Homecoming dress

I'm playing catch-up with all these posts sitting on my dashboard!  This one was from homecoming night in early October. Jenna and Kate got together with some friends to attend the dance and Emily drove home from the Uni to take photos with me of everyone dressed up. She also had corsage orders to deliver to the local high school students - her newest small business - so it was a busy and fun weekend.

I did not sew Jenna's blue dress, incidentally - this was bought, primarily because I was in Singapore until a few days before homecoming, and decided the less sewing I needed to do, the better. We successfully found something online that Jenna liked, so that was a win. Kate had something specific in mind that she wanted, so we agreed to custom-make that based on a design she had in her head.

I just have two things to say about this dress, process-wise.

The first is that it is sometimes frustrating for me as a dressmaker to know what fabrics are needed for a particular design to work but be unable to find those fabrics to buy, and have to end up making do. In this case, Kate requested sparkly fabrics, and a cut that was drapey and flowy. Now, this is a completely feasible combination, provided we lived in a world where we could customize exact fabric along with the fit and design of made-to-measure tailoring. Unfortunately, the fabric is sometimes the one thing you don't have control of, because stores stock what they will, when they will. On this occasion, therefore, we had to choose between drapey or sparkly, but not both. I count ourselves lucky that Kate at least chose black, for which there were more options of fabric bolts than any other color (except blue, maybe), and that homecoming was close enough to Halloween that the stores carried adequate cosplay materials of the sparkly variety; Emily, with her dreams of a forest-green prom dress in the middle of May, was not quite so fortunate.

Long story short, we compromised: plain chiffon sleeves which were flowy but not shimmery, and a bodice and skirt that were sparkly but a bit boxier than we saw in our mind.

The second is those sleeves. A long time ago, Emily had needed a formal concert gown and asked for sleeves similar to these: chiffon (translation: visible seams), over-the-shoulder raglan-cut, but without elastic (translation: invisible darting, pleating and/or some other shaping magic). I'd made muslin after muslin, consulted with my friend Jen, returned to first principles, even used a store-bought dress with close-enough sleeves as a reference - essentially pulled every drafting trick I was aware of, but under the time crunch, I simply wasn't able to deliver. We eventually conceded and I gave her classic set-in sleeves. The dress was still beautiful, and she still gets compliments on it whenever she wears it at concerts, but it's never stopped bugging me not having been able to Make That Dang Sleeve.

And then this fall, wouldn't you know it - Kate asked for That There Dang Sleeve. Black. Chiffon. Time crunch (trip to Singapore in imminent future) and all. Did I roll my eyes? I did. Did I break out in cold sweat? You bet I did. But even I could recognize a second chance when I saw it. And somehow this time it all came together. Yes, there were multiple muslins, and yes, elastic was allowed this time around, but I remember looking at the final draft and thinking, "Huh. This is not the monster I remembered fighting back then." I guess my mind was clearer now. Or I didn't care about failing, having done it so spectacularly once before. I didn't finish the dress before getting on the plane, but I did adjust the final muslin to the point where I had the peace of mind that this dress was going to work. I laid and cut out all the pieces in the expensive, sparkly fabric, labeled everything, left myself copious notes, and flew to Singapore. And when I got back to the US 10 days later, it was almost like working with a craft kit: thread and notions all purchased and set out, diagrammed instructions to follow, and all those pre-cut pieces ready to assemble. I'd never sewn a dress like this - it was loads of fun and came together in a couple of days with such ease that one could almost forget the tracing and fiddling and wasted practice yardage, and the remeasuring and redrafting of the weeks prior. If only all custom garments were made this way! 

Here's the front of the dress,

and the back, which has a strap tied into a bow.

and three sisters together again - a homecoming in the purest sense of the word, no?

A tiny new bag

Hello, friends! 

It's November! Somehow, summer happened and I don't remember a whole lot of it, honestly. So much has happened this year. Emily graduated from high school, and I sewed a prom dress and threw a grad party and got all emotional. Kate started a new late-summer job at the water park. The high school swim and dive season resumed in August and our days were non-stop shuttling to and from the pool and daily mounds of towels in the laundry. And we moved Emily into her new place at her Uni which, funnily enough, was the same apartment I stayed at when I first came to Minnesota 21 years ago to go to grad school. Very full-circle. 

