Sewing for Tweens: Ghastlie party dress

Lately, I find myself looking at my children and wondering where my babies went. The feeling is especially true for my eldest daughter. She turns nine in a few months, but strangers often mistake her for being a couple of years older. She's tall for her age, and has a maturity about her that I guess comes from being the eldest child. Even so, she's still a young girl who will happily wear clothes that I make for her and it makes my heart glad because I know that this may not always be the case. The challenge will be as she gets older to find the balance between what is age-appropriate versus what she will actually want to wear.

It has often been remarked upon that while there are so many girls' clothing stores, there seems to be not as many age-appropriate clothing options for girls in the 9-13 year old age bracket. My sisters also take a more conservative approach to dressing their daughters which has been such a blessing because the clothes are invariably passed down to us.

Still, it is always nice to have something new every now and then and so it was that I embarked on this sewing project for Sienna last weekend. She selected the fabrics and I looked online for some tween dress inspiration. This polka dot dress with a bit of a rock-n-roll flavour popped up. I was immediately interested in the shape of it and showed it to Sienna, who also really liked it, so that formed the basis for her latest dress.

The fabrics are a black and white stylized print that looks like a Maori koru motif and a slightly subversive Alexander Henry print from the Ghastlies collection. The Ghastlie family have been around for several years and this piece of fabric is from the 2011 series. It had been in my stash for quite a while just biding time until a suitable project came along. I think as my daughters get older, these kinds of prints will become even more popular with them. Some of the facial features are quite menacing especially to younger children like Aimee, who doesn't like the fabric at all but to an older child, the fact that it is slightly spooky and off-beat is part of the appeal. This will be the perfect Halloween party dress.

When we looked at the polka dot dress, the two aspects that appealed to me most were the use of piping and the pockets. I think that by incorporating both of these factors in my version they help to balance out the quite dark mood of the print and keep the dress playful and fresh.

I headed to the blog expecting a detailed tutorial, but found that the instructions assume that the reader has some knowledge of dress construction which meant that I had to rely on what I remembered about making a lined bodice several years ago. I basically resorted to fumbling my way through all the steps, which is fine if you have the time and patience, but I really wanted to whip it up quickly. This is not one of those dresses. There's maths involved, people. There's understitching and adding a zip to a lined bodice, plus handmade piping on this baby, so there are more steps than a Rocky Balboa movie.

Maybe someone has made a dress exactly like this with a free pattern and accompanying tutorial out there somewhere in blogland and I suffered unnecessarily? Anyway, the pain of constructing this dress is really worth it, I think.

Often when I sew without a pattern, there is a lot of unpicking as I am terrible at calculating and pattern drafting in general and I just wing things. I found it to be true for this dress, as I made the bodice too small (I forgot to add seam allowances for the zip - oh, and for the whole bodice) so it's a snug fit. All it means is that Sienna will likely only get a season's wear from it, but that's why I have two other daughters, right? So they can capitalize on their mother's sewing mistakes. I imagined the dress to have a nice, full skirt like the one in the inspiration photo but realized quite late in the process that I had nowhere near enough fabric to make a circle skirt or any kind of full skirt. In the end, I had to settle for one much straighter than I would have liked.

Such a shame because a flared skirt really would have won it for me. With one change in the "plan" (the one that is written in my head), it follows that more allowances needed to be made elsewhere. The hemline was originally going to hit around knee-length, but the straighter style meant that it needed to be shorter to give greater ease of movement. I can't see Sienna doing cartwheels in it, but at least she will be able to run more freely with the hemline at a shorter length.

Are you sick of all the photos yet? Can you tell I am proud of the dress? And of my daughter, but that goes without saying.

Just one more image of how Sienna decided to accessorize the outfit. Love it. Love her. Do you think that I will need to make some new leggings for her?

If you have reached the end of this blog post, well done, now you feel how I did when I finished making the dress. Slightly ragged and a little more aged but pleased to get there in the end. Now go forth and make something. I'll see you over at Leonie's for Show and Tell on Thursday.

My fears (or one of them) laid bare

Having grown up on a farm, I like to think I was raised to live harmoniously with all kinds of creatures but I have never quite been able to overcome my fear of anything with more than four legs. We're pretty lucky in this country that we have very few venomous creatures - and two of our three dangerous spiders hitched a ride over here from our sharing, caring neighbour, Australia.  We have the native katipo, redback and the whitetail spiders, which are all relatively small spiders on the size scale of scariness. So, my rationale is that because they have no other effective means of protection to repel predators, some of our native creepy crawlies are so ugly and grow to insane sizes just to freak us all out instead. Huhu beetles? Wetas? I wet my pants - I mean, I rest my case. Imagine how I'd go in Australia with all its poisonous snakes and spiders and Tony Abbott.

