Celebrations, family, friends and a haircut

Two weeks ago (May 9) I turned "old lady". Yup, my age no longer begins with a 2... A quite nice feeling! I know there's some sort of conventional age-hysteria one should get when turning 30, but I'm just not feeling it. If I'm happy with my life, where I am and the direction my life is moving in, then why worry about age? Sure, 25 sounds better in our youth-celebrating society, but would I want to be where I was when I was 25? Not a chance! So I'm embracing my new, mature age, and am very much looking forward to what this new decade in my life will bring =)

Also, it's not so hard to turn 30 when one is celebrated for two weeks... =)

Flowers (pic taken the next day though) and a delicious dinner out with the man in my life, on the big day.

Weekend 11-13 of May the local dance scene organized a lindy/balboa camp. Best of all was that Malin and Johannes could come for the whole weekend! They came without the children, and while I of course was sad to not get to spend time with the kids, at the same time I'm glad M and J could focus on attending classes and socials. I'll just visit them later this summer and play with the kids then =) So the old gang got together for a wonderful birthday dinner out, Malin and Johannes, Rita and Erik, me and the mr. Fun!

Me and Marita during the open reception. Please ignore the background - we sneaked off from the festivities to get a better picture.

After a few days of rest (meaning normal workdays) it was time again: now off to Stockholm to celebrate with family and childhood friends. We had a 4-day holiday in Sweden this last weekend, so it seemed smart to get a bit of extra time in the city. Stockholm was at its best: green everywhere, lovely scents of early summer in the air, sunny and warm. Thursday May 17, I had an open reception for family and friends (at mom's place).

Friday, I got a haircut at Retroella, and talented Sara fixed a hairdo superfast. Love how she formed the bang-roll, I'm so going to learn how to do that on my own!

After I had been properly styled, I and Marita went shopping / taking a slow stroll while checking out stores. Lot's of walking, and we eventually ended up in the Old town. I couldn't resist a classic "Look, the alley is so narrow I can touch both walls!"-photo:

Saturday, it was time for my sister to go home to Malmö. I, dad and my aunt waved her off at the platform (family tradition).

Then the three of us went out for lunch and a cup of tea / coffee at Vetekatten. They have a nice outdoors-section, perfect for sunny summerdays.

My "day-after" attempt at the bang-roll. So and so, not horrible, but not perfect.

Sorry, I look a bit distant in this pic. The sun was really bright and I was fighting to hold my eyes open =)

All in all, it was a lovely weekend in Stockholm, and I feel blessed to have been celebrated so thoughrouly by family and friends over the past weeks. Love you, guys! 

I fell a bit in love with my old hometown (again). Not eunough to want to live there, but eunough to feel good about returning soon. Like tonight... We're going to Stockholm Blues dance Weekend now! I'm very excited about this, blues dancing is a passion that has been growing the past years, but I've never had an oppurtunity to take proper classes. Very much looking forward both to the classes and to the socials! I've finished sewing a jersey dress from a new pattern I've drafted, but that's another post ; ) I'm hoping it will be a good dance-practice dress, we'll see after the weekend.

Have a great weekend!

Love / Erika

My sewing space

I've organized my sewing area! For me, the purpose of the Ikea-trip earlier this year was to get the last things needed to put the final touches on my sewing area. Some small things to organize it and make it user-friendly. Since then I've been torn whenever I've had a day over: organize or sew? Last weekend I finally set the sewing aside, and re-organized my stuff.

I started with taking out all my fabrics, and only keep the ones I have a planned project for (and a small pile with fabrics that I have a few different ideas for, but haven't decided on which idea I prefer). The rest, about 1/3, went to the storage room in the basement. Some of it I know I want to keep, but have no immediate use of (like 12 m of white linen. For example), other stuff I'm more uncertain of. Ah well, later problem =) The fabric above is what I kept in the appartement...

The fabric all neatly(?) stashed in my vintage linen cupboard, aka the fabric closet. See, there's even room for more! Yay! Does mean I can go fabric shopping? ;) Before, I've sorted fabric by content, now I tried something different: sorting by type of garment it will become. The jersey's got their own pile, though.
I know a lot of people store their fabric on open shelfs, which is very pretty and inspiring. However, I've had some of these pieces for more years than I care to admit, and keeping it safe from sunlight and dust is a priority. Hence, doors are a must.

Overview of the fabric closet, the sewing bookcase, my hatboxes, and how I store my pressing table. Easy to reach but away from sight, just how I need it to be to have the energy to put it away between sewing sessions!