It surprised me how physical it was, moving and setting up new digs, even if it was just a fraction of the size of a regular house and just 30 mins from home. We did a late night grocery run to stock her fridge after a quiet dinner together at the end of the day. You know the kind - you're working hard and you forget the time and suddenly the sun's set and you realize you should probably have dinner, so you drive out into an unfamiliar neighborhood and find a random sandwich place and it's only after you've sat down to eat that you feel the weight of the day and the looming goodbye settle on you. I bawled all the way home but I was so proud of my kid for doing this on her own, and so grateful that she was excited for instead of petrified of the transition. 

And just like that, the house was quieter and there was more bathroom counter space and we had to reorganize the laundry roster and learn to cook less food because there were just four of us now. I'm not an empty nester by any means, but it was an adjustment, nonetheless. My neighbor, who herself sent off three kids to college, said, "The first one is the hardest because it's the one that makes your family no longer intact." I also know of many other moms who'd beg to differ, and who'd swear that it's the youngest that's the most devastating because it's the last one that strips you of those those caretaking responsibilities which have been your identity for so many years. And there will be yet others who will say it's the second one, or the fourth, because that's the one who was the kindest to the dog, or the one who always remembered to buy the milk, or the one who tended to check in regularly so you never had to guess where they were. At the end of the day, we all agree on this: it's momentous when a kid leaves home. Particularly when it's not something you've grown up being used to - nobody leaves home at 18 in Singapore. Where would they go? It's a tiny island with a very finite number of tertiary institutions and everyone transitions from childhood to adulthood alongside their parents, and the caregiving shifts direction ever so subtly and evolves organically and in-person.

But I survived. And we're creating new patterns and logistics in how we continue to love each other. And what a blessing that she's only 30 minutes away and there are always convenient reasons to come home every other weekend, or stop by the apartment or campus. Any continuity from her old life helps, too. Like her music: earlier this month, my husband and I attended a couple of concerts to hear her play - new stage, new orchestra- and band-mates, but same kid, same trombone, and the same music that had always brought her so much joy. She was back home for homecoming to help take pictures of her sisters, stopped in at Sections last week to watch Kate swim, and two weekends ago, all three girls and I went to a rock concert. There were other random occasions, too - a week after she'd moved out,  we attended a fabric printing class together, just for fun. There's a separate post about that coming, but I wanted to mention that here because we'd signed up for that before she'd left home so we could have something artsy to look forward to after.

Which brings me to this bag (at last, I hear you say). I needed a new bag for so many reasons. For one, I'd had my old bag for more than six years and thought I should downsize, now that I no longer need to cart around all kinds of Motherphernalia. For another, I wanted to sew bags again. I should clarify: I always want to sew bags, but my kid had just left home and where other people might, say, eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's to cope, I sew receptacles. Summary: I was subconsciously looking for a reinvention, and my old bag was on its way out. Voila.

So here it is - my new much-smaller shoulder bag. Still upholstery suede, though, because that fabric lasts forever and doesn't show wear at all. That six-year-old bag I was telling you about? Still looks new on the outside, although the cotton lining is definitely worn.

I'm still sewing my straps the borderline-obsessive way.

Here's the strap anchor. It's a bit of work to attach externally instead of in-seam between the outer and lining layers of the bag, but I wanted to be fancy, so serves me right.

Here it is, inside-out. The lining is some real South-East Asian batik, probably Indonesian. 

While we're on the subject, I've always thought the tie-dye batiks we get here in American fabric stores were too fadey. In fact, I almost didn't believe they were batiks when I first came here to the US, because growing up in Singapore, batiks had been synonymous with vibrant fabrics like these. 

End of detour. This is the strap with a lobster claw, which I put in all my shoulder bags, to which to attach key rings. Saves me the trouble of digging for mine amongst all the other junk in my bags - I just feel for the strap instead, and pull out the keys.

An inside shot to show you one of the two inner pockets. You can see them more clearly in the first batik-side-out picture above. 

A couple of WIP shots next. You can see the pocket laying across the middle seam of the project - it's kinda like one of those spot-the-hidden-object pictures. Also wanted to show you that my fabric edges don't always line up in the construction process - see the two unmatching lower edges for what I mean. What's more critical (to me, anyway) is how the fabric piecing aligns at the seam, and sometimes, precision in other places has to give. All that irregularity disappears into the base seam anyway, so it's still all good.

