Reflection on Occupation

My foray into dress making was a part of my Occupational Science paper, as part of my Occupational Therapy degree.

Part of this assignment is to write an opinion piece on our learned occupation, specifically:

An appraisal of the value and meaning to them of their learnt occupation. Drawing directly on their experience of participation. Examples should be drawn from student’s occupation learning record (500 words).

As part of this paper, students were encouraged to spend 15 hours learning a new occupation, and I  chose the up-cycling of clothing. At the very center of this occupation I was learning how to sew
clothing - re using, re vamping and recycling clothes that were otherwise destined for a shredder. But as I learned to sew, I also found myself learning how to follow a pattern, how to design a pattern, how to make, create and repair, and how to be clever and inventive when sourcing and including different types of materials. I learned patience, persistence, and when to just step back and try again tomorrow. I learned sewing machine maintenance and repair.

I was really proud to be able to give my friends little girl a purple whale and tell her "I made this just for you"

A highlight of my journey was when a friend said to me "Oh, you've got a new skirt... hold up, you MADE that didn't you?! It's Awesome! You've got so good at that!"

I was able to link back to my lovely Mum, both by taking up a hobby she was proficient at, and by using her sewing machine.

I was able to do something 'just for me' and I was able to feel I was making things for my children, saving money and saving the planet.

Do I consider myself a seamstress? Not yet, but I now feel that I'd be more than comfortable dragging out the machine and giving it a go to repair or rework before just throwing in the clothing bins.

The biggest barrier I found was when I wasn't able to attend the basic dressmaking course due to my husband being called to investigate a warehouse fire in Gore, so I was left without my babysitter. I had huge facilitation in youtube, pinterest and google though. I was able to source almost all of my materials for free - from the Waitati Free Bus Stop, from friends and family and by altering clothing I already had.

I feel that the 15 + hours I spent on this occupation has given me the confidence to keep going, and I really think I'll continue my fabu fashion for free hobby in the future

The final tally:

A bed for the dogs

A skirt for a 3 yo

A skirt from a wrecked pair of jeans

a pod of cuties

A special something for a little girls first birthday

A hand knitted snood 

Curtains for the kids bedroom

A mens T shirt I turned into a ribboned singlet and rocked at Soundwave '14 in Brisbane

All in all I feel pretty Occupationally Satisfied, and I'd love to put my new found skills to use in a practice setting.

Wait.... am I a sewer now?? When did that happen?

This is a Torneau cover from a friends new ute.

The stitching had come undone, and he was asking around about getting it fixed.

Another friend told him "Oh, Cath can sew... ask her!"

So he did. And I fixed it.

Wow - world famous in Palmerston.

Sure, it's not exactly haute couture, but it's something I was able to do for someone else, and that was pretty damn occupationally satisfying.

Cool :)

ooooooo Fuck!

It's funny how when you go out to learn a new occupation you suddenly find yourself learning other occupations at the same time.

Today I'm learning sewing machine repair for numpties :/

And my dogs are learning a vast and colourful array of swear words.

That's part of my needle bar, also known as the UppyDowny (see post #2).

It's supposed to be attached to my machine, but it spat out the words tiniest grub screw and it's now in the lunchbox of shame where I keep other mystery machine parts.

Dammit.

I guess occupational fulfillment must be tightly linked to occupational adaptability.

That's what I'm telling myself anyway.

Something Really Special

This is something really cool.

This is Mum's Pfaff:

She bought this in 1980 something, and used it for everything from waterproof overpants for crawling babies to my wedding dress.

I spent a good chunk of my childhood drifting to sleep with the sound of this old girl whirring the the background, so it's really special to have it at home with me.

The instruction manual for this isn't with it - Mum wasn't big on throwing things out, so I'm sure it would have been filed away safely, but thanks to the wonder of the internet I was able to get a manual for it in one easy Google search.

This really is a glorious machine. Mum must have paid a fortune for it when she bought it. Modern Pfaff Machines (even second hand) easily run into the thousands. Check out Trademe if you don't believe me. This old girl even threads her own needle - how's that for helpful! It's heavy, powerful and ruthlessly efficient. Turns out German sewing machines are just like German Cars.

It's been very special to be able to carry one with one of Mum's occupations using Mum's equipment, I've thoroughly enjoyed learning the temperament of her machine, and it's special to be making things for her grandkids using her machine even though she's not here anymore.

