30

Today's my birthday.

My girls treated me to breakfast in bed, my co-workers decorated my desk, put on morning tea and treated me to lunch and to top it all off I've had lots of lovely messages and phone calls from family and friends.  Hubby even gave me some time yesterday to finish off my new dress - Vogue 8685, more on that soon.

I think that 30 is going to be great.

Friday Night Sewing

Friday night I had a lovely time messing around in my sewing room.

I sewed up some cushion covers from my recent fabric purchases and whipped up a tablecloth.  I'm not sure if hemming a tablecloth counts as actual sewing, but I'm claiming it.

I'm loving all the chevron items being shown on Pinterest (I've spent more hours than I'd like to admit browsing all the 'pins').  They all seem to have the zig zags running horizontal, but I preferred them running vertically so that's what I've done.

My cushions won't dazzle you - there's no fancy piping or trims - but it was a lovely relaxing night and that's all I wanted. 

New Balloon

Not too long ago Tessuti Fabrics featured some linen jersey as their fabric of the month. It took me a couple of days to decide to order - I loved the look of the fabric but at $28 a meter I needed to think before I ordered.  I ended up ordering some white linen jersey and some beautiful navy merino jersey. 

All that to say I've made another Balloon top.

Could of sworn this was straight when I took the photo!

I knew I wanted to make something that I would love and that would get a lot of use and I think this fits the bill. 

In other news I've signed up for the Kids Clothes Week Challenge.  I'm a bit to the party - it starts on Monday - but my kids really need some new gear so this challenge is ideal.  You're supposed to sew for your kids for an hour a day, every day for a week.  I'm going to do a little bit of prep work this weekend so that I can just spend my hour sewing.

Anyone else signed up for the Kids Clothes Week Challenge or Me Made June?

So nice I'm doing it twice

I'm going again people - I enjoyed Me Made March so much that I've signed on for Me Made June!

Here's my pledge:

I, Robyn sign up as a participant of Me-Made-June '11. I endeavour to wear at least one self made item each day for the duration of June 2011.

My pledge is the same as last time - one self made item a day.  It's supposed to be a challenge and it really will be - my wardrobe hasn't expanded much since March and the temps will be quite a bit lower so we'll see how we go.  If you're thinking about it I'd say give it a go - you'll get some really lovely support from other sewists and may even find a few new blogs to read.

Flying home tomorrow so hopefully this sewing blog will have some actual sewing on it soon!

Not sewing, shopping

Thanks for helping me out with the dress pattern.  The consensus was that I should definitely glam up, but maybe try a different pattern.  So I'm open to suggestions, I love maxi dresses so maybe I'll head in that direction, what do you think about Simplicity 2219?  I really like this version.

Still enjoying my holiday but I really miss my sewing machine. There's a small indepenent fabric shop in town that I like to visit everytime we're here, this time I picked up a cool knit fabric for one of my new Vogue patterns and some stretch interfacing.  At night I've been madly blog surfing and browsing Etsy and these three fabrics are winging their way to me.  I can highly recommend this shop - excellent customer service and great fabrics.

I'm about to go on a cushion sewing marathon.  Two of those fabrics are for the kids and the other will be for our bed, bet you can't guess which one is for us ;-)

Opinions please...

I need your opinion please.
My 30th birthday is coming up and I'm in two minds about what to wear.  On the one hand I'd love to go a bit glam in Vogue 1102.

I'm not a big bow person so I'd probably leave the strap across the back and use a decorative buckle or pin to give it a bit of bling.  I even joined Pattern Review so that I could read all the reviews and everyone was very positive about the pattern.



Or do I forget about the glam dress and just wear my jeans and a nice top?

Bonus - the pattern is currently on sale!  What to do, what to do... 

New Toy!

This post is brought to you from my birthday present and favourite new toy - my laptop!

My 30th is coming up (just under a month) and my wonderful husband and three girls bought me a laptop for my birthday.  They gave it to me a little bit early so that I could take it on our holiday.  So there won't be much sewing related posting while we kick back and relax with walks on the beach, way to much food and drink and plenty of family time.

I've got a couple of projects on the go, some new patterns in the mail and a birthday dress to organise so the mojo is flowing and I can't wait to get back to my machine.

Wardrobe staple #1 - Simplicity 3686

I think this is the fourth time I've made these pants and there's another pair in the works.  Me Made March showed me that I'm really lacking in some wardrobe basics or staples - like black pants.

I bought this fabric from an ebay seller a couple of years ago and it has been sitting in my stash waiting to be sewn up, I think I might have enough left over to make a black work skirt as well.  It's a light weight black wool fabric with absolutley no stretch!  I cut a size 14, narrowed the leg slightly, added 2 inches to the length, attached cotton tape to the waistband to stop any potential 'growth' from body heat, and fully lined them.  Because they're made from wool I also used the lining fabric as the waistband facing, not the fashion fabric as recommended. 

I'm not sure what I've done but there's a little bit of pulling in the crotch region (hmmmm) that hasn't been there when I've made them previously so I'm assuming that it's something I've done during construction - I just can't think what.  I was tempted to blame the wrinkles on weight gain but I still have an older pair of these in rotation and I don't have any wrinkles in them and they're exactly the same size. 

Overall I like these pants, they're going to be great for work and I have another pair of these on my to do list.

A new woman

Do you like my new do?  Maybe I don't want to know the answer to that!  My 30th is coming up and it felt like time for a change so I thought chopping off all my hair was a good idea.

On the sewing front I feel a bit overwhelmed.  I have so many ideas running around in my head but no energy to get anything done.  Does that ever happen to anyone else?

I've got a pair of pants on the go - the fly is in so the rest of the pants should come together really quickly, two dresses and a jacket cut out and a pile of fabrics and patterns all ready to go.  Now all I need is an extra couple of hours in the day. 

I did manage to finish and post my contribution to Quilts for Queensland - it's not perfect but I really like the way it turned out and hope the eventual recipient does too.

I was posting to get rid of all the pictures of me and instead I've just added more :)

It's a wrap - Me Made March 2011

Me Made March 2011, a set on Flickr.

Here's Me Made March in all its glory. You might notice there's only 29 photos in the set (and 24 displayed on screen) and there's 31 days in March (you're pretty clever), that's because two days were exact replicas and it didn't seem worth taking identical photos.

This month has really shown me the gaps in my wardrobe, I seem to need more staples - black pants, black dress, white shirt etc. Of course the next item on my sewing table is a really bright casual jacket ;)

PS - I do have a head, flickr just seems to cut it off in these smaller pictures.