What was the point of this next picture? No clue, sorry. This is what happens when you take photos and don't post them till months after. Maybe it was to show that curvy seam and the edge-stitching? Huh. Let's say that's it. Moving on, now!

Final shot of Fleur modeling the bag to give you an idea of its size. Okay, it's not really tiny like the title claims - it's just more compact and current than my old one was. Fleur does a lot of modeling for me these days now that the kids are hardly home to pose for me. And I am horrible at selfies and finding appropriate mirrors for taking selfies. So it's a good thing I have a body double. Plus, unlike the kids, she never fidgets.

I might have a couple of these bags to put in the store for the holidays. One of them is a fun variation - will share pictures in the next post. 

Early wishes for a wonderful Thanksgiving, everyone! Feast with abandon, enjoy your loved ones, and -id you're traveling - be safe on the roads (and air)!

The Green Prom Dress

It's been a long time, I know. I've missed you guys! 

Thank you to everyone who left comments and wrote emails to check in with me. It felt good to be in your thoughts. I've been doing okay, just really BUSY - we had a senior graduate from high school this spring! Those of you who've celebrated your own HS seniors will probably get it; I certainly had no idea how much there was to take in and do in the weeks even before graduation.

I'd say it started as far back as January with the last jazz concert of the year. You know how that is - even though the snow was still on the ground and we were nowhere even near the end of the semester, it suddenly hits you that this was the first of the "lasts". And in spite of swearing not to be That Mom, you subconsciously start the countdown anyway, and slap titles on each subsequent deeply poignant experience: The Last Wind Ensemble Concert With This Sister, The Last Time She'll Play In This Orchestra, The Last Time We'll Hear Her Horn In The Pit, The Last Fight Song For Which She'll Conduct The Marching Band, The Last Solo, The Last Note, The Last Whatever and Whoosit and Thingamajig. It was ridiculous - and exhausting.

I know now, of course, that I was trying to comprehend that something massively wonderful was happening. And parsing each of those lasts was how my brain made sense of the emotional weight of the sum of them. Yes, you read that right: my brain did the emotional math. Because my heart couldn't quite handle it, and was instead just a big soft marshmallow cloud of bewilderment. I mean, what a trip, from the thrilling highs of pride and wonder to the simmering lows of relief and gratitude, as if all four years of high school - if not all thirteen since kindergarten - were distilled into the closing months of senior year and shot into one's metaphorical veins. It was hard to catch my breath; it was harder even to stay present and not let my mind race to the future when it would "all be over" and college would be the new normal, whatever that looked like. I tried, though. Remain NOW, I constantly reminded myself. Feel everything. Listen to every note. Go on that car ride. Say yes when the friends want to stay till midnight to chat, and order pizza, even. Buy the tickets to watch the performance for the fourth, fifth, sixth time.  Bring the giant camera to take the good pictures even though the children roll their eyes. Was it all good? Absolutely. Did I believe I was bonkers? Heck, yeah. Did I cry? For months prior, in the shower and car and my therapist's office and at inconveniently random and unrelated moments everywhere else. And yet on graduation day, as I glanced around me at the sea of parents, I saw that same look on so many other faces: the soaring delight, yes, but also the disorientation of inexplicably having arrived at this moment, mixed with the misguided determination to somehow hold it all together. Apparently, I wasn't the only one. Huh.

That is all I will say about my experience of the weeks leading up to graduation. A part of me is still recovering, but in a good way. I'm excited about Uni and independence and all the good things that follow graduation, because my oldest child is ready. Her sisters still have some years left at the high school, so there will be their concerts and football games and swim and dive meets to attend. There is comfort in that continuity as well.

And in the ebb of that emotional wave, I feel able to document and process my favorite moments of the past couple of months. Here, for instance, is Emily's prom dress. Now, because we were also in the throes of planning her grad party, the original plan was to purchase something online and simply have me make any necessary alterations to it. So we bought one . . . and it didn't work. Not a terrible dress per se, just not something one would wear to a formal. We returned it, and found ourselves back at square one, except a couple weeks closer to the deadline than before. 

Handmade, then. This is usually what happens anyway, right? You'd think I'd have learned that by now.

