Squeak Like the Wind

Shirts shirts shirts! A story of sticky stiffness... LOL!

One of my partner's favourite things are shirts. I mean good quality, beautiful fabric, well made shirts with proper collars and cuffs and general yumminess. I bought him a gorgeous black shirt covered in red and green chillis for his birthday one year and he thrashed it until he went on a health kick and lost almost 30kg. Kind of a win win situation, but he doesn't get to wear the beautiful chilli shirt any more. He's bought some amazing shirts from Anton's, but they're heinously expensive, and although they're well made, they're usually very simple designs but done in gorgeous fabrics with a bit of delicious detailing.

And I thought, "I bet I could do that".

So I bought a basic shirt pattern. I couldn't find one with proper French cuffs, but apparently it's quite easy to make them - you just double the existing cuff pattern and put an extra button hole in. Oh and (thanks to my friend Damien for pointing this out) you interface the opposite side... and voila. Pop in your favourite cufflinks and you're smokin.

The only real issue was getting a good durable interfacing going for the cuffs and collar. Apparently the regular stuff you get from the stores doesn't hold up too well after a few washes. So I did a bit of experimentation.

I bought a few bits and pieces. One was a fusible mesh-like interfacing with stitching to reinforce and stablise it - this is to stop the piece from being stretched. I think if you were really keen you could use two layers and cross them.

I also bought a roll of paper with interfacing glue on it. I'm sure that isn't what it's called, but that's basically what it is. You iron it on to the fabric, then stick your sew-in interfacing on it, and it becomes fused.

I needed this because the final layer was exactly what I wanted except that it was sew-in rather than fusible. I didn't want to risk the collar looking bubbly or puffy so I really wanted it fused - and this was the answer. The photo above shows the paper being pulled off, showing the greyish fusible stuff underneath. Behind for reference is a plain piece of fabric. Picture below shows the woven interfacing which I then ironed on to this.

So. Take one layer of your chosen fabric. I'm using poplin for this one, it was my test shirt. Fuse the paper two sided gluey stuff onto this, and fuse the woven interfacing on to it. Then fuse the sewn/reinforced interfacing on top of this.

I made a little square and ran it through the wash a few times. Came out looking pretty good.

Time will tell on this one. I'll update with how it holds up in a few weeks' or months' time.

I hope this is a help to other people starting sewing out there - I'm finding the interfacing thing quite difficult - there seems an almost infinite range of products available and it seems no two stores stock the same thing, so I'm trying to share my knowledge here as I accumulate it. :)

Now this is what I call living

With only 4.4 standard drinks in the whole 750ml bottle, why not treat myself to a champagne brekky at home?

One of my favourite things to do is going out to breakfast... but I did that yesterday already, and will most likely do it again some time this week. So I thought rather than going out and spending more money, I might as well do it at home! I got all this light Omni bubbly for about $3 a bottle, so I don't mind cracking one just for myself, and hey... if I only drink half of it, it's still cheaper than just one glass if I went out. Yay!

So this was my brekky this morning, hanging out in our lovely little courtyard, which would have been super-chilly but for the lovely sunshine which happened to be there just long enough to sit and kick back over bacon, googies and a great big pile of mushies.

Ohhhh yeah. This is what I call living. :)

Pannier Playfulness

I went in to Sydney yesterday for a pannier workshop with the Green Living Centre (was the Watershed) in Newtown.

Hugely useful and wonderful! I cannot believe they put this on for free.

Now, I just did a great big review of the whole damn thing, and accidentally hit "back" just as I was about to publish it, so if you're after lots more information, feel free to email me.

These are a tiny version of the green bag panniers - cheap and cheerful and very useful! You can also get some really sweet greenbags with cute pictures on them, so this would work out well if you want a splash of colour for very little cost. They're lined with corflute (unsure how to actually spell it) so that they stay nice and stiffened and don't get pulled into spokes or deraillers.

Despite their simplicity, the bucket panniers were my favourites! They used buckets from various places, they got them all for free, and apparently Boost throw away a huge number of square white buckets with lids that are perfect for this (and with the lids become rain proof!

You can see in this picture that the elastic stabiliser is a piece of recycled inner tube. Fantastic idea!

You wouldn't want to use these on a bike with an expensive or fancy rack, as you can see it's already scratched it up a bit. I don't mind - but I'm thinking it might be worth lining them with some rubber stuff to stop them rattling as well as scratching.

Wonderful stuff, and I think they'll work very well for tall awkward things when I have to carry them. Would be rather nice if I was the fresh food market type and had to carry celery and fresh flowers home. As it is, I think it'll suit a baguette or two just fine. :)

Newtown and not so new clothes

I went to Sydney for a pannier making workshop today... Rosie is still attached to the back of my car, so I'll take pics of them tomorrow.

