Crafting: Making Culottes

Ahh, culottes.  Those things that have all the safety and comfort of trousers, but allow you to swish around as if you were wearing a skirt.  I've never made any before, in fact I've never sewn any full size clothes before, just miniature ones for my teddies on a tiny pink sewing machine I had as a child.  I have altered clothes in the past, but only by hand.  I didn't actually have a pattern for this, but decided to just wing it whilst using this helpful video to get the basic shape. 

This project gave me the opportunity to finally pull out the sewing machine my parents had brought me well over ten years ago, and which has just been sitting in a cupboard since then.  It probably does need a good clean and oil, but it managed get through this project with not too many problems and I only had to have a couple of fights with it.

I sketched out a basic idea of how I wanted to cut the fabric to make these culottes.  The plan was to have one piece of fabric for each leg with shaping on either side to make the crotch area.  Then one strip of material for the waist band, and a couple of pieces to help strengthen the closure area which would just have buttons at the moment and maybe a zip later down the line.

A quick word on the material.  This is African wax cotton, which is pretty easy to work with, and I did give it a wash before starting any work to reduce the chance of shrinkage after all the sewing is done.  It was actually a gift from some friends when I lived in Nigeria and there's actually enough material to make a full African outfit, including the head dress.  So, theoretically, I could make a number of items with this pattern and it also meant that I wasn't as bothered about the possibility of messing this up as I might have been with less material.  This took a lot of pressure off making this outfit, so it was much more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been.  I really love the design, it's quite bold but with colours I do normally wear.  When I was in Nigeria there was a fashion of leaving the white strip with all the fabrics information at the top and bottom of the fabric exposed, and I wanted to do the same with this garment as a node to where it came from.

Once I'd cut my pieces out I sewed the leg seams together, and then the front and back seams of the culottes.   I don't have the machinery that would finish the edge for me, so to stop it fraying I decided to use the zigzag stitch on my machine and then cut right up to this stitch (I still need to do the cutting part).

Then I added the panels to strengthening closure where the buttons and button holes where going to be.

Finally, as I wanted to have as much volume as possible, I decide the pleat the waist line instead of actually cutting the fabric to my shape.  Once these were in, with more in the back than the front, I sewed on the waist band to hold them into place.  As I had planned to also have the white information strip at the bottom of the waist band as well as the bottom of the garment, I sewed the back of the waist band first and the fish would have to be upside down.  However, in the end I decided it looked a bit too out of place, so I folded it in and sewed along the edge.  At some point in the future I will probably unpick this band and replace it so that the fish are actually facing the right way, but for now it's staying the way it is and, actually, it doesn't look too bad.

As I was still leaving the information strip at the bottom of the culottes I didn't need to hem this part, which was a complete bonus!  So all that was left to do was cut and sew the button holes, and then sew on the buttons.  I decided to just use these plastic buttons that I had collected from a magazine a few years ago as the colour sort of matched the colours on the fabric, and the size and patterns suited the brightness of the other colours.  It definitely isn't the neatest sewing around the button hole, but I'm just amazed I remembered how to do it.

I'm not going to lie, these culottes are not the most flattering items of clothing ever made, and if I'd cut the material to skim my hips rather than putting in the pleats it would have suited my figure better.  It probably isn't helped that the fabric is relatively stiff so that it has a more structured feel at the moment.  Once it's had a bit more wear and washing though, the fabric will move a lot more freely and will take on my shape a little better.  Despite all this I really love these and I've already worn them quite a few times.  Getting some practise with the machine has also been good and I'll definitely be making more items in the future.  In fact, I already have some outfits planned.

Paperless Productivity - Habitica

 

After taking a little bit of a break from productivity apps I moved onto a slightly more fun way of getting your tasks done, and that's by using Habitica.  In a nutshell, this app is basically a way of gamifying your life.  Where you build yourself an avatar and complete tasks and habits to level up your character and unlock in-game features.  However, if I'm being honest I was just there for the pets you can get.  

As with all the other apps, I was just using the free version on my phone.  However, you can also use the app on your computer and I'm assuming the two link up through your account.  There is an option to subscribe as well for additional features, which is actually quite cheap and, if I used this all the time I would think about it.

Once you've downloaded the app you register your account and then create your avatar.  Then it's time to go.

The main set up of the app is broken into four pages (shown at the bottom) made up of Habits, Dailies, To Do's, and Rewards.  Each page comes with some little examples to start you off with and which you can edit and change if you want to.  

