Monday, December 6, 2010

Not drowning, waving



Actually, make that drowning...

Well, I think I've topped my record lately in the "set yourself too many tasks, fail miserably and fall into a heap" stakes. Of course, setting yourself lots of tasks isn't a problem if you've actually got enough time to execute them... which I did have a while ago but haven't had lately. Just to let myself off the hook slightly though, having the Mr away all last week did set me back a bit. After parenting solo one school kid and two cranky toddlers I was just too knackered to stay up crafting, sewing or blogging and most nights fell into bed and dragged myself out again the next morning, having been joined in bed by anywhere between one and three little buddies sometime through the night.

So on my list of things to do by about now was (she takes a deep breath):
- Sewing myself a dress. From scratch. No pattern.
- Sewing my big girl a dress including petticoat & decorative flower (see 'next up on my sewing machine' over on the right)
- Finishing the hand printed Christmas paper & tags
- Buying and making various gifts for family & friends for our early Christmas celebrations (more on this later when it's not a secret :-)
- Making a birthday gift for a friend

Hmm. Some of them are almost done, but others are nowhere near done, and I'm going to have to come up with alternative solutions or just accept that life's not prefect. I've given myself a serious talking to and decided that my new year's resolution will be to do less projects and give each the time they need to be done well rather than raced through.

Anyway... let me show you something I have been able to do a little on...

I finally decided on the style of dress to make for my brother's wedding, then agonised over the fabric - went to my favourite fabric shop hoping to find some Japanese Echino light weight cotton in one of their beautiful prints. But they didn't have any and nothing else jumped out at me. So after wasting my precious child-free couple of hours I headed home feeling defeated and deflated. Out of precious fabric shop browsing time, I trawled the net and finally decided on the Alexander Henry "Imperial Kiku" from Kelani Fabrics.



As the dress is such a simple design I felt that the fabric needed lots of personality. I made a 'muslin' to check on my pattern in a solid purple colour which looked pretty boring. I have drafted the pattern myself after taking pointers from "Design-it-yourself clothes", so we'll see if it's a total disaster or not!

3 comments:

  1. Hello hello from a fellow drowning person... argghhh :) Love the fabric for your dress... I'm sure it will look fabulous! I'll be doing a bit of "wasting precious time" in fabric shops today... LOL
    So much to do in such a little time.. I secretly love it! Hope you everything done :)

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  2. I'm still not quite sure why I also put a million and one things on my list as well, but it seems I like the challenge of it. I really like the dress fabric!! Good luck finishing it and with your other projects!!

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  3. also drowning here!! that fabric is wonderful - can't wait to see the final product (you are so damn clever.) xx

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