Catching up…

A month on, and I’m still ravaged by the shingles attack that hit me in mid-January. Absolutely everyone who saw my torso said it was the worst case they’ve ever seen (doctors included), and lucky, lucky me, the little bugger caused nerve damage, which means the pain in my side could continue on for months or possibly a year (again, lucky, lucky me). I’m on four different prescription painkillers until the neural-specific one hopefully starts working soon, so I’ve been stuck at home Resting (I hate resting.). The good news is that the doctor says I can now go do the odd half day at work and very easy run here and there as it’s driving me crazy not to, but I’m not to overdo things. But even that’s better than being chained to a couch!

Anyway, I’ve done as much resting as it’s humanly possible for Melissa to do, which means I’ve been lying flat on my back and sleeping for most of the days, but I managed to squeeze in some sewing, almost entirely in 5 minute segments, followed by 20 minutes of rest. Rinse & repeat… These will have photoshoots and proper posts coming hopefully next week!

The amazingly simple-to-sew Style Arc Marita dress:

A grey wool “chic sweatshirt”:

A pair of pleated, My Image denim-look leggings:

A quick, gathered raglan merino wool sweater from the February BurdaStyle magazine:

Upcoming Fall 2011 sewing – the fabric

I posted about my Fall sewing pattern plans weeks ago, but I never quite got around to showing off my lovely Fall fabrics at the same time, and then I went and bought a little more since I sewed through enough of my stash over the past year to make space for more.

Indeed, the first two fabrics were bought long enough ago from the superlative Ditto Fabrics that I’ve actually already used them!

This grey stretch wool suiting is finding a life in my Draped Jacket and Skirt Suit you’ve heard so much about lately, and I’m sure you remember this peach silk habotai from my recent blouse, right?

Well, the day after I bought the above from Ditto’s website, we determined I’d actually be going down to Brighton later that week, so I stopped into their store on the Saturday morning and picked up two more fabrics (along with a good gossip with Ditto’s lovely owner, Gil!).

Burda magazine April 2016

I’m catching up with the Burda magazine issues I missed while I was ill, so even though I showed you my picks from March’s issue last week, here I am with April already!

This isn’t the best garment photo, but I love the seaming on this dress, which Burda have very cleverly accentuated further with their use of stripes. Well done! I also live the asymmetric neckline, which makes me think of the neckline I chose for my wedding dress back in 2010!

Re-emerging

Thank you all so much for your understanding, sympathy, kindness, and support while I’ve been ill. I know some of you expressed disbelief that I could still possibly be ill after all this time (10 weeks!) but welcome to post-transplant life! I’ve been thoroughly checked over by the hospital and several doctors and the working theory is that I really ran myself ragged getting the boat ready to move to our new moorings in late January, allowing a nasty bout of sinusitis to take over. Then I had EBV reactivation for a few weeks (effectively fighting off mono/glandular fever), then at least two more viruses, culminating with a delightful flu that’s going round my office which involves constant headaches concentrated near the ear/jaw. It’s been so much fun, let me tell you.

For a lot of that time, I couldn’t do much more than watch Netflix (9 days straight in bed meant I watched the entirety of Orange is the New Black), but then I had to go into work, and the new mooring meant that I either had a 1hr+ public transport commute at rush hour with no means to sit down (costing me £8/day too I might add), or a 40min cycle ride. I’ll let you in on a little secret – cycle commute is made out to be some super healthy, exercise choice, but seriously, a 15min walk took way more out of me than the 40min cycling on flat London roads with red lights every few minutes. It’s unbelievably stressful, but not strenuous in the slightest (even on the days where I was falling asleep at my desk I could get myself home). But I’ve got an entire post brewing on this subject for my Riverrunner site. I’ve had a lot of time to think, and plan, but not so much desire to write.

Steeplechase Leggings Times Two

Pop quiz – What’s better than an entire Saturday set aside for sewing?

Give up? It’s an entire Saturday set aside for sewing with a friend! Yes, a few weeks ago my friend Sanchia (whom you may recall as my Threshold Shorts pattern athlete model) was all “we need to set a sewing date and make some leggings!” so we found a Saturday we both had free, and she came round to the boat last weekend! Sanchia has sewn before, but hasn’t made leggings in a while, so she selected some fabric out of my (frankly, overflowing with fabulousness) lycra stash, and we used my Steeplechase Leggings pattern to sew her up a pair without any inner leg seaming.


Tablets are perfect partners for Pdf pattern instructions!

And since we were going to be sewing all afternoon, well, I might as well make a pair for myself, too! Since Sanchia chose my FunkiFabrics “Prism” lycra (I had the Flexcite base but it’s also available on their wicking Titan base fabric, I wanted to choose something dark so we wouldn’t need to change threads, so I used some fabulous cityscape lycra that had literally just arrived from Sewing Chest the day before (they have got some great sales on their sportswear fabric pieces right now, just sayin’!).

We had a good chat cutting out the fabric, and then pinning each step together and constructing them assembly-line style, plus a break for lunch, and then she got to play on my coverstitch machine for the hems and waistband finishing, too. By the time 4pm rolled around, we had two finished pairs of leggings!

