The Mother Of All Spring Cleaning Lists

What's the best thing when you have too little time for all the things you want to do? A Great Big List, of course! I love lists - organisational, motivational little things of beauty. This one is a spring clean of all the stuff that's been plotting itself To Do in my head for the last few weeks, and oooh it feels good to have written it all down.

So let's share the love. First of all, clothes.

1) Anda dresses: one dark blue, with in-seam pockets and a big wide band of funky leafy material at the hem, and the other one in grey, maybe with gathered pockets (and maybe like these?) on the front. I might finish this one off with some contrasting bias tape (would pale yellow work?). This is such an easy pattern that this time I will be trying to draw it a bit less bulky from the waist down.





The Hawaiian-style leaves just shouted summer at me







Not sure about the colours to be honest 





2) Then another dress, made by lengthening the lower half of this two-piece bodice pattern. The fabric I have in mind for this was cheap and lovely but is only 90cm wide, so we’ll see whether I need to cut the pattern into more than two bits to make it work.

3) Then I want to turn my red jersey dress (last summer’s first make, fact fans!), which has managed to get stains all over the top half, into an a-line market skirt like this one. And while I’m on the subject of red jersey, I’ll finish the t-shirt below and adjust the sleeves beyond all recognition (all that fabric flapping around my sausage-like upper arms! No!).




Note to self:
accentuating biceps that flab
Is. Not. A. Good. Idea.

 
4) Also on the top half we have a nice green jumper which was a bit crap and hung funny and will become a cardigan or shrug. But which? A shrug would be easier (see here) but I have never yet been known to wear one, and just because I don’t know where to put the buttons yet doesn’t mean they’re an entirely bad idea. I've already done the cutting, in attempt to move this off the To Do list and into my wardrobe again.

5) I will finish making a dress for L out of one of G’s old shirts, following Martha’s instructions. If this is a hit I’ll do more later in the summer, as we seem to have old shirts aplenty.





Cuteness!





6) And because the half-made shirt dress is short enough to look like more of a tunic, some laid back ¾ length shorts or summery trousers to go under it wouldn’t go amiss (think I'll adapt this a bit). And while I’m making them, T should definitely get some too – the poor boy doesn’t have any  homemade clothes so far.

7) But girly stuff is so nice to do that I would really like there to be another sundress for L, using the ikea dress McCalls pattern or this MADE tutorial…. Or one of each, if by some miracle I have time.

PHEW!

In the non-clothing category, for the moment there’s only:

7) these baby booties, the first pair of which will be needed somewhere in May (the others can wait till September). In fact I’d love to do these as part of a package together with:
8) a bib, and
9) one of these hats.

Apart from all that, I have a secondary list brewing in my head under the heading “late summer holiday stuff”. This includes ridiculous camping accessories like bunting and dresses made of towelling for beach or poolside ease. I like this list mainly because it assumes that will have completed the above-mentioned by the early summer…




Many works in progress

  And then I’m looking forward to the children’s bedrooms and the hall/stairwell being renovated and needing decoration. Fabulous practical ideas don’t get much better than this, this and this, do they?

All in all, I think I won’t mention yet the little germ of a Christmas crafting list that planted itself yesterday afternoon.