Also while in Sydney I had half an hour to kill before the workshop started so I went into the local Vinnies (just across the road, what a shame haha) and found the key piece for my outfit for this year's Tweed Ride! Woohoo! No photos of the full item until the ride, but this is the label. It fits perfectly, and needless to say it looks pretty damn swish.

Now, I'm off to bed before I pass out. *yawn*

Lunchwalk

Sometimes a walk at lunch time to clear your head is far more effective than a headache tablet...

The Apocalypse Tube

Today I broke out the tyre irons and gave Rosie her second Apocalypse Tube.

The Apocolypse Tube is the name I give for the awesomeness of these things combined:

The tyre sealant is this magical goo that you squirt into your tube, and when your tube gets a little puncture (as in 1/4 inch or less) it dries on air contact, and seals up the puncture. Amazing. Add this to a thorn resistant tube, and suddenly you have a tyre that's going to resist just about anything short of an apocalyptic event. Oh yeah.

Also, I got to buy and try a groovy new tool - this is a valve core remover (with the valve core still stuck into it). I love cool bike repair tools! It makes me feel all hard core 'n' shit.

So, with dirty hands and fresh tubes in Rosie's tyres, we wheeled out the back for a thorough wash down and lubing of the chain.

The other thing today was that I finally admitted defeat. After spending over $150 on two sets of dress guards, not being able to install them, countless emails between the seller and I over how to install them, and supply of different clips, sending back the old ones that didn't work, blah, blah, blah, I tried to install the new clips today and failed miserably.

The product itself is fine. The guards are beautifully designed and made, and the whole product is perfect. But Rosie's fenders sit too close to her tyres to get the clips in without scraping the tyre, and the derailler grabs the guard on that side when ever I go over a bump in the road, and has repeated ripped the guard off and gotten it hopelessly tangled in the derailler area, which is distressing and frustrating. (I did however have a terribly attractive man stop to help me sort it out once , which was quite fun, so it hasn't been all bad. LOL.)

So I've stashed the clips and guards away, for another day. I'm thinking of switching from Rosie to a Dutch bike for transport purposes, and I think the skirt guards will be perfect for that: wider fenders, no derailler. One day. :)

Bikes are allowed to be here too!

I've come out on Rosie this morning for brekky with one friend and coffee with another, and finally had both the time and the inclination to stop and take a picture of this wonderful thing: I'm not sure what it's called. But I know what it is! It's a message, loud and clear, that bikes are allowed to be on the road.

Over the christmas period and in to January, I participated in a study funded by the ACT government aiming at making cycling safer in Canberra. I had a camera attached to my helmet, and I recorded about 20 hours of me riding to and from work on the roads. At the end I participated in an interview as well.

Something that happens with car drivers and bikes on the road, and was certainly highlighted with the not so recent shenanigans with Shane Warne and his chance encounter with a cyclist, is that there is an attitude that since cyclists don't pay vehicle rego fees for their bikes, they have no right to be on the road.

I'm not going to put in my 2cents worth into this debate today. But I will say this: it's wonderful to see that little patch of green paint and white stencilling, and its message: watch for the bicycles, they're allowed to be here too.

Another day, another baggie

Soooo. This is kinda how I work. Nothin for 6 months and then BAM. Three posts in one day. Admittedly I'd written the majority of the last one in November of last year, so that was kinda cheating. If there is such a thing as cheating at blog writing. *shrug*

I've been having amazing amounts of fun making bags. I've made one almost exactly like this before - it was cotton drill with black spots on a white background, and a plain black lining. I gave it to a friend, who loves it. This one was half made yesterday, and I finished it off tonight... It had a few firsts for me, one being the whole cut-this-fabric-a-certain-way to show off and centre the fabric, and the other being FEET!

The pattern doesn't actually call for feet, but I bought a packet of them and was just itching to use them (itchy feet, haha ooh I should have another glass of wine, I'm bloody hilarious) although I can see that they're a little close together. It all made perfect sense when I poked holes into the template plastic, but it seems things look different from the outside. Oooh. Profound.

I adore the bold red polka dotted lining. Fricken kudos to me for kickass fabric selection.

I'm pretty fearless when it comes to making stuff. I mean, the worst that can happen is you make a bigassed mistake, unpick it if you can, and chuck it if you can't. Sometimes mistakes actually give you an opportunity to play with a design, rethink it, do it differently.

It's the little things, however, that have me stymied from time to time. Like, whether to use interfacing on the linings. Like stitch length, and adjusting the tension on the machine. Like how to get that sweet spot right between ironing your fusible interfacing just enough to make it stick but not enough to make it wrinkle and distort. This is the most difficult one, I think! Heavy interfacing or light wadding? Cotton drill or quilting cotton? Fusible, sew-in, or canvas???

