I'm giving away a little bit of culture!

Hey hey hey!

So the drafting series is behind us - did you have fun?

I hope you did! I also hope you learned something new, something different, something that freed you to think outside the box, something that might inspire you to try sewing from a different angle. And maybe offered you an alternative to buying (and storing) multitudes of commercial patterns, thus saving you lots of money and space. Why spend money/space on patterns when you can spend it on fabric? is my outlook on sewing, and life in general.

This series was for me also a walk down memory lane and a revisit of my childhood. It is near impossible for me to think of drafting without remembering being a daughter, student and fashion brat in mum's house. That I also got to physically return to Singapore earlier in the year and resume drafting with the ladies who first taught me, was like icing on the cake. I only wish Grandma were still alive - what a party we would have had, could we (mum, Auntie Laura, Jen and me) have had her teach us! Now that would have been something to blog about.

And then there's all of you - thank you for asking me about drafting in the first place. Thank you for your comments, your emails, your requests and your interest. Because of you, I got off my behind, thought of my own little girls learning to draft someday and said, "what the hey, drafting isn't easy to teach but I'll have a shot at it." What a thrill of a journey. And the best part was that Jen and I got to work together as if we were still in the same school (or even just the same country, dang), taking the same bus, hanging out in the same fast-food joints and coffee shops, dreaming of the day when we'd be all grown up and fabulously dressed. Which we are now, of course (fabulously dressed, I mean - I don't know anything about being grown-up).

Thought I'd celebrate the end of the series with a little giveaway! When I was back in Singapore earlier this year, I went shopping and returned with an eclectic collection of, well, culture. See here:

Some of the toys I played with as a little kid:

a paper ball, a little wooden top and some of those gummy bubbles inflated through a straw. (You're getting the folded ball, not the one I actually blew up with my germy mouth to take this picture).

Some of the cute stationery that you can find in any part of Asia, really. Here are a lego-style color pencil, take-apart food erasers and a card case - from Korea and China.

That strawberry bag:

Notions and stuff - a giant seam-ripper, Japanese self-threading needles, one of my drafting pencils, a pair of golden-yellow frog buttons, and half a dozen white fabric roses:

6 yards of trims from my favorite haberdasheries in Singapore and Bangkok (they're sold in rolls!!!!!)

and batik. Of course batik.

2 yards of fabulous bright, cotton Malaysian batik such as you've never seen in the Western hemisphere:

I'm putting it all in a package and sending it off to one lucky person! If you want a chance to win a little bit of the culture of ikatbag (and a small part of South East Asia), leave a comment on this post

• telling me one thing new /different you learned about sewing this year, and how you learned it/where you learned it - a book, a miserable personal experience, somebody's blog, a video, watching someone else do it, anything. Inspire me! Make me want to go buy that book, visit that blog, watch that video and avoid that miserable personal experience!

• by Thursday Nov 11 2010, midnight

• with easy access to an email address. If your comment gets picked and I can't find your email address within ten seconds, I'm redrawing. I'm that lazy.

Anyone in the world can enter, so start writing your stories now!

I'll close the giveaway at midnight on Thursday and pick a comment at random and announce the winner the next day.

Drafting - An Epilogue

So here we are, four months after it all began. We've finished our drafting series, although it's taken me this long to actually say so! I feel silly confessing this, but I actually forgot that I hadn't properly closed the series. Suddenly remembered only last week that I had this epilogue post (original post date: July 7 - ulp!) sitting on my dashboard. Well, better late than never. Jen and I enjoyed writing it for you and for our own daughters and perhaps one day we'll put it into a real book. That would be fun, if a lot of work- sheesh.

Here is a summary list of links to all the chapters of our series:

Part I: Overview: Tools, Terms & Measurements
Part II: Drafting: The Front Sloper
Part III: Drafting: The Back Sloper
Part IV: Fitting: Front+Back Check
Part V: Drafting: The Sleeve BlockPart VI: Fitting: The Sleeve Block
Part VII: Adaptation: Sleeves
Part VIII: Adaptation: Necklines, Facings and Sleeveless Garments
Part IX: Adaptation: The Bottom Half
Part X: Adaptation: Boys, Men and Women
Part XI: Adaptation: Darts & Princess Seams
Part XII: Resources
Part XIII: Using Slopers With Commercial Patterns

And we were just skimming the surface!

One thing to remember: there is no single correct way of drafting. Another way of saying it is that everyone drafts differently. There is a lot of personal preference or personal style in it. Some people always like roomier drafts. Some people always make snug slopers. Some people draft big sleeve caps with a lot of ease. Some like them tight. Some never draft slopers and jump right into patterns. Some are purist drafters, and some like a combination of drafting-and-draping to get their final slopers. When I was drafting a sloper for someone with a very different body shape and size than mine, I had a discussion with mum about shaping. I was all for waist-shaping and underbust darts, but mum recommended concentrating most of the shaping within the darts (i.e. straight side seams). When I said I was on to my third fitting and still making adjustments, she said, "Your grandmother (who was a tailor) had almost 50 years of experience and sometimes still did more than one fitting."

