Filed under: Living & crafting | Tags: expandable tummy skirt, fast skirt, orange, pregnancy skirt, recycled sewing, simple sewing
I had a long knitting pause which happened after I finished secondary school and lasted until… We’ll maybe three years ago. Knitting was (is) perceived as boring, dull, something that only old ladies do, both among my friends and the Slovene society as a whole. Actually, knitting is still the methaphor for a boring, mind numbing way of spending one’s time. As is most of the things that crafty people do: sew, crochet, re-make their furniture, etc. I don’t know when this ‘I can’t do anything by myself’ became a norm, a fashion, a statement in our culture?
So, for quite some time I didn’t knit. But I (tried) to sew.
I learned to sew on my mothers sewing machine by myself (reading the instruction manual was my way to go) when I was about 14 years old. I cannot really say that I am good at sewing, but I am not really bad either – I think I have an attitude problem when it comes to sewing. Let me explain a bit.
For example – I see someone wearing a cute skirt and my mind goes ‘I could easily make that myself’. Just need to find the fabric’. Hmmm. ‘What colour?’ ‘Where do I go to buy it?’ (or even more probable (in a store): What?? They want that much €€€ for that simple skirt?? Are they crazy? I can make that by myself in no time!)
So, (maybe) a couple of days later I actually set off to buy the fabric. Than I get gome all excited about making the new skirt. And than the story begins.
Do I need a pattern? Sometimes I do and I even recognize that (important aspect, since, as a proper DIY person quite often I don’t need no simple pattern, I will just make it myself) AND I even have it (stack of old Burdas is always laying around) and since I am “fat” I usually choose at least two sizes bigger pattern that I’d normally wear. You never know. Better to be a bit big than too small. I can always narrow it a half size.
By the time I’m done with copying the pattern on the paper I usually get tired or fed up or bored with it so there are two possibilities:
a) neatly fold the pattern together with the fabric and leave it in the closet to wait for better, more productive times or
b) decide to carry on and cut the fabric, as I am determined this is not going to be just another of my failed projects.
So, than I get my sewing machine, set up the table, find the threads and start sewing. I have my self -tought order of how to do things, which makes everything even more complicated and not leading to the desired goal.
Usually I hurry to the point where I can try the thing on for the first time – and find out, inevitably, it’s too big.
There are two ways how things can develop, again:
a) My enthusiasm vanishes. I fold everything neatly together and decide I’ll work on it later.
b) Keep on.
And after two hours of ‘work’ I find myself totally miserable for not being done yet! Or if I am by any chance done – usually I am not satisfied with the outcome.
I was analysing my sewing habits and expectations and realized that I perceive sewing as an instant gratification activity. I expect a project to be done quickly, no mess and usable within couple of hours.
Couldn’t be more wrong, huh? ;) Knitting, on the other hand, takes time and patience and I never expect to see results ‘in just a sec’.
So, now, I turned to ‘half-finished’ (half-recycled?) sewing projects – here’s a pregnancy skirt I made (in less than 1,5 hours of total working time!) by using and old T-shirt for the expandable tummy area and some fabric from my stash. Of course I am not wearing it to work, but it’s good for strolling in the park with Tamara. And did I mention it was extra quick to make? ;)
My fast sewing project.
First of all – thank you for your sweetest comments regarding our ‘news’. :) Of course I will keep posting, at least that’s my intention. And regarding this – here’s a theme I wanted to share with you for a while now.
This thought occured to me about a month ago as I was looking at my nail varnish. It was just sitting there on the kitchen counter waiting to be used and I am a bit lazy about putting my stuff to where it belongs, so it had been there for maybe a couple of days. I checked the ingredients (my obsession – reading lists of ingredients on everything we use and eat) and than I remembered that some brands name their shades of varnishes like “Pink crystal” or “Sheer innocence” or similar. I checked this specific one and it had no name, so this got me thinking, what would I call it’s colour. It’s a nice, deep red coulour. Not shimmering, a bit like sour-cherry. I started thinking about adjectives to go with sour-cherries and … And than – a sparkle from the past lit in my mind :)
I love red. In all its shades. Photo: Grasswire
Some of my ex-Yugoslav readers will maybe fill the gap immediately, since I mentioned sour-cherries. Or maybe you are already laughing, thinking “…. ooo, yeees, we’ve had one of those, to.”
