Lars, Lucinda and Linen

Lars von Trier : Danish film maker. Co-founder of the Dogme 95 movement. Film makers vowed to abide by a set of rules in making their film. And they made some watchable, and some not so watchable films...

So, he's not a cyclist, and probably doesn't sew, so why am I talking von Trier?

Ever since I fell in awe of the Film Petit series where sewing for kids is inspired by movies, I couldn't stop thinking of the Lars von Trier and Jorgen Leth film The Five Obstructions.

Essentially Lars von Trier challenges his fellow Dane and mentor to remake Leth's 1967 film the Perfect Human. Yet Leth has to remake the film according to rules set out by von Trier, hence the 5 obstructions. (click on The Five Obstructions link above for the details)

While I suspect my movie tastes may be a little too arthouse, I've always thought it would be great to challenge a fellow sewing blogger to remake something wonderful and then give them some Dogme 95 style rules such as no artificial lighting (as someone who only sews after kids bedtime that would kill me!)

Anyway, I think I'm going to play this game in my own little corner over here, all by myself...

Lucinda does sew clothes for kids. Boy does she sew clothes for kids. I don't know if she cycles or makes movies. I just know that I really, really like what she sews.

Her Flickr pool is a place where I could lose hours of my life drooling over beautiful clothes, and I think I'd struggle to find a single garment in there that I didn't wish I'd sewn myself.

I'm not going to apologise for sounding like I have a huge crush on a semi-stranger cause she's also really nice, not only is she all over the sewing blogosphere saying lovely things, but she just mailed me a little linen top

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Linen: Nothing needs to be said but that it seems to make everything lovelier.

So what's going on here?

Well, next week is Kid's Clothes Week - summer version, and while it's the middle of winter here I wasn't all that keen on joining in until Lucinda gave me the perfect excuse.

An excuse to sew, to sew something summery and lovely, and an excuse to buy just a little bit more linen...

I'm going to recreate her masterpiece with my own little list of obstructions:

1: her top didn't fit, but since I don't have access to her kid there's no guarantee mine will either.

2: I don't have a pattern. Freestyle sewing is not something I'm particularly comfortable with. But I'm drafting my own pattern from her top with guesses as to how to deal with obstruction 1

3: It has to be stripes cut in perfect chevrons (go back and look at her picture again, you'll see the challenge I'm faced with here, hers is flawless!)

4: Of course it has to be linen (of which I really only had scraps leftover. oh dear fabric shopping time)

There is no fifth obstruction as I really was tempted to unscrew the light globe from the sewing machine and plan to sew only in natural light and then I thought that's just stoopid, you'll end up creating the worst sewn garment you've ever made and then send it to someone else to have it fall apart on them.

So I'm leaving my last obstruction open. I've no doubt I'll find one along the way...