The first page, Habits, seems to be for habits you would like to develop, but which aren't necessarily actions you need to do on a daily basis.  Adding a habit is pretty easy to do.

Click on the cross at the bottom on the page, add your name for the habit and any notes you think you'll need.  If it's a habit you want to get rewarded for doing have it as positive only, to be rewarded for not doing it negative only, and if you want it to be something you want to get rewarded for doing but have the extra penalisation if you don't do it(such as not eating process sugar) then have it as both positive and negative. 

There's then an option to set how difficult you think the habit will be, as well as adding how often you want to reset the streak, and add a tag if you're wanting to attach the habit to a larger goal, like getting healthy.  If you don't complete these habits regularly they begin to decay in colour, you lose streaks and end up being penalised.

The next page is the Dailies.  This is for daily habits and you can only click these to say you've completed them. I'm not entirely sure why this additional page is necessary when you already have Habits, however you can add much more information to this habit and they seem to have more consequences to completing or not.  Setting them up is pretty similar as before.

Click on the cross, add the name of the daily, any notes you want to add, and how difficult you think it is going to be to do.  The biggest difference with the dailies it that you don't add a positive or negative and you can break down the habit with checklists.

You can schedule this habit, put how often you want to repeat it, adjust the number of times you've completed it (streaks), and also tag this habit to a specific goal.

There's also a possibility of adding a reminder. This didn't appear on my screen saver, as with other productivity apps, but it does appear on my phone's notification bar.  As with the habits, completing or forgetting these dailies has positive or negative impacts on your Avatar.

The To do's were the main page for me.  Setting up your tasks are pretty much the same as adding Dailies.  

Click on the cross.  Then add the name of the task, any notes you think will be useful, how difficult you think the task will be, when it needs to be done by, a reminder, and then tag it to a larger goal / task.  

As with the Dailies, you can also break the to do down into smaller tasks using the checklist, and I found this a pretty useful way of getting them done.  As with the others, the to do's will begin to decay in colour if you don't complete them in the time you've scheduled.

One thing I found with this page is that the tasks are ordered in the order you add them, with the newest at the top.  This wasn't particularly helpful for how I wanted to use this app, but it's easy enough to change this by clicking on the three vertical lines at the top right and then filtering them by Scheduled.  You can also use this to find all the to do's you have for one goal by clicking on the Tags.

Each Habit, Dailies, and To Do's you complete gets you rewards in the form of food, potions (including hatching potions for your pets), and coins which you can then spend on equipment, or you can make up a reward yourself and decide how many coins this reward will cost you.

The menu allows you to look at your skills and achievements, buy some more items and quests in the shops, look at what equipment you own, and purchase some gems which will then allow you to buy additional items. 

There's also an option to do some socialising with other people using Habitica and build quest parties if that's what you're into.

The Tavern is probably the most useful part if you need to take a break from all those tasks and habits.  By checking into the Inn these are then frozen and then have no negative impact on your Avatar.

I didn't really use these other options other than the Pets and Mounts section.  Here you can hatch your pet, feed it up to become a mount, and equip your Avatar with it.  I'm guessing these come in handy when you're completing a quest, but I just enjoy hatching and feeding them.  Right now I have a bear as a mount and a wolf as a pet, and as far as I'm concerned my Avatar is living her best life.

I have to admit that, even though I'm not a gamer in any way, I really liked this app.  I don't think it necessarily added any more of an incentive for me to actual complete my to do's and habits, but it did add a pleasant element of fun to it.  It also didn't use as much storage on my phone as I thought it was going to, which is always good.  The only thing that didn't quite work for me was the fact that my habits and to-do's are on different pages and I much prefer having them all in one place so I can see everything I need to work on that day.  However, I would still recommend this app and I think I'll put it with TickTick and Teux Deux as my top apps so far.

I had originally planned on testing Evernote next, but as I already have and use OneNote it actually seemed a little bit pointless as you would use both digital notebooks in a similar way.  So instead I'm going to try something a little simpler but cuter, and that's Cute Note.  Should be fun.

Project Pan 2020 Update #3

Exactly as I was expecting, this quarter has slowed down quite a bit as I basically only have the palette to work on now and I haven't even been wearing make up that regularly these last three months.  

