Sewing practice with lovely African print.

It's been a really long time since I made any garments myself. I used to make most of my clothes in high school and I thoroughly enjoyed the process of picking out fabric, choosing a style and getting down to the process of figuring how best to cut the cloth and put it all together, correcting errors as I went along, and finally displaying the work. I started out with these two stunning prints below, a two meter length of cloth left-over from something my mom had made for herself. In anglophone Cameroon, African print cloth usually comes in six meters.  In the Kumba main market, cloth is measured in fadons which I've just been informed is Pidgin English for fathoms, the unit of measurement which denotes 1.8288 metres. Not quite 2 metres at all... now I feel cheated! Anyway, so 5.4864 meters of cloth is called three fadons of cloth. Most cloth merchants will refuse to cut and sell you two fadons because they'll be left with one which they seemingly have a difficult time selling. I figured a brilliant solution to the problem of having to buy more fabric than I need. When next I go shopping for cloth, I'll ask to first see all the one fadon cloth and make my initial selection from those.

In approximately two weeks, I was able to make 5 skirts and a pair of shorts. I was a bit worried about taking up this hobby again because I can not get a hold of ready-made patterns to cut from. Cutting cloth requires quite a lot of skill and I don't quite have that yet so every item I have made has required quite a bit of thinking... the kind that makes me feel like I'm doing math! I have been working mainly during the hours that my kids are in school, when the house is quiet, and I'm rather pleased with the results so far. Here are a few pictures of Soshina and I, modeling two skirts in a similar style but in different lengths.

Loving what my hair is doing these days :-)

 

This one is a few inches shorter, a bit more flared with a zipper on one side and a hidden pocket on the other side. The hemline has a wide double border which looks neat and helps the flare stay down in the wind.

 These shorts are from a very simple cut but there was a bit of a challenge in getting the waist band just right.

I tried my hand at recreating this hairstyle which I used to see on Fula women when I was a child. Soshina's hair is soft, shinny and easy to maneuver.  I totally enjoyed doing this.