glittergoods

Basics for Girls (except mine, who needs something a little fancier)

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, my latest Japanese book purchase inspired me to actually make something (instead of just sitting around thinking about what I COULD make), except from a book that I picked up almost a year ago, Basics for Girls (I haven't made anything from that fabric in the picture yet, but have often thought about it, see how that works?).  I feel essentially the same way about it as I did in my original post, which is to say that the patterns are, yes, basic, but compelling, also "basic" isn't a terrible quality when you are trying to make something according to instructions that you cannot actually read.

I love, love this dress. I love how smocky it is, I think the proportions are great, it's adorable over jeans & a long-sleeve tee, I love the raspberry striped seersucker I used to make it.  I love the fit of the yoke & the binding around the neck & arms.  I love the design of the pockets, though they're too small to be that useful & I was clumsy with them.  Big armholes definitely make it an overdress, but since we are, I learned today, having colder weather than SIBERIA here in Seattle, I'm not too worried about her suddenly being unable to wear an undershirt without melting.  (Last week I was in the fabric store picking up some this & that for summer clothes, the cutter made the usual small-talk comment about "boy, you'll be busy" & I said something equally small-talky about having to get the sundresses made before it gets hot, & she stopped, looked at me, & said "It's JUNE and you're wearing a DOWN JACKET.  I don't think you have to rush.")

 
My girl thinks this dress is pretty cute, though initially refused to wear it pre-embellishment, "please can you put something on it, you know, like when you do drawing with thread?"  Then she sent it back again to have the heart filled in, FINE, & in the interim I made the huge mistake of making the same dress out of a floral fabric, & so her initial refusal has been followed by a grudging acknowledgement that yes, the heart is awesome & maybe she'll wear it sometimes, but it just isn't as cute as the flower one because it doesn't have as much stuff on it.  Stripes, it turns out, do not count as stuff.  (Too basic, right?)

Here we have the right amount of stuff.  This one, she wanted to wear two days in a row, the other one she can barely stand to try on for two seconds. "Just try it on!  Let's see how it fits!" I say, cheerfully, hoping that she'll get distracted by something sparkly before she remembers to rip those boring, boring stripes off of her body. 

No luck so far.

we call it "relaxing," not "boring"

Oh, I had a whole long post detailing our weekend in San Francisco, which was not actually very detailed because mostly all we did was eat good food & take long walks in the wrong direction (thanks, Google Maps, I owe you one), & thus we completely failed to hit any of the crafty hotspots except Britex.  And Kinokuniya, but that was by accident (see:  long walk, wrong direction). 

But then New Typepad ate it, & I'm not sure that we are not all better off for it being reduced to the single paragraph above.

Also, despite lugging the big camera around all weekend, in the end I took exactly two pictures, both inside the hotel:

This is the most comfortable bed ever.

This is the view from our hotel room.

Ta-da.

But, really, thanks to all of you SF suggestion-makers.  I have an extensive & interesting-looking list of cool shops & etc. for the next time we go, &, frankly, there are worse things than organizing a weekend around great vegetarian food (to wit:  Millenium, Herbivore (we had very cheerful + efficient service at the Divisadero location -- beware extremely liberal onion use), Papalote, Weird Fish).

And, also,  I got to go to Britex.

It was a little overwhelming, but since when has being slightly overwhelmed stopped me from buying fabric?  The remnant floor was my favorite, but they'd also just gotten a fresh Liberty shipment in so I stood around & ogled for a while.

I made sure our "well, we might as well, since we're HERE" trip to Kinokuniya wasn't wasted either:

I especially like that little dress.  The mother/daughter matching isn't really my scene, but there's some cute kid stuff in this book.  (I would immediately return home & proceed to make some dresses from a completely different Japanese craft book, but that's another post.)

Those pictures are from after I got home, by the way.  Seriously, two pictures.  The entire weekend.

scattered

Lots of lazy little things going on around here this past week or so as summer rushes to a close.  It's cool & greyish again here this morning, though we did just have two hot days (which is rare enough this year that everyone is walking around talking about how we just had two hot days).

First-ever attempt at a jacket.  Sleeves turned out surprisingly decently; have stalled out at crucial moment of zipper installation.  Maybe today.  This project has served as a reminder to me to never show the pattern packet to my girl, who got very shouty that I was not making the pretty pink ruffly one as pictured.