That being said getting through the Urban Decay x Gwen Stefani eyeshadow palette has been going quite well.  Now that I've reached pan on Blonde I've moved onto Skimp as my highlighter colour, which I'm hoping to pan on by the end of the year.  I've also managed to get quite a good pan in Stark, so I'm not going to work on it anymore as I want to reach pan on other colours.  The one colour I was expecting to see more progress on was Anaheim as I use it as my contour colour, but I do use it more evenly so maybe there's more progress happening then it actually looks.  What I'm hoping is that the pan will suddenly appear........in the next three months.  These are not the easiest shadows to work with as they are quite chalky, but I'll keep working on them and we'll see where we are by the end of this year.  After using it for nine months though, I think I'm pretty certain I'm going to be decluttering it by the end of this year.

The good thing about all this hand washing is that I've had to put on more hand cream, which has made using up this Welsh Lavender Ltd Farmers' Hand Cream much easier.  This was one of my add on items and I wasn't expecting to finish it this quarter so I'm quite happy that it's gone, even if the reason for it isn't that great.  I really like this product.  It works really well, smells amazing, is in a reusable /recyclable packaging, supports a UK farm, and this product is vegan.  However, I couldn't find anywhere that said if it was cruelty free or not.  I would like to buy this again, and other products they have, but I think I'll find out from them if they test on animals first.  Would recommend otherwise.

All this means last quarter is going to be all about the eye shadow palette.  However, depending on what job I manage to get, if I manage to get a job, I'm not sure how much of an opportunity there will be to actually wear make up.  So, how much I'll get through this quarter is going to be anyone's guess, but if I can get a couple more pans before the end of this year I'll be very happy.

Goals for 2020 Update #3

Okay, we all know what I'm going to say here - this year has been a funny year, nothing has really gone to plan, circumstances have meant that what I had originally planned to do wasn't possible.........I could go on but I won't.  We know all of this already.  So, I'll just get into the goals and how they're going or not.

British Sign Language Learning

I seemed to have completely lost the motivation to carry on working on this.  It's not that I don't find it interesting or don't want to learn this language anymore, because I do.  It's more that after doing the job applications and trying to get money back on my cancelled flights I don't really want to do anything else that requires this type of brain activity.  For now it's taken a back seat, and that's okay as I don't want to make it into a chore I have to do.  I'll get back to it at a later date when I can make it a priority again and it's actually something I'm looking forward to.

Financial Fitness

As someone who is a self-employed subcontractor I was able to get a little financial aid from the Government over this period and this has made being unemployed at the moment much less stressful than it could have been, especially with the whole issue with the flight cancellations.  It did also allow me to get rid of the last little bit of credit card debt that I had from the car purchase in New Zealand, so that now I only have my student loan sitting there.  I am still being careful with my money at the moment whilst I carry on with the job search, but once I'm earning again I really want to put a good amount of money into my pension fund, as it's been almost a year now since I've been able to, and build up a bigger emergency fund in case this all happens again in the future.  Diversifying where my income comes from is also going to be really important as well.  The one thing I am going to do this quarter, and which I can do regardless of whether or not I have a job, is to find out how much of a pension I have at the moment and which companies I have pensions with (I have a few employment pensions that I've never really looked at).  Then I'm going to look at putting them all together in one place so I can really get a good idea about where I stand on this front and what I need to do in the future to research a good pension target.

Being A Tourist

This has obviously been put on a low burn right now as Covid-19 has meant too much movement in unadvisable if we're to reduce the spread of this virus, we're also experiencing a second peak here in the UK.  We did get to go to the South Island in New Zealand before we left, during their lull period of virus infections and when movement was allowed (you can read about this trip in part 1 and part 2).  We've also managed to do a little bit of exploring around where we are at the moment, but this has mainly been in urban areas and not the countryside walking we'd prefer to do.  Obviously the options have become even less now that the lockdown measures have had to become more strict right now, and lack of money is also having an impact.  But I am researching some day walks we can do and, now that I have a vehicle I can use, hopefully that gives us something to do to pass the time over the next few months.

Paperless Productivity

This quarter I looked at Journal It!, Memorigi, and Toodledo.  These are pretty good apps, but a little bit too complex for what I need at the moment.  S0, for now it's still TeuxDeux and TickTick that are at the top of my list, but there's a couple more for me to work with before I decide what is really working and if I'll move to the digital format entirely.

Of course, I have added other things to my day, mainly on the crafting front.  It just seems the most logical thing to do when you have a bit more time on your hands, quite a bit of crafting equipment you haven't really touched in the last few years, and a requirement to spend more time in your home.  One thing I do really need to add to this is exercise.  Now that I haven't done any path building in quite a while I've definitely loss the strength and fitness levels I had previously, so I'll be upping the exercise I'm currently doing to help ensure that it isn't too much of a struggle when I do finally get some work again.