Rich's Birthday Robe

If you've been following my blog for a while, you will know I've been sewing for about four years. That's quite a long time and I've made a lot of things for myself and also for nieces, nephews, my friends kids and also a bunch of aprons for friends. I've even made stuff for craft swaps - but I didn't get around to making a single thing for Rich!

I don't know why,  but for some reason I have a kind of fear of sewing for Rich, I  think its a general fear of sewing for men. I think if my nephew was  16 instead of 8 and he asked me to sew him a hoodie I would also be filled with fear. I don't know what it is about sewing for men that freaks me out, maybe its just a fear of the unknown - more likely its a fear of buttonhole and sewing a fly zipper.

This year I decided I would make Rich's birthday present and due to my fear of sewing for men, I decided to start simply and make a robe. It's a thing that he needed anyway and really it seems that all the ready to wear men's robes are totally boring.

I asked my friend Shell to take me out to Spotlight as there doesn't seem to be anywhere in the city to buy fleece since Arthur Toye closed down. When she found out I didn't have a pattern for a dressing gown either she loaned me hers - its good to have sweet sewing friends!

This is the fabric I chose for Rich, they had quite a few fun fleece prints at Spotlight, but this was the fabric I thought he'd like the most. It's space, but also kind of like something a wizard would wear.

Here's the final robe, being modeled by the fence in our courtyard - not Rich, but he does really like it I promise.

I really liked how it turned out and I'm happy that I managed to make Rich something he loves. I kind of love it too as it looks so snuggly, so last time I went to Spotlight I picked up some fabric for my own robe.

I love this fabric so much! In case you can't tell from the picture these are unicorns with rainbows.

Unicorns and Rainbow Dress

Something very weird is happening in my creative world lately, I don't know quite how its happened, but lately I have no desire to make anything for myself outside of costumes. It's weird. Very weird. All of the projects I have on the boil are presents for friends, or friends children or some cool guy who has a birthday soon. I'm not really interested in making anything for myself.

Seriously, I don't know what's happening guys? I have a tonne of patterns and fabric for me, but none of it is calling my name. Why?

I guess the important thing is I am STILL sewing and I STILL want to sew, just not for me. Maybe that's totally ok.

Anyway on the topic of sewing, last Saturday my friend Emma asked me to join her and a few other girls to join her for a sewing day. She even made gluten free banana bread - hurrah!

So what did I end up working on? Well nothing for me - obviously. However, this year I've decided to embrace "using the good fabric" along with a couple of my friends. This Lisa Frank style unicorn fabric was definitely the "good"  fabric and I cute up a sewed with it regardless! MAGICAL!

This is a little dress I've made for my forever work BFF - we don't actually work at the same place anymore, but she's still my work BFF. She is having a baby girl in December, so I decided to make her a dress for the baby to be as  I knew she would love this fabric.

Who WOULDN'T love this fabric, I only had a metre of it so it had been lingering in my stash for a while as I didn't know quite what to do with it. I originally bought the fabric from fabric destash central, which is a NZ fabric destash group on facebook.

This is a tried and true pattern that you guys have seen a bunch of times here, here and here and I've made another version that I am yet to blog! It's such a cute and simple dress for a little girl. I also started another little project - it's nautical themed, here's a sneak peak.

Yes, those little whales are wearing tiny tailor hats. This is going to be a pretty cute dress when it's finished.

If you are a sewist, what have you been making lately? Anyone else found their selfless sewing mojo?