I want a new baby

Not another baby. A fresh one. One that doesn't do heinous things.

What heinous things you ask?

I'm not telling. 

Okay, you really wanna know?

Well, it's pudding, you see. I walked into the baby's room after his nap and . . .

On second thought, no. Trust me. You don't want to know.

Just know that I'm hiding from the world.

Now I know why I couldn't think of a story to tell for a Monday morning gif parade.

God had other plans for me.

Plans that involve . . .

Nevermind. I said I wasn't telling, didn't I?

I'm done with life for the day.

If you'll excuse me, I feel Ben and Jerry's calling my name.

 

Vintage sewing lust

Shift dresses without good waist definition just aren't my thing and mr man doesn't wear suits. But Caroline's sweet little piped dress is banging. It wouldn't be a difficult look to recreate either. A basic yoke pattern with a couple deep pleats in the bodice, a peter pan collar, and a good strong piping and you're all set.

Look at little Jack jr's delicious wittle baby legs. Don't you just want to pinch them a little? I recently picked up a similar pattern for pudding in anticipation of Christmas. Looks like it will be put to good use if I keep coming across nifty ideas to use it.

I really adore Michie's patterns. They come on nice heavy white paper and all the pieces are straight forward and easy to trace. They also come in a wide size range in one envelope so you can take one classic look and with easy adjustments, stretch it from infancy to toddlerhood in a variety of ways. It never made it to the blog but pudding's Easter outfit last year was a Creations by Michie pattern, #105, the sailor bubble. You couldn't ask for an easier pattern to put together. It's totally not Michie's fault I ran over my finger with the sewing machine needle. It's what I get for procrastinating to the point where I was putting together that bad boy at 3 am Easter morning.

I also relied upon Michie for pudding's St Patrick's day outfit which if I recall correctly did not debut on the holiday itself but the weekend after. I used #120 Sunsuit/Dress. The main fabric is a soft seersucker from Hancock's because Joann's seersucker feels like upholstery fabric. The round yoke was cut from a muslin sateen and embroidered with a Celtic knotwork J in green perle cotton which is apparently girly and impossible to read judging by the comments I got.

As usually happens here, I've strayed from my topic but I had to take a moment to share some Michie love. A quick search on google will show all the ways people use this pattern. I especially love her because the heirloom sewing world is awash in all types of pretty for little girls. Michie makes it a point to design for boys. If it wasn't for her patterns, I don't know that I'd sew much for baby pudding.

A moment of silence for the dress that will never be

Some days just don't go my way. Admittedly, it's often my lack of interest in planning aka I was totally going to get up off my rear end and shave my legs last night buuuuuuuuuut, I really need to figure out how to make this for pinky's regency outfit. Look at it! I don't know the historical term for this little big girl onesie but it features tiny pintucks on the bottom with just a touch of lace. How cute would that look peeking from under the hem of pinkerton's skirts?

The internet really is a big ol' rabbit hole. Poor Alice ought to be grateful she didn't grow up in the digital age. The cats alone would keep you busy for days. But I digress.

Due to that whole too lazy to get off the computer at a decent hour bit I mentioned, my wardrobe options were limited to stuff involving pants. I pulled on a top I've recently made, my old reliable black pants, and was finishing up my make up when I noticed two big brown spots on the shoulder. At this point, my kids are already in the car, having scurried out ahead of my usual Sunday morning wrath. (If you are a church goer with kids, I don't have to explain this to you. You know and you just cringed.) I stalk into the bedroom and quickly throw on another shirt only to have my husband interrupt me saying, "Whyyyyyy? That one looked better!"

Thanks for that, champ. 

A heavy sigh later and I'm stalking out of the house. I make the fool mistake of looking down and there's some big splotch on the shit of my pants.

The point of this meaningless story is that I need some new church clothes, namely dresses. So I took a whirl around the internet to get some inspiration and was confronted by the one sewing pattern that mocks me in its "completely unsuitable for you" cuteness.

Oh how I want this dress. It calls to me every.single.time I walk into the fabric store. Hell, there is a good possibility I actually bought the pattern. But I promptly lost it or something because it is not around to mock me and my big ol' bust. As cute as this dress is the honest truth is that high necks make it look as if my boobs are going to eat my face.

I'm sure you're thinking, well, dude, how hard would it be to change the bodice to something more flattering, like a v neck perhaps. AND LOSE ALL THAT LOVELY DETAILING?

No, my friends. Better to have loved and lost than to forge on and piss myself off/bring on a big boob shame spiral from which only ice cream can soothe. 

Le sigh

Somethings just aren't meant to be.

Like a potential love affair between me and Tom Hardy.

Aww, do you need someone to kiss your boo boo?

