Sunday, August 29, 2010

Just sew it!

My colleague became grandmother last November (yikes! She's only three years older than I am...) and this weekend, her grandson was christened.
I was wondering about a little present and came up with the (admittedly not too inventive) idea of sewing a bib. When you've got a baby or toddler, it's better to have enough of those at hand.
And although I don't consider myself a great seamstress, I'm quite happy with how it turned out. I combined the sturdiness of a jeans fabric in the lower part of the bib with the softness of a shirt in the upper part and the backing fabric. It's closed with two pieces of velcro. I washed the bib at 30 °C and even put it in the dryer, and it didn't do it any harm, so I guess it's ready to use ;-)

Funny, I like to sew, but it always takes sooooo long until I drag the sewing machine out of the basement and actually start to sew. And I seldom sew something for myself although I'm quite attracted to the idea of having unique, hand-sewn clothing and creating things my style.
I hate patterns and the technical terms that go with tailoring. I'd rather have an intuitive go at sewing, because I believe it's like knitting or typewriting - once you know how it works, it's going all by itself and you'll sense any failure on the spot.

When my son used to go to kindergarten, they used to masquerade on carnival. One of my "masterpieces" was costume for a Cro-magnon man (resembling the Inuit outfit) which even had a cotton lining because the upper fabric (which looked like suede) had lead to unpleasant zaps when my son wore it. To construct the jacket and trowsers, I sewed those like those of a karate suit, adding a hood to the jacket. The jacket had a faux fur brim (I had ripped apart a faux fur stole I bought at Ebay) and I even made some shoes out of a fabric that had plush on the inside and a rawhide look on the other side. They are wonderfully warm and I considered wearing them in winter.

Another of my creations for him was a racing suit I made of two or three Tyvek overalls (I needed several layers as they were very transparent. The suit was embellished with sponsor logos I printed on thin fabric, and with red fabric appliqued with a silver fabric logo.
To sew the Tyvek was dreadful, and that suit didn't last very long (I still have the Cro-magnon outfit, though).

Come to think about it, I did create things for myself, by oddly enough, only for productions of my theatre group... Made myself a wide pair of trousers that I fixed with a rope for my role as Puck in Shakespeare's "Midsummernight's Dream".
And there was a medieval undergarment I wore as Maria in "Twelfth Night".
And in the German comedy "Pension Schöller", I made a long black skirt with a sash to wear as an elder woman.

I'm not quite sure why I don't sew something for me that I could wear any day. There are a lot of nice things on the net and I have even bookmarked some for further reference...
((I guess I should just take my time and - sew it!))

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