So we went fabric shopping - first online (faster, we thought, but everything would arrive too late), then in-person, but that failed abysmally, too. Because there we were, standing dismayed in the aisles of SR Harris - that ostensibly uber-reliable dressmaking fabric mecca - a week before prom, and with nothing but a fantasy shade of green that didn't seem to exist anywhere in the cosmos.

You know how some people give you a home-made loaf of bread and you're like, "Oh, this is so cool - did you use a bread machine or a brotform in your oven?" And they tell you they baked it on a hot stone out back using the wheat, barley and rye which they'd been growing on their acres of farmland and hand-ground into flour just minutes before adding it to their great-grandmother's ever-effervescent sourdough starter.

You see where this is going, right? See, there was nowhere left but that level of DIY. And isn't it funny how, once you've resolved to do something, no matter how impractical, even the insane begins to look viable?

We bought a yard of the only green-ish lace we could find - it looked like a patch of weed - and randomly dyed it. I say "randomly" because the bottle said "dark green" but there was no way to tell what we'd actually get when we were starting out with the shade we had (and how long do you let the thing sit in the dye anyway?). We gave it our best guess and rationalized it thus: anything would be prettier than wearing a dress of marijuana.    

Then I made the underlayer. This we didn't have to dye, thankfully - it was the only green satin thing any of the stores stocked, so we decided it would have to do. The design was pretty straightforward: a spaghetti-strap bodice connected to a semi-circular skirt with pockets, and a thigh slit. Here is a sad photo of it on Fleur so I could place and pin the lace overlay. I'd forgotten till I was doing this how much lace shifts as you drape it - gravity and the contours of the garment itself made it sag and pull in different ways than if it were lying flat on a work surface. Incidentally and totally unrelated, you might notice my Menagerie animals in the background.  Initially, I'd set them up in my sewing room for inspiration, like a cheering squad for all my unfinished WIPs. This time, though, as they watched me drop pins and curse as I stepped on them, their unblinking gaze seemed judgy instead - all except for maybe that purple dragon, and only because he still doesn't have eyes (they live in the vase in the living room where I'd set them 8 years ago).

Moving on now. More of the layout process next. A multitude of pins. All that lace hand to be stitched on by hand. I listened to a LOT of podcasts that week!

Because we wanted clean lines, the poky ends of the lace were folded over the edge of the main dress and stitched to the backside. And then all the stray cutwork bits had to be trimmed away.

Here is the finished dress on Emily.

Here's the back, her favorite part of the dress. Designing a dress entirely from scratch sometimes means trying to figure out how to best secure it on the body in ways that don't tug or squeeze or otherwise hurt. We brainstormed the usual suspects: halter-style ties at the nape, straps around the back of the shoulders, corset-style lacing all across the back . . . and decided that this bow was probably a whole lot more fun. 

If I remember right, the main dress (plus its accompanying muslin) was finished in a couple of days, although the lacework took the rest of the week. So worth it, though. I so, so love the texture of this dress,

to say nothing of the zany personality of the beautiful girl wearing it (or the fact that I still get to sew her clothes)!!

My Patterns in Print and other updates

Happy spring, friends!

Although it feels decidedly summerish here in Minnesota this week at a sweltering 86 degrees. Temporarily sweltering, that is, as we expect to plummet back into the 40s this weekend. Typically neurotic spring in the upper Midwest, in other words. 

Speaking of sweltering, we were in Singapore a fortnight ago. This was the first time we'd been there as a family since the start of the pandemic. The girls had grown a lot in those 3+ years, so much so that my family could barely recognize them at the airport when we set eyes on each other after all those years apart. It was a sweet reunion. Mum is doing well. Being with my family again is like being filled with all good things. 

Back here in the US, we're prepping for a graduation party. I tell myself it will be like any of those insane birthday parties we used to throw when the kids were little, just bigger, although perhaps even less stressful, because there would be none of the manic role-playing-game-type activities - complete with ambitiously-sewn props - that we had to invent to entertain the guests.  I'm trying to be present in it all, and not let my mind sneak back to the past too much. Yes, I know this is all bittersweet, and that the kids were babies not that long ago and somehow I blinked, and here we are, 18 years later as if time ungracefully short-circuited us to this moment. I choose not to linger there. I've learned enough about grief to recognize this for what it is, and to anticipate that the emotions will come when they come. Even relentlessly so, there is a place for them, and the present isn't it. 

