Day Five

Here we go--second to last day.

Mounds of dress stuff.
Notice how well the iron goes with everything.
And the pins stick out.
Sorry:)

Getting it together.



Help!!!



Beginning the pinning.

All pinned.



You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round, like a record,
baby, right 'round 'round 'round.
Actually, more like here we go 'round the mulberry bush.
Whatever the case, it was a lot of going in circles.














Sewing the lining.
Look closely. The needle and thread are there.



The DRESS, end of Day Five.

The end of the flower cutting out.

And there you have it--Day Five.

Stay tuned for ..... the Last Day.

The Dress, Days Three and Four

There are a lack of pictures for these days but here is what there is:



The jacket.



Jacket lining.

  



Isn't it interesting how similar the jacket and lining are? Mind boggling.

Flower beginnings.



Working on flowers.



And that's all she wrote.

Picture wise.

Sunday was day three and all it saw accomplished was cutting out the jacket pieces and beginning work on the flowers.

Monday was day four and it saw a trip to JoAnn's. When I was there last week to buy materials, I was assured that there was organza in the back, it just wasn't out yet. So I went Monday and looked where it should be as well as every other shelf. I did not see what I wanted so I got nylon netting and went to the cutting tables where I asked about organza.

The woman said, "Oh, I know what you're talking about." She asked someone and led me to the first place I'd looked. Sure enough, there is organza, but the thin, soft stuff one might use for bridal projects, not the stiff stuff I wanted for poofing out a skirt. So I got nylon netting and spent the afternoon cutting it out. This is what I did not take pictures of because I was so not excited about it. There are plenty for Day Five though.

To be continued.....

The Dress, Day Two

Here we go--day two.


Cutting the interfacing.



Windng the bobbin under Seth's supervision.





Winding the bobbin up close.





Ready to go.




Seth trying the pieces out.
"Is this a sleeve?" he wanted to know.



Sewing along.










First side of the first piece gathered.

Second side of the first piece gathered.

Zipper in! Hooray!

Foundation.

Sewing in the lining.

There would be a picture of what I accomplished yesterday but it looks funny just laying on the table and sewing something in for hanging was not on the to do list. It isn't on today's list either but I may do something about it.

Stay tuned.....









The Dress

For my birthday this year I received a request from Joanna. Would I please make her a dress for a dance she is attending on February 5? Of course, I would love to make her a dress. The fact that she is in Idaho, I am in Massachusetts and have only three weeks to make the dress and send it to her? Just an added challenge and another step on my journey.

The target dress can be found at the following address:

http://www.promgirl.com/shop/dresses/viewitem-PD585089

As I was not able to find a pattern exactly like it, I am making changes to the pattern most like it I could find. If I had a couple of months I would be able to come up with something even better but I'm pretty sure the end results will be fairly good.


This is the dress fabric. It actually is more
grey than this picture shows.





This is the jacket fabric.



The new improved skirt pattern.

The zebra patterns.

Bodice pattern glued.

Bodice pattern cut out.

The first cut.

The second cut.

On the bias.

And again.



The last cut of the day.



And that is what was accomplished yesterday. I still need to get organza for the skirt but I figure I can do that Monday because I have enough to do today to take up all afternoon. It will be interesting to see how far I get. If I finish all I can without the organza, I have the jacket and flowers to make.

Stay tuned.....

Journal

It appears that writing a blog is something like writing a journal: sometimes it happens regularly, sometimes it doesn't. It also seems that the more is happening, and therefore there is more that should be written about, not as much gets written. Too bad this can't be remedied by multitasking. Actually, I suppose it could if you have a program such as Dragon and you can talk to your journal or blog while you are doing something else.

This picture was taken in August. Across the back are Daniel, Joseph, Joanna and Laura. In front are Cedric, Seth and Amena. It was a rainy day.

All of them were born at home and/or with a midwife.

Laura was born October 28, 1991. Present were her father, my mother, Liz Travis, the midwife, and Liz's assistant; I don't happen to remember her name at the moment. I remember that we had a big plastic sheet on the floor in the livingroom in order that I could squat during labor and delivery. At the time, although it was a good idea, I really didn't know enough about the whole process for it to work well. It is a good way to get a baby out but when I was squatting, it seemed that everything wanted to happen too fast and I wasn't ready for that. I also remember being on the bed wondering how I was ever going to finish the process. I'd given birth to Alisha five years earlier but when she was born, I really didn't know what I was doing or what to expect. With Laura, I knew what was ahead of me and I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to do it. Being pregnant was great but giving birth wasn't exactly on my list of favorite things to do.

