Wordless Wednesday

Ottobre 3/2012/18

My MIL has four granddaughters, my three and my niece, the drama princess.  She often picks fabrics with the intention of making them something where one or both of us turns it down.  My SIL is into a lot of pastels and I'm really not.  I often like busy and bright colors and my SIL doesn't.  It's a fairly good bet that neither of us is going to like a busy pastel print, but a lot of times my MIL will convince herself that we'll both love it.  The particular fabric that the dress I made Ottobre 3/2012/18 out of I believe predates my girls, but nothing was ever made out of it.  I got to see the fabric every time my MIL would discuss another round of clothes and every time I would just skip over it.  When I got the 3rd issue last year, I knew that I wanted to make the Little Roses pattern, but I didn't really know what I was going to make with it.  When I saw this fabric the last time we sorted through her fabric, I knew that I wanted to make the Little Roses dress out of it.

It's another seersucker print.  We buy a lot of the Tutti Fruitti fabric line.  I made the 98 which is the smallest size for the pattern.  The bear cub was not being particularly cooperative about posing for photos so I had to catch them while she was wrestling with Darth Baby and trying to ride on Q's back.  I think the print complements the nature of the design, but I also feel like the dress is missing something.  I may end up sewing some trim or something to it later, but it's fine as it is, too.  I have another version of this dress already cut out and I think I'll make the pin tucks longer than the 3 1/2 inches the pattern states for version 2.

Dragon Biker Jacket

I was visiting my MIL yesterday, and she was lamenting the fact that her embroidered dragon that she made for a project she was working on came out all messed up.

I know.  It's tragic just how awful it came out, huh?  So what is a helpful daughter-in-law supposed to do?  I offered to take this glaring thread mess off of her hands, of course, so that she wouldn't have to look at it any more.

If you've been following my blog a while, you may remember that I made the bear cub Ottobre's Young Hero Jacket.  Those entries are here and here.  I thought it would make the perfect applique to the jacket.  Even though we are pretty much done with weather where the highs are lower than the 70s, it's pretty clear the bear cub will able to wear it at least one more year since the nerdlet has been wearing it upon occasion.  In fact, the nerdlet graciously volunteered to wear it while I photographed it.  I couldn't get her to straighten her arms so that it would lay a little flatter though (or even to stand still).

 

I also managed to leave her house with two other dragons that she had made.  I'm sure she's wondering right now what happened.  It's a good thing to have 3 majorly cute distractions running around non-stop when you  offer the kind of help I do.

Ottobre 3/2012/17

Ottobre 3/2012/17 has given me nothing but trouble.  

 

I cut out the fabric for Ottobre 3/2012/17 in size 98 some time ago.  The first issue that I had was that this green apparently does not exist in thread anywhere on the planet.  Not only that, but no lighter or darker shade of it exists, either.  They all are too blue or too yellow or have too much gray in them.  The second issue I had was that my machines don't like it at all.  In attempting to do a rolled hem on the sleeve pieces I managed to rip holes in a number of them before finally getting some whole pieces.  These aren't perfect in the rolled hem, but when the next issue of this being a zero stretch knit came to my attention, I decided that it wasn't worth it to keep trying for a t-shirt that none of the girls might be able to wear.  If it fits over the bear cub's head, she will be the only one to be able to wear it and that is because she is a natural contortionist and can twist her arms so that she can get out of almost anything.

The front

The back

I really like this pattern and I'll try it again with a different, stretchy knit in the future.  If this version is wearable, I'll edit this post to add a picture of the bear cub in it.

Edit:  Pictures!

I'm not sure how long she'll be able to wear it though as it barely fit over her head.  I'm also thinking that when I make it again, I might trace a larger size.

McCall's 5295 and 6563

I fell in love with this orange and yellow batik cotton gauze fabric.  I didn't buy it the first time I saw it, but I couldn't pass it up when I saw it on sale.  I bought what was left on the bolt which was just under 5 yards and wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but I knew I wanted a flowy skirt and I was thinking a top with a cowl.  I ended up choosing M 5295 view B with no sash and M 6563.

 

For the top I made a 2 1/2 inch FBA for a large top, but it ended up being very large and I ended up taking out 6 inches under the bust from the sides.  When I make this again, I will take all six inches out of the front and maybe another inch or two out of the back.  I will also correct for my straight shoulders, which I normally do, but I neglected to do here.  I also didn't cut the pattern on the bias but on grain.

It isn't the most flattering around the waist, especially from the side, but I really love it and will probably wear it to shreds.  I'm thinking that I really need more gauze clothing.  The nerdlet took the pictures and she was in a hurry to watch her daddy pet battle on WoW so I couldn't get her to take more.

I definitely don't have enough orange clothing.

Ottobre Leggings patterns and another method for making leggings attached to a skirt.

I cut two pairs of leggings one in pink and one in teal from two different Ottobre patterns in size 80 so that I could compare them since the girls are in need of leggings, and all but Darth Baby are so thin that the smallest leggings just fall off of them unless I make 4 inches worth of tucks around.  The teal pair is Ottobre 6/2008-2 and the pink pair is Ottobre 01/2007-2.  I don't have a clear preference for either one and both are still very large on the nerdlet and the bear cub.  The teal pair is too long on the butt and fit a little better around the waist (but still needed to be made smaller) and the pink pair is okay on the length around the butt, but even bigger around the waist and legs.  At least now I have a much better idea how to make a pair that will fit them (though I might modify them less since it looks like these pairs will fit Darth Baby much better when she gets a little older.

