Sick kids, sick parents....

Alas! What I was worried about in August had come true in Sept. After 4 days of daycare, my toddler got sick, and in turn infected his baby sister, myself and my husband. A household full of sick kids and sick parents was not an easy one. My baby wanted to nurse constantly (for my antibodies to fight off her illness) so I hardly got any sleep. And of course I still had cook and do the usual house chores and take care of the other sick kid. Well, we survived that and I hope I won't get to see the next wave of sickies in my house for a while! But flu season has just started....

Trendy handbag for $5

I thrifted this patent faux croc bag for $5 a few months ago. There was nothing wrong with it. It wasn't even dirty.Lately I've seen lots of these patent croc bags in magazines. It seems like it's all the rage for this Fall/Winter 2011 season. I'm happy I am on trend for only a fiver!

Self-stitched Sept'11 Challenge - Sept 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

As mentioned before I have signed up for 'So, Zo's Self-stitched Sept'11 Challenge'. I aim to wear at least 1 self-stitched or refashioned piece of clothing each day during the month of Sept.

Sept 1 (sorry the picture is blurry):I'm wearing a self-stitched top (New Look 6357) and microfibre cargo pants I bought 12 years ago in the UK.

Sept 2:I'm wearing a self-stitched faux wrap top (New Look 6729) and self-stitched ankle length pants (Vogue 8041).

Sept 3:I'm wearing a repurposed chocolate box elastic as a hair elastic.

Sept 4:I'm wearing a Montreal Jazz Festival t-shirt from 18 years ago and self-stitched ankle length pants (Vogue 8041).

Sept 5:I'm wearing a thrifted cotton cashmere top and self-stitched pants (vogue 8157).

I actually look forward to cooler days as I have more self-stitched and self-refashioned clothes that are for cooler weather.

Chocolate box elastic repurposed

This is more a repurpose than a refashion. I got this gold elastic from a chocolate box. My hubby was going to throw it away but I managed to save it. I was going to take it apart and make something with it but haven't had time yet. Meanwhile, I needed some strong elastic to pull my hair back.

From:

To:
I didn't fiddle with it. I just used it as it. My hubby thinks I've finally gone off the rocker!! LOL!

ECing a 4 month old baby

The ECing is not progressing as well as I had hoped.....perhaps I was setting the bar too high. In my mind I was hoping that my 4 month old would continue to only poo during a pottytunity and starting to pee mostly during a pottytunity as well. The fact is that she had pooed in the diaper 3 times in the last 2 weeks. I'm a bit discouraged. The first 2 times she pooed in the diaper, someone else was holding her and I was busy cooking or doing some other house chores. So I wasn't paying attention to her 'tells'. The 3rd time she did it, she gave me lots of tells by fussing and crying but I was clueless. Afterall, she just pooed a big one only 30 minutes ago! So I tried to feed her, she refused the boob. I tried to rock her to sleep, she was screaming and crying but eventually calmed down. That was when I discovered she had another big poo in her diaper. Sigh!

I know my baby is going through some sort of developmental stage. Her feeding, sleeping, pooing is all out of sorts right now. So I guess I just have to be patient and figure out what her new patterns are. I guess I'll never really truly have it figured out since she will continue to grow and her needs will continue to change!

Vogue 7933 waistband converted

I have converted the Vogue 7933 waistband to a pull-on style, comfort waistband (see previous post). Yay! It's not perfect but it's now much more wearable than before. There is still a little gaping at the back but tolerable. It's probably because I have a flat seat and I'm short-waisted. I will have to re-draft the waistband piece of this pattern later for a better fit.

I was rushing to finish this after the kids had gone to bed and forgot to take pictures along the way. After removing the original waistband and sewing the original zipper fly shut, these are the steps:

1. Find the original fabric for this pair of pants. Cut out the contour waistband on the stretchy grain of the fabric, using the Vogue 7933 pattern as a guide, but omit the overlapping tab part so that the waistband will form circle.

2. I sewed the waistband into a circle, and did the same with the facing. Then I sewed the top of the waistband and the facing together.

3. I cut a piece of 1 inch non-roll elastic which is about 1.5 inch shorter than the circumference of the waistband. I zig-zagged it into the top seam allowance of the waistband facing piece. I tried with a 1/4 inch elastic but I like the 1 inch elastic better because makes the waistband more sturdy. I stretch the elastic slightly when I sewed it to the fabric. I stretched it a lot when sewing it to the back where it originally gaped horribly.

4. I sewed the waistband to the pants and top-stitched it with contracting threads.

Front:

Back:
I rarely tuck my tops into my pants these days. So this is how I am wearing it. The waistband gently holds back my mommy tummy a bit which is nice.

I'm quite happy with this conversion. These pants are wearable now! I am going to look at the other pants I made and see if I still have the original fabric to do this conversion again. Thanks Myrna for your post!

Self-stitched Sept'11 Challenge

Yep, I've signed up for 'So, Zo...,'s Self-stitched Sept'11 Challenge. I already wear at least 1 piece of self-made clothing every day so this should be fine. The challenge for me is to remember to take a picture of each outfit every day for the month of Sept!