He thinks I'm funny. It's a start, right?

P.S. the internet has suggested Tom Hardy as an excellent starting point for a Monday Morning gif parade. I'm not sure I can disagree. 'Til tomorrow then.

Back with a beauty or three

Funny how things just get away from you. Long story short, I moved, crowded myself with boxes, and then when I finally cleared out space for the computer, I discovered it died. Lovely, right? In the meantime, I plowed through quite a bit of sewing, learned more about my pleater, forgot things about my serger, and rediscovered fabric I'd forgotten. Btw, that's when you know it's time to stop, when you come across fabric you'd forgotten you'd had. Will that stop me?

...

...

So anyway, I find it quite interesting discovering all the history we seemed to have missed in school, particularly when it comes to people who aren't white Europeans. In my absence from the blogosphere, I was drawn into a conversation on a facebook group for fiction writers and to my dismay discovered just how little anyone knows or cares to know about the world of people of color outside of slavery and/or oppression. I expect it from the general population, we who were raised with textbooks that put the occasional Black, Hispanic, or Asian in a little box set away from the rest of history as little more than a footnote. But these were writers obsessed with history and yet they had taken the attitudes and social mores of Victorian England and were more than happy to apply them to all of history.

Well, let me be clear, while prejudice and racism have always been a part of our story as humanity, it has not always resulted in people of color merely being footnotes to history or on the outside of social acceptance or relegated to the role of servant, slave, or marginalized people. We of color have rich histories both inside and outside of Western European society and now that I'm back in blog business, I shall make it mine to spend more on that topic. I hadn't meant to but you see, I was perusing Pinterest for dessert recipes and came across a picture that reminded me of the Facebook conversation I referenced earlier.

May I present Queen Ranavalona III, the last person to reign the Kingdom of Madagascar. Now raise your hand if you knew they'd ever been a Kingdom of Madagascar. Don't be shy. I didn't know either. The kingdom was established in 1540 but as the French and the British had a rather nasty habit of fighting over things that didn't belong to them in the first place, the kingdom came to an end in 1897.

Her niece and heir, Marie-Louise as seen below, grew up and studied nursing, a career that earned her the Legion of Honor from the French government for her services during World War II.

Ranavalona III came to the throne after the death of her aunt, Queen Ranavalona II, pictured below.

The things that keep me up at night

So I was putzing around the internet, avoiding both sewing and my bed, when I spied with my little eye something wonderful to behold?

OMG CAN YOU BELIEVE THE VAST AMOUNT OF AWESOMENESS CONTAINED IN ONE GORGEOUS, MAGNIFICENT , WONDEROUS GARMENT??

Must.have.one.for my very own.

This deliciousness was brought to life by the beautifully talented Frances at Polka Polish. Wanna see more?? Lucky for you, there's a whole blog post dedicated to perfection here. Oh and lookie, she wore it for St Paddy's with a green crinoline, just when I think I couldn't love one garment any harder.

::le sigh::

She says it's a fabric beast but you know what? I have 7 yards of seersucker upstairs (don't ask) and you know, could there be a better use for that much fabric? COULD THERE??

You know there couldn't, otherwise, why would I be using so many CAPS??? AND QUESTION MARKS???

There couldn't and thus, for obvious reasons, I cannot rest until I find something similar to make my very own.

Of course, there isn't a copy to beheld, except for one in a 30 inch bust and look, I'm not paying $18+ and still have to resize the pattern. So alas, the search continues.

Unless I can come up with a clever way to hack up a princess seamed and/or dropped waist 50's era pattern to accommodate my desperate desires. Please tell me someone, anyone out there in Sewlandia has some sort of inkling of how I go about this.

I will simply die, DIE I SAY if I cannot have some amazingness for my very own.

Did I say die? Because yeah, DIE!

So go ye therefore, my minions and bring back greatness.

Bad blogger. Bad, bad blogger.

I really need to face facts. I'll never be a consistent blogger. But for now, enjoy this post and expect a few other late comers as I swear I've been sewing. I've made some progress on my regency sewing, though not as much as I'd hoped. I sewed it up for St Patrick's and took the kids to the parade to boot and I turned out Easter wear with a slight mishap that I managed to Tim Gunn into something I see making heavy rotation in my summer wardrobe. So I hope you'll stay tuned and I hope you'll like this image as much as I do.

And if you know anything about it, feel free to comment.

Back in the saddle, baby!

So were you wondering what happened to that whole Sew Fortnightly Challenge? Yeaaaaaaah. Let's take a page from The Bloggess and pretend that didn't happen, okay? Maybe I'll catch up, maybe I won't but I'm here now and I have a tutorial to share, awesomesauce, yes?

