The Necklace Tree

Well I am VERY proud to say that this empty old brain of mine has finally had some new product ideas. Whoo hoo!

I'm not really a super idea-generating crafter, you see. I get an idea, I execute it in an infinite number of ways, I get bored with it and then ..... nothing. I wait. For another idea. Which takes for-EV-er to come along, ordinarily.

I've been wondering (for some time now, poor brain) about what items I could add to my markets in 2010. Inspired by the complete lack of a yellow necklace in my jewellery drawer, I finally hit on the notion of constructing fabric necklaces - I thought: how cool would it be to actually wear some of the amazing material I work with?

And so I am proud to present my latest product range of fabric-covered necklaces. Behold the necklace tree!

Isn't that display stand great? I happened to be wandering past a shop last week thinking Hm, I really need something I can festoon with my new fabric-covered necklaces ... and lo, I looked randomly in through the  window of a shop I haven't been into for months, and there was the perfect thing. I love it when the universe provides like that.

And it helps that I am totally in love with these new necklaces, too. Such an infinite variety of colour possibilities! I could make one to go with every outfit! I've made some that just loop around your neck, and others that have ribbon ties so that you can change the length of them. My heart is ablaze with excitement.

Many of the ones you see here are constructed using Anna Maria Horner's latest line of voile, Little Folks, which is the most divine fabric around right now. It's been specially treated to be oh-so-soft, and it's a delight to work with - it'll be a delight to wear, too. I long for bedsheets made out of the stuff, but then I would be afraid to sleep in them because they'd be so fine and delicate.

Necklaces though, that's a great way of putting it to use - use that you can enjoy every day. I'm taking this lot with me to the Northside Makers Market on Saturday 6 February - we'll be at the Northcote Uniting Church on High Street between 9.30 and 2.30pm. Why not come along and pick up one of these babies for your jewellery drawer - before I steal them all for myself!

My Goodness, My Gusset

I unreservedly apologise to the famous Guiness advertising campaign which inspired today's post.

I see this sign quite regularly, on the wall of a pub on the corner of Alexandra Parade and Smith Street, and it often inspires me to make up little advertising slogans and rhymes of my own. I am a nerdy loser, I know.

A few days ago it got me thinking about my favourite sewing words. I love how sewing has its own language, an admission ticket through to a whole new world, where everyone understands what you're saying. Language has always been the tool that saved me from drowning - what helps me feel part of something, like I belong - and sewing language is no exception.

In no particular order, my favourite sewing words are:

Gusset: this is kind of grandmotherly and naughty, all at once. It makes me think of giant knickers and talculm powder, of saucy g-strings, of gasping and of geese. I don't know why geese.

Jabot: that's the ruffle down the front of a shirt, isn't it great? It's French, and so much more jaunty and chipper than "ruffle". A jabot takes your shirt out for a stroll with a beret, certainly, to sip an aperitif at a sidewalk cafe somewhere. A jabot has a navy and white striped maillot, and perfectly applied liquid eyeliner, and knows how to hoist a jib and tie sailing knots. A ruffle, on the other hand, does nothing of the sort. It just sort of flutters about helplessly on the spot.

Godet. Again with the French, this is the little triangular shaped insert that sometimes goes in at the bottom of the back seam of a skirt. Godet. Godet. Waiting for Godet, to adapt a phrase. Yes, it's beautiful and I love the way it feels in my moth. I mean, mouth. Oops, typing error.

What are your favourite sewing words?

Beautiful buttonholes - hooray!

Ta da! Buttonholes!

Nine of them, to be exact, though I'm not counting the mistake at the bottom which was meant to be number ten. Clearly, I was getting cocky. Clearly, I was thinking I had this buttonhole caper whipped. But no! I managed to bugger up the last one completely. We'll say no more about that.

So this is my new shirt, made out of fabric I bought from Rathdowne Remnants a year ago for $5 a metre, and which looks like Liberty at $50 a metre instead. I'm pretty happy with the deception. Mock Liberty shirt for one-tenth the price? Count me in!


I used Simplicity pattern number 4077 - it seems it may have gone out of print recently, as I cannot find it on their website for the life of me, so you'll have to make do with this badly lit and out of focus photo. Apologies. The pattern is a good one though, if you can pick it up second-hand or from Simplicity's out-of-print pages, you're bound to enjoy it. Again, I didn't need to do major alterations for it to fit well, and that's fantastic. I'm definitely going to use this for shirts in the future.

I've worn the shirt three times already this week ... is that too much? Once to work with a camel-coloured skirt; once to a friend's place for dinner, and last night to go and see Daniel Kitson doing 66a Church Road at the Melbourne Arts Centre (I highly recommend it).