I took the leggings and attached them to the bottom half of dress that were no longer wearable by the girls.  I  sewed the leggings but stopped prior to attaching the waist elastic.

Then I took the dress and chopped it where I wanted to attach it to the leggings.

I cut a piece of elastic roughly the size of Darth Baby's waist because I wanted all 3 of the girls to be able to wear these.  This turned out to be a mistake as I ended up having to sew two 1" tucks when they were done.

 

I placed the cut skirt (this one was lined and I kept the lining because it was sewn to the dress in places) and the legging right side out with the elastic right side facing the skirt.  This was non-raveling elastic so I simply overlapped it.

Then I sewed it around 1/4 inch from the edge.

I flipped the elastic up and stitched 1/8 inch from the edge of the elastic on the skirt.

 

Here is the bear cub modeling hers.  She took two seconds to flip around for me to take a photo and flipped back around to continue watching Peppa Pig the second the flash went off.

The nerdlet wouldn't even take them off for me to sew the waist smaller and even wore them to bed.

That is how long a size 80 (9-12 months?) is on my five-year-old.  I really like that I'm no longer throwing out these dresses that are stained or aren't worth repairing so that they can continue to wear them.  

The Bear Cub's Birth Story

Someone asked me about the bear cub's birth and I was going to just post a link to the story here and I couldn't find it.  I guess I never posted it here, so I went to my old livejournal account to repost it here.  Here is the story only modified slightly from the version that was written a few days after her birth.

Early on the day of her birth, I started telling everyone that I was going to have the baby the next day. I didn’t really have any signs, but I felt that I was ready after all. That evening, we went to visit Q’s grandmother in the hospital. She had come down to visit and in order to be here for the bear cub's birth, but had acquired pneumonia before coming down and ended up in the hospital. When we got to the hospital parking lot, Nerdlet started throwing up on herself. So instead of visiting, we went to Q’s parents in order to bathe and change her.

Afterward we visited there a little while before leaving. On the drive home, I had my first contraction at 9:16 pm. The obstetrician told me that my labor would be fast and the contractions would be stronger and faster than normal so that I need to come in at the first sign of a contraction and not wait and time them. So since our house was on the way to the hospital, we made a quick stop for my bag and breast pump and headed in. By the time we got to the hospital less than 30 minutes later, I had had 8 contractions and they were coming so fast that I could only take 3 to 10 steps before another one started. When I got to L&D and they checked me, I was 6 cm dilated. They admitted me and moved me to a delivery room and by the time I got there and they checked me again, I had progressed to 7 cm. They asked me if I wanted an epidural and I said yes as at this point it felt like I was having one big contraction that didn’t end. Everything I had read and heard before indicated that being induced causes harder and more painful contractions than going into labor naturally. I can tell you that for me that this was completely not true. The contractions I was having were much worse than the ones I had with my first pregnancy, which was induced.  I didn't end up getting the epidural, though, as they didn't make it to me before the bear cub was born.

The doctor on call came to see me and asked me if I was ready to have the baby at 11:50 pm and I joked that my sister could get her wish for me to have the baby that day instead of the next because her ex-boyfriend was born the day after, and the doctor said that I was ready and I could push the baby out then. I told her that I wanted the baby to come healthy and that it didn’t matter which day. At this point the baby’s heart rate spiked and shot down and the doctor told me to push her out now. The nurses helped me into position and I didn’t get her out and the baby looked to be in even more danger and the doctor said she needed to come out now or we’d have to do a C-section. I pushed her out with the next contraction at 11:55 pm, and she came out in her water sack fast, quick and healthy.

When she came out, one nurse took her to clean her up and the doctor and the rest of the nurses were crowded around the table whispering about something frantically. I asked what was going on and none of them seemed to hear me. I became more insistent and started to move out of my position to move toward them. The doctor told me that I had a vasa previa. I asked her what that meant and she briefly explained that the placenta had not been attached to my uterus, but only to the water bag and that it was amazing that the baby had lived and she wouldn’t have if she hadn’t come that quickly. She sent the placenta to the pathology lab and told me that we were a case study. I have since looked it up and in apparently most of these cases the baby is born dead and they find out that vasa previa was the cause afterward. The babies that live were delivered by C-section ahead of time. So my little bear cub is a miracle baby. I did not have time to share my birth plan with the doctor, and I found out after I delivered that she gave me an episitomy to get the baby, but considering it after I read about vasa previa, I can only be grateful that we got her out so quickly.

It turns out that it looks like my bear cub also has Down syndrome. In another miracle, she had no organ problems yet, did not need to go to NICU, and her blocked kidneys had even cleared. She was jaundiced and had phototherapy, and she responded well to it and we went home after 2 days in the hospital.

When we went to the two-week appointment is when the doctor heard something funny in her heart beat.  We went to the cardiologist at that point and that is when they discovered the two holes in her heart.