This would be my first real, live tutorial so try not to laugh too hard if it's sucks. Also feel free to ask questions in the comments if it sucks so hard you can't tell what I'm talking about. Please and thank you.

Now maybe you're curious why I decided to make a morning cap . . . although I suppose I should start with the definition of a morning cap. In short, it's the flouffy thing (which is totally a word) that women of various eras wore on their heads to protect their hair from dirt, sometimes denote marital status, and usually drop hints to the personality, social status, and income of the wearer. If you were say, a farmer's wife out in the country, your morning cap would be a simple affair likely made of linen or cotton. It would need to hold up to frequent washings and you wouldn't want it to get in the way of keeping your home or wrangling your passel of children.

But if you are a silly woman, far more concerned with laying about and feeding your passel of overindulged yorkies scraps from the table or flapping about trying to marry off your passel of pretty but penniless daughters, you might done something far daintier.

Personally, I wanted something towards the mid range, something pretty and dainty but fairly simple and easy care. So I modeled my morning cap after the obnoxiously snobbish Mrs. Norris from the version of Mansfield Park.

Because I am a cheap heifer who already has more patterns than I need, I thought I could find a tutorial to help. Unfortunately, I found a lot of morning caps but precious few instructions, just suggestions for a few different patterns to try. I did find an excellent starting point however, in Sarah Jane's Regency inspired Classic Cap. There was no ruffle and it seemed quite a bit smaller than I wanted but the overall shape was on target. I printed out the crown, fudged a new brim and gave it a go with an old sheet and a basting stitch. Here was the first result.

Very cute, if I do say so myself but much too tiny and too renaissance for a regency impression. I fiddled a bit more by enlarging the crown, and working out the back closure part. My second effort was much more promising and pretty close to my end goal.

Before you can make your bonnet, you'll need to make your pattern and you'll need Sarah Jane's crown piece to help. First, measure the crown of your head ear to ear, about where you want the bottom of your cap to hit. I went for just behind the curve of my ears which was about 18 inches. I added an inch to account for the seam allowances and then cut a strip of fabric 19 x 3.5 inches. Now I wanted my cap to have a bit of a curve around the ears so I laid the strip in half and used my french curve mark what I hoped would be an elegant little swoop, reducing the ends to just about 2 inches.

This is your brim piece. Go ahead and cut two, press them very well.

To make the ruffle, you'll need to measure along the rounded edge of your brim. For the look I achieved, you'll want to multiply that number by 1.5 and add another inch for the seam allowance. Curving the brim will extend the length so don't just use the 19 inches you tore previously. I can't remember what my number was but we'll say 21. So 21 x 1.5 - 1 = 32.5. I wanted my finished ruffle to be about two inches deep so I added half an inch to that number to accommodate the seam allowance on the crown edge and then another quarter of an inch to accommodate the bit I'd lost in joining the lace to the ruffle. That left me with a ruffle piece 32 1/2 in long and 2 3/4 wide. Press with a bit of starch and set aside.

Next comes the cap. Take Sarah Jane's crown piece and lay it on the fold where indicated and lay the remaining flat side against the selvage if possible. If you don't have a selvage edge, you'll want to set the piece back about 3/8inch from the cut side so that you have enough to fold over to make a nice, finished edge. Her crown piece was much too small so I set the pieces back even further from both the fold and the selvage/cut edge to give myself more fullness, a full four and a half inches back from the fold and 2 and 5/8ths back from the selvage/cut edge. If your hair is a decent length, you'll want to add even more fullness to accommodate a regency top knot.

You'll want to round out your edges, as you can see at the bottom and the top left of my picture to give you a nice rounded point. Then you'll want to cut out a little square notch to accommodate your drawstring. As I'm using 1/4 inch ribbon, I'll need to create a channel to fit. I cut a 5/8 of an inch out of mine.

Give everything one last press, working out all the creases. Now you're ready to begin.

To make a basic cap, you'll need about 1/3 of a yard of fabric and half a yard of 1/4in ribbon. I used a swiss dot which is wonderfully lightweight and a touch fancier than a plain weave and a poly-satin ribbon. The swiss dot is from  Hancock's and the ribbon from Farmhouse Fabrics. I also used about a yard of narrow ribbon along the edge of my ruffle as well as about a yard of one inch wide poly satin ribbon on top. Of course, you can add different bits of this and that to your bonnet as you see fit.

We'll start with the ruffle first. To attach the lace, you're going to use a very narrow zig zag stitch. I set my stitch width to 2.5mm and my length to 1.0. Pin the lace onto the right side of the fabric, about four threads from the edge. Then slowly stitch so that the zig is on the lace and the zag is just off the fabric. As you sew, the bit of fabric left will fold over the tiny lace edge. 

