FuoriBorgo

American sewing

I'm the mood for sunshine today - so although we actually haven't done any beaching or sewing recently, I'm posting some photos taken just before the harsh winter hit.

I hadn't used an American sewing pattern for many years, the last one a Simplicity Taekwondo outfit that I adapted to matching pjs for the boys when they toddled (that dates it!), and during the last several years of struggling and making do with somewhat incomprehensible (to me) French and Japanese patterns (here and here), I'd forgotten all about the, indeed, simplicity and comfort of sewing in a language that I could understand. In fact, this particular oliver + s pattern, After-School Shirt, which comes with very detailed step-by-step instructions that even a beginner could easily follow, and with clearly marked and traceable patterns, sewed like a breeze.

As an American pattern, though, it uses inches as unit of length.  Of course, inches!  Now, please tell me that I'm not the only non-English/American/Canadian who has problems with non-decimal units of measure?  Using inches, and all those intimidating fractions (like 11⁄4"), is a stretch for my mathematical abilities far beyond what I'm normally prepared to do when sewing.  (Don't forget, I have a high school boy and middle school one, and I need to reserve my scientific brainpower solely for those moments when I have to at least pretend that I'm following what my boys tell about the algebra, physics, and mathematics they're studying - so no complex arithmetic when I sew, please!)

Anyhow, I didn't bother to measure the eleven fourths of an inch.  One thing I've learned with Japanese and French sewing is that sewing allows a fair bit of scope for creativity and interpretation, and although my fractions of inches are certainly off, Rebecca's After-School Blouse, with its cute two buttons at the front and two buttons at the back yoke, turned out just lovely.  

just in time!

Winter came late this year, but when it arrived this weekend, it came in full force, bringing with it an army of stormy winds, copious snowfalls and icy temperatures.  Fortunately, I'd finished Rebecca's flannel pajamas just in time.

For the top, I used Anna Maria Horner's Loulou flannel and the Chemise de Nuit pattern I made last year, except this time I cropped it a bit.  I like the elasticized neckline and cuffs of this design: so easy for mamma to sew a perfect fit, so easy for girl to slip on and off!

To make the pants, I'd bought plain flannel in solid gray, and to liven it a little I did some rows of simple running stitching at the bottom, trying to match the color of the embrodery threads with the print of the top.  I really like how it came out - such a quick and fun handstitching job - and I'm thinking of getting some plain flannel to make PJs for myself, and just brighten the fabric up with the same trick.

Winter and its cold army is apparently going to linger on for the whole week, but my girl will have warm and comfy nights in her new flannel pajamas.

just now

I just finished some sewing, and I'm planning a little embroidering.

-    my brother was in India
-    all natural in the bathroom, by Riana  

Happy weekend!

sewing for 2012

While in the US I splurged a bit, and bought some fabrics that I'd been coveting for a long time.  Oh,  the joy of online shopping, in a place where you know the Italian mail-person won't charge you some surprise tax or other when they deliver your foreign package (I currently have a 5-year-old unresolved claim with the Italian Post Office for massive taxes applied to a little baby gift I received from the US when Rebecca was born).  The only inconvenience, of course, was that I had to limit my fabric enthusiasm to the size of our luggage.  Which, come to think of it, maybe was a good thing!

I shopped at QuiltHome.com during their Christmas promotions, and was very happy with the customer service, especially as they invited me to visit their store and even to have lunch with them (unfortunately, I couldn't make the trip up - next time!).  

I got some flannel by Anna Maria Horner from her LouLouThi collection to make PJ's for Rebecca (QuiltHome seem to have run out of this particular pattern).  It was more expensive than I'd thought, so I bought just enough to make the top, and then got a piece of matching solid plain-gray flannel (believe me, it really is matching, although it doesn't appear so in the photo) from the local Jo-Ann to make the pants, and have plans to do some colorful embroidery to spruce them up a bit.  Something like this:

I also bought some laminate fabric, which I'm very excited about as I've never sewed oilcloth before: the kind of oilcloth you find in this country, in fact, is too sad for words, and is merely intended to cover your even sadder kitchen table.

You'd never call this floral oilcloth pattern "sad," would you?  It's a Kaffe Fassett's collection, and it will look great on Rebecca as a hooded raincoat.  I wouldn't mind having it on my kitchen table either, actually!

