Kids

Making A Tunkey OR A Tiger Monkey

Rachel — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:27:34 GMT

I have been messing around with Inkscape today trying to capture Esther’s beloved “Tunkey.”

With some help and guidance from my 5 year old daughter, this is what we came up with:

What could this look like as a fabric?

I’m going to tile this and see what happens.

Not sure about a background color. Any ideas?

Love, Rachel

Sewing Yet Another Girls Colonial Dress? Yup.

Rachel — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 02:52:25 GMT

School is here! This year my daughter Rosemary does not have to wear uniforms to school—to her delight. I bought her some basics and told her that I would make her three dresses for school. She decided to design one of them which looked amazingly similar to her sister Esther’s colonial dress that I had made her earlier this year. She carefully drew her sketch and verbally let me know what all the details were. It’s the night before her first day of school and the pieces of her dress were in a pile on my sewing table. Even worse than that—I was really really tired.

I tried to carefully feel it out…how she would feel if she wore the dress on the second day and not the first. Her little face fell and she kind of whispered, “Well, I told all the kids already that I was going to wear this very special dress that I designed and my Mamma sewed for me.” My heart sank and I knew it was a big deal.

Kiss kiss, the kids are in bed and I begin to work on yet another colonial dress. Same pattern, different material, shorter sleeves. Amazingly I finish the dress (without all the fancy lace decorations) and hang it in her room ready for the first day of school. No matter that the skirt goes to her ankles and she’ll have to somehow participate in PE. No matter that she’s wearing a colonial inspired garment to school. It’s all worth it yet once again when her little eyes sparkled with joy and her wide smile filled with gaps grinned. Please ignore the wrinkles in the dress—she wore it for two days in a row (not to school though!)

Some tips for those of you wanting to sew this dress: McCall’s 5414

Make a mock-up bodice first. With both girls, I needed to alter the bodice quite a bit. Rosemary is a size 7, so the pattern should have worked quite well for her, but it didn’t.
Changes I made to the bodice pattern.

I needed to shorten the waist in each of the bodice pieces. You can get a good idea how much you need to shorten by measuring your daughter from her shoulder seam to her waist. Then measure the pattern (make sure you eliminate the seam allowance of 5/8”). Make adjustments at the lines on the pattern that says “adjustments made here!”
I also needed to raise the front bodice only about 1 1/2 to 2 inches at the shoulder. You may not need to, but keep an eye open for these changes.The back bodice was fine. The sleeve was fine.
Measure your child from waist to floor before you cut out your skirt. The skirt lengths are VERY generous and you can save yourself quite a bit of fabric by doing this.

I know it seems like a pain to do a mock-up, but believe me, it will save you so much time, fabric, and energy if you just get it right in the muslin. Do it!

Love, Rachel

Tigers And Monkeys Make What?

Rachel — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:21:45 GMT

My daughter Esther is in love with Tigers…and Monkeys. Because she can’t decide which animal is better, she has created a new animal which in our house is called a “Tunkey.” In order to create this animal she ties her two stuffed animals together with a lot of hair bands. It works. She is constantly drawing this fantastic creature and gets discouraged when her Tunkey isn’t quite perfect.

I found this adorable monkey fabric at my favorite local quilting store and I decided to make Esther a dress. She is very excited about it, but I know that somehow if some “tunkey” fabric is mysteriously created it would be the best thing ever to this five year old child. My two nieces Lilly Hannah and Ida are on the job and at this moment in time are sending me some tunkey sketches. I’m excited to see what they look like. Until then, she is thrilled with simply a monkey dress.

Love, Rachel

Indie Fest Fashion Show

Rachel — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 05:49:43 GMT

We went to Indie Fest yesterday and we had a great time at downtown Disney. Here is a picture of me with all my kids except one.

It was a beautiful hot day and we had a really nice time. I was glad that I didn’t have high expectations of how things were going to go. It’s important when the word “Indie” is involved to keep an open mind and let things progress as they will. I learned that lesson from my brother Daniel. We had an outdoor show which was followed by two teenage girl bands. I’m going to stop there and just share with you our show.

Sorry that the garments are so hard to see in this video. I’m glad to have it for posterity. You look upon the blessings you have in your life, tangled balloons and all…

Love, Rachel

Quality Childrens Garments...Does It Really Matter?

Rachel — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:24:12 GMT

I love the feel of good quality material. I just do. I confess that the first year my daughter Rosemary went to school, I sewed her school uniforms because I just couldn’t handle spending $45 for a cheap polyester jumper. I would not have had a problem in the least if it was a good quality product though. Cheap fabric just bugs me. So, I confess, I’m a fabric snob. I only use 100% high quality cotton materials in the garments that I sew. If I'm going to take the time and effort, they are definitely going to last through it all.

This is a story about a dress:

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Rosemary who begged her Mamma to make her an Easter dress. Rosemary was three years old and like most three year olds, she loved to twirl. Her Mamma decided to make her sweet little girl the twirliest dress in the world.

