The Winter of No Sleeves

This winter (joyfully!) I will have three kids who are all old enough to want to get dressed by themselves but not old enough to actually manage all the details themselves. Details like putting the right arm into the right sleeve, managing to get their hand all the way through the sleeve without getting tangled up, connecting the bottom parts of the zipper - it's all very complicated when you're three or four. Complicated and likely to completely derail a mom's morning.

Hence, I give you ... The Winter of No Sleeves.

This year, the kiddos (so weird to not just say "the boys") are going to have no outerwear that has sleeves and zippers. Usually, I get one light jacket and one heavy coat for each of the them. Sometimes if I'm able to find a really good quality formal coat, I'll get that too, but we don't have a lot of formal occasions to look sleek for, and our church is pretty casual. This year, we're doing cloaks. One fleece, one wool.

I made the fleece versions this week. I wanted to test out the pattern and fleece is a lot cheaper than wool. Also, the wool cloaks will need to be lined, so that's another level of trouble that I don't want to waste if the pattern isn't right.

Buying the fleece was fun. Twinkle instantly landed on his choice. Munchkin took more guidance. His favorite color is pink, so I wanted him to have a pink cloak, but I didn't want it to look like he was wearing a girl's cloak. ("Excuse me, saleslady, can you show me where you're keeping the non-feminine pinks?") We considered several different options and landed on a fabric that mostly reads BRIGHT!!! rather than just pink.

Beautiful as I know Munchkin to be, it's possible he's not a born model.

I made Munchkin's cloak using M6431, view F except that I didn't use the neckline cutout. I didn't really think it through before cutting it out. Not including the hood, Munchkin's cloak has 6 pieces: front, back, 2 side fronts and 2 side backs. With Twinkle's and Mei-Mei's, I streamlined the pattern so that it only has 2 cloak pieces: front and back.

The original pattern had no option that only used 2 pieces. The simplest option (view C) had a zipper up the front, which I didn't want because obviously, zippers complicate life. So I used the back pattern piece for this view and cut it out twice. To make the front piece, I recut the neckline using the front pattern piece as a guide. Clear as mud?

After the fact, I wish that I hadn't used the front cutout, because the cloaks run a smidge big and I didn't need the extra room that the cutout gives. Also, I cut 2" off the bottom of Twinkle's cloak so that it would be the right length and I cut 1.5" off the bottom of Munchkin's hood because it was oddly oversize. But overall, I'm pretty happy with the first Winter of No Sleeves experiment, and I think I'll be able to tweak the pattern satisfactorily later when I do the wool versions.

But what really makes me happy?

I had to make 3 cloaks. Three.

Ice Dyeing

Quite a while ago, I had a sewing intensive week and make a number of clothes for myself. I used linen for all of them

(Ah, linen. How do I love thee? Thou art easy to sew and a good weight for clothing, allowing projects to look and feel professional. Thou art casual and comfortable when unironed and tossed into dryer for a quick fluff. Thou art classical beauty and simplicity itself. Also, dearest linen, thou wast on sale.)

and I used quite a bit of plain, unbleached linen, some of which I made into a tunic and a dress and some of which I ice-dyed.

Ice-dyed?

Yes. It's lovely. Let me tell you about it.

First, I collected about a grocery bag's worth of ice. Being stingy, I took 2 days to make it in our ice trays instead of paying $2.50 for a bag of ice. Then I wet the fabric, squeezed out the excess, and then scrunched it into a rectangle. For this technique, it's better to scrunch (think of the fabric going up and down, hills and valleys) than layer or fold. Since I didn't know exactly how it would look, I dyed more fabric than I needed for the shirt so that I would have enough that I could pick and choose which parts I wanted. I used one package of Dylon fabric dye, in navy blue.

Then I poured the ice on top. You want enough ice to cover your fabric. Scrunch your fabric into a smaller area if necessary. (Twinkle was a very enthusiastic helper.)

Then I sprinkled the powdered dye on top of the ice. 

Twinkle got a little blue on his hands, but it could have been much, much worse.

Due to poor planning, we did this project just as the sun was going down. You're supposed to wait for the ice to melt, but it wasn't melting very fast. (Which tells you how long ago these pictures were taken, as it is now warm enough to melt a brass monkey at 10 o'clock at night.) We experimented some with a hair dryer, which Twinkle was very keen on, but it didn't seem to speed the process up much.

See? Still not melted. If I had thought of pouring hot water over the ice, that might have done some good.

Eventually we gave up and rinsed the fabric off in a bucket. After rinsing a lot of times, I ran it through the washer and dryer.

See how pretty?

I love how random the splotches are, which is pretty necessary for this project because - control? You have none. Which is a bit liberating, once you get used to it.

 I made a large, drapey shirt with turned back cuffs and a wide V-neck. I was mostly copying this picture, but I didn't use the measurements listed. (Also notice: that website is in Russian.) The effect isn't quite as dramatically drapey as I wanted, but for a first try, I'm very happy with it.

I sewed this top and my other linen projects with triple seams, which is where you take a French seam, iron it to one side and then topstitch it. French seams are necessary because linen frays like anything when you wash it in the machine, and the topstitching makes the seam lie flat, which looks nicer. 