At this point, I'm thinking these are things that only experience will fix. Until then... time to start cutting for my next baggie. Though... I think that can wait til tomorrow.

Virtutis fortuna comes

Last year, I put into place a plan I'd been working on for over 8 years.

When I was 28, I had decided that after 10 years in the workforce as an admin worker, I'd had enough. I'd gone from job to job for years. My first job was terribly underpaid (job-share) though lots of fun (receptionist at a flying school!) and at 21 I moved to Sydney. For the years in between until I started working for Bernie, a financial planner, I'd not stayed at a job for longer than about 12 months. The shortest was 2 weeks, though 12 months was about the average.

Working for Bernie was good for me - gave me a good stable base to sort out my depression, and work on things like my self esteem and that sort of stuff. But it was boring. He tried to give me more challenging work, I'd do basic financial plans and he'd proof them, but it was still boring. I'd get my work done by lunch time and surf the net for the rest of the day. Sounds fun but it was actually soul destroying. So pointless. And then I'd put off going home to an empty house, to wait for a husband who would be home some time between midnight and 3am, 6 nights a week. Yay, being married to a chef. Again, sounds so much cooler than the reality. LOL (no hard feelings! It was just... difficult, being in two different time zones). I even tried a bit of bar work, to align my hours with his, but I was even more bored and miserable. No go.

The other thing was that I was always tired. It'd always been like this - even at my first job, where I worked a 3 1/2 day week - I seemed to struggle with fatigue. I had tests, nothing wrong. Years later, tests again, still nothing wrong. More recently, when doing my regular plasma donation, the nurses at the blood donation centre refused to take any more blood products from me until I knew why I looked more and more like I'd been run over by a truck. This time they did sleep studies as well. Still all normal. There's nothing wrong with me - I just can't handle a 5 day week.

I went to a careers counsellor at 28, (who cost something like $650 and was worth EVERY dollar) and she told me, probably quite correctly, that I was going to be bored and frustrated in my work unless I got off my butt and went back to uni.

The idea was that if I was always tired, but taking a pay hit when money was already tight wasn't a great plan, I could go to uni, get a job that paid twice as much, and only work 3 or 4 days a week. A good plan!

It took close to 8 years. Heh. But I got there. I started working in Catholic schools as a school counsellor, thinking that a 3o hour week spread over 5 days with school holidays would work. It didn't. I spent the first week of the holidays lying on the couch, stunned. The second week I'd spend trying to have a life - do what I wanted to do, see some friends, and then the school term would start again and I'd start out ok, and get tireder and tireder... and it'd all start over again.

Finally, I got full registration as a psychologist, and left school counselling, and got my 4 day a week thing on. Oh. My God. It is awesome.

I love what I do. Not everyone can say this. It had very little to do with luck: the only luck involved was the dice that were thrown when I was conceived, and rolled relatively high on smarts; the rest has been down to planning, hard work, determination, and a great big dose of frustration tolerance.

It makes me laugh when people say "you're so lucky" in response to me telling them I work a four day week and love what I do. That's just ridiculous. I made this happen. I was lucky enough to be born with a good brain in my head, and I didn't fuck it up - I used it. Like Caesar is purported to have said, "Luck is the companion of courage", or "you make your own luck".

Hello peeplets!

Hello again!

I'm determined this is not going to be one of those "I'm gonna carry on for an hour about why I haven't been blogging and I feel guilty about it" posts. All I'm going to say this: living your life is far more important than documenting it, and some inane blog isn't going to make me immortal.

So here I am again, merrily typing away for my own (and occasionally others') amusement. For those (poor sods) on my facebook friends list, you'll have noticed a LOT of pictures recently with sewn goodies. It all started a few months ago when I mentioned in a passing comment to my friend Damien, whose mother is a tailor/seamstress, that I miss making things due to the pain in my hands after knitting and spinning, and it'd be really neat to get myself a sewing machine.

Damien mentioned this in turn to his mum. I have the feeling she went into Mission Impossible mode, and within a few weeks had found a 5 year old Janome MyStyle being sold for only $100 a few suburbs from me. She drove nearly an hour to come and look at it - gave it a test drive, and gave me the nod, and beat the other buyer by mere seconds - I'd handed over the cash and was walking out of this guy's house with the machine when the next person turned up to attempt to snaffle my bargain. Well, too late... it was mine, all miiiine!

I was VERY excited to realise that I remembered more from my brief fling with sewing machines back in high school, and wound my first bobbin by following the instructions in the machine's manual. :)

So I hit the ground running. I made a couple of little things, got it serviced, and then really took off. What I'm enjoying the most is making bags - they don't take huge amounts of fabric, they're intricate, challenging and fun, and I'm finding they make wonderful gifts.

And who doesn't need more bags, right? :)