My kids and I have been learning a lot about environmental concerns and taking baby steps to lessen our own impact on the planet ( reducing, reusing and recycling).
Sam is especially worried about the melting ice caps and how that affects the polar bears. He likes polar bears.
Claire drew fish food, because fish food is awesome. Fishies are awesome too.
My picture depicts a small part of what makes our planet beautiful to me…trees and flowers and birds…
I’ve been completely obsessed over trying to sew a dress to wear to my sister-in-law’s wedding next month. It has turned out to be two or three times as much work as I anticipated. Here’s the first dress (which I’m embarrassed to show you):
Oh. my. god. It’s soooooooooo terrible. I look pregnant.
I love the fabric. I love the design (as pictured on the pattern envelope–Simplicity 3831). But this looks sooo bad on me. First of all, I should have known better than to put in a french seam where fabric had been gathered, but I didn’t, and ended up with that ghastly bulky seam. Also, it has become evident to me that commercial pattern drafters don’t like breasts. If I had no breasts, the bottom of the bodice would have fallen in a flattering spot. This most certainly does not. I redrafted the pattern, adding two-and-a-half inches to the length, just to get the seam beneath my breasts rather than directly on them.
The redrafting worked out fine. Nevertheless, the dress still made me look pregnant, so I scrapped that in favor of something a little more streamlined. (I’m going to rip apart the dress and use the fabric to make a blouse later on.)
The second dress has presented its share of challenges. I think the fabric is beautiful, but it’s slippery, stretchy, likes to fray and resents any effort from the iron to press it into shape. It was extremely challenging trying to cut out the pattern pieces, and as I’m sewing, I frequently have to compensate for cutting irregularities. Despite that, it’s coming together much better than the first dress.
My mother will be paying us a visit early next week, which is great, because I’ll need someone to demonstrate installing a zipper. I just can’t wrap my head around it…folding and pressing the fashion fabric and lining, how to get it to all come together… The dress is very close though, and from pin-fittings, I know it fits better than earlier attempts. I just hope I don’t end up looking like too much of a fuddy-duddy in my homemade garment. Many of the wedding guests are fashion concious and care a lot about labels, trends, etc. I’ve never been one of those people though, so I’m not sure why I’m worrying about it now!
Meanwhile, news stories like these are worrying me, so I’m off to market to stock up on food staples:
My kids and I have been trying out some of the ideas for creative time Amanda Soule describes in her excellent book, The Creative Family. Just wait until you see their awesome hand painted placemats! I’ve got a little bit of stitching to do before I share them with you, but trust me, they’re great. I don’t know when I last saw my kids so excited about a project.
Today, we sat down together for a little family drawing time. My kids already are confident artists and enjoy coloring and sketching, but I think having some additional bits of inspiration set out on the table and the better quality materials Amanda recommends made this an even more enjoyable experience.
Here, Sam works on a large scale grinning skull he found in one of Ed Emberly’s drawing books:
Claire didn’t attempt to draw anything in particular, but she enjoyed experimenting with markers:
I tried painting with watercolors, which I haven’t done in a good twenty years or so.
I had fun–after I put a damper on my critical side and just enjoyed the process. Already I’m looking forward to our next drawing session.
'I, Amy of quixoticpixels.com, sign up as a participant of Self-Stitched-September. I endeavour to wear only handmade items of clothing every day for the duration of September 2010'.