This gives your project a very professional look and feel and I think it is well worth the extra time. Also it makes your garment last longer because the seams are stronger.

Another detail I like is the loops I put in to keep my bra straps hidden. These loops are sewn to the shirt on one side and snapped on the other, so they're easy to flip under my bra strap and fasten. I sewed the snaps to the neckline facing, so none of the stitches show on the outside. I like wide necklines, but since I have little boys who have only a tenuous grasp on the concept of personal space or appropriate behavior (and since I don't spend my days artfully reclining against a tree) the loops help a lot to keep my neckline where I want it. 

This was a really really simple dyeing project and such a fun technique. I love using the navy dye because it looks like traditional Japanese shibori, but it also looks really pretty when you use green, or pink, or even when you mix colors. This would be a lovely way to personalize a tablecloth or dish towels, if you're not inclined to sew. 

Much fun! 

A small amount of grass was killed in the making of this garment.

No Really ...

The other day I mentioned to a friend of mine that I keep a spreadsheet of the boys’ clothes, and she looked at me like I was some strange, hyper-organized, control-freak supermom instead of the mostly ordinary, fairly messy mother of two she knows me to be.

“No really,” I told her, “it makes life so much easier and it’s so much simpler than you’re probably thinking.” 

Here’s the thing. Having too much stuff stresses me out. (Except obviously books. Bring on the books, I say!) Particularly having too much clothing stresses me out. But if you are going to have less, you need to be more organized about it than if you have a lot. Which is counter-intuitive, I know. But it’s not organizing the stuff itself that is important (although that’s always nice), it’s being organized about what you have in the first place. If you have a huge pile of clothes, the odds are pretty good that somewhere in the pile, there is a shirt that will go with those shorts, even if you didn’t buy the shirt with the shorts in mind. But when you only have a handful of things, you need to keep track of what you have so that you know if there are any holes in the wardrobe, so to speak, that you need to fill before the next season.

For instance, at the beginning of the spring, all I had on hand for Munchkin’s summer wardrobe was two pairs of army fatigue pants, one pair of fatigue shorts and three polo shirts. Now two bottoms and three tops would seem to make three outfits, but the polo shirts clashed pretty terribly with the fatigues, so I know that somewhere between February and warm weather, we’d need to come up with some more neutral tops and some denim or khaki shorts. Since I had it all written down in my spreadsheet, it was easy to know what to shop for at the spring consignment sale.

Twinkle wears Munchkin’s hand-me-downs, so when I’m putting Munchkin’s clothes away at the end of a season, I enter all the items that are still in good shape in this spreadsheet in Twinkle’s column in the next year’s spreadsheet. This makes it very simple when grandparents ask what they need for Christmas, or when I feel like sewing or knitting them some things for next season but haven’t decided yet what to make. Instead of dragging down a bin full of clothes and digging through it, all I have to do is check the spreadsheet.

Here’s how I organize it.

(Before going any farther, I should say that the way I use excel drives ‘Stache absolutely nuts. I am not nearly as computer savvy as he is, and I tend to use excel in a rather messy, intuitive sort of way. I am not necessarily recommending that you make your sheet exactly like mine. I am sure there are better ways or programs to do this. However, this sheet works very nicely for me.)

This is the basic format, without any clothes entered:

The “total items” number I enter in by hand. The “projected items” is the sum of all the numbers you see. As I enter in clothing items, I change the numbers to reflect how many items are now needed. The “estimated cost” is the number of items (either total or estimated) times $6.66, which is what I expect to spend on each item. (We buy almost all the kids’ clothes from JBF, a high-quality, high-volume consignment sale that happens each spring and fall. After going several times, I’ve found that I typically spend about $6 + tax on each item if I’m not there on a special sale day.)

Here is the spreadsheet with some of the items entered.

Notice that the projected items and projected costs are now much lower. I could make the cells bigger to show the whole list of “already have” clothing items, but then my spreadsheet would be more unwieldy. I prefer to just click on the cell to see the full list. If I am planning to make something for the boys but haven’t yet, then I type it in bold as a reminder to myself that although I do plan to make it, it’s not a done deal yet.

Some more notes on my numbers of items. I made this list based on how often I do laundry, which is once a week. We go to a church where anything from casual to dressy is considered appropriate, so only one specifically nice outfit is plenty for us. The summers when we’ve had family weddings on the horizon “wedding outfit” was also entered into the spreadsheet. During the summer we often put them to bed in a t-shirt, or even just a diaper, so they don’t need as many pajamas as in winter. The boys don’t go to preschool  or daycare, so if we run out of clean clothes and they spend a day in their diapers, there’s no harm done. The boys don’t wear socks in the summer, because I snatch at any excuse to not have to keep up with tiny socks. I buy nice leather sandals for them to wear to church and crocs or sandals for the rest of the week.

After all this dry talk of spreadsheets, why don’t we have some pictures of the boys in their summer clothes? 

The boys in their "water glasses"

I should plan more than one hat for Munchkin: he's a big fan.

Why do I even bother planning clothes for Twinkle? This is his preferred outfit from May to September.