Video: Rosmeary Twirling

Rosemary loved her new dress. She wanted to wear it every day. And she pretty much did because her Mamma didn’t see much harm in it. If anything, her Mamma wanted her to wear it as much as possible because it took forever to gather and sew on all those stinkin’ ruffles…ahem. Here are some highlights of the next couple of years in “the dress.”

April 2003

September 2003

November 2004

December 2004

Rosemary absolutely insisted upon wearing her fancy dress for her Pre-School Christmas show. One of the Moms came up to Rosemary's Mamma after the show and quietly asked her if she needed a real Christmas dress for her daughter. Two days later she handed her a bag of old polyester hand-me-down Christmas dresses.

Video: Rosemary Christmas Show

Rosemary of course needed to wear her "fancy dress" on Christmas Day.

February 2005

After wearing this dress day in and day out for three years, Rosemary's Mamma finally put it in the dress-up box because she couldn't stand to look at it anymore. The garment had been washed and dried hundreds and hundreds of times and acquired a genuine "vintage look" in a record breaking time-frame. Many people had complimented the little girl on her dress and asked her Mamma where she had found such an adorable vintage garment. The Mamma would just sigh and smile.

Alas Easter rolled around again and Rosemary asked her Mamma once more for a beautiful twirly "fancy dress" just like her favorite yellow and pink dress - only all in pink. Now the Mamma was much smarter this time around and refused her little girl. She was really sick of that dress.

Or did she?

April 2006

July 2006

Rosemary's Mamma is such a sucker!

Love, Rachel

So, does quality really matter? Well, it depends on the individual. There are two kinds of thought:

Kids are kids and they destroy everything:

It's true. Kids are kids and they ruin clothing. They play, run, jump, slide in the mud, dance outside barefoot in the rain. That is the job of children - to play and to play hard. Cheap clothes just don't last as long and you end up buying clothing more often. And do you really want your kids destroying an expensive garment that you paid for?

Rachel's kind of thought:

The garment is sturdy, well-constructed, and made with quality material. I did pay a bit more for it so my kid better wear it ALL the time. The side note is that it just happens to be cute at the same time. This garment will last through all three of my daughters. I like that.

Quality is a personal preference. There are strong arguments on both sides which I obviously didn't delve into in this post. Read more in my post about Fabric Choices And Quality.

It's A Tiger Kind Of A Day

Rachel — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:16:08 GMT

Happy Tiger Day!

Hint: Face Paints are an AMAZING summer activity! Not a lot of effort on your part and the play goes on and on.....

Love, Rachel

Peter Leo Comes To Visit

Rachel — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:32:42 GMT

My sister Megan is here visiting me with her new son, Peter Leo, who is now 5 months old. We are having a blast together (notice the lack of posts?) and it's really cool to be working on our Fall Mamma Made Line together in the same room. Megan always has a plethora of amazing ideas and it's been really fun to shoot them off of each other. Here is little Peter.

It's really sweet to watch Eleanor and Peter play. They really love each other and Peter doesn't get upset when she beats him up.

Have fun with your sister today!!! We're going shopping!

Love, Rachel

Breathing A Sigh Of Relief...Or Am I?

Rachel — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:47:55 GMT

Whew! The Summer Line for Mamma Made is done and it's live and I am about to breathe a deep sigh of relief. But why aren't I? Things are great, the weather is beautiful here in San Diego, school is almost over and summer is ahead of us...I think I'm just tired. Too tired to even sigh. Tired and yet my mind is still buzzing with a million different things that won't let me let down and just BE! Let me be!

Do you ever go to bed completely wiped out and yet you lay there for an hour or two just thinking about stuff? Random stuff that really doesn't matter at all? Well, I feel like I'm living that thought process but throughout my days. What can I do? Hmmm. Hot tea!

Yes, this is a stolen flickr image. There are some really funny ones when you type in "hot tea." If this were me, I would have tea leaves. Yes, I'm a bit of a tea snob if you will.

Well, super cool news today! My daughter Ellie took her first steps today! Yay!

Here she is lurching around with a magnet in her mouth. That child cannot keep things out of her mouth!

After a graceful fall, here she is quite proud of herself.

I'm ready to regroup and write some new technical posts. If anyone has some suggestions on what they might like to learn in regards to sewing/construction or anything in that general department, give a shout out.

From my scattered brain to yours....

Love, Rachel

Do Babies Eat Artichokes?

Rachel — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:17:21 GMT

I have living proof that they do.

Somehow she figured out how to scrape her teeth along the leaf to get all the meat.

Crazy. These California kids...what can I tell you?

Love, Rachel

Sunny Sunday

Rachel — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:26:43 GMT

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny Sunday here in California. This dress is one of my favorite designs from a collaboration with the amazing artist Eleanor Grosch from PushMePullYouDesign. I found this size 18 month sample in my closet and I decided that my Eleanor could wear it. Here she is in "Bella Bird" on a sunny Sunday afternoon looking beautiful just because.

Love, Rachel