All the Stuff...

Sometimes life just has a way of getting in the way of things... doesn't it?  Three weeks ago I had a call from school to say my daughter was sick, at the sick bay (there were bugs going around) and needed to be picked up.  By the time I got there - less than 30 minutes - I was informed my son had dislocated his knee cap, and was waiting for the ambulance to arrive... so the last couple of weeks have been a bit up in the air - looking after Dylan when he needed extra care - checking in with Nadia who turned out just had a bit of a cold coming on which started with a high temperature and general crappiness - and finishing up the last week of work before the {well deserved} school holidays started.

Now almost at the end of the first week of the two week term holiday, Dylan has attended a specialist appointment about his knee {fortunately he seems to have avoided major injury - and just needs to be careful and avoid sports for another month before he can use it fully}.  Still a little bit sore at times and a bit swollen, he was very lucky!

Nadia and I have both spent the first week of the holidays doing bedroom cleaning, sorting and tidying.  Her room is finally moving from a childhood bedroom, into more of a teenage bedroom - a bit of a bittersweet moment. 

Nadia inherited the smallest room in the house - and we installed these shelves for all her little girlie stuff.  It didn't remain this tidy for very long - but it did look good, and keep track of a lot of stuff, for quite a while.

The toys have turned into clothes storage with sleek grey baskets.  Still a work in progress, but I am really hoping that this will be finished by the end of the holidays.  One week to go!

Before Xmas I located a fabric shop in the US that sold fabric in pre-cut bundles complete with a pattern that suited the fabric.  This was awesome because the hardest thing about buying dress fabrics is judging the weight - and matching it to the pattern requirements.  Although they didn't ship to NZ, they put me on to a shipping go between that organised that side of things.  And so finally, I had a rather large bundle arrive with three different patterns and fabrics enclosed (for quite an exorbitant postal charge I might add and I'll never do it again!)

 I chose a pattern for a jacket and black "sweater knit" fabric, half because I quite liked the simple nature of the jacket that I thought would be a useful addition to my wardrobe, and half because I wanted to know what "sweater knit" was.  I chose view A.

As the fabric was calculated for the view and size that used the most, I worked out there should be some left over as I was sewing the smallest size on the pattern, and chose the shortest, sleekest view.  With the left over yardage, I had the extra cool idea of seeing whether I could squeeze this Bibi dress from Tilly and the Buttons book Stretch from the same length of fabric - YES! I was off and running and I cut the two items out at the same time and commenced sewing.

 It turns out that sweater knit is just a relatively heavyweight, maybe double? knit.  Still not entirely sure.  I sewed up the dress in the size for my measurements - not noticing that it has negative ease, which means it is designed to fit smaller than your body measurements... not a look I was going for.

So, yeah... I made a dress that is too small... while simultaneously sewing a jacket that ended up too big.

I have some weird pulling on one side, and it hangs rather loose.  The collar also sits a bit weirdly at the bottom.

I am not completely disheartened by this, and next I'm hoping to make a dress from this book...

... from a grey and black stripe.

We shall see!