(like the rod stewart song)
i'm an elder millennial living in the bay area who loves dark beer, the environment, and sewing for the tiny humans in my life.
All tagged etta
i know what i like and i like what i know.
after my first rendition of the playdate pattern from oliver + s i was smitten. since it only goes up to a size five if i wanted to make it again it had to be for miss etta.
so make it for etta i did.
have i mentioned nora and etta are quite girly? well they are. i however am not. so it's a constant struggle to find fabrics that are sweet enough for them but not too saccharine for me.
when i saw this amy butler lark print at stonemountain & daughter i instantly knew two things: a) nora and etta would love wearing it and b) i wouldn't mind sewing it. so i picked up a few yards and waited for the right inspiration.
it's pretty obvious i love all 49 of my oliver + s patterns (94 if you count each size), but according to all the podcasts about blogging one should do 'list posts' so here it goes:
beginners luck. that's what i had the first time i made the roller skate dress by oliver + s.
i got this chevron print at the fabric depot in portland oregon when i took nora to pick out materials for thefairy sisters dresses. i had originally planned to just dresses for nora and etta, but realized pretty quickly i couldn't exclude maya. so i planned my cutting and was able to squeeze out an additional dress from my limited fabric.
let me tell you getting the chevrons to match up was not easy, but somehow (let's give credit to the watermelon beer i was drinking and my critical thinking skills, but mostly the beer) it all came together perfectly.
while i ponder the all too quick passage of time we're gonna finish off back to school week by talking about the skirts i made nora and etta for the first day of school.
since this was etta's first year I let her call the shots. bucking tradition (she's a firecracker my bo betta) she requested a skirt as opposed to a dress. naturally i saw this as an opportunity to try a pattern i've had for a while, but haven't yet sewn: the hopscotch skirt by oliver + s.
let's continue back to school week with what nora and etta wore last year.
the instant i saw the library dress pattern by oliver + s i knew nora and etta would love the faux wrap style. however the back presented a problem as nora and etta are past the age where dresses that button up the back are practical.
at that point i was pretty confident i could alter the pattern to close with a zipper, but when i saw this tutorial post over on the oliver + s blog i had no excuse. after first making it one time as instructed for maya (will blog about that rendition next week), I tried my hand at a zippered version.
it turned out fantastic. (as have both subsequent versions, one of which was the show & tell dress in corduroy.)
let's kick off back to school week with a throwback post to the dress i made two years ago for nora's first day of kindergarten.
earlier that summer i was back in michigan visiting my family and took nora to the store to pick out fabric. we settled on this gradient sprinkle print in pink (for her) and blue (for etta) as well as some accent ribbons.
i came home to cambridge, poured myself a harpoon summer ale, and set to work on two roller skate dresses by oliver + s. since we couldn't find any accent fabric that went with the sprinkle print i made version a. lined in white cotton batiste they ended up being perfect for the first day.
the birthday dress tradition continued when etta turned three (read about maya's first birthday dress here). she asked for a fairy tale dress by oliver + s (okay she asked for a pretty dress and i decided that meant the fairy tale dress).
however she did specifically request a pink fabric with blue flowers. so while visiting victor i made a trip tostonemountain & daughter in berkeley and picked up this adorable print. to this day it remains one of my favorite fabrics.
this is the story of how aunt maggie won christmas.
december 2012: my nieces were incredibly into their american girl dolls or rather they were incredibly into those babies made by the american girl doll company. yes just about everything these girls did revolved around tweedy and mister dolly. (you read that right, mister dolly is what etta named her doll. in terms of cuteness that's right up there with how she calls vic 'aunt vic' or 'uncle vicky').
sometimes it's fun to ask the girls what they want in a dress and make it. other times i ignore what they are saying and make what i want.
this is an example of the latter.
did you know disney has an entire movie franchise on the adventures of tinkerbell? in one film 'secret of the wings', we learn about the existence of winter fairies and (spoiler alert) tinkerbell discovers she has a fraternal twin sister periwinkle.
drawing inspiration from this epic motion picture nora and i decided to make her and etta matching fairy sister dresses.
last month my family rented a house on the oregon coast for a few days. we were across the street from the beach which was very conducive to photos on my then unshattered iphone.
so here are some 'artistic-but-not-really-because-every-shot-looked-amazing-due-to-the-setting' photos.
most of the time my sisters accept my creations with open arms and indulge me by sending frequent photos. on the rare occasion they make a request for something my nieces actually need i try to oblige. so when my sister abby mentioned over christmas that her girls needed more long sleeved winter dresses i knew that would be part of my january to-sew list.
having a new years resolution to sew my stash, i was struggling to come up with something i could make with the fabrics i already had. once i saw the beautiful holiday dress gail made her daughter out of corduroy i remembered the amethyst fine whale corduroy (now on sale) that had been sitting in my fabric basket for two years and decided to use it to make a library dress by oliver + s.
given that my parents were hippie baby boomers who joined a tofu co-op in the early 90's, it's not surprising that there weren't a ton of rules in the kempner house. (in hindsight the fact that we were all naturally good kids who liked school, had nice friends, and weren't too boy crazy was probably conducive to and thus afforded a laissez faire approach to parenting.)
when maya when moved to the big kid room at her daycare my sister and i decided it was time for her first backpack.
vic had very thoughtfully gotten me the little things to sew book by oliver + s a few months earlier and i was dying to try the penguin backpack pattern. but when we found this owls all around print from the nested owls collection we knew a penguin wasn't gonna happen.
about a year ago i made the ambitious decision to take both nora and etta to the fabric depot in portland.
all three of us immediately fell in love with this poppy print. envisioning the garden party dresses by oliver + s, we also picked up some coordinating solid fabric, and two very fun flower buttons.
then i started a new job and this fabric sat in my stash.
and sat.
and sat.
sometimes i can't even take credit for the concept behind my work.
my sister sent me a drawing nora did of her dream dress: purple polka dots, three quarter length sleeves, collar, and most importantly a twirly skirt.
i combined the tinny dress pattern from straight grain with some purple polka dot fabric from a local fabric store and a few weeks later nora received her dream dress as birthday present.
i guess you could say these are the dresses that really started me sewing.
june 2012: i took my new bike out for a spin and grabbed some coffee at 1369 (if you haven't been there and are ever in boston i highly recommend it, it's quite possibly the most darling coffee shop of all time).
then i wandered into gather here (an amazing fabric store in cambridge, massachusetts). when i emerged an hour or so later i had my first oliver + s pattern: the family reunion dress, a few yards of quilting cotton, some buttons, and thread.