And lastly, something for me: another bright and colorful Kaffe Fassett fabric (this is also unavailable from QuiltHome at the moment).  Oh, so many sewing plans!

embroidering with wool

I announced the winner of my gift-away in the body of the post here.  Thank you everyone for entering!

Did I tell you I bought a gorgeous little embroidered purse at the flea market the other day?  Yes, I know, I told you already (here), but I like to tell you again!  What made me fall in love with that 60s purse was the bold orange & brown large floral embroidery, in a perfect Scandinavian vintage style (I actually have no idea what Scandinavian vintage patterns look like, but somehow this embroidery suggests Scandinavia to me).

The embroidery is made in thick cotton thread - thicker than any embroidery floss, probably close to a #10 thread, of which I only have white (I do covet a nice stash of colorful crochet threads, but we would first need a bigger "storing staircase" in our house).  Still, I have many wool yarn remnants, so I decided to use those instead.  Inspired by my new-old purse, I embroidered with wool. 

I'd actually been wanting to have a go at embroidering with wool since seeing Melissa's awe-inspiring embroideries, and Monica's beautiful recent work.  Monica had told me something that really piqued my interest:  that because wool is fuzzy, it hides a multitude of mistakes!  So wool seemed the perfect material to try some vintage-Scandinavian flea-market copycat free-hand embroidery.

And Monica was right: wool has a fluffy, chunky texture that makes embroidering with it very satisfying.  With one stitch you cover a lot of ground, and if that stitch is a little imperfect, it won't be noticed in the dense overall look of woollen embroidery.  Just a little piece of advice: wear a thimble - beacause of its texture, wool needs that little extra convincing to go through the fabric.

I think I've fallen in love with a new craft ... 

blouse for which season?

I made this casual blouse at the end of winter, when I found a remainder of cotton jersey at the market, with a bright, colorful pattern which seemed like it would be perfect for the coming springtime.  But winter went on and on, long, cold and gray, and when spring finally came and I took out my new blouse, it seemed so dark and uncheerful:

So, back to the wardrobe it went, awaiting autumn - a time for more subdued tones, right?

Months later, autumn is here, and I'm still not convinced.  The blouse's pattern is from a Japanese book (coton & linen ISBN978-4-277-72252), and as has happened to me several times before with sewing projects from Japanese books (like this, for instance), it didn't turn out quite the way I expected, and seems a tad shapeless.  Or maybe it's not quite right for the type of fabric I chose.  Who knows?

In any case, sewing with this jersey fabric was a pleasure.  True, it's a little slippery to work with, and you have to be careful not to stretch it.  But it doesn't unravel, which makes the seaming so much quicker and easier! 

Hmmm...  Are these autumn colors?  I don't think so.  Right now I'm thinking of putting it back in the wardrobe to await winter.  It will look bright and cheerful over one of the turtlenecks that are Layer One of my winter uniform.

for our youngest writer

And just like that, she can write her name.  And just like it'd happened years before, when her brothers filled me with the same wonder, I found myself weeping little happy tears.  Because it is always a wonderful and moving surprise when a child suddenly decodes the magic of writing, and realizes that words are made by sounds that can be represented by symbols that they can reproduce!  

It all started one day earlier this summer, when Rebecca saw me doodling in the damp sand by the shore, and we improvised a game where we each made a flat "sand board," and as I traced a letter, she'd copy it.  Soon she was working with pen and paper alongside her brothers, as they did their school work (older brothers are such a powerful incentive to learning new skills!).  And now, at the end of summer, she can write her name.  Just like that.

We decided to mark this new achievement with a pencil case.  We made the whole thing together, from the color scheme (red and cherry-pink felt with turquoise accents), to the ribbons (the Little Red Riding Hood ribbon from Retrosaria, and another I don't remember from where), to the stitching (the pattern is from skip to my lou, where there are several versions of a "crayon roll" - I chose the simplest, and simplified it further).

 

While we worked on this together, Rebecca alone chose the contents: every last thing that could be stuffed inside!  And I know that the youngest writer in our family will use it all.

a spot of sewing and refashioning

What do you think is the right length for summer dresses?  (Ok, so that's a tough question on a Monday morning!)  Personally, I'm not too fussy, and my decision depends mainly on the occasion and the temperature. When I garden in the summer, for example, I like to wear a short, above-the-knee dress, because I don't like a lot of fabric on me in the heat - I have a bunch of old dresses, short and loose, that I use almost exclusively for gardening. Besides, gardening in a short dress makes me feel I'm doing a good job of blending in with the rest of the female population in the fields in our village: women who wear practical dresses in summer and winter alike (I confess that I only wear a dress in the summer), and with sickle or hoe in hand (yes, yes I've got those!) and a handkerchief on their hair, tied with a knot at the nape (I'm not much of a head cover lover), all working by hand in the fields.