On the subject of old-ish things, I did something for myself recently that surprised me: I had my digital sewing patterns printed. Well, some of them, anyway. I've been writing sewing patterns for about 14 years, a fact that stunned me when I actually counted backward to determine when this pursuit first began. It has always struck me as ironic - the precision and methodicalness of teaching a person to do something creative and artistic - and as you all know, for a while I rebelled against the idea of sewing patterns altogether. By all means, have manuals for assembling a toilet or filling out an IRS form, I'd argue, but for Pete's sake, let people make a doll or a backpack whichever way they wanted, thank you very much. Eventually, I made peace with this by deciding that pattern-writing was not the same as bossing people around. Rather, it was like a recipe: here is what you need to make This Thing, and here is how I throw it together; follow if you have to, deviate if you want.

Whatever their motivation, these patterns (I think I've written 17, in addition to who knows how many tutorials and deconstructions) have been a fun distraction, and a sneaky but modest, source of passive income - pocket money to buy more fabric, was what I thought of it when they first began to sell. And then it began to look sort of like a small business, and there were taxes to pay, finances to document, customers to interact with. Some days it felt like an actual job and I'd wonder how to categorize myself: freelance designer? monetized hobbyist? Self-employed SBO (small business owner) who pays her sole employee in chocolate? What was most amusing to me, though, was that it was a largely invisible enterprise. These were digital patterns, designed on a computer screen and delivered remotely into someone's inbox following an online transaction. Nothing physical existed, except for the prototype bags or soft toys that were sewn to fine-tune the construction process - even these were ultimately sold off in my Etsy shop (yet another online arm of my unseen business). And if you'd visited me in my home/office and asked me what I did during my spare time, I wouldn't have anything to show you apart from pulling up an image on my phone of a screenshot I'd taken of the cover art.

Then last month, on a lark, I decided to have some of those incorporeal patterns printed for the first time ever, and found a proper printing company which didn't charge an arm and a leg for full-color pages. It felt incredibly self-indulgent, let me tell you. Especially at a time when everyone and their mother is making TikTok tutorials for those of us with the attention span of a flea, which makes a written pattern even more old-fashioned. But I did, and I forgot about it until the box arrived at my door and I opened it with no small amount of fear and trembling: would they be hideous? Would the fonts be blindingly mis-sized? Would the photos look like indistinct blobs? Would the text bleed off the page because I failed to consider print margins? Mind you, I'd stared at these same documents on my computer screen for days on end while I wrote and formatted them, so I knew that the photos were not low-res blobs, and I was well aware of the layout of each page, having printed out each subsequent revision on our economy black-and-white home printer for hardcopy editing.

But when I actually looked at them - the first color prints of my up-till-then-only-digital patterns - it felt unreal. I've had my work included in print magazines and books, and I always got a kick from seeing that, but it was quite different now to hold the tangible form of something that had only ever existed on my computer screen, or as one of those nebulous, ghostly things called pdfs. It was oddly validating. I remember thinking, "Hey! I actually did stuff! It wasn't me just imagining it, because here they are! I can touch the paper and flip the pages and everything!" Then I patted myself on the back and said, "You shoulda done this 14 years ago instead of just concluding you were going nuts for wondering where all those hours went."

So just wanted to share that sometimes when you do invisible work, like writing software, creating digital products, analyzing obscure data, or hey, even cooking meals that mysteriously vanish in 20 minutes so that you have to do it all over again several hours later. . . no, it really wasn't a dream. It actually happened. And it totally counts.

Incidentally, I do plan to get my other patterns printed eventually. And maybe put some copies in my Etsy shop to see if anyone's interested in buying them as print copies instead of the digital versions. The nice thing about bulk(ish) printing is not paying copyshop prices. Menagerie, for instance, would've cost $70 at FedEx just to print each page manually, but print shops could automate spiral bound books for less than half of that. A win-win.