I totally love it - and isn't it great when you finish a piece, and it fits, and you love it, and other people say nice things about it? That's the sewing trifecta, for sure!

(PS - these are the first pair of shorts I made, the ones that were meant to be throwaways and which instead turned out really well!)

Turning Japanese

I'm joining in with Finki's January design challenge, which is all about turning Japanese.

I've created some little kimono dolls, out of kimono fabrics my younger sister (Scalpel Bettie) gave me for Christmas; plus some oddments donated by my mother. Japanese fabric is beautiful, so I was really happy to receive these bits and pieces as a present. And because they came as a giant bundle of offcuts, I don't have The Fear about cutting into them the way I do with really BIG bits of lovely fabric. It's almost as if the smaller genre enables me to be freer with what I make!

Then, to top it off, My One True Love returned from his cycling weekend and brought me a present .... of these lovely Japanese fabrics! There's a wonderful shop in Bright that stocks Japanese materials, buttons and beads.

I love the way he does this. How many husbands would go away on a blokey cycling weekend and still manage to find the fantastic fabric shop and go in and pick out a whole range of incredibly wonderful stuff, for their wife? My One True Love is certainly a king among men.

B is for .....

.... buttonhole. Scary, scary buttonhole.

There are some sewing techniques I'm just not crash hot at.

Okay - there are MANY sewing techniques I'm not crash hot at. Some of them are really complicated, like ... I don't know, boning and corsetry. Can't do that yet, though I'd like toone day. Others, like working in stretch or slinky, silky fabrics, require materials I don't work in very often, so I forgive myself for those.

Then there are the very ordinary simple things I'm completely rubbish at, and this is where buttonholes fit in.

Buttonholes are meant to be easy, especially when you have a whiz-bang sewing machine like I do (never mind the fact that I only ever seem to use the straight stitch and zig-zag ... sigh, 147 other stitches going to waste). But I just don't do buttonholes that often - I'm more of a dress-and-zip girl - and when I do, they always seem to go wrong.

I think it's because I usually like to have more buttons than the pattern calls for. I'm paranoid about the "gaping blouse" effect; the one where there is no button in the middle of your chest, in exactly the place where you need it the most, that bit kind of across the peak of your bosom, and your shirt pulls open a little bit and everyone can see inside it to your bra. Do you know the one I mean? I hate that look, especially at work, where it seems to be very popular with some women (she said prudishly).

So I like to use lots of buttons to avoid it. Like in this shirt here, which I made about a year ago. I even used contrasting buttons because the mis-matched colours played so well against the neutrals of the fabric. And I get a lot of compliments on it, and every time I wear it, unfortunately all I can think about are the crap buttonholes I made.

Because when you use more than the pattern calls for, I never get them evenly spaced. And then I can never match where you have to sew the button on so that it is in the middle of the buttonhole. And then everything ends up looking a little "home-sewn", to use Heidi Klum's uber-insult from Project Runway. Gah!

I'm writing this post today because I'm working on another shirt, you see. And I have buttonholes to make. Nine of them. In a row. Spaced evenly, I hope.

And yes, maybe I'm using this post to procrastinate instead of actually sitting down and doing the bloody buttonholes.

Fine. Fine. I'm going. Wish me luck

She wears short shorts

Well no, not really she doesn't, especially if you read yesterday's post. But it was a compelling title nevertheless .... and I'm still hoping one of the CEOs of a sportswear company will read yesterday's post and reply to me, like the MD of Lincraft did about the cushion inserts all those months ago.

Ahem. This post is actually about shorts of the longer variety - dress shorts this time, not running ones - I thought it was appropriate to continue the theme. And it's all part of the January sewing frenzy, in which I spend the entire month sewing for me me me me me me me.

I now have not one, but THREE pairs of new shorts in my wardrobe. And two of them I made myself.

I think I need to put this in perspective for you. I haven't worn shorts in over a decade, they just don't work on me. Plus, if you read yesterday's post, you know how averse I am to anything that falls above the knee. It's not just my thighs, ladies, it's also because I am short, and I prefer clothing that elongates my form rather than chops it up.

But a month ago, on a whim I purchased some lined black linen shorts from Laura Ashley (on special at 70% off) and they were an absolute revelation. The comfort! The ease! The complete lack of worry about ahem, delicate chafing issues in the hot weather! (I always wanted to be one of those women with boy hips and gaps between their legs, but no amount of starvation ever managed to achieve this, so I long ago gave up and accepted my inevitable carrot shape.)