But I have two linen dresses, formerly pregnancy clothes, that are just a touch too long to be comfortable when I garden.

Way below the knee, and just below the knee!  Not comfortable for gardening.

I still wear them, but usually I have to make a knot on one side, and with my dress gathered up this way, and sickle and hoe in hand off I go to my garden.  Last week, though, I decided to fix the length of those gardening dresses, and do a spot of refashioning, too.

To do this, I got some lace at the street market.  The choice was limited, but here's what I came up with:

Taking the dresses in a couple of inches and adding the trimmings took no time at all.  Not a glamorous kind of sewing, just simple hemming on old dresses, but refashioning and turning those old dresses into something that I actually can comfortably wear again was very satisfying.  Besides, they make me feel I'm doing a pretty good job of blending in with the rest of my fellow lady farmers in the village:

Well, sort of.

Coton, lin et Liberty

This is a book I coveted for only a couple of weeks, before I gave in and bought it, as I'd known all along I would: because I truly love the children's sewing book, Intemporels pour enfants, from which I made several patterns (you can find a list of them here), and the moment I saw that a new sewing book - a sewing book for women! - by Astrid Le Provost (creator of Citronille, and author of five sewing books) had come out, I had to have it.

To tell the truth, though, Coton, lin et Liberty was a bit of a disappointment when I first opened it.  The fifteen garments - several tops, a couple of dresses, and skirts, a pair of pants and shorts - aren't quite what I'd imagined.  Some of the photos are plain, and probably don't do justice to the garments; to me they look a little shapeless and dull, or at least, not my style.

However, the patterns are explained in more detail than in Intemporels pour enfants, and they come with several images of the different steps required to make each garment, which make them so much the easier to follow for those who are not comfortable in French.  Like, me!  And the universal pictorial language of the book is a huge help.

There's a pattern for a little simple loose top with cropped short sleeves, the Haut à petites manches froncées, which I tried first, because I happened to have the perfect fabric.

And work on this Haut went very smoothly, including the mysterious technique for making the slit at the back, the French patte indéchirable, which had previously given me so much trouble, and which somehow went fairly easily this time.

Except that I got hung up at the armholes, because as far as I could work out, neither the image of all the pieces to cut out, nor the tracings for the pattern, indicated that bias was also needed for the armholes, and the extra bias I'd happened to make was enough for one armhole only (I would venture to say that these are errata in the pictorial language).

So, here's my  Haut à petites manches froncées, one armhole (the left) and the buttonhole at the back still to be completed.

I didn't manage to finish the top, because my little assistant became very reluctant and extremely concerned about distant thunder approaching, which - she explained - she couldn't shut out of her mind.

So I set aside my French sewing for women, took some photos, and I went to read real picture books with my frightened girl.

sewn for the garden

I'm not sure how it happened, but even though I had one less child to look after this week, and I didn't have to cook dinner twice because we got invited out, I've been so, so busy.  And will be until Saturday.  But then there's Sunday, when I can finally tackle the following:

-    Take one of our new upcycled deck chairs - the frame of which we picked from a neighbor's woodpile (by now they know we're a little odd, and given to collecting garbage, like ancient wine demijohns and broken-down sewing machines, or decrepit rakes ...), and for which I sewed fabric pieces almost a month ago, but which we've never really had time to use.
-    Open the chair.
-    Sit in the garden doing nothing.
-    Sweet nothing, except for chatting with my kids:
-    The boy whom I haven't seen in a whole week, and who's flying back on Saturday from his tennis adventure in some Baltic country or other (here)
-    And the boy whom I haven't really seen in several weeks now, as he's had his nose deep in his school books in preparation for his state exams, which finish on Saturday afternoon (who knew Saturday afternoons were working days in Italy?)
-     And my girl too, whom I haven't seen in ... two, or perhaps three, seconds.

Yes indeed, this weekend I'm finally going to sit in our new upcycled deck chairs, and do nothing except for be with my family.  And I'll ignore the three more deck chair frames sitting in the barn, waiting for their fabric pieces to be sewn.

But first, I'll have to choose which deck chair to sit on.  Decisions, decisions ...

Happy weekend!