Night Of The Living Dead School Girl

OK, I think this child needs therapy of some sort.  When asked to pose for a picture of her uniform this morning, this is what she came up with:

Seriously?  It looks like those Victorian death portraits.  Yay.  That’s exactly what I was going for.

This is a great skirt, which I've made twice so far and plan to make several more times in larger sizes for TLo.  (Yes, it is very confusing that the Big One wears smaller sizes than the Little One- or at least this seems to completely baffle my husband.  The Little One could, technically, be called The Wide One.  But that's just mean.  Plus we're really trying to avoid actively instilling eating disorders in our kids-- unlike several of The Big One's first-grade schoolmates, who shall remain anonymous, and oh man don't even get me started on that one.)

This is BWOF 10-2006-140.  For some reason the new skirt from BWOF 12-2009 (as shown by Angie A. on her blog today) reminded me of this skirt.  In fact, they're not really all that similar, but I like the flippy skirt idea as a general concept.  It's particularly nice for more tailored school uniform looks.  I find the oversized A-line jumpers get a little boring after a while.

Anyway, I made this in a navy twill and a khaki twill as per the Great Uniform SWAP rules.  Both are Docker remnants from someplace or other (can't remember where exactly, might be Fabric Mart, might be someplace else). 

The only real change I made to the pattern was to add buttonhole elastic to the waistband.    Or at least, I think that was a change.  Anyway, it’s a change that I usually make if it’s not already included in the pattern.  I am a devout believer in Buttonhole Elastic. 

Because The Big One is so slender at the waist and basically has no butt (she gets that from her dad), I have to pull in the waistline quite a bit or else her skirt falls off. 

I think in this picture you can still see how nice a hip curve it has though.

  

This style must have been really popular in Germany in 2006.  In 2007 I met no fewer than 5 German women who pretty much had this exact skirt in denim.  I can see why they liked it, it's pretty darn cute.

This was the best pose I could get out of The Big One.  Plus, she’s looking particularly lovely with her giant missing-tooth gap and her hair uncombed.   I’m such a good mom to post these photos for everyone in the world to see.  I’ll be sure to save them to show her prom date too.

Some Honest Thanks.

Katie has given me the Honest Scrap award. Actually, she did this last week but I’m just a little slow in following through.

“Scrap means left over, fragments, discarded material. Many times truth and honesty are discarded material, considered fragments and left over. People like us need to tell it like it is and let the scraps fall where they will.”

Here are the rules:
1. Thank the person who gave the award and list their blog and link it.

2. Share "10 Honest Things" about yourself.

3. Present this award to 7 others whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged you.

4. Tell those 7 people they've been awarded Honest Scrap and inform them of these guidelines in receiving the award.

1. Thanks:

Katie at Kadiddlehopper nominated me for this award. She has more energy than any one person should have and gets an astonishing number of projects completed every month. Plus, they look good (because I suppose you could say my kids get astonishing numbers of "projects" completed every month too, but could you wear them?? Exactly.) Thanks Katie, for sharing all your wonderful work and for passing this award on to me.

2. I Hereby and Forthwith Nominate These People:

1) Everything Just Sew (Judy)

Judy designs gorgeous baby clothes. Plain and simple. I always love to see what she posts next.

2) The Stitchery (MaryBeth)

MaryBeth is a wise person who I don't speak with often enough. She also happens to make lovely clothes and she's extremely thoughtful about her work. Lucky for us, she shares her thoughts out loud.

3) Quality Time (Angie A.)

Angie is a happy person. I like that. She also makes clothes. Or at least, she discusses making clothes. She seems to actually create clothes about as often as I do. But she has very good ideas and really, isn't that what counts?

4) Is Sewing A Sport (The Other Judy)

Judy also makes cute kids' clothes and I like her attitude (she's another happy person... I like this in other people since I'm such a miserable pessimist myself).

5) The Slapdash Sewist

This is the girlie whose name I can't ever remember. I'm going to make up for that by saying she is really funny, very insightful and makes some cool stuff to boot. Plus, she is my new hero for giving me my new motto: "As long as you're not afraid to get cute clothes dirty, you can wear them every day." Awesomeness.

6) The Pink Place

I have no idea who this woman is, but she sure does make pretty things. She hasn't been blogging long, but everything she's posted has been lovely. Quality over quantity, I always say.

7) Location: Eurasian (Katharine)

Katharine is a great sewing buddy. She hasn't done lots of posting lately, but she has a darn good reason. I'm happy to see what she does post and hopeful that we'll be able to see lots more soon.

(There are so many many blogs out there and I know I only read a fraction of them. It’s really hard to pick just 7 blogs!)