Then I read this week about the discovery of a tunnel web spider that was reportedly as large as a man's hand. I initially dismissed it as being just one more valid reason to avoid the Wairarapa (jokes, I love the 'Rapa), when I read further that this spider lives happily in the ground NATIONWIDE.

They say it is harmless, but I'd quietly disagree. Look at the size of it, that thing'll gnaw your face off. It's very weird though, even though I feel so repulsed by these kinds of creatures, they also intrigue me. In the interests of research, I googled this spider and learned that it is related to tarantulas and the deadly Australian funnel-web spider, so it's got some fairly decent genes.

I felt certain that I would have nightmares about one of those things finding its way into my bedroom as I have this recurring nightmare where a spider is slowly lowering itself from the ceiling on its thread and I wake up just before it drops onto my face and I do this awesome spider-evading ninja move with my whole entire body that wakes my husband up. It feels so real to me that I have to get him to turn on the light to check if there is something on the bed. I am officially a nut-case.

I haven't had a nightmare this week, but reading the article transported me back to the time when a little friend came to visit and decided to play hide and seek in my bra while I was in the shower. Funny game, weta. So funny.

When I felt it against my skin, that bra came undone quicker than a politician's promise. This all happened four years ago. I'm not traumatized by the experience at all.

I took some photos to prove to my husband that I was actually attacked by a weta the size of one of Saturn's moons and had to wrestle it to the ground before I: A) dealt to it with one of his shoes and staked it to my front door as a warning to all its spiky-legged relatives or B) calmly released it back into the bush depending on whether or not you are a Department of Conservation employee. Or you are this guy:

Have yourselves a happy spider-less and weird bugs-as-accessories people-free weekend, Moonies.

Crochet ice-cream fairy doll and two important lessons

Wellington has the best weather. Said no-one ever. The cold bite of winter has finally hit us with full force and its arrival coincided with the last week of the mid-year school holidays so instead of just being miserable outside, we could all be miserable together inside as well. Thank goodness for loom bands and children that like to craft and watch lots of telly.

Aimee has always been quite the keen artist and the walls in our house bear proud testament to that. Especially at about Aimee height. Ahem. Lately she has been producing some really imaginative pictures where I can actually tell what they are instead of having one of those awkward conversations where I pretend to know exactly what she's drawn and she looks at me all indignantly because I guessed incorrectly.

One drawing she made for me in the holidays was so cute that the moment I saw it, a picture popped into my head of how it might look as a crochet doll. This is Aimee's picture of an ice-cream fairy:

There is so much to love about it. She chose the yarn colours and I spent a day cobbling it together with the help of this crochet ice-cream tutorial. I posted an image of the work in progress on Instagram and this is how it ended up:

You're in luck, this girl doesn't mind being photographed from behind.

All the while, Aimee's older sisters and she would come over to where I was working and see it taking shape and offer lovely words of encouragement. Yet, I could never have imagined how much Aimee would love it once it was finished.

I see all the flaws and the things that could be tweaked to make it look better and the hair that could be much more 'tamed', but Aimee loves it just the way it is, and isn't that a great lesson? To love wholly and completely in spite of any imperfections, both real and imagined?

I received a lovely comment on Instagram that praised my mothering efforts. I was so touched to read that because there are days when I feel like I get it all terribly wrong. Like this shining parenting moment in the holidays that my little artist also captured. It's fairly certain that no crochet dolls will be resulting from this picture.

Evidently, I must have some major anger side-effect issues that make not only my arms fall off but those of the child being disciplined. Or maybe it's a super power because it's a mighty fine excuse to not do any housework or cooking. Every picture of a sad child must also have at least one caricature of a smirking sibling enjoying the verbal tug-of-war. The thing is, I don't even remember what I was angry with her for and I bet she doesn't either, if you asked her. I might have missed the whole point of the picture. I haven't really. I will do my best to make sure that when I next convey my displeasure to one of my children that at the very least, my feet will be pointing in the right direction.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Joining in with another fairy this week over here.