Playing around with hand-dyeing cotton twill tape.  I'm finding the process incredibly satisfying, though I suppose at some point I should take a break from process & think about what I'm going to do with product.

Been spending some time poring over the book I got from Sally's tag sale, Basics for Girls (ISBN978-4-579-11147-3, more pictures on flickr).  It's exactly that, charmingly basic, with several variations on each pattern, (ie, dress with short sleeves, no sleeves, long sleeves, & "formal" versions).  I'm not sure there's much here that I couldn't find with a good dig-through of fabric store pattern books, but of course I love the styling (& not having to imagine what the pattern could look if done up in fabrics more to my taste is nice, too).

When there are two kids, you can't make just one space helmet.  My boy & I got into papier mache the other day, an excellent cheap messy morning of flour paste, a local free paper, & a balloon.  He's hoping it's dry enough to paint today, I'm hoping that I didn't over- or under-estimate his head size too badly.

I was never very impressed with this mirror ball dot fabric on the bolt, but on our perfect trip to Portland a while back we were at a quilting store (Fabric in the City) & there on the wall was this big amazing modern quilt made using all of the colors together, & it was the color combinations that got me more than anything else.  I ordered this fat quarter box after looking longingly at it for months, & I love seeing it on my shelf so much that I don't know if I'll ever be able to cut into it.

The Great Wall of Tomato is finally paying off, & we're getting cherry tomatoes by the double handful every day (these are Sungold, the Matt's Wild Cherry are just starting to ripen).  I have been ruthlessly cutting back still-growing vines & blossoms in hopes that if the plants would just focus, there will be enough time to ripen up all of the full-size tomatoes before the weather turns.  We have been laughing all summer about how maybe we won't put in quite so many tomato plants next year, wouldn't it be nice to be able to see the dahlias?, but this harvest part is pretty well worth it.

tiny table, tiny plants, tiny boxes

So, the show yesterday was a sweet little thing:  10 artists, cute house, nice people, a fun afternoon.  I made some great trades, particularly with the woman across from me, who had the most, most amazing collection of vintage planters kitted out with lovely tiny plants.  Her table was such a breath of fresh air in the midst of the usual trunk show stuff (don't get me wrong, the other vendors were great too, but this was the first time I had ever seen this kind of product at a craft show) that I think most people ended up walking out of the house with at least one plant.  I, personally, made off with three, including:

(this was the first one I snapped up.)

(this, I think, is my favorite.  I have a thing for white ceramics, turns out.)

I also picked up a little yellow creamer (see here).  Oh, & don't miss the fantastic little doe piece that Blair got.

One of the ways I unwind after a show is to make something small that has nothing to do with work or any ongoing projects on the to-do list -- a palate-cleanser, if you will -- although it takes me a while to stop wandering tiredly around the house thinking about all the things I should be doing (work, pillow for second auction, birthday invites, work, class valentines, shade project, work, etc), so inevitably these projects start very late at night.  Luckily, this one was pretty easy.  I've been wanting to make a felt box like this for a while now (yes, it's from a Japanese book, isbn 4893968491), & last night was the night.

Aside from the fact that I think felt boxes are just fundamentally great, the thing that really makes this project for me is the stitch detailing at the corners.  Love!  I used some of my stash of wool/rayon felt for this, & while it worked fine, structurally speaking, it's just the teensiest bit floppier than I'd like.  I think that in the future (because, dear reader, there will be a future for these boxes, oh yes) I'm going to investigate either 100% wool felt or maybe adding some interfacing -- though interfacing might just ruin the excellent simplicity of the entire process.

And now, although writing about the box makes me want to rush off & make another one, I think it's time to get to work on those transformer-themed rollerskating party invitations that have been hanging over my head.  Wish me luck.

pretty fabric puzzles

Oh, February, with your sickness & broken internet & knee surgery (not mine!) & schools clamoring for auction donations.  Good thing I've just been waiting for an excuse to finally try one of those gorgeous log cabin pillows.