More later.

Invitation

Just a little note to anyone who might be visiting, please feel free to leave comments. I'd love to see what you have to say.

A Change

Does everyone have a day that changes their life? I suppose that most of us actually have several of those days. Sometimes the change is very small; so miniscule that it is not even recognized. Sometimes the change is monumental. Yesterday was such a day for me. I am not yet ready to rate it, but I can feel a difference.

I have always had an interest in the workings of the human body. We had some encyclopedia-type books about human growth and development and I devoured them. They covered everything from the reproductive cycle, conception, pregnancy, birth, and beyond. When I first began reading them I was probably about 12 or 13 and had not yet begun menstruating so that is what I was most interested in. I knew that girls and women bled every now and then and I wanted to know why. I think I learned more than I needed to know at the time but in the end that was okay. As I got a little older, and started really thinking about things, it occurred to me to wonder how it was that women had babies. If it took a woman and a man, and the woman had the baby inside her, how the heck did it get there? I do not recall that the books actually described the process but it didn't take much figuring to deduce that if a woman had a vagina and a man had a penis and the man had to deposit sperm in the vagina, the penis somehow must enter the vagina. That surely meant that the two involved in this process must need be naked. Hmmmm. When I confronted my parents about this, they confirmed that it was so. This is a concept I surely wasn't ready to wrap my mind around. What a disgusting thought! Who on earth would want to be seen by anyone without clothes on? Especially by someone of the opposite sex? It must have been around this time I decided that I wasn't going to have children or get married.

So, I knew what the parts were and I knew how the process worked. But somehow I got the idea that it wasn't cool to talk about those parts or the process. I am not sure how I developed this idea because the one time I asked my parents that one question, they were forthcoming with information and didn't seem to have a problem with talking about it although I don't remember them ever initiating any conversations. My grandparents certainly didn't have a problem about such things. I used to go to their house often and Grandma and I would "draw" on each other's backs and have good back scratching sessions. For these, Grandma would take off her bra and fling it across the living room to the couch. I remember once when I was somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 Papa mentioning that you had to "use it or loose it" when it came to sexual activity. He would have been about 66 or so. By then I had had three babies so I knew what caused them but I hadn't thought about intimate relationships in any context other than creating new life.

In spite of the odd ideas I somehow managed to get into my head, I had still convinced myself that when married, any topic of conversation would be okay. Including breasts, penises, vaginas, and various other body parts; even what they do and what might be fun to do with them. Well, I was wrong. I know that not all people feel this way, but some believe that to talk about such things is to invite bad or even evil in. Quite frankly, I think that if it were wrong to talk about and find enjoyment in our bodies, God would have stopped with Adam and found a way for reproduction to happen without Eve.

So how did I get to the point that I was so apprehensive about yesterday's class? All we were doing is learning how to do breast exams, pelvic exams and draw blood. Before class, I was somewhat uncertain. I mean, I've done breast self-exams. Not monthly like I've been told I should but often enough to know what is or isn't normal for me. All I can think of is that my background, my culture, if you will, had taught me that homosexuality is bad, that pornography is bad, that masturbation is bad and that anything that is or looks bad should be avoided. I am not going to argue for or against these things; I have my beliefs and they are what they are. Others have their beliefs and they are what they are. It isn't my job to change the views others have any more than it is their job to change mine.

Until yesterday, I was somehow more concerned that someone might think that I was doing or being something bad by wanting to be a midwife. I mean, how can you perform a pelvic exam without using a speculum to view the vagina and cervix? How can you perform a breast exam without looking at a woman's breasts? How can you perform a breast self-exam without touching your own breasts? It's okay to do these things.

Today was an incredible day. Learning how to do a pelvic exam was like the most logical continuation of learning the skeletal and muscular systems I can think of. How absolutely incredible to feel the sacrum and ischial spines. What an amazing thing to find out that a breast is a breast. How wonderful to hit a vein and draw blood the very first time I attempt to do it. What an empowering experience this was knowing more now than ever that the things I am learning I will be able to take and use to help other women and in so doing, be able to help their children and their families. This is my goal.