10 Truthful Things About Moi:

1) I try to feel otherwise, but I don't really like dogs. Actually, I'm not discriminating against dogs per se. I don't really like domesticated animals of any kind. Except cats. And that's mostly because they persist in really liking me, which makes it seem uncharitable to dislike them in return. This Christmas, Santa is bringing The Big One a cat. I have some serious qualms about what this will do to my fabric stash.

2) I have a small problem with collecting and, rather more importantly, never using fabric. I do try to control this addiction, however. Mostly because I'm poor. Wait. Is that two truthful things?

3) I'm pretty poor. According to the government statistics on poorness. However, I think I'm really quite well-off in the scheme of things, so this just proves that government statistics can be very misleading. Don't believe everything the Man tells you, man!

4) My parents were hippies. Sort of. Enough that I'm lucky my name isn't Starflower or Nirvana or something. Not that Nirvana is a bad name. I used to know a lovely woman with that name. Of course, she was Indian. Which makes much more sense than calling some Irish kid from North Dakota “Nirvana”.

5) I think I'm smarter than most people in any given room. Actually, technically speaking I am smarter than most people in any given room, unless the room happens to be full of nuclear physicists. However, I'm not as smart as I like to think I am.

6) Being smart has gotten me absolutely nothing in this world. Unless you count a sense of smugness about being smart. Which is pretty much useless and almost never pays the rent or makes you popular.

7) I have hardly any friends. I doubt this has anything to do with #5 or #6. No, really. I don't think it does.

8) I think sarcasm is really entertaining.

9) I wish I had more time in the day to do all the things I want to do. Actually, I just wish I wasn't so lazy. But not enough to become less lazy. It's easier to wish for more time.

10) I hate washing dishes.

Yo Mama Is So Cheap…

Sorry, I seem to be on a late-80’s Yo Mama kick lately.  Must be midlife nostalgia of some sort (although why Yo Mama jokes would make me feel nostalgic, I have no idea).

So this weekend I rushed rushed rushed (always a bad idea) and made up this little jacket for TLo.  The idea was for her to get to wear it for Thanksgiving dinner, but of course I just finished it tonight.  This is, basically, the story of our  lives.

I used Ottobre 4-2008 #4 “Hiippa” jacket.  Actually, this jacket pattern is shown two ways in the magazine and I sort of cherry-picked from both versions.  The second was 4-2008 #7 “Venny” jacket.

 

Now, the observant amongst you might be saying to yourselves, “Those models looks suspiciously like babies”.  You would, in fact, be right.  They are babies.   This pattern was sized 62 cm – 92 cm.  TLo wears at bare minimum a 110 cm.  She’s better in a 114-116 cm for width.   But this is the pattern that I was dead convinced would be the only one in my voluminous collection of patterns that would work with my fabric.  What to do, what to do? 

(sigh)  Grade it up.

I have to do a lot of size alterations on my own clothes but I’ve never done anything this extensive for the kids.  Still, unwilling to put aside my dogged pattern convictions, I didn’t have much other choice.

In a nutshell, I used the “how to upsize a pattern that is ludicrously below your own pattern size” instructions from Barbara Deckert in her lovely book Sewing for Plus Sizes: Design, Fit, and Construction for Ample Apparel.   (I’ve never actually needed to try this technique before since, although I definitely do wear a “plus” size,  I only need a size 14 at the upper chest measurement so I have ample pattern choices to alter from.  Her technique is really geared for altering beyond the standard pattern size ranges, which made it perfect for this project.)  Here’s the result on the front bodice pattern.  

The concept is to slice-and-dice the pattern into a sort of grid and spread apart the pieces by however much extra you need.  In this case I theorized that I needed about 4” in width and 2” in length across the entire garment.  I based this theory on subtracting the differences in body measurements between a size 92 and a size 110 (based on the size chart in the magazine) and adding a little more for ease.   

Essentially, all the other pattern pieces had the same frankenpattern chic going for them when I was done.  You don’t even want to know what grisly remains were left of the sleeve pattern.  I had to retrace that one completely once it was altered.

It took me a crazy-long time to get the pattern all sorted out.  Then I finally was able to cut out the fabric and sew it up, which took relatively little time at all.  I didn’t finish the inside very nicely, but since this is made from Christmas fabric and can only be worn for the next  30 days, I didn’t figure it really mattered.

And speaking of the fabric: “Yo mama is so cheap…  that she made two whole sweaters out of a minky sofa throw that she got at WalMart for $7.50.”   Here’s the first one.

Not brilliant pictures.  TLo isn’t feeling so great and in the end my upsizing theory wasn’t spot-on.  I needed to add more than 4” to the width in the chest and this one just fits.  But it’s too bad we don’t have Feel-O-Vision, because that minky fleece fabric is To. Die. For. Soft.