A Christmas to remember

So, beyond buying my fabric I haven't even started my Mad Men dress. I have wanted to jump back into sewing and posting on the blog so bad, but it may be too early still. We will be taking Maaike back up to the hospital tomorrow after some recent developments, so we will just have to wait and see.

Despite my lack of sewing I have been putting a real effort into making this a Christmas to remember. With the kids out of school I have been trying to have at least one hands-on activity a day for them to work on. Here is what we have been and will be up to:

Monday: Make initial ornaments for the tree (ie paint and glitter smothered on a wood letter cutout)

Tuesday: Make reindeer food to thrown out on the front lawn on Christmas Eve (oats mixed with bird food and glitter- so the reindeer can see it from the sky)

Wednesday: Make sugar cookie dough

Thursday: Bake and decorate the cookies for Santa

Friday: Scatter reindeer food, make thank you cards for Santa, set out milk and cookies

Tomorrow morning there will be an additional surprise: a personal video message for Santa! Not sure if you have heard about the Portable North Pole, but it is amazing. I've made a mock example using my kindergarten picture so you can see what I'm talking about. Seriously, it's enought to make almost any child believe. Click here for a peek into my childhood.

Advent Calendar

Simple, quick, and cheap. No fabric involved. I have never done an advent calendar before, mostly because I thought my kids were too young to get it and partly because I didn't want to invest all the time in making one... and its not too late to start one for this year either. Who says you have to do all 25 days.
It is amazing what you can do with $8 and a couple of glue sticks. With the $8 I bought the brown paper lunch bags and a few dollar store toys to go inside some of the bags. The decorative paper was left over from another project last year, but definitely isn't necessary. When it comes down to it all you need is the brown paper bags, something to put in them and a pen to mark down the days. Most of the items in the bags came from our house (old Halloween candy, gum, hot coco mix, muffin mix, etc). We open the bag of the day after the kids find Buddy. The kids have loved it and so have I.

The great thing about this advent calendar is that I will have nothing to store for next year. Straight to the recycle bin. Today Buddy was hiding in a stocking and the advent bag revealed Andy's mint chocolates...they were left over from my birthday. I know I'm cheap, but the kids didn't seem to mind a bit.

Mad Men Sew-Along : Adjusting the Sleeve

Now that we have a fitted bodice we should make sure that the sleeves are good. I decided to lengthen my sleeve and here are the instructions for how I did it. You only need to make one of the sleeves for the muslin.

Since I took the sideseam in by 1/4 " then I needed to do that same to my sleeve so that the armhole matched up to the bodice. I started with 1/4" at the armpit and then gradually adjusted it to 0" about halfway down the arm.


Then, with right sides together, I basted the sleeve together at 5/8" under the armhole.


Next, I pinned the sleeve to the bodice with right sides together at the armhole.


Then I stitched them together with a basting stitch at 5/8". There will be a bit of extra fabric at the top of the armhole on the sleeve. You will need to gently slip the excess in the seam so that there is a small bit more fabric on the sleeve but the fabric is more taute on the bodice. This is called easing. This allows for your sleeve to move more freely. (remember this is the muslin so don't worry if it isn't perfect)


Now try it on and see if there are any changes. Mark where you want the sleeve to end and then add on another 1 1/2" for hemming.


Now to transfer any changes to my pattern piece. First I added a piece of tissue paper and marked where I wanted my sleeve to end (adding in 1 1/2" for hemming).


Then I added my adjustments for the sleeve with and cut the remaining tissue paper off.

Elf on the Shelf

The only Christmas decoration I have left this year is our Christmas stockings. There is nothing like starting over to make you reevaluate what you've done in Christmases past and look to Christmases in the future to get you all excited about starting new family traditions for Christmas present. Enter Buddy stage left.Buddy is our elf on the shelf. He gets hidden each night in December leading up to Christmas. Then each morning the kids get to find him and Buddy hangs out on a shelf all day reporting to Santa if the kids have been noddy or nice.

There is a whole website dedicated to Elf on the Shelf where you can play Christmas games with your kids, fly through the North Pole, and even resister your elf with Santa. You can print up an adoption certificate for your elf to welcome him/her into the family and Santa can send a letter to your printer for the kids. It's really amazing.

I looked all over for a cute elf to buy, but the only ones I found looked like Gremlins. At Robert's I picked up an 8 inch artist's manikin for $5 (40% off coupon) and the red, white, and lime green paint. The hat and shorts are cut out of an old green sock and then hand stitched. The red buttons and brown ribbon suspenders where glued on. And finally I drew the face on with a permanent marker after a few practice runs on paper. I wanted to leave him faceless, but then Coy pointed out that if Buddy didn't have eyes he couldn't see what they were doing and if he didn't have a mouth he couldn't report to Santa. Good point. I then cut off the tips of two shish kabob skewers and glued them on for ears just to make sure Buddy could ear too.

Mad Men Sew-Along : Adjusting the Bodice

Sorry I have been a little MIA lately. It was my husband's 30th birthday this week and so although I found time to sew I never could find time to actually blog about it.

So, let's get this bodice muslin done.

After trying on the muslin there were three things that I needed to do.
1 - lower the neckline another inch
2 - take in the sideseam just under the armpit 1/2"
3 - drop the waistline by another inch

Once I made the first two changes by basting and cutting my muslin fit like this :



I was really happy with the fit at this point so I decided to transfer my adjustments to my pattern pieces. (You could just use your muslin pieces as your pattern pieces, but since I needed to lengthen my bodice I decided it would be easier to just change the actual pattern pieces to match my fitted muslin.)

The first thing I did was lengthen my bodice. I wanted the bodice to hit at my belly button, but it hit 1" above (minus the seam allowance). To make the bodice the correct length I first cut a horizontal line through the bottom section of my pattern piece.

Next I added a bit of tissue paper in between the pieces and taped them leaving a 1" gap.


I then redrew my darts so that they still ended at the same point (so that they lined up with the skirt darts).


Next I took in the side seams. I needed to take in 1/2" at the top and then graded it down to 1/4" and then 0" by the end. This was a little tricky on the front bodice because of the dart.

I closed the dart temporarily and then drew the desired line down the side seam.


Keeping the dart closed I cut the excess off of the side seam. Now reopen the dart.




Lastly, I needed to lower the neckline another inch. While trying it on I marked the bodice where I wanted it to hit on my neckline. I transfered these muslin markings to my pattern piece. I then added 5/8" for seam allowance and then cut off the excess.




I then, of coarse, repeated these steps for the back bodice pieces.