I'm a cool mum and that's not cool

More often lately, I have come to realize that the days of watching my girls point at the sky in wonder at the "hopperdoctor" and seeing them bounce on the "pampopleen" are over. It left me wondering about the fact that we spend a sizable portion of our early parenting lives teaching our children how to pronounce words correctly only for them to disappear down the dark hole of SMS speech when they hold a mobile device in their hands. My children do not have cellphones, and despite the fact that I don't converse with them in text speak (soz, peeps, I don't spare you from the same rule) I can see that some terminology is creeping its way into how my eldest daughter communicates with her BFFs. Text terms, abbreviations and acronyms are commonplace and constantly evolving but I feel reasonably confident that I am au fait with the majority of them, or I could at least hazard a guess if I saw it written somewhere. It's not that I have a FOMO. LOL. I just think it's a parent's responsibility to get a handle on these things and if we can't keep ahead of the game, at the very least we can try to keep up.

So, the other day when my daughter said I was cool, I felt quite touched. Then she dissolved into a fit of giggles. I should have known better, although in my defence, it's not uncommon for her to say something heart-meltingly lovely to us. She explained that it is not cool, it's cool - cranky old overweight loser.

Not. Cool.

Seeing my Mum-face, my daughter quickly compensated for the rude remark by saying "No, you're only one of those things". Well, that's alright then. While I was momentarily left wondering which one, she went on to add "You're not old, overweight or a loser, but you are cranky". Fair call. My children are nothing if not honest. I turned it back on them though and asked them when and why I get cranky. They all know it is when they aren't doing something they've been asked to do. Usually for the fifth time. There's a lesson in there for them - and me, but mostly them. Mum FTW (not the obscene FTW, the other one ICYWW).

LOL.

{Facebook Find}: Feline shenanigans and why The Bloggess is still TFBOTPWDKIE

Let it be known that I hate animal pictures and videos clogging up my Facebook wall. I just don't find them even vaguely cute or funny and I made a silent promise to myself long ago that I simply cannot be friends with anyone who does. Ha! Only half-joking. I was faced with a conundrum when The Bloggess linked to this Facebook video on her blog, because if she so clearly enjoyed it, then it would result in only one of two outcomes: I'd watch the video and A) admit it was funny and have to reevaluate my Facebook friendship status with a number of close relatives or B) find it unfunny and realise, crushingly, that The Bloggess is not my comedic superhero after all, which would really ruin my day because she is The Funniest Blogger on the Planet Who Doesn't Know I Exist. But it would be only very shortlived disappointment, because there is always The Harridan who is also a very reliable source of entertainment and she'd be a tidy replacement.

So, it was with some reluctance that I clicked on that link and there it was. Every single cat video known to mankind all packaged up into one nice, tidy four minute montage. And, it was actually funny. And a little bit cute. Except for the toe-sniffing, that's just revolting. Those crazy cats. I even viewed it twice just to be sure my judgement was not unduly influenced by the fact that it was recommended by a blogging doyenne, and yep, it was still funny on the second go-around.

Watch and enjoy.

Have a great week, friends.

There Are No Cats in This Book

I don't tend to count picture books as being among the books that I read, but that isn't being fair to the picture books, is it?

Recently, Aimee and I have been enjoying There are No Cats in this Book by author/illustrator Viviane Schwarz. It has been around a little while it seems but we've just discovered it, realizing only at the end that she has written an earlier book with these characters called There Are Cats in This Book. We will be seeking out that book at the library these winter holidays.

Some children become so enamoured with a book that they want to have it read to them over and over again but I had never really seen that happen with Aimee until this book. She loves how interactive it is, as the cats (yes, there are cats in this book - oh, the irony!) enlist the help of the reader to escape the pages of the book so they can go see the world. 

I am so glad to find a book that she adores and I hope that this marks the start of a lifelong love of books for her.

What picture books have your pre-schoolers enjoyed? Any recommendations are warmly welcomed.

{Facebook Find}: Like A Girl

How was your weekend? Bet you're all dying to know if you were the winner of the magazine giveaway. Or maybe you aren't. Because you DIDN'T ENTER. Cripes guys, way to make a girl feel loved. Are you breaking up with me? Clearly, I need to avoid any jobs in sales since I can't even give things away. I considered extending the timeframe by a few more days, but I rather suspect it would be a little like nailing jelly to a tree. So, *streamers and ticker tape raining from the sky* Lisa from Big Little, the magazine subscription is all yours. Congratulations!

In other news, this video was on my Facebook wall this morning. If you have a girl, married a girl, teach a girl, work with a girl, live with a girl or you are a girl, this is for you. Yes, this is a clever marketing strategy, but I am less interested in the product and more interested the responses by a boy and a young woman who appear later on in the ad. Please take a moment to watch it and think about what message we send to our children when told that they do things 'like a girl'. It's brilliant.

Let's give all our pre-teens the belief that they can win the race.

Have a great week.