knits

Of late, I seem to be making a lot of pants. All of a sudden, N’s pants don’t fit her anymore, or, more specifically, the problem seems to be that the distance between the waist and the crotch is a tad too small.

I perhaps would not have been too excited to cut and make a bunch of pants at this point, had I not made this a few months earlier. N loves it so much, so it made sense to repeat, i.e. make what she and I like. To resolve the aforementioned problem, I went up a size (8T this time) using the same pattern but brought the thighs in a bit.

It almost worked I thought, but I wasn’t too happy with how it looked:It’s too loose around the crotch. So I went back to size 7, reduced the folded in waistband by a little over 1/4″ and got much better results. Here is the second version. I like the fit around the crotch much better this time, although she can’t tell the difference, and loves both equally. 🙂The pattern for these leggings comes from Oliver+S. I added a cuff in the case of both, a pretty simple on for the purple ones and a “fancy” one for the black pair. (The idea for it comes from here.)The fold over “petal shape” was meant to be on the outside, but alas I was much too much in a hurry. I didn’t feel like unpicking it for a red-do it, and so inside it stayed. Ms. N hardly cares, because she is perpetually in some dance position which requires her to point her feet out!

Needless to say they are super comfortable. As it turns out the fabric is also perfect for winter. I bought both at Sahni Fabrics in Nehru place. The knit is a “double knit” jersey and entirely reversible. I haven’t seen it before, and am in love; I want to go back to get some more. 🙂

The same trip also yielded some nice silky knit in blue which is N’s favourite colour. The fabric was too light for a pair of pants (thankfully), so I decided to make a t-shirt. This is the Field trip Raglan T-shirt pattern from Oliver+S  which I also made in size 8. It turned out that I should have also stuck to size 7 in this as well (or perhaps even a 6?) with probably only a slightly bigger opening for the neck. See how enormous it is around her chest?

Since the fabric was so slippery, and the shirt was kind of feeling too floppy, I made a couple of minor changes to the pattern: I added a waist band (after cutting off the bottom 2″) and did the same with sleeves. It seems a bit more together now. She wore it immediately and to school the next day, so I guess it counts as a success. 

But of all, this has been the more fun project, and I have been saving it for last!I had been wanting to try out kid’s undies for a while, and after spending some time on Etsy I found this pattern and this. That Darn Kat pattern gives different styles for boys and girls and runs upto size 8. I made the largest size for N. (When I checked right now for the site, the owner seems to be on a break but promises to be back soon.) The slight problem for me was that it does not give body measurements, so I made the largest size with the hope that it fits or is too large for her. I am happy to say it fits perfectly and they are very very comfortable. The fabric is all scraps–our old t-shirts, the kids’ old t-shirts, even her leggings– and by all accounts they are super comfortable. I have to admit, I balked at the idea of showing these on my model, but truth be told she was more than willing to model for these!The second pattern is from MBJM (Made by Jack’s Mum) and has two styles as well: briefs and boxers. This goes to till size 12. So far, I have made just one for M but it looks so cute on him that I want to make more.So. That’s it for today I think. I still have some more backlog stuff to post, but for now I need to go and pack. We leave for our holidays very soon.

Asmita/xx

 

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gifts

Happy day-after-valentine’s day!

I hope you had a good yesterday and of course today. I made a quick little gift for N the night before.

The inspiration for it came from purl bee which is always excellent for quick and gratifying ideas. I won’t say much about the fabric now (because it’s a little piece of what I am working with right now), but N had asked for something in red and something heart shaped so she got what she wanted. And it was super super quick to make.

This blurry photo is unfortunately the only one I have but she is pretty pleased with it.

Then also we sent off some stuff she made and I sent off my package a few days before that.

Sadly none of these have reached their destinations yet, it seems. So for now I will remain quiet about it!

All in all it was quite a valentines day celebration for someone (i.e. me!) who is not much into festivities.