This challenge will also help me figure out if I'm wearing the same small portion of self-made clothes day in and day out. I'm sure I'll have fun doing it. Here is my pledge:

'I, Lovenicky, sign up as a participant of Self-Stitched-Sept '11. I endeavour to wear at least 1 self-stitched or self-refashioned piece of clothing each day for the duration of September 2011'.

Converting pants' waistband - Vogue 7933

I made a lot of clothes, especially pant/jeans before I had kids. Now that I have 2 kids, my body shape has changed a lot and some of the pants I made just don't fit properly. The waistband is a particular issue. I want to make them wearable again.

I have been seeing these 'comfort waist pants' sold in Reitmans (a Canadian clothing chain). I have never tried them on but they are pull-on style and do look comfortable and polished at the same time. I noticed that the waistband were cut on the stretchy grain just like the pants were. However, it seemed like there was something else underneath the waistband. Since I didn't own a pair, I wasn't able to find out.
I googled 'comfort waist pants' and found Myrna's blog (http://blog.myrnagiesbrecht.com/2010_03_01_archive.html). She owns a pair of these pants and actually took the waistband seam apart to find out what was in there. Apparently it has some sort of hard clear elastic sewn into the top of the waistband. I don't know where to find these elastics so I'm just going to wing it by sewing some non-roll elastic in my stash into a pair of pants that I made to see if that would work.

The pants that I will be experimenting on is this one (http://lovenicky.typepad.com/blog/2009/11/last-top-finished.html ) - Vogue 7933. It gapes horribly at the back if I don't wear a belt with it. I'm going to convert the waistband and see if it will improve the fit. Wish me luck!

ECing a 3 month old baby

I can't believe my baby is 3 months old already! I'm still ECing her, although I noticed that she poos less now than before. Previously, she would poo after every feed. Now she has a big poo in the morning when she wakes up, and then perhaps a couple of poos during the day. I know it sounds weird, but the changes in her elimination frequencies is quite interesting to me as her mom! LOL

I still offer her 'pottytunities' after each feed, even though she doesn't always poo/pee during these instances. I have also added 'pottytunities' when she wakes from a nap, especially when I am able to catch her right after she wakes up. She would poo/pee and give me this big smile afterwards!

Knit skirt to dress refashion

I found this linen/cotton knit skirt at a thrift store. I didn't know that you could make knit out of linen! I liked the colour and the stripes. The skirt is too long for me so I thought I could make a dress out of it.Steps:

1. Rip out the side seams a few inches down from the top. It's better to rip more than less because you can always resew the seams back. Take out the waist elastic. Also, rip out the stitching on the waistband a couple of inches from the side seams towards the middle part of the skirt.

2. Try the skirt on as a dress. Mark where the side seams to close (the arm hole).

3. I hand-sewn the seams up to where my arm hole was to be (hand sewing because the sides seams were slightly damaged). Then I turn the seam allowance under all the way up the folded-over waistband.

4. I had some double fold denim bias tape in my stash. I fold them and sew it together to make a long denim tie for the neckline.

5. Push the denim tie through the waist band using a safety pin.
6. Try on the dress again and adjust where the you want to knot the tie.

7. The dress is loose fitting so you can put a belt on or just leave it loose and airy!
Another easy peasy refashioning! One note of caution: if the knit is not stretchy enough then you may need to actually cut out the armhole curves of the dress instead.

I am nursing my baby right now so I'm leaving the dress quite loose as is. Once I finished nursing I'll need to adjust the whole dress and put some shape into it.

Refashion inspirations

I just borrowed this book from the library: '1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse'. Really inspirational book. Lots of creative ideas. I of course like the 'Coutures + soft goods' section for refashioning ideas for myself. But the pictures in the other sections also inspire creative fashion ideas.

This book is all just pictures. There are no instructions on how to make the items. If you just like to look at pictures to get your own creative juices going, this is the book for you. Borrow it from the library first before you decide to buy it.

Swimsuit refashioned

Remember the teal swimsuit that I was thinking of refashioning? Well, it's done! Thanks very much to hubby who single-handedly put 2 kids to sleep. I was able to have some sewing/refashioning fun for an hour (it has been really really difficult to steal an hour for myself when having a raging toddler and a 2 month old baby!).

I had been doing a lot of planning and thinking before I took out the scissors for this project. It was a bit of trial and error: cutting some, sewing some, trying the suit on, cut some more, sew some more, etc. That's why I didn't take any 'during' pictures because I didn't know how I was going to do it and how it would turn out.

So a too-long one piece swimsuit:
Became a faux tankini suit!


Steps:
1. Try on swimsuit. Make a rough mark on where to cut the across the suit.
2. Turn the suit inside out. Mark the line to cut and cut it.
3. Try on the tankini top and the cut bottom. Note where else needs cutting. In this case, because I have a flat bum, I found the bum portion of the suit had too much fabric. So I decided to shorten the front by 1.5cm, and the back by 3cm.
4. Sew the tankini top and the bottom together again.
5. Try on the suit again to check the fit.
6. Topstitch the tankini bottom edge to make it look more like a real tankini.


The new suit feels more snug which I hope will not droop after being in the water. Now I just have to go swimming to see if it will perform as I wish!