Something a bit different

My wonderful Mum died at Christmas time, 2012.

She was a phenomenal seamstress, and as mentioned previously most of my childhood clothes were loving hand stitched by her.

She wasn't only a machinist though, and was very capable with wool as well.

When we were cleaning out Mum's house last year I came across a glorious bag of wool odd and ends, including a magnificent ball of multi coloured madness.

I'm not sure what she was ever going to do with it, because multi colour wasn't really mum's 'thing' but I snapped it up and got knitting.

Knitting for someone like me is S.L.O.W.

Even though I was only doing a plain/purl stripe this took me weeks.

In progress....

And done!

  (Model provided by Back Yard modelling Inc)

So just in time for spring and too late for Winter I had made myself a fabulous pure wool snood.

And it's lovely :)

And no Cole you're not allowed to keep it.

This was cool for a change - there was no set up/pack up like when you get the machine out, and it was something I could do while chilling out watching TV. I can't do that when I'm sewing because it takes my full attention.

Pretty happy with how it turned out, but I don't think knitting is going to be a full time hobby for me, I'm an instant gratification kinda girl, and it was just to slow.

A pod of cuties

I've got little kids - Lucy, who's 3 (sorry sorry, nearly 4.....), and Cam who's 6 but is a huge softie and just loves his cuddlies, so I got busy on the internet, and looked for some cool but really simple soft toy patterns.

I come across this one

here - unfortunately, the instructions aren't in English... but the photo's are fab, and it was relatively easy to make a pattern for myself.

 I free handed a couple of attempts on a newspaper, I wanted to make mine out of jeans too - I'm in a real jean destroying phase, so I used the width of a pants leg as my size guide - that way I was cutting both sides out at once. This is why my whales are more stream lined than the originals. Man I'm clever. 

After that I carefully pinned my pattern and cut around them. This was where the tricks for young players came in - His belly has to be in reverse, so you get the dark back, light belly thing.

This was probably the trickiest bit - making little grooves for the underside of his chin. Whale Mk1 caused a lot of swearing with his chin grooves, but I wised up with subsequent whales, and pinned the grooves to hold them in place while they were stitched.

I love how baby toys have a crinkly noise making thing in some of them. I assume when you buy a baby toy from the shops it's some sort of heavy duty cellophane, but in the spirit of recycled fabu I used the wrapper off a new roll of tin foil. It wasn't exactly the sound I wanted, but it stiffened up the flippers and tail nicely, and still make a pretty cool sound for a home made toy.

Once he was all stitched together, I pulled apart and old pillow which had lost its shape in the washing machine to reuse the stuffing inside.

Tada! Fist whale done! I wasn't 100% happy with his tail, so I rejigged my newspaper pattern and tried again.

Tada! Whale Mk 2. His tail was much better, and this became my final pattern.

Happy customer! Best. Mother.Ever.

I spoilt myself and bought some new sewing scissors, and holy sweet baby Jesus do they make it much easier to cut. They weren't overly dear either - $14 from K Mart, but they have made the cutting out so much less stressful. Highly recommend good scissors if you wanna be recycled fabu like me.

Drunk on my own success, I decided to make a whale to give away. I made this fella out of velvet and some embossed cotton which was given to me by a friend when I told her what I wanted to do, and was discussing what sort of textures you'd want for a baby toy- he's going to be given to my friends little girl for her first birthday on Friday. I of course decided the second he was finished that he probably should have been pink on top, dark underneath but of well... next time. I can see I'm just gonna fill my house up with Whales.

I'm pretty proud of how these fellas have turned out. Not exactly 'fashion', but totally recycled, and totally made by me. 

And something for me

I have a lot of jeans.

A LOT of jeans.

And being a big fatty boomba, it means that an embarrassing number of my jeans are worn through at the thighs, but are still perfectly fine everywhere else.

So, being the glorious hoarder I am, I have heaps of jeans I don't wear, but hoard in case I ever find a use for them. Today was that day!

The wonderful world wide web has so many glorious uses for recycled jeans, I particularly liked this one, because it chops off all the nasty thigh rubbage and makes a funky skirt.

I'm pretty lucky to be learning how to sew in the world of youtube and wiki how and King Google. Stuck for inspiration? Pinterest.  Any issues with my machine - Google. Still stuck - Youtube that shit.