Oh,and I almost forgot…on a totally unrelated note:

I cracked the method to make homemade butter! Over the years I have tried this many times, and finally on Friday thanks to some patient instructions of a good friend and pictorial aids from here, I got my first blob/handful (?) of butter. The taste is divine and N had three straight spoonfuls of it. I admit that I had a few undisclosed number of tastings too 🙂 And while I can always buy butter from the shop, this opens up more possibilites….

xo/a

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a celebration and other things

Hello friends. It has been a week of glorious weather. Good news is that my curry leaf plant that I had given up on in the cold weather is sprouting leaves again.

This week I also celebrated my birthday, with some lasagna and cake. I turned 40; it seems suddenly like I have been around for a long time. A big birthday and I have been thinking a lot about things I want to do differently than the way I am doing them right now.  But more about that in another post. We went to Humayun’s tomb, the magnificent ode to the 16th century Moghul emperor Humayun, and one of my favourit-est places in Delhi. All in all, quite a lovely birthday.

Things have been going well on the sewing front. I made a little zippered pouch for myself with the help of this excellent tutorial. I still am not feeling very confident with zippers (broken needles and all that), but I plan to make more. In any case, there’s lots more to show and tell over the next few days and weeks.

So just wanted to say hi at the moment. Hope you are all well too!

Asmita

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pjs

The pajamas got done this week, and N has already worn these a couple of times. Here she is with “Biki.”The pjs are soft, airy and all in all lovely and will be on regular rotation at least as long as this summer lasts.After I got the cuff wrong on the first ones, I did figure out the whole thing by the time I made these pants but decided to keep the cuffs of these ones short. For one, they are the perfect length, and I think by the time I have to unfold them it’ll be winter, and in any case too cold to wear these.

But for these ones, I did make the cuff as I was supposed to.  

I figure its slightly thicker cotton and she’ll be able to wear these through December.

I have to say making these was immensely satisfying. I did get better and better at making them progressively, and its nice to have three of these. I love the pattern and might need to make the top next (and of course a matching pair of pajamas too for cooler weather.)

Ooh, and before I go, got this done for a little girl whose birthday we went to this week. 

I am told by the mom that the birthday girl liked her clip, and N and I spent one very pleasurable morning with me making this and she drawing her birthday card (that’s what you see in the background).

That’s all from me today. Hope you all have a lovely week. I know I will, because I am GOING to Himachal Pradesh!! More on this next week!

Asmita

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back!

Given how long I have been away for (more than a month now…) I might as well start a new blog, introduce myself and all that.

Seriously, I came back from Pune, now almost three weeks, all geared up to show what I have been making and all that, but now that was more than three weeks ago. And what took me so long to write? Well, the sad and the very tedious reason is that we had no internet.

Actually, this is not a fact that I mind in general. Or, rather, I should say that after going through some serious withdrawal symptoms, I kind of got used to it. Like in a life without cable TV, I realised that it created all kinds of free time and it wasn’t such a bad thing after all. But then, I missed writing my posts, if for no one else then for myself (I was pretty sure that by this time I have lost the few friends I have made through my blog.)

So. Anyway. Here I am, dear friends. If you have checked in a few times to see thank you for your patience. There is no revised or new version of me or anything, nor any profound reason for why I was away for so long. But thank you for dropping by.

It feels like too long ago, to tell all that I have been making and doing the last many weeks. But let me just start by saying that someone around here turned five a few weeks ago. While this happened only a little over two weeks we feel like it happened a long time ago, because the person is no longer constantly reminding us excitedly that she has “just turned five.” By now we take this fact for granted, and are almost looking forward to being five and half.

As a birthday present she got something very small, but something that she had wanted for a while.

Two clips! The pink bow clip is a free pattern from here and was super simple to make. I didn’t do a great job with the hot glue gun but that’s ok as she nor anyone can see it.  The rose barrette is from here and took some fiddling but was worth the time and effort. 

N wore the barrette for her birthday and has been happily using both since.

Initially I had big plans to make N a dress and such, but those fell through partly due to my laziness in Pune. Actually this turned out to be a good thing. Because…

The weather in Delhi could not have been more different than in Pune. But no more “weather” talk because the only way for me to deal with Delhi is to not talk of the weather at all. So anyway, the good thing was that we came back and I realised that she just needed very very light clothing rather than any birthday-appropriate fancy frocks, or fancy anything for that matter.

