Men vacuum, she says

Nearly four-year-old J told me the cover picture on this delightfully funny book is all wrong. Men do the vacuuming, she told me. And in this house, mostly her Dad does. Joel's away and while we miss him, I also miss our partnership in keeping our home running. I found Mrs. Murphy Hires a Cleaner at the local library. It's actually a good intelligent, fun read if you can find a copy. An adult only read, though!

My dress is cut out, zipper in, most pieces sewn together and now I'm working on the neckband. Here's a photo one small alteration to show the colour. I'll soon learn if my alterations all worked. It's been time-consuming so if the dress works out, I may regret working with the less-expensive velour rather than comfortable, warm, stretch velvet. The dress was waylaid by J's request for a housecoat. She picked out the fabric from the stash -- pink, of course. I thought I was done and J was ever so pleased. She likes that the fleece is cosy and warm and perhaps feels she now has a housecoat like everyone else in the house. But then she asked, "Does my housecoat have housecoat pockets?" No, I responded. "Would you like housecoat pockets?" "Yes." So, I'm not done yet.

I love ordering from Fabric Mart in Pennsylvania but between the exchange rate and the increase in shipping costs from the US to Canada, this occasional venture may be even more occasional. No more surface mail to Canada so what used to take three and a half weeks now takes 10 days. That's the bonus. But my $46 US order of fabric ended up being $93 Canadian once the exchange rate and shipping were added. Still, this is pretty good for 7 1/2 yards of beautiful fabric plus 2 lbs of buttons and 4 lambskin oval patches. The purple is Cotton basket weave, the navy is worsted wool, the tweed Silk Rayon and the cream is Microfibre Suede. I accidently only ordered one yard of the latter for a Joel shirt -- which is barely a back and a sleeve for him! The buttons - a few are usuable for projects -- but mostly J and I find good games with them

Opting for the Fun!

I was challenged by some blogs' New Year's resolutions but only enough to at least write down what I'd like to be sewing. So I started jotting down what I needed for the wardrobe: two skirts for work, a jumper, Gortex jacket. But quickly I started a fun list -- a dress for J using the left over purple wool fabric from a fore-mentioned skirt, a fleece jacket for J, (J's added a housecoat to the list!), a knit dress for myself....and that last one is what I jumped to. It's more than two years since this pattern came out in BWOF (11-2006-110) and I still like it. It's supposed to be in Panne Velvet which means a stretch velvet that stretches two ways, not four. I'd even purchased some panne velour to make a muslin. What held me up was the number of alterations this will take to make petite-sized. See all those separate pattern pieces? 13. I'm in the midst of the alterations. The 1st was to make long sleeves.

One more Christmas item

Before the Season wraps up on January 6th, wanted to show one photo of dd. Here she is, helping out at the local Food Drive back in November -- at 3 1/2 she was keen to help move the food into storage after it was collected, helping the Scouts, volunteer firefighters and other foodbank volunteers. She wanted to go back the next day!

Back in late November, I was determined to get much sewing done for Christmas presents and here's the photo of the Wazoodle package of fabric. ost of that huge package from Wazoodle is sewn up - (save for 1.75 yards of a future fleece top). The morning of Dec. 24th, I finished the last present and sewed about 17.5 yards of fabric -- two housecoats, three PJ pants, one PJ shorts and 16 potholders. You'll find the pattern for these at Simple Pot holder pattern. Then during the days since finally sewed a red housecoat for myself. When I was planning my mother's housecoat, I ordered both purple and red fabric but it's sometimes hard to tell the shades of colours online. So I decided if it turned out to be Mom's deep red, then it was hers. However, it arrived as bright red so she ended up with purple which she seems quite happy with. Thought I'd get more sewing done after Dec. 25th but it's been hectic. The highlights were Christmas Day at cousins, my brother and sister-in-law here on Boxing Day and New Year's and C&T taking all three kids plus dog so Joel and I had a night away that went too fast.
I'll post a review of the housecoats soon. Now, some winter sewing planning.