You'll be left with some whispies but those are easily trimmed. Press your lace edge outwards, your tiny seam towards the fabric.

Fold over your short ends twice, enclosing the raw edges and sew a narrow hem on either side of your ruffle.

Leaving the threads long, put in two rows of basting stitches on the free edge and gather the ruffle up to fit the rounded edge of one of your brim pieces with each edge stopping about half an inch short of the brim edges.

Lay your second brim piece on top, wrong sides together, sandwiching the ruffles between the two brim pieces. Starting at the short end of your brim, stitch, keeping the ruffle free before turning the corner and stitching the ruffle to the curved edge.

Trim your corners and turn your ruffle out, pressing everything neatly.

Before you're ready to attach the crown, you'll need to fold up the straight edge of the crown and create a channel for your drawstring. To do that (and I apologize for not snapping a picture) you'll need to fold over that notched edge and sew two lines of stitching about wide enough to accommodate your ribbon. If you didn't use a selvage edge, you'll need to first fold over your fabric about 3/8ths of an inch and press. Here's a picture of kind of give you an idea if what I've said makes no sense.

Sew two rows of basting stitches in the crown. We're going to do a French seam here to neatly enclose all your edges so you'll need gather the crown of your cap and pin it wrong sides together to brim's straight edge. You'll want to have more fullness at the center of the brim than the sides to avoid the deflated look you see in my early muslins. 

Trim your raw edge to an quarter of an inch. I know it's close and I know it's painful but you can do it. Turn the seam over and sew with a half inch seam, enclosing the tiny raw edge.

I used a 7 yarn darner needle to thread my ribbon through the channel but you could use a bodkin or a very narrow safety pin. Draw up and tie in a bow. Tie the wider ribbon about the brim of your new creation.

And that's it. You now have a cute little morning cap to keep your curls and ribbons in place and frame your face prettily should the that aloof gentleman up the hill stop by for a visit.

I think I'll be gifting this one to pinky as, I never though I would say this, but I think I could use a bit more fullness in my ruffle. 

Here's Jane Austen in her quite ruffly morning cap and chemisette.

And now for the Sew Fortnightly recap:

The Challenge: Peasants and Pioneers 

Fabric: cotton swiss dot

Pattern: self drafted

Year: appx 1810ish

Notions: 50 wt DMC broder thread, 60 needle, half a yard of 1/4 inch ribbon, a yard of one inch ribbon, one yard of narrow lace

How historically accurate is it? It matches up pretty well with the different examples I've seen hither and yon but I can't vouch for the fabric content of the lace. It came from walmart and it has a wee but of a shine to it so I'm going to assume poly or nylon blend of some sort.

Hours to complete: about two hours total

First worn: Aside from prancing about the house, not yet

Total cost: about $5

I made a grocery list

Aaaaaaaaand I know where it is.

I feel so accomplished.

Pudding is stuffing his face with all the things lately so the budget has been expanded to allow for the copious amount of cheerios, lunch meat, peas and carrots, and the lactose free milk (sigh) it takes to stave off his hangry rages. We are now working with $175 a month.

No, that wasn't a typo. You ever get hangry? Hunger + Anger = Little Baby Meltdown complete with a headslam into the floor of the cub scout social hall. This child is going to be the death of me, I can feel it. Right now he's alternating between throwing a temper tantrum when I won't let him touch my phone while it's playing Blue's Clues and abject fury when touching the damned phone causes Yahoo Mail to pop up instead of his beloved Steve.

So anyway, yeah, groceries.

Thursday: Chili Mac

Friday: Fried fish, broccoli, au gratin potatoes (from the box because we're classy like that.)

Saturday breakfast: Sausage, egg, and cheese crescent wrap with fried apples

Saturday: Broccoli cheddar braid and salad

Sunday: Swedish meatballs per peteybird request with egg noodles and roasted cauliflower

Sunday dessert: Peach crunch cake ala mode without the crunch as mr man "doesn't like nuts in his mouth" because he's 12

Monday: Beef tips but I'm putting them in the crock pot, mashed potatoes, and corn.

Tuesday: Grilled chicken salad

$141 + $20 produce box = under budget. Hooray for me!

International Ugly Cake Day

As my darling peteybird informed me, "It looks like someone yakked on top of it."

Ain't nobody asked for your opinion, boychild. Now eat your damned cake! 

At least it was tasty.

I promise there is a good reason for my absence. I've been merrily sewing/embroidering along and as soon as I am finished, we will have a talk, okay?

Here's a little preview.

ETA: I forgot to add the recipe. Ooops. Fresh Strawberry Cake with Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue. Do not overbeat this stuff or your cake will be ugly too.