Different books, written by different authors, will show you different templates for blocks and slopers. And have different formulae for various things. You will compare approaches and say you prefer so-and-so's more than so-and-so's because your sleeve block, drafted with so-and-so's instructions fit you better than so-and-so's which felt like wearing a potato sack. As if all that variation in approaches wasn't enough, there is also only so far a theoretical template can take you. Once you put it on a real human body that not only has curves, but also movement, you might need to close the books and take out your pins and markers and indulge in a little bit of draping. There is no shame in a sloper that fits badly the first time around. I've made many vile slopers in my life. And I have learnt more about fit and drafting from a bad sloper than from those that fit well the first time around. I've learnt to adapt and visualize. I've also learnt how unsymmetrical the human body is.

Tip: Make your sloper snug. Be conservative about the ease. Don't be afraid to plot exactly what you measured. A sloper that is too tight will show you more clearly where the fit issues are than one that is so loose that it is shapeless all over. When I began drafting, I almost always ended up taking in vast amount of inches at the waist, hips and chest because I was afraid it would be too tight and so cleverly added "just-to-be-safe" ease. Very common beginner's mistake, and one I still make from time to time, especially when low on nutella.

One of the consequences of only making your own sewing patterns and never using commercial patterns is not knowing how much fabric you'll need when you finally get around to sewing your garment. Here's a post I wrote earlier this year on Mum's method for estimating yardage. It helps me think I sound clever at the cutting table in fabric stores.

An update on the lined brown kraft paper that I use for drafting: The KOTTE paper I used to buy from IKEA is still available, but it is now called SNOVITA. At 99c a roll that's 8 m long, it's a good deal.

Bit o'gossip: While the series was going on, my good friend signed up for a sewing course! Not the How To Sew A Tote Bag type of sewing course, but the kind that I wish I had access to, so I could recommend it to you all. He (yes, HE- bravo, E!) will be learning to sew a skirt, various pockets, different seams and (if I remember the course description correctly) a shirt. I don't think he even owns a sewing book yet - but now he probably knows more than I do about proper skirt assembling and fit because he's taking proper lessons. Can you hear me cheering?

Other related news: I've been seeing a sign at Joann's cutting counter that they have Personalized/Individual Sewing Lessons at $40 for 2 hours. It is customized to your needs and may include alteration-to-fit modules. Whoo!

One last photo before I close the series - I thought you might like to see my pattern collection:


Four envelopes - one each for me, Kate, Jenna and Emily. All the clothes I've ever sewn for all of us this year fit in those envelopes. That's one of my favorite perks of pattern drafting from slopers - I only keep what fits each person- and usually that's just the front and back sloper and basic sleeve block. Most of the adaptations (i.e. patterns) I draft and toss, unless it's something I think I might sew again, like an A-Line skirt. Which means I get to save all the precious space in my sewing closet for the really usable stuff, like actual fabric, hardware and notions. And everyone knows how we already never have enough room for all of those!

Cinderella

Hands up those who know that in the original Cinderella story, the illustrious princess had three gowns, one for each night of the ball?


And that the first was pink, the second blue, and the third gold-and-silver?


And that it was actually mentioned, in some versions,


that her gowns had floating overskirts (must have been written by a sewing person)?


Emily's is the last of this year's Princess Costume Trilogy. How unoriginal is that?

Every year the girls ask to be princesses, fairies or variations thereof. It never departs from this general theme. I am always hopeful that sometime they will ask to be something more unique, like a bratwurst, or ET. But it never happens. So now their closet is full of princess costumes. But I'm not complaining because while they will not wear an ET or robot costume after Halloween, they will, and do, wear their princess costumes all through the year.

But back to overskirts. I experimented a bit this year on their overskirts. Kate's Belle dress had a ruched overskirt over a gathered (ick! ick!) skirt. Pretty and luscious, but she noticed right away, at the discerning young age of two-and-a-half, that the twirl factor was very low.



Jenna's Ariel dress was a gathered overskirt over a semi circular skirt. Better, albeit unfaithful to the original Disney dress.




Emily's Cinderella dress has- finally- the swag draping that I'd wanted for Jenna's.

Hurrah, except I was using some stiff gold tissue lame remnant that I of course did not have enough of. So limited twirl. And - oh, must tell you all this - when I'd finished her bodice and before I'd put on the trim, I was suddenly gripped by the urge to slap on a communicator and intone, "Ensign Charming, Cinderella, Mrs., sir. Beam me up, Fairy Godmother!" That shiny reddish gold satin on stark white fleece in that V-layering - hellooooooooooo Star Trek.



Well, here are the princesses:


with their cousins the day before Halloween:

And here are their cloaks:



Satin on the outside, fleece on the inside:

And out they went to Get Candy. It was a warm night, thankfully - only 40++ F. And yes, those are mittens.

3 princess gowns+ 3 princess cloaks+ 8 Rapunzel (although not technically royalty till she married Prince OohILoveYourHair) dresses = I had a lot of fun with the delicious fabrics and trims but I am rather all princessed-out now. Oh for some cardboard.

Rapunzel: Pull-Apart Pinata

This is our Rapunzel pinata.