Mum was an AWESOME machinist - really fab, but any problems she had she had to nut out by herself, I wonder what amazing capability she would have had if she had the internet?

Anyway, I got picking, and whipped up a skirt. It looked kinda weird once it was put on, because I'd used stretch denim jeans, and it was kinda huggy, so I prettied it up by destroying a skirt I picked up from the bus stop a couple of months ago.

I also needed to pick a bit of a split in the back, so I could walk!

I'm not sure if I'll ever rock this in public, but it's wearable - so I'm counting this as a success too :)

Starting Small

So I thought I'd get straight into it, and make one of These:

I found this on Pinterest, which linked to a fantastic DIY Tutorial.

So I set up the machine and off I went.

Steps:

This was a maternity top I wore when I was expecting Lucy.

 Cut into two large squares - this bigger the better because the fabric really pulls up when the waist band is put on. Hem up any raw edges.

Find the center and cut a circle. I found the easiest was to do this was to fold it in half and trace around a dinner plate.

Put the squares on top of each other, rotating the top one 90 degrees.. I think it's 90 degrees... I never was any good at the whole mathsy thing. Rotate one till it looks like this.

Carefully stitch on the waist band. The tutorial used a wide piece of colored elastic, but I didn't have any. Instead, I cut the arm off an old long sleeved t shirt, stitched it into a pouch and threaded the elastic I already had through. It's all about using what I've got and spending as little as possible! 

Trim it up and put it onto Three year old!

Yup. She didn't like it. Apparently "I only wanted to wear pink today"

Sigh. Still, skirt worked out pretty well!

Lessons learned today:

This is a fabu skirt that was cheap, cheerful and really easy. No major hassles today :)

An overlocker would have been awesome to tidy up the inside seams - I zig zagged them but the light cotton that the original top was made out of was pretty light and frayed pretty easily.

SO - for a first attempt at something completely new from something old, I'm calling this one a success :)

Right lets do it dammit.

I've spent a good chunk of the school holidays getting to know my machine.

It was given to me as a 21st present some years ago, and apart from the odd repair job or straight stitching some curtains it hasn't had a lot of use. It looks like this:

I had previously been having a lot of trouble with the machine's cryhole, until I actually opened it properly and found a knot of thread big enough to garrote a leprechaun. 1st lesson in sewing kids - cleanliness is next to godliness.

I was lucky enough to catch up with a sister over Easter, and we sat down and ran over the basics of machine care, settings, repairs, threading, consumables and all the other bits and pieces you need to know when you're starting out sewing. While I'm not a complete rookie, it was great to have a refresher in machine use - especially when the last machines I used with any regularity with industrial walking foot straight stitchers used to upholster curtain side trucks.

She bought out my Mum's sewing machine, so I could have a go with it and ask any questions.

I have vivid memories as a child going to sleep with the sound of Mum at her machine working until all hours of the night on bits and pieces of clothing for us kids. So it's with a large amount of nostalgia that I'm taking up this occupation. I feel it's a nice nod to Mum and my history to be making things in my home for my children.

My Mum was an incredibly talented dressmaker, and with no formal training at all she was able to pull amazing pieces of clothing out of thin air. Most patterns made herself carefully drawn on newspaper with a vivid marker.

I think the prime example of my Mum's sewing prowess was when she created my wedding dress in a short week before my wedding:

This is my work space:

Because of the size of my house and the fact that it's shared by 3 other people I can't leave my machine set up all the time, but for now it's easy enough to set it up and pack it up from my kitchen table. My Mum had a dedicated sewing room with a large cutting table, and I can definitely see the appeal in that, but at this stage the kitchen table is fine. It's a nice work space in the center of the home, the light is pretty good, the table is a good size and the adjustable chair means I can work comfortably.

I have noticed a couple of presses on my occupation though:

Mum! What are you doing? Mum? Mum? I'm tangled up in something! Now you're yelling! oh god run away run away! oops just spewed that cotton you growled at me about......

So with a car full of treasures found at the Waitati bus stop, and a Pinterest board full of hope, I'm off on my occupational adventure. Wish me luck!

Fabu Fashion for Free!

This blog is a journal detailing me learning the new occupation of remaking, revamping and recycling clothes.

As part of my Occupational Science paper (part of the second year of my Occupational Therapy Degree) I'm to spend 15 hours learning and documenting a new occupation.

Check out what I'm doing and why I'm doing it here.