element, which is all well and good, but sometimes I wonder if it’s necessary to make them all so Hollywood happy ending-ish? I don’t remember being horrified by the tongue-cutting of the sparrow story (though maybe I should gave been?), but do remember thinking how lovely it would be to discover that your pet could dance and communicate.

I spend a lot of time thinking of the balance between providing protection and awareness for my child. How do I help her cope with disappointment, loss, fear, hurt, danger, etc. etc. without traumatizing or coddling her? I believe stories help a lot.

This reminds me of an exchange I had with K the other day:

K: C’mon Mommy, we’ve gotta go to [friend’s] house ASAP!

Me: Okay, okay, hold your horses…

K: Hey Mama? Did you know that ASAP comes from Aesop’s tales?

 

Monday Outfit: Mini Me Style

Good morning! How was your weekend? We’ve had a relaxing one full of bike-riding and now we’re counting down the days until school starts on September 4th…

With that in mind, this week I have a double-feature! Be warned, there are endless photos coming up. But first, let me back up a bit and start from the beginning. A few weeks ago, sweet Yeka of Lollipop Garden Grafts contacted me to see if I would be interested in a sew-along – I’m always up for a fun sew-along, so I heartily agreed.

We wanted to incorporate Japanese patterns of course (Yeka sews beautiful clothes from many Japanese sewing books) and some kind of mommy-and-me matching and back-to-school/fall theme. I know, that’s a lot going on.

At first I was a little stumped because although I often make clothes for K that I want to wear myself, I’m not actually a fan of matchy matchy outfits for me and K. I thought and thought and thought….

Then I remembered that I had sumptuous linen fabric I’d purchased here ages ago in two colorways and instantly knew that they would make great fall-inspired tops.

Once I had the fabric selected, I had to go through my usual rigmarole of researching my extensive collection of Japanese pattern books. I wanted a similar silhouette for the two of us, and hit jackpot when I saw the tunic in Simple Modern Sewing. I knew that there were virtually identical patterns for kids in my many books. Don’t let the muted hue of the fabric fool you, this linen is gorgeous. It’s striated with greens and blues and greys with marigold stripes and looks olive or blue-greyish depending on the light. Love love love.

For K, I used a pattern from this book, and I kept the buttons the same on both tops (from my vast supply, compliments of my mom – the buttons are edged with metal around the holes, upping the cool factor. The devil is in the details, right?). Her fabric is a light red with the same marigold stripes, and the red is very close in color to this top that I made a while ago. As you can see, I had some fabric left over so hey, why not make some coordinating infinity scarves? There are about ten thousand tutorials online, but I’ve made these often so I just whipped them up – so easy!

These tops are fabulous. I love that they’re of the same spirit but not identical. I did make things harder for myself by hand-stitching the neck binding and sleeve cuffs for both tops, but I’m very proud of the neat finish. They’re comfortable, and though my version borders (as per usual) on maternity wear, I think with the scarf and boots, I can get away with it in cooler temps.

The photoshoot was tricky because I always try to keep K’s face cropped out and with our height difference, I had very few images to select from. But we got kind of creative, no?

I also made the jeggings for K, and I have now used up the last of my beloved denim knit. I’ve made a skirt out of this same fabric for K before and it gets serious wear and matches everything. I need to get some more once my fabric fast is over. I used this book for the jeggings, though at this point, I could make leggings in my sleep.

I am especially in love with K’s outfit. She looks so stylish and ready for autumn, don’t you think? I was a little sad that she ditched the boots which you can see in the photo where she’s twirling, saying they were too uncomfortable and not as fancy as her patent leather black flats – I want a pair of those nautical galoshes for myself.

These were fun outfits to sew, and now I think I have to go make myself more tunics because it’s mega-comfy and will become a fall outfit staple! Thanks for coming up with the idea Yeka! You should jump on over to her blog to see her adorable creations, below is a little sneak peek — what about you, do you like to dress in matching/coordinating outfits with your little ones?