We vowed to wear our new leggings to Run dem Crew on Tuesday, where we got another friend to snap some photos of us!

Patrones 22

Remember back before Christmas, when the in-laws travelled to Spain and brought me back Patrones 320? Well, at the time I was too flu-ridden to scan the second issue they bought at the same time, so I’m sharing it with you now.

This second magazine is labelled “Casual” but is more the size of a typical Patrones “Extra” issue. These lower numbered Patrones issues started a few years ago and are reprints of previously-published patterns. In this case, I haven’t seen any of these before so it’s fine by me!

It’s a terrible magazine photo (why cover up the pattern dress with a massive cardigan?) but I absolutely love the tech drawing for this curved seam dress. Funny, but it really reminds me of a Patrones designer skirt I made in 2008 and then never really documented on the site (which I tend to not do anymore, you see everything!)

There are tons of amaaaazing coats in this issue (remember that I swear by Patrones’ coat patterns!!), and I especially like this one with a zipper opening, and three separate zippered welt pockets, too:

The short, naval pea coat is such an iconic piece of clothing, but strangely, not one you see patterns for very often. For me, this would make a fantastic transitional coat I could wear 9 months of the year…

Our DIY wedding – printed materials

One cost that can add up really quickly for a wedding are all the printed materials you need for the day. I’m not just talking about the invites (which can get ridiculously expensive if you go the letterpress, inner envelope, return card, RSVP envelope, etc route!), but also all the other bits of papery stuff that is forgotten until a few days before when you realise you actually do need them!

The illustration

The first step in our wedding design process was to commission a cartoon drawing of us from the illustrator John Allison (of Scary Go Round fame). James has been a big fan of his comic for ages now, and we both really liked his design style. So we sent him a photo of us, a brief description of James’s suit and my dress (at that point I was still thinking of that Vogue cowl-neck number) and to imagine 6 months’ more hair on my head. Which somehow he got eerily spot-on.

(Apologies for the awful jpg artifacting – I’ve not got the big version of the illustration in front of me to work from)

The wedding website

With the illustration in a nice, big file, we could then set about making our wedding website, which was to be the crux of our invitations. We both work in web developments, and absolutely everyone we know, right up to my grandparents, has an email address, so this way we could put the bulk of the information for both receptions on our site and be able to update it later, too. The RSVPs were all online, using a Google Spreadsheets form (easy to set up, easier for people to reply to than a trip to the post office, and we could both get access to the running tally), and all the usual venue info and registry links could be added without having to worry about word counts and layout.

I can now post a link to it for you to have a look at James’s standards-compliant coding prowess, because I don’t have to worry about you all messing up the RSVPs or gatecrashing or anything! The worst that can happen is that you decide to buy us some more insulation off our registry…

Invites

So with the website in place, all the invites really had to do was give folks the date, and point them towards the website. We ran up two sets of postcards from Moo.com (one set for the UK wedding and reception, and one for the Pennsylvania reception). And to set the tone, the wording was “James and Melissa are finally getting married!” ha!

Hospital activity packs

To accompany my my little red sewing machine on the inside here with me, I made up some “activity packs” in advance that my mom or James could just bring to me when I got the sewing itch. Into each gallon ziploc bag went all the cut fabric pieces for that project, plus the thread and bobbin, any notions, and the scanned line drawing & instructions. That way I should hopefully just be able to get down to business when the feeling strikes me without having to do all the boring prep stuff!

First up is already in my activity drawer (I’ve only got four drawers and a tiny wardobe in the room, so one is designated for fun!), a hat from the May 09 Burda, with all the pattern pieces cut out in the red & white floral cotton poplin, with all the appropriate pieces fused to some super heavyweight canvas interfacing.

I’ve also got this top and trousers from the May 09 KnipMode ready to go…

A Claudia tribute outfit – inspiration & finished set

It’s been years since I’ve had a reason to sew something for Halloween. I’m pretty sure the last time was when I made the badger and fox suits for J and myself, and that was 6 years ago. So when I found out we’d be in Cornwall over Halloween AND there was a local outdoor fancy dress party, I started plotting. And when a friend said she’d be hosting a vampire party on Halloween weekend, I really got down to some serious planning.

You’ll already be aware from my tribute teeshirts how much I adore the recent “Interview with the Vampire” tv show (Brits, it’s on iPlayer now!), so my immediate thought was to try and recreate one of the vintage costumes from it. The first season takes place from 1910-1940 but the main female character, Claudia, is introduced in the 4th episode and spans 1920-1940. Unfortunately, for a good portion of that she’s dressed pretty juvenile, so those early outfits really didn’t appeal.

Happy 2021! (My year in review)

What. A. Year! I’m not even going to attempt to sugar-coat things, and any attempt to try and put things into perspective just sounds like a cliché after all this. But for a year where I was essentially under house arrest since March, it’s surprisingly not all bad. Above all else, I’m grateful to have spent the time with my husband and that we both were able to continue our office jobs from home at full pay and remarkable support. My sewing was both a welcome distraction and a balm in this year of chaos and uncertainty.

I’m going to try to use my usual year-end format again, though this was clearly a year that broke all attempts to contain it so let’s do what we can (clearly a motto for the year!)…