I cleaned out the bookcase rather good to, all my sewing books actually fits into it now! And my boxes for supplies/thread/special scissors etc (notions and haberdashy). My patterns also lives here, in the white+grey boxes.

I had some problems of what to do with all the toille fabric (I bought 25 meter at Ikea...). I made the underbed storage box a pure toille-supplies box with fabric, tracingpaper etc. The other box is for all the non-sewing related craft supplies, like yarn for knitting, knitting needles, lace-patterns, crocheting supplies and so on.

Where the sewing actually happens: the desk. Made a lot easier to use with all the small thing out of way and up on the wall. The wall hanger is actually an Ikea kitchen tool, very handy. The computer's on the small hutch, and when I spend more time in front of it (like now, writing a blog post) it takes 5 sec to lift it up on the desk. I find having it like this means I don't get stuck in front of the computer so much.
The thing on the right of the desk is a closet that one can spin around, on the other side there´s a full length mirror. Very practical when fitting! It holds the project boxes I got at Ikea, plus pressing supplies and my UFO-pile (which is safely hidden out of sight). It's so easy to have it all in a box, pattern, fabrics, toille, and then a lid on it so it doesn't get dusty.

Over the desk: a print of 19th century outfits. I did realise when mounting the handle on the wall that I had bought too few hooks. Don't worry, it will be remedied this summer!

So there you are, a full tour of my sewing area! I don't have a cutting table, but one of the best things with this huge bedroom is that I can place 4 metres of fabric, 150 cm wide, flat on the floor and there's still room to walk around it. Without moving any furniture or so =)
Hope you enjoyed the look! How do you sew, do you have a separate sewing room (oh, in my dreams...)? Or a designated area? Do you store lot's of fabric "that can be useful in the future" or do you only buy for one project at a time?

Love, Erika

I'm sewing jersey!

A while ago my mom visited for a weekend. Always such a treat to have her here! There was plenty of good food, late talks and of course our Saturday morning special: Scones to the music-crossword on the radio. With the phone nearby so we could call my aunt for the questions we didn't know... =)

Umeå dancefestival was the same weekend, so we took the oppurtunity to test some new dances during the taster-classes daytime, and then we lindy-ed the night away. Lucky for me, mom's an amazing and experienced dancer who regarded joining her daughter for an evening of lindy hop as a fun experiment rather than a terrifying nightmare =) I had the best lindy social so far this year! Great dancers, great floor, swingin' band and oh boy, I was in the mood =)

Besides from being a wonderful dancer, mom has a lot of experience in sewing the material that fills me with dread: jersey. Ehum, yes, I'm one of those "I can't remember when I started sewing, mom taught me the basics when I was a kid" =) I wish I had paid more attention though, as a lot of the so called "couture sewing techniques" is what my mom calls regular home-sewing. My hope is to one day equal her skills and her attention to details! In the mean time, I sprung on the oppurtunity of having her here to hold my hand for my first real attempt at sewing a jersey top. I used my bodice block/sloper and made changes to adjust it to the stretch of the jersey. Made a toille, laughed a bit, analyzed it with mom, and then made a second attempt on my own. This is what I came up with:

And from the side/back:

This jersey is a bit too heavy for such a fitted top, my next attempt will be in a lighter weight jersey. Also, mom was right. A real shocker, right? ;) Looking at the toille she figured I could take out a total of 4 cm on the width to make it fit better. I thought I knew better (doesn't kids always?) and doubled the reduction. Look at the front, at the dent in the bust-area: She was right. *Sigh* Next time, I'll listen to my mother! =)

Right now, I'm working on a blouse in a pretty floral fabric that keeps trying to slip more fabric layers beneth the sewing machine feet than I want it to.

I'm hoping though that this blouse will show me that my pattern is finally ready for the gorgeus italian silk I've had in stash for over a year...

 The silk fabric with last years pattern laid out, for an idea of the size of the print.

 A close up of the fabric. Look at those structure lines, they're actually woven into the fabric and therefore 3-dimensional.

And of course, there are many more adventures with jersey planned! After all, now I have a working sloper and there's no end to the possibilities. Dresses for summer/comfy homewear/dance practice ispretty high on the list...

Wish me luck! =)

Love, Erika

All I need is blues. And my new dress.

There's been a lot of dancing going on here lately. Fun as always! Besides teaching the intermediate lindy class, I and my partner have been working on something all new on Umeå's dance scene: a blues dance workshop. I've been sold on blues for about 3 years, and while we've had a few blues dance sessions (playing blues for an hour after the usual lindy social), we haven't had classes or any pure blues night. But now it felt like the time had come and there was a demand for it! So last weekend we held a blues dance workshop for two hours, and it was a very interesting challenge to teach a whole new dance... Lindy I'm familiar with teaching but this was all new =) Darn tricky, but so rewarding when at the end of the class it felt like everyone had understood, and really was dancing blues!