To those of you who don’t share our Yugoslav cultural and imaginative experience here’s a bit of introduction.
One of the legendary Yugoslav cars was Yugo. It was manufactured in the factory called Zastava, located in Southern Serbia, one of the six republics od our ex-homeland. This was a car owned by many families in the 1980’s, I believe I am not exaggerating when I say it was our national family car of that decade. Also, one peculiar detail about is the fact that it was exported to USA where they were sold in those ‘buy one get two’ deals (meaning – you bought a ‘decent’ car and got one Yugo extra).
This car was one of the products that you’d have to pre-order, pay in advance and wait for several months till they assemled it and you could actually lay your hands on its plastic-feeling ochre, black or grey steering wheel. Of course, there were several ways of how to “fool” the system and get in the line before others, and also there were jokes and popular sayings about Yugo. All in all I think it is an icon of the time.
I am not going to write more about the car, if you’re interested about finiding out more you can start your search at Wikipedia, Youtube and Leksikon-Yu-Mitologije (Serbo-Coratian only).
Of course my family also had a Yugo. We had to travel about 600 kilometers to get it (one of the methods ensuring shortened waiting period). And the colour of the car was deep red – very common and in my opinion one of the shades that Yugo looked its best in.
As I was thinking about the name of the varnish the name of Yugos colour sprang up. Do you know how that specific tone was called? It was named Rotten Sourcherry.
Yes. The shade was named “Rotten sourcherry”.
In Serbo-Croatian it doesn’t even sound that terrible, but once translated into English it’s so prosaic I could cry. Imagine – there are so many possibilities how to name a beautiful colour and somebody somewhere decided that they’d name it Rotten Sourcherry.
Here’s an imaginative converstation between two people:
A: “Oh, that’s a beuatiful car you’ve got there. I love that blue color!!”
B: “Yes, we just bought it. It’s really comfortable. We’ve had a lot of trouble deciding which colour to choose, but in the end we settled for Adriatic Blue.”
A: ” It really suits this model. However, my favourite is Rotten Sourcherry.”
As I was sitting on this thought for a while, thinking about beauty (of the world, or strictly beuaty as a marketing term) and the words decribing, it occured to me that symbolic namings reveal ideals of the time they are produced in.
Maybe naming a colour Rotten Sourcherry was one of the first (figurative) messages that there was something rotten in our homeland? The name is exact (probably that’s the colour of rotten sourcherries…), and its’ so direct and unpretentious it doesn’t even bother trying to be something else. Once we’ve started naming the colours that way and people started treating those names as normal everything went down the hill.
I didn’t do any further research, but I wonder how they named a certain shade of ochre, seen on Zastava 128, also a model of the same factory? ;)
P.S. Of course, our first car was Yugo. My father bought it to me in 1998.
I know it’s been terribly long since I’ve posted.
But, once you see the image below, you’ll understand my 21 weeks old reason for absence.
See the nose? It's pointy, huh? ;)
Finally, I’m feeling better, my all-day-sickness is gone, energy is back and I can actually do things. Like – write my blog. Or knit. Or sew. :) I didn’t knit anything for more than two months and now I just want to take the needles and do something. Actually, that something will be a Baby moderne blanket for my friend who is expecting her first baby in August. I’ve bought cotton yarn today and I’m just about to cast on.
I’ll just share a photo of a chick, I made in March – the pattern is from Zoe Mellor’s Knitted toys. This is actually the first toy (not counting cupcakes) I’ve ever knit. It was fun – quick and simple and a good way to make kids (and their parents) happy. I’m thinking I’ll add some dried lavander flowerets to the stuffing when I make the next one.
White chick with blue wings.
