Saturday 10 March 2012

full of Grace

Grace has a cold and has not been able to sleep, the only way she's been able to get a decent amount of sleep is with one of us holding her. So I have been designing dresses for her and writing blog posts in my mind while I sit in the dark listening to her sound like Darth Vader. This is one of the posts and if she ever sleeps more than 20mins in one go again I might make one of the dresses.

I realized that I posted this on flickr but not here. For most of my pregnancy I kept saying how much I wanted photos of my new voluminous body but somehow never got round to taking many. In the end, I grabbed the tripod, found the remote and snapped a few pics. They are nothing to write home about, poor light and against a plain wall. But I am glad I took them, as two days later Grace was born.

I wanted to use the photos to do something that celebrated my pregnancy. For nine months I watched in fascination as my body changed, then one day (in my case 6 days earlier than I was expecting) I had a little dark eyed bundle in my arms and I was no longer pregnant with no time to acknowledge that passing. I was blessed with an easy pregnancy and thoroughly enjoyed it, perhaps it is because I'm unlikely to be pregnant again that I don't want to forget it.

I've used this inkscape technique before. I used to do pictures like this with actual cut out paper when I was younger so it appeals to me. I tried out lots of different colour combinations, which is much easier to do in Inkscape than in with real paper, I like the heavily textured blue paper but it is far too distracting.
One day I might use the files to craft robo the actual paper and make the real thing!

Saturday 3 March 2012

dress

I've been mulling over how to make a quick dress for Grace for a while now. There are some lovely baby girl dress patterns but I wanted something supper quick as Grace doesn't give me a lot of time. She has a nice fleece dress that decided to copy. I think more baby clothes should be made in fleece, it's warm, stretchy, comes in great colours, doesn't fray and the sick and drool doesn't soak in!

I just traced round the dress to make the pattern, adding a 1.5cm seam allowance when I cut it out. This worked ok but I think to be more accurate I need to include seam allowance in the paper pattern. As it is fleece I decided to cut down on one line of stitching by not giving it a hem, just cut the fabric with pinking shears. I did the same on the front yoke to make it look more intentional.

The yoke is lined with material from an old t-shirt. I was able to save time by using the hem of the t-shirt as the hem of the yolk. The dress is those colours because I am using up my scraps of fleece. The photo doesn't show it but it's purple at the back. I added a couple of flowers to pull it all together (and to give Grace something to play with!).

It was really quick to make, I'll definitely be making another. The only thing I would change is to make the shoulder straps longer. Then I'd be able to move the buttons as she gets bigger and get some extra use out of it.

The colour is a bit off in this photo, but she looks fab in it.