It is a cardboard tower that's open at the top and closed at the bottom. It is not a smash-up pinata like the previous pinatas we made for summer outdoor parties. We made this one a pull-open pinata because ours was an indoor party and our guests were a little too young to be inflicting blunt force trauma on things, even inanimate objects.

Some of you expressed interest in pull-apart pinatas, so I'll show you how we made ours. The initial plan was to make the tower as is, and cut as many windows as there were guests, stick tissue paper over the windows, bundle up treats, tie long ribbons to them, put them in the tower with the ribbons hanging out through tiny holes in the tissue paper. Each guest would then pull one of the ribbons and a little candy bundle would come tumbling out. Easy, non-violent, equitable, and unmessy. But not much fun, and zero suspense.

So we changed it to this more popular kind: lots of ribbons dangling from the bottom of the pinata - all of them duds save the one that, when pulled, would open a trapdoor and spill out the loot. Lots of suspense, and even easier to make. Here's how:


First, make the base of the pinata. We made ours out of corrugated cardboard. Our pinata was a cylindrical(ish) tower, so the base was a circle. Cut a large trapdoor out, hinged on one of the four edges:


Next, get lots of those curling ribbons:


Cut a length of ribbon, and securely glue it to the wrong side (inside) of the trapdoor, so that it hangs over the edge opposite the hinge. I used my hot glue gun because it was there, heating up for assembling the pinata anyway.


Here's another view:


Then attach the base to the pinata body. I hot-glued mine on.

Cut lengths of ribbon - at least one or two per guest, and lay about 6" of their ends within the trapdoor opening. Close the trapdoor - it will pinch the ribbons in place.


The hinge edge will not have any ribbons so you'll need to disguise it by cutting small slits close to the hinge and inserting ribbons through them.


Decorate your pinata - use crepe paper in frilly layers like the store-bought pinatas, if you like. We left ours plain because I like natural cardboard, and I didn't think Rapunzel's tower had ruffles.



When you are ready to use it, fill it with candy and hang it up.




The guests take turns to pull one ribbon each. At some point, someone will tug on the ribbon that opens the trapdoor


and out will come the goodies.

Much easier than the papier-mache bash-up kind, and actually more nerve-wrackingly suspenseful. Only don't let the kids see you make it if you're using multicolored ribbons, or they'll remember which one opens the trapdoor. Sneaky.

Excuse Me While I Zone Out

We had a fun weekend - Jenna's birthday, followed by candy-harvesting around the neighborhood. Now I'm slowly checking things off my List Of Things To Do After Jenna's Birthday, like fun making-dental-and-flu-shots-appointments, fun laundry, fun cleaning-the-whole-kitchen, fun cleaning-the-sewing-table, those kinds of things. And answering email, etsy duties, working on the Fungus Sewing Pattern.

But first, I get to drink tea. That's my cup half-full :)


I leave you with one picture of how the Rapunzel party went:

Photos to come.

Rapunzel: Nabbing A Prince

I thought I'd also share our fishing game because of that there daft picture of the witch. The girls hooted with laughter when I drew in her tiny hat. The point was to make her ridiculous rather than scary, because my littlest girls don't like scary much.

And the prince looks like a Playmobil klicky, doesn't he?

Anyway, I'll make this quick because I have a pinata to put together.


Here's the game:

1 Cut out long yellow ribbons/string/whatever.

2 Stick on magnets at the end. Here are ours wrapped around little cards to keep them apart for the party.

3 Print out the princes and witches on cardstock and cut them out so they are the same shape (so they cannot be told apart when face down)


4 Add paperclips

5 Scatter them on the floor, face down. With older kids, this can be at the bottom of a stairwell. With our 4-year olds, we'll be fishing off the floor while sitting on the sofa.

6 Tell the children they are Rapunzel and the ribbons/string/whatever are their long braids and they need to let their hair down and see if a prince will climb up.

7 Set them a random goal: whoever catches 5 princes first, wins.

8 Introduce a challenge: if they reel in a witch, they have to throw one prince out from their stash (but they can keep the witch as -snort - compensation).

Ariel

with legs.

Jenna wanted Ariel's pink dress for Halloween.
Not the turquoise mermaid suit, which was just as well, given the temperatures in these parts.

Pink and white fleece and white shiny thingy fabric. I hesitate to call it satin because it drapes poorly and is overly polyester and has glitter stuck on, besides.

Here she is with her sidekick, Flounder:

And here's a photo of her overskirt. If I'd actually looked at the little Disney figurine we have of Ariel, I would have noticed her overskirt was NOT a cheat-gathered thing like what I made. And I would have preferred the actual swag drape that it was, because this gathered thing was very bunchy at the waist and hard on my needles. That's beside the fact that I got the colors of the skirt and overskirt switched, too.


But Jenna loves it and, unfortunately, Kate loves it, too. Simply because it's pink. Grr. I should outlaw pink in our house, and that will be the end of fights.

Here is proof that even layers of fleece will not save us from hypothermia. It was freezing today, with some wicked wind. Brrrr.

Two down. And Emily's is also done -it just needs a few stitches put in by hand.

Now to start on the hooded cloaks.