the Maddy dress

Sometime ago my mom gave me some “vintage” patterns for kid’s clothing. Since vintage is so in these days, I decided to give one of the simpler patterns a try.

Enter Burda #10464.

Definitely 1970s. Bell bottomed pants, large collars, dresses mid-thigh. Not to mention the fabric choices in the illustrations! And the hair.

Looking past all of that, though, the dress itself is not that vintage. Timeless, I suppose.

So I forged ahead and decided to make version C of the dress. My mom had saved all the pattern pieces and the instruction sheet. The German instruction sheet. I have to say, that as far as instruction sheets go this one was minimal. You really have to have some advanced knowledge of sewing and dress construction (not to mention be able to read German) in order to follow these instructions. Actually, if you have advanced knowledge of sewing and clothing construction you don’t really need the instructions.

The only really useful instruction on this sheet was this:

WICHTIG! Naht- und Saumzugaben mu¨ssen beim Zuschneiden zugegeben werden!

Which, when I read it now 24hrs after finishing the dress I believe says:

WARNING! Seam allowances must be added when cutting the material.

Yes, I am reading that now. Yes, I already finished the dress. No, I did not add seam allowances. Sigh. No wonder the size 5 that I made barely fits Maddy. Oops.

Anyway, I dove into my material stash and found some fabric. I mixed and matched and hemmed and hawed and finally came to a decision based mostly on availability of what I had on hand and partly on colour combination.

The finished product:

The piping around the armholes was my doing. The topstitching around the bodice was my doing. I even experimented with some French seams down the side… not entirely sure I did it correctly, but it’s done. I didn’t do the pockets.

I think this dress would look sweet with some contrast piping down the front seams. And next time I make it I’ll add some seam allowances!

February is sucking the life out of me

First we had this:

Then we had this:

And then we had 3 snow days. And a holiday. And a sick kid who couldn’t go to school. And the sidewalks aren’t plowed and I don’t have a car and I am trappedinmyhousewiththreekids. And they’re predicting more snow.

And while we could do some of this this and this:

… I think I now officially hate February.

March, hurry up.

professing love

Some days I wonder what I got myself in to. The kids are all screaming or crying, I get kicked, spat on, yelled at. Food is thrown. Tantrums are thrown. No one is happy.

And then art work like this comes home from school and all the bad stuff that happened that day disappears.  I love you too, Maja.

they are, afterall, part Canadian

This past December we had an epic snowfall — well, epic using Philadelphia standards. I think it was the biggest snowfall that we’ve had in December in a 100 years? or something like that. Of course this called for: SLEDDING/TOBOGANNING/SLIDING (call it what you will).

I was a little nervous sending Maja out to the park with a sled because last year when Richard and I took her sledding she got a face full of snow on her first run down the hill — we had to go home with her screaming the whole way back. Thankfully, however, this year was much better! She actually enjoyed herself!

tummy sliding, toboggan riding, snow slipping, saucer-flying!!!!!

I think she spent about 6 hrs out there on the toboggan hill that sunny day. I’m not kidding. She was loving it. And best of all? Maddy had fun too — they were both fearless!