And birthday or no birthday, she needed some pajamas. So one got done last week.(Apologies for the not so nice looking shirt in the picture. Its from when some artwork got done…).

And here is one of the lovely toes with what I call the remains-of-the-summer-vacation nail polish.

The pattern is from here and they are called “sleepover pajamas.” (I only made the bottoms.) The fabric is very thin cotton from my favourite shop in Pune. It’s the first thing I have made for her in size 5, and while they are a wee bit long, she loves them. Cutting them and then making them I also felt a bit sad and like suddenly she had grown.

I would like to say that I just finished making them in under an hour or something, because it is actually possible to do that especially with the no ruffle version. But no, they took very very long, in part because I cut only one cuff per leg and could not, for the life of me, figure out the instructions. I entirely blame this matter on the fogginess in my head induced by humidity, but, as I said….no weather complaints.

So that’s why they look like bedtime story pajamas, but just for the record, they are not meant to be. I have to more on my sewing table and plans to make amends.

The other thing that got done in this no internet period is this.I have been cutting up and saving the 2.5″ squares for sometime now to make this. The plan was to do it in Pune, and I even took the squares there, but then I already told you lazy I was in Pune right? So I got them back here. I have been trying not to save too many scraps of what is left over of the fabric after I cut it for something else like a dress, and so this little pillow was perfect. It has lots of remaindered fabric that got left back. And reminders too of what got made this last couple of months. N loves the pillow cover to see if she can remember what was made with what fabric and it has now become a kind of a game.

I wanted something nice for the back so that we can use both sides. So I used a remaining bit of Echino and did a simple button closure.

As you can see the little cat likes it too!

Ok, that’s about all from me today. I can promise this time that I am coming back to post some more stuff really soon, because right now after this I am going to my sewing table to finish a few more things 🙂

See you all soon. Thank you for visiting.

Asmita

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food etc.

More cooking has been done this week than anything else. Late last weekend we went to this place called the French Farm (directions are here). The place is located so 60 kms outside Delhi off Delhi-Jaipur highway. He grows organic veggies all of which can be procured quite easily in Delhi itself. But because I have a friend who often goes to the source itself and likes to see things before they are dug up from the ground and procured as it were, we decided to tag along.

The outing itself was not as fun as I had anticipated–N got car sick, cranky etc., but the produce itself was (is) so fantastic that one way or the other I am going to have to figure out how to do this again.

So here is my haul.

Given that our entire dining table was covered with only veggies (and it is a pretty large table) I have spent a lot of time cooking this week. Mostly stews and soups since it’s still very cold–at least too cold for me. My current favourite blog for recipe hunting is smitten kitchen, and we’ve so far had the most yummy swiss chard pasta, and swiss chard bean soup (with still more of swiss chard in the fridge), celery soup, and…

So, anyway, feeling pretty well-fed, N and I embarked on our long term project this week. “Long term” because I have been planning this with her for the last four months at least. This week after a major melt down over this issue I stopped procrastinating, and we have finally begun work on our DOLL house. And here is our first room–

This was a lot of fun to make, given that I am not a fan of making tiny things. And, if I wanted to sound like a brochure, I would add that the room has a lot of “fun details” like extra “room” for guests to sleep in.

And a train service! Apparently, this is necessary because we do not have any other rooms as yet, and if  turtle and fish need to travel some distance to get supplies they need some mode of transport. So I have been told. Not a bad idea, and I wouldn’t mind a train at my real doorstep. (Seriously, there are too many cars in Delhi.)

N is pretty delighted with this, and hopefully this will give me the necessary impetus to get going with the other rooms.

And now having finally shaken myself out of my procrastination mode, I am also on to getting into the mode to make some other stuff. So here is what is coming up.

More on this soon!

Thanks for visiting. I am very happy to be back. Hope you all have a lovely Sunday.

-Asmita

P.S. My long running favourite read is the Orangette blog. I really like the way Molly Wizenberg writes and what she writes about, and I loved this essay that she recently posted.

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