Getting Fit: Week 1

This year I set myself a challenge to get fit. For the first three months, I'm working out bodyweight and interval training, on alternate days. My first milestone, due in April, is to fit well into my pink dress.

This week I only did bodyweight training. I wasn't sure what to do on my own so I decided to just follow the beginner bodyweight training model. I plan to start interval training when I get to Switzerland next week.

The most interesting thing about this model is that it's short and keeps me entertained. Maybe I'll keep at it!

Monday

I just followed the schedule and I discovered a few things:
- I'm not sure I'm doing squats right, they're just too easy
- lunges are easy as well but I'm pretty sure I'm doing those correctly

Wednesday

I thought I'd get the worst muscle ache after the workout on Monday but I was fine on Tuesday. Out really hit me on Wednesday morning and I spent all day limping from meeting to meeting.

I read a post and watched a video on how to do squats and it looks I'm doing them right. I also realized I need to learn how to stretch. That should be a priority before the next session.

Friday

I did not get more muscle soreness after the Wednesday workout, which might imply it was too easy. Actually got around to watching the video in the beginner class and it turns out you need to do the circuit 3 times! Oh well, this is going to get harder... I'm also doing planks incorrectly, go figure.

Someone was in the room I was exercising in by myself on Friday so instead of doing the body workout I went and did 20 minutes of intervals. Not the best thing in the world, but oh well... it will come in handy in the end, and doing something is better than doing nothing.

PS tomorrow - a post about a craftsy class!

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How to make silk bias binding

I promised this tutorial a while ago, but was too busy with work to get to it. This tutorial will focus on how to iron and fold the binding, rather than how to cut it. I have three links to good tutorials about how to do the correct cutting.

Here goes: a tutorial for properly making bias binding. Apologies for picture quality, I was using my phone.

Tools needed:
* silk square for the bias, sewing machine and scissors to make the continuous bias strip that will be ironed into place
* a 2-inch (5cm) wide piece of cardboard
* some sort of vaporiser, filled with water
* bias tape maker - for these pictures, I used a Clover which makes 1/2" binding (starts with 1" strips), but if I were to do this again, I'd use the one which makes a 1" binding (out of 2" strips)

Naming:
* left-side: bias strip not yet passed through the bias maker
* right-side: bias strip which has been folded by the bias maker

Steps:

1. Cut bias strips out of your silk square. I like this tutorial…

Pregnancy Pattern Round Up

Whilst I have been sewing these past 9 months, I haven't been posting much because in the past I was not massively keen on reading about people's pregnancy patterns. However, at some point I realized that I'm wrong and having some review out there would be useful, so decided to do a round up post about what I've learnt works and doesn't work in terms of this kind of sewing. This is a very long post :)

I had a fairly easy pregnancy, so I was perfectly positioned to have good results with sewing, which is great since maternity clothing is either decently priced and of bad quality, or expensive. Dime for dime, you get more out of non-maternity ready to wear.

Some lessons I learnt along the way:
Some non-pregnancy patterns will work for pregnancy. Sort of. As bump size increases, in the best case scenario you will get the mother of all pooling at the back, as if a gazillion-inch swayback is required (but isn't!). If that doesn't bother you, you're fine; otherw…

A new shirt

I made a white shirt. I cut this out sometime in late September, and I used McCalls 6035 again. I managed to finish it around Christmas. I wanted a nice white shirt, with a bit of a twist, so I added grey embelishments to it.

I am very pleased with how the embelishments turned out. I did a few things:
- embroidered the collar with French knots
- added grey/white twill tape to the sleeve seams
- used mother-of-pearl-with-grey-tint buttons

The effects are subtle, but they are there and I like them.

I embroidered the collar using two shades of grey, in a "burst" pattern. I tried to be relatively consistent about density of the French knots, but I think a bit of difference isn't very bad.

The collar was the first thing I finished, and it stayed there for a long time, until I found the time to get back to sewing.

I used a lot more interfacing on the collar than I normally do, and I think it shows. The buttons and tape on sleeves were added later and they're not very speci…

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