Falando de costura

These days I have been busy sewing.

When I started sewing, a few years ago back when we were still in Canada, sewing was almost an expensive hobby. What I mean is that once you buy the fabric, notions and spend your precious time making your own garment, the price of your piece of clothing is probably the same price or likely more expensive than something off the rack. Nevertheless, there are still many advantages in knowing how to sew, even in North America :

– You develop a critical eye. You realize how well or how badly that shirt off the rack has been made. (In my case it often translate into, “WHAT?!! That much for that piece of sh*t?”, or “Indeed it’s very cheap, but I will likely end up making all the seams over again”). 🙄

– You can finally make whatever you want; whichever model in whichever fabric you want AND in exactly your own measurements.

– And, oh the SATISFACTION when you’re finally done with a project! That feeling to be wearing something you’ve made yourself, from start to finish, or even altered to fit just right. (And proudly reply “I made it myself!” after someone asks “where did you buy this?”, that’s a good feeling.)

So, even if the price wasn’t the best, I found that sewing was worth it even in Canada.

Now, here, that’s another story…

– My personal taste, even if I do love colors, is much more subdued than the average Brazilian.

– I don’t like sparkles or neon colors. I’m not a big fan of animal prints. And certainly not a combination of all three. Finding a simple dark top; black, dark blue or even brown in the stores as proven to be a challenge.

– I don’t like anything too tight (especially around my generous bottom) or too short (nothing above the knee).

– With this heat, how can anyone wear polyester??? Well, it’s cheap, so believe me they do… Even in the fabric store, the sellers are not sure what I mean by natural fibers.

– And, last but not least, THE PRICE. Well, here the balance has shifted dramatically. Just to give an idea, after buying the fabric, notions and spending my precious time in sewing, my finished garment costs me easily a THIRD of the price that I would have spent in a store for a similar piece of clothing.

Yes, I luuuurve to sew in Brazil! ❤ (YAY! Finally a big brownie point to lift up the mood in this blog!  )

The boys are going to start school soon at the private school next door. After a shitload of documents, we fortunately managed to get a “family scholarship” that fully covers for the tuition. Fortunately too because the list of school supplies, books, plus uniforms is magnanimous and obviously expensive too… The backpacks and pencil cases are not even on the list (probably too obvious to be on it?), but we have to buy many tubes of “normal” glue, and colored glue (?), with and without sparkles (WTFreak?), white and colored sheets of thin and thick paper, cardboard, play-dough… All these crafting supplies that were usually provided by the school in all the countries where I grew up. Some of it is more than ridiculous; why would kids need 5 erasers and 3 pencil sharpeners each? I ignored the number and bought one for each. If they lose it, I’ll buy another one later.

For the schools uniforms, I couldn’t possibly make them myself (and there are not that expensive anyway), but I decided to do something about the backpacks and pencil cases. They are easy to make (I’d heard), a nice project for me, and in comparison, super expensive, ugly and bad quality in the stores.

The backpacks for pre-school.

The pencil cases for my three little monkeys. 🙂 Re-used, recycled (and free!) jean fabric on the outside.

Bicycles on the inside.

With embroidered name tags.

Pretty proud of myself !

The boys are very excited about all these new things too. They loved showing their new pencil cases to their grand parents over Skype. They even showed their new toothbrushes and their very own tubes of toothpaste (with their name on it). Natanael asked me if I was going to make them new shoes as well. Ha ha.

Brazilian kids learn from a very young age in school to brush their teeth after each meal. (At least the Brazilian school system got something right!)