This pillow is for our preschool auction, & while I originally planned to build it around fairly sophisticated & neutral fabrics, you will not be shocked to learn that the more color I added, the better I liked it.  Log cabins fascinate me, the way that the placement of one strip can completely change the entire look of the thing.  It's like a puzzle, one where I don't know the solution until I know it.  When I felt like one more round of prints would be too much for my revised plan of playful-but-restrained, I finished off with a wide neutral border (Kaufman kona "stone," such a great, um, stone color).

I also spent a lot of time thinking about how the quilting was going to change the look, flipping back & forth between Lisa's pattern in Crafter's Companion & the Japanese version in Machine Made Patchworks.  I went for the straight vertical lines (Japanese style) instead of the square spiral (Lisa style) partly because I wasn't sure I wanted any horizontal lines to interfere with the number/letter fabrics, but mostly because I was feeling very perfectionist about this project (see above re: auction) & my new sewing machine still makes me a little nervous.

I love the look of the ribbon ties on the back (I turned & tacked the ends to avoid fraying),  but I think that if I were better at zippers, I would have used one for the closure so that I could have made the cover tighter (I like a nice fat pillow).  The two extra ties do make a useful difference, though.

Possibly my favorite part of the entire project was having an excuse to use my machine's loopy stitch.  It's subtle, black thread on the grey corduroy (I was worried that it would be too easy to cross the cool/dorky line with contrasty thread), & I like how it sort of looks like a line of scribble.

I was also happy to be reminded of this quilt, which is one of my all-time Japanese craft book favorites.  It looks like the kind of thing that would be a good bit-by-bit project, & one that would probably turn out excellently if you just trusted your stash instinct, doesn't it?

A short list for Wednesday II

I ordered a stack of books from yesasia.com a while ago (I could do a list of reasons why I love ordering from yesasia, including:  the exciting "grab bag" nature of ordering a book with no real understanding of what it's about; how all the books come neatly wrapped in clear plastic sleeves, making it easy to resist "just flipping through" when I should be doing something else instead; free shipping; & how it takes so long for the books to get here that I have an actual moment of surprise & curiosity when the box finally arrives.), & here are my three favorites:

1.  If you have been paying attention at all to this blog, you will not be surprised that I ordered this one.  The skirts are great, although not revolutionary, but it's really refreshing to look at a skirt pattern without having to squint at it & try to figure out how it would look in a nice plain fabric instead of a garish floral or etc.  ISBN4-579-110001.

I really wish the light was better today, because the skirt on the left has this great seamed shape that you can't really see in the picture.

Love the pockets.

2.  This one is full of adorable little smocky outfits for girls in the 100-140cm size range, which, I happen to know (thank you Hanna Andersson) is exactly the size of my own little girl.  Since I ordered this one solely based on the cover & the assumption that it had something to do with a. kids &/or b. sewing, I got nicely lucky.  Whether I'll sew anything for her out of it before she outgrows that range, though, is another question, especially because it doesn't go in much for skirts.  ISBN4-579-11054-4.

I love those little pants, though.  Those are little brown polkadot cuffs.

3.  By way of explaining why I ordered this one I will say that my father collects little houses, house-shaped cookie jars, village sets, old spice jars shaped like a Dutch village, whatever.  And by "collect" I do not mean "oh, did I show you my five robin's-egg blue McCoy pitchers in pristine condition" or my own excellent set of polka-dot Fire King bowls, but instead I am talking about a collection, with much emphasis added.  I have tended to stay away from house-themed crafts, because what I've seen tends to be a little country-kraft for my tastes (exceptions here & here), but this is the second Japanese house book I've ordered & I think this one might be the inspiration jackpot.  ISBN4-14-031131-2.

This quilt is amazing.  Way, way too amazing for me to actually ever attempt, but I do really love the little houses all set in a grid, with the outer rings of crammed-together houses.  So much piecing!  The quilts on the page before have a picket fence (but, you know, a hip wonky one) as the surrounding motif, which is cool too.

This book may also have the most impressive instruction section of any in my collection.  Here it shows you how to do up a fabric house based on a photo of a real one. 

And here it seems to be addressing the fact that if you do any of these projects, you will have eighty million pieces to manage, & might actually be offering some helpful tips.  I don't know that I'm up for eighty million pieces, but it's far more inspiring than I ever expected a book called Houses, Houses, Houses! would be.