Also, I'm working on Menagerie 2. Yes. Not lying, I promise. But we're talking years, not months, because I sew only during those rare pockets of time between swim meets and jazz concerts and the other wonderful things the kids are involved in. But I'm getting there. Two winters ago, there was an elephant and panda and several aquatic mammals. This winter, giraffes, two versions of unicorn and even an axolotl, all systematically photographed and documented. Menagerie 2 is looking to be bigger than the original, and I might have to do some culling to make the final selection more manageable. Thanks for being patient. I'm not giving up. This is something I need to finish, no matter how long it takes.

But now, the snow is gone and the townsfolk are emerging from hibernation. May you enjoy the beckoning sunshine, may you reconnect with neighbors whose names you struggle to recall, may wretched hay fever stay far, far away, and may the coming days be filled with projects that lift you up and expand your world.

Till next time -

Paw Patrol Vest Pattern

Hello, all!

This is a quick announcement to let you know that you can download the Paw Patrol Vest pattern from that earlier blog post here.

I decided to tag it the original post so that anyone visiting that post in the future can access it immediately without having to jump to a second link. Please also note that it is not a full tutorial - it literally is just the templates and some notes, but it's a straightforward enough garment, so you should be good to go.

Anyway, here's the original PP post again. Happy making!

Snowmen and Trees

I am slowly (but surely) playing catch-up with some oldish photos which've been sitting in our camera. I've just started learning about our new photo-editing software so I expect that my photos will look a bit weird as I try different things and figure out how to balance color and brightness and such. 

There are many, many others I took longer ago while my photo-editing system was in limbo which I'm going to let go of because they go too far back to have any relevance now. A few of those projects still made it to the blog because I happened to also take some back-up shots with my cellphone. But some simply didn't, and that's OK. Life is more than just photos and projects we did or didn't document - some are meant to be enjoyed in the moment and not recorded, is how I see it.  

Anyway, here are some wooden things I painted over this past holiday season. The first is more of these familiar Christmas trees, which have become a sort of Advent tradition in recent years (see here) and here ). I love how it's meditative and forces me to slow down in the midst of the busyness and focus on the smallness of the details, the symmetry and to wait for the different layers of paint and varnish to dry before I can add the next one.

Last fall, I facilitated a grief support group which was a lovely healing experience for me (and for the participants also, I hope). As we headed toward Thanksgiving and Christmas, some of us expressed apprehension about the coming holidays and the uncertainties therein. Like not knowing if we we would even put up a Christmas tree, for instance - grief is fraught with tension: while we have the desire (or the desire for the desire) for it, we often don't have the wherewithal to do something that's previously brought us joy or comfort. 

So I thought I'd paint these little Christmas trees for the participants so they might have a symbolic tree of sorts to observe the season, if celebrating wasn't quite accessible that year.

I took photos because with each year's batch, new designs emerge among which I discover new favorites even as I'm giving them away.

With the photos, I'll have records I can return to in subsequent years to recreate them if I want.

Here's another wooden project: snowmen. 

I must've had these blanks forever, and although I began painting them a couple of Christmasses ago, I finished them only this January. Initially, I intended them to be just regular snowmen, with generic scarves and hats and lump-of-coal buttons but they eventually became my family, and I've tried to capture the activities and hobbies with which each member identifies at this moment in time.

Like a snapshot, but 3D, you know? I did a similar thing with Kate over a decade ago, when she was in her princess phase and I'd wanted to remember all her  dress-up personas.

This is Emily with her lavender sprigs and Goldfish crackers.

her trusty trombone,

her books and paint brushes.

This is Jenna who plays the piano, 

flute, 

and bakes up a storm. Anyone want to guess what the TS is on her red scarf?

This is Kate (and Bunny), 

her goggles and Shrek-ear crocs, buttons-of-cheese,

and her alto sax. 

This is my husband who loves photography, baseball, growing his native plants

grilling, 

and our cat Milo who loves being outside as much as he does.

Finally, this is me, with pineapple tart buttons, saddle-stitched hat and my two defining crocheted projects - the scarf I miraculously finished 

and the infernal millstone stitch afghan that I fear I never will. 

Here it is, incidentally - it hasn't grown much since I took that photo a year ago.

And here's our other cat Maisy, who follows me around constantly.

It feels strange posting about Christmas trees and snowmen this late into the new year . . .  then again, maybe not snowmen, since this is Minnesota after all and the snow is ours for keeps till who knows when. Hope you're getting some good sunshine where you are, and seeing the occasional bird or two. Be well, friends!