Thrifty

Yep, another summer top for my daughter. What can I say? It only takes slightly over half a yard of fabric to make one of these for her - even Walmart doesn't sell tops this cheap, I'll bet. Although I am paying myself less than sweatshop rates for my labour....

You can't really make out the gathers in this patterned fabric, but I liked the way that it went with the printed twill tape - and my daughter likes the bunnies on the printed twill tape.

It's a good time to be saving some money: the air-conditioning on my car has come a cropper. Here's hoping for cool weather 'til I can get it fixed. I'm a winter person. I can't take the California heat in a car without a/c...

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Translation of the day:

UK English: come a cropper = to fail utterly in US English

UK English: skint = broke / poor in US English

As in, I'm going to be skint for a while thanks to this expensive car repair... pah.

Kids' Clothes Week continued

I managed to get more things finished during Kids' Clothes Week than I thought I would, which is certainly not the norm around here (despite being a mum for over 7 years, I still catch myself feeling surprised that having 2 children around the place can often turn a 5 minute task into a 2 hour long one).
This dress is made from a pattern in this book (ISBN: 978-4-529-04526-1). The local police helped me find the sewing time for this one, as we had a reverse 911 call letting us know that there was a felony suspect on the run in our area and that we should stay indoors with the windows and doors locked. With the way that my windows were rattling and shaking every time that the helicopters circled, I'm not sure that locking them was much of a hindrance, but still...

I think that I'd have done a better job at lining up the tartan (plaid) if my hands hadn't been shaking and if I hadn't been jumping up every 5 minutes to listen to the breaking news update / peek out the windows with a baseball bat in hand. To be honest, I gave up caring about alignment after a couple of attempts at pinning. Looking back, I should have just cut the bottom part on the diagonal.

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The sewing was a welcome distraction that day. Apparently some of the SWAT action was only 8 doors up from my house. Whew.

This one was a quick and easy sew. I used a similar method to the smocked top and dress that I've made in the past, but did a gathered panel on the front instead of the smocking.

It should do well for the hot summer days that we get around here.

This one was another quick and easy sew, using the pattern that I put together a while back. Do you remember my mentioning last year that I had a peasant top cut out and ready to sew? I'm ashamed to say that this is that top. In my defense, I had lost an arm panel, so had to spend, oh, all of 5 minutes, looking through a scraps bin for more of the same fabric...

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You might also remember that there seems to be an earthquake every time that I make one of these tops. I thought that I had got away with it this time, but then the news let me know that there had been a 3.9-magnitude earthquake a little further up the coast, that I hadn't felt. Hmm. 3 tops, 3 earthquakes...

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Today is the last day of the challenge, but I'm not sure that I'll get to squeeze in any sewing time today. It looks like I have a fun day ahead of me: standing over my kids while they clean their rooms. That's another 5 minute task that they like to turn into a 2 hour long one...

Kids' Clothes Week

I have a backlog of things to show you, a husband who has the ridiculous notion that I should be cleaning the house right now and, ok, I really should be giving the floor a sweep right now. Still, it's Kids' Clothes Week over at Elsie Marley, so I'm squeezing in a quickie post.

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Kids' Clothes Week was badly needed around here: I tend to plan to make my kids some clothes, so I don't buy any, but then I don't get around to actually putting aside the time to make some. Luckily Meg has given me some motivation, as my daughter's belly was starting to peek out from under a few too many too-small shirts...

So, here's today's effort: a plain long-sleeved top, based a little upon the pictures that I've seen of the Summer Blouse in Heather Ross' Weekend Sewing. I made up a wee pattern and put a little bit of printed twill tape on it to add a little interest.

She wanted the sleeves rolled up, like my shirt sleeves were..

Thank you for all the sweet comments about the embroidery. I was asked if I planned on sharing any of the embroidery drawings - is that something that any of you would be interested in? I keep planning on researching pdf writers and working out how to put pdfs on blogger. If anyone can recommend a pdf writer, please let me know. It would make sharing things a lot simpler.

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I'm off to sweep the floor, then. Take care..