Yesterday everyone got a chance to test their new and/or old blues-dancing moves, as Swingum hosted a pure blues dance social! We were a small workgroup, and we tried to change the concept to differ from our usual lindy socials. Diveded off part of the room to make it cosier, placed the tables in the room next door to give space for that quiet, cozy blues feeling on the dancefloor. We got a lot of positive respons on the new "layout", so it feels like we're on the right track.

The "socializing" area. Refreshments were in the kitchen next doors.

Blues night (or slow drag night as it's called nowadays) at Herräng is the night when everyone dresses up in their faciest outfits. Black or dark coloured dresses are usually favored among the ladies, with skirts that tends to be on the slim side. A lot of the gents are just dashing, dressed in suits or even tux's.
For this our premier Blues night I wanted to wear something special, so I introduce to you my vintage little black:

I would guess it's from the late 40s, judging by the grown-on sleeves, the lapped metal zipper in the sideseam, the bustdarts and the gathers in the shoulders, in combination with the A-line skirt and the pleated "belt" that ties in the back.

A few detail shots:

Sleeve with gathered shoulder.

Three covered buttons secures it in the back.

Lapped metal side-zipper.

Pleated "belt"

And a last picture from the dance, where my fully fashioned vintage stockings also are visible =) I loved dancing in this dress, the sleeves made it easy to move, the material was light and I never felt warm in it, the skirt was the perfect shape for blues.
Unfortunatly, as you maybe can see from some of the photos, it's not in mint condition. The fabric is fragile and the seams have split on some places, like the neckline. I'll need to do some needlework on it before wearing it again, but on the bright side: the not so perfect condition of the dress means I can dance in it without feeling like I'm comitting a vintage clothing-crime =) Also, blues dancing is a lot less straining on the clothes than lindy hop...

Now I'm off to dream about more blues. We'll def host more Blues nights in the future, and hopefully there'll be more workshops as well. For now, my legs are burning from all the dancing yesterday, I've still got that slow, dreamy blues feeling in body and soul, and my mind is playing Fade to black with Dire straits.

Love, Erika

Ikea and luxury - a contradiction?

This weekend I did something new to me: An Ikea-roadtrip! It's bizarre, considering that Sweden is the hometurf of Ikea, but the closest warehouse to Umeå is the one in Sundsvall, 350 kilometres away. Personally, I'm not a huge Ikea-fan, I prefer shopping second hand or investing in solid, quality stuff. However, some things are actually in pretty high quality even at Ikea, one just has to know where to look. For organizer-mojo's they're great! I've been wanting to make my sewing room a bit more organized, to put that final touch to it, and this trip was perfect for that. I also bought about 25 metres of toille-fabric =)

25 metres... that's a lot of toilles!

Thing was, someone very dear to me (someone who might be what's been occupying my thoughts and time these past couple of months...) needed to get a whole lot of basic things, so we figured we'd make a mini-vacation out a trip to Ikea by staying over at a nice hotel in central Sundsvall.

I'll be honest, I voted that we'd stay at Knaust simply 'cause I wanted to take photo's on these stairs =) Unfortunatley, Ikea took so long (five hours!) that when I got to the hotel I was way too tired to fix my hair or press my new-sewn red dress before dinner, so you get to see the post-Ikea me instead of the fancy vintage version I had planned.

Just look at the ceiling! And the staircase...

Here you can see all the way up

Resting on a landing

Ever heard stories about how the hotel was overbooked and someone's room got upgraded? It always happens to someone else, right? This weekend my fairy-godmother must have been in a good mood... An albeit nice double room was tranformed into a loft suite!!!

We had dinner and then there was just no point in leaving the hotelroom. Had a glass of wine, some chocolate, and just chilled in our top-suite with a view over the rooftops in central Sundsvall...

Picture taken from the bed loft

Best of all: we could have a continental breakfast at the suite, served at a time of our choice (we did pay like 40$ extra for the change of rooms and the roomservice, but it was so worth it!). This will undoubtledly go down as the most luxurious vacation I've ever had. Not too bad for an Ikea-roadtrip, right? ; )

Bye, bye, Knaust! 

I had the best weekend, driving through this beautiful landscape, shopping things that will hopefully make organizing my sewing supplies a lot easier, staying at a wonderful hotel with roomservice, and spending the weekend with someone I care about. Pretty darn perfect =) Now my fingers are itching to build furnitures and to re-organize my sewing space!

Love, Erika