So I set out to exponentially increase the proportion of shorts in my wardrobe - ie, I wanted more.

I found this Simplicity pattern number 2656 months ago and had determined I'd use it for the skirt. Which I still intend to do, but after buying the Laura Ashley shorts I suddenly remembered that it had a short pattern as well.

I was dubious to begin with, especially because of the pockets on the side - I really don't need any extra bulk around my hips - but I decided to give it a shot. And lo and behold it worked beautifully! The pattern fit like a dream with hardly any alterations needed, and that is saying something.

I used one of those fabrics we all have lying around in the stash which is too smart for trying out any old thing, but not smart enough to use on one of our special projects - you can see it a little bit under the first photo, it's a dark polished cotton with a subtle yellow and blue check running through it.

So flushed with enthusiasm, this time I made the pattern up in this cute birdie fabric remnant I got from IKEA ... and it was almost exactly the perfect amount. See the sweet lining in those pockets, too?

And I had a lovely little metal-toothed vintage zip that I used for the back seam (the pattern didn't have a zip, or any other method of entry, which confused me somewhat, because otherwise how are you meant to get into the things?).

Overall I am very pleased with them, and they're the perfect casual separate for weekends. I intend to wear them for as long as the hot weather allows.

Australia Day barbeque, anyone? I'll be there in my shorts.

A Message For All Sportswear Designers

I like to think of myself as bit of a shopping expert.

I have many years of experience behind me. I read sales guides, subscribe to email newsletters, get to know the quirky hideaway boutiques. I mentally file catalogues in my head of where to find limited editions, sales items, colourways and styles. I know what I'm doing.

Plus, I did 20 months of hard-core training with the experts - Arabs and expats in Dubai, where shopping is a national hobby, shops are open until 10pm six days a week, and the entire four-week period between January 15 to February 15 is devoted to a much publicised, international event: The Shopping Festival (I'm serious), full of jawdropping bargains. So I reckon I know what I'm talking about.
 
And today, what I'm talking about is the fact that I HATE shopping for sportswear. HATE it.
 
Sportswear was the term originally used at the turn of the 1900's to describe clothes that were easy to care for, in washable fabrics, with accessible practical fastenings, that enabled the increasingly emancipated modern woman to dress herself without a maid's assistance. So important, that - especially these days of course, where we have no maids.
 
Now, I'm not referring to this kind of Michael Kors/Josh Goot/Zac Posen/Donna Karan type of sportswear designer. Those designers do not make the kind of gear I'm referring to.
 
I am referring to the kind of sportswear that you go to the gym and sweat copiously in. This is a message for the everyday Nike, Fila, Everlast, Russell Athletics, Rebel, Lorna Jane, Champion, Puma, Asic and Lonsdale kind of sportswear designer.
 
So, designers (please say that in a Tim Gunn-ish accent), designers, I have a revelation for you. Some of us normal people buy sportswear not because we are IN shape, amazing or otherwise, but because we in fact AREN'T in what you consider to be shape, judging by the state of your clothing options.  
 
Dear god! Amazing! Who knew! This must come as a complete surprise to you.
 
Because otherwise, why would the shops be filled with your horrifically tiny pieces of clothing that we have no desire to even try fitting into? Dear designers, some of us (and when I say some of us, I mean me) are Not At All Interested in running shorts that barely cover our butts. Some of us have chunky thighs that run in our family, and we wish to cover them up so that we are not too busy cringeing with humiliation to go to the gym at all.
 
Some of us are not pert 16-year-olds, and some of us are getting a bit prudish in our increasing old age. Some of us may have rounded tummies, and knee dimples, and saddlebags. We may not wish to wear your incredibly small scraps of fabric.  We may not wish to show off the crease between the back of our thigh and our arse. We may not wish to wear your awful skin-tight legging things that other women may love.

Some of us need a bit of extra help when it comes to workout gear so that we actually feel we CAN go to the gym and burn calories instead of just burning with shame.
 
Please, PLEASE start making things that might appeal to the getting-in-shape of us out there, rather than the I-go-to-bodycombat-everyday-and-have-buns-of-steel crowd. For goodness sake, you might even increase your customers that way, and heaven knows, maybe if we go to the gym in the gear you make that we feel comfortable in, perhaps as we begin to shape up we might even then graduate to something a little more .... streamlined!
 
I just don't understand why I can't buy knee-length shorts. I'd make them myself except I have no talent with stretchy fabrics like the stuff exercise shorts are made out of. What is wrong with doing a line of knee-length shorts that aren't skin tight??

So designers, here endeth the lesson. Things are in your hands now.