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.

and...it's finished (one of them, anyway)

Turns out that the silver lining to catching an awful achy fever the last full weekend before the first of the two upcoming auctions is that I had no choice but to spend an entire day on the couch, binding the Auction Quilt.  Binding the quilt & watching Wolf, Witches of Eastwick, the fourth Omen, & part of Sky High, ahem.

I was thinking, as much as you can think when you're sleepy, feverish, trying to keep your stitches even, & also half-watching an exciting wolfman wrestling match between Jack Nicholson & James Spader, about how much I always dread the time commitment that hand-binding a quilt brings with it, but how much I always fundamentally enjoy the process of wrapping a neat tight edge around a quilt with a gazillion snug little stitches.  It gives me a sense of tidy closure, which lasts approximately until it's time to put the quilt in the machine & then I stand around anxiously for the entire wash cycle, wondering if my quilting & or binding & or basic idea for a quilt is going to hold together.

Look at me, waxing philosophical about this thing now that it's done.

Done!  Hurrah!  (Lots more detail pictures in my flickr set.)

Not that I have been all quilt all the time, lo these many silent weeks.

Or not just the ONE quilt  This one is lap sized, destined for the second of the auctions.  I have to finish binding it approximately immediately.  Next year:  two kids, one school, one auction, can't wait.

This little one is on the bind too, but has to wait until next week.  When I'm totally going to feel like picking up a little quilt-binding project just to relax.

I mock, & yet...it's probably true.

 

The Auction Quilt, nuts & bolts

The auction quilt (The Auction Quilt!  I will capitalize it!) has left the building.  At least for a week or so, until it comes back to me for binding.  And by "left" I mean "is tidily packaged up waiting for me to drop it off tomorrow for the quilter to pick up, only I have to go buy a spool of thread to send with it first," so obviously my entire metaphor is seriously flawed, but whatever, it is ALMOST DONE.

So now, I can talk about it without hyperventilating. Without hyperventilating, & also at tremendous length.  Ready?

From this:

to this:

has been an interesting process for me. The Auction Quilt is a little bit larger than the other ones I've done (70" x 80" finished top) & it's the first one that has been entirely pieced, plus it's going to be auctioned off, so, you know, no pressure, for sure.

To start, each of our preschool graduates drew a picture representing friendship, which I then scanned & printed out on inkjet fabric.  Washability is important for a quilt like this, so I chose the EQ Printables Regular Inkjet Fabric from Electric Quilt Company (as recommended in the Purl book), & after some struggles with getting printer & monitor colors to match, was very pleased with the printouts (using Epson inks).  Bottom line? I'd use the EQ sheets again.

A few specific comments:

• The fabric initially looks off-white, but after printing, removing the backing & rinsing, is a bright, clear white.
  
• The Regular sheets are very...crispy.  I assume they'll soften some with washing, but I don't know whether that will come at the expense of some color fade.  I am not unhappy with the texture for this project (plus, we were able to gang six 5"x5" images with 1/4" seam allowance on all sides onto one 11"x17" sheet, so the Regular was definitely the most economical choice), but if my design depended on more printed real estate, as it were, I think I'd give the EQ Cotton Lawn a try. 
• I saw some pretty significant color bleed, particularly in the magenta/purple/brown range, as the sheets were drying after rinse.  I got mostly around this by letting the sheets sit longer the recommended 15 mins after printing (up to a couple of hours), then doing an initial room-temp rinse, then a very warm soak with a little Synthrapol, then back to room temp rinsing until clear.
  
• Probably because I used a warmer than recommended water, I saw about 1/2" shrinkage widthwise across the sheets.  Even when sticking to room temp water, though, I was still getting up to 1/4" shrinkage, so I definitely recommend factoring a generous seam allowance with this stuff.

Ok, so, printing aside, the overall plan was 5" art squares, framed with squares of red, blue, or green, then finished out with a linen/cotton blend to make 10" blocks.  We ended up with 37 art squares; I made a series of smaller log cabins to go in the center of the remaining 19 blocks.  Everything was improvisationally pieced, though eventually (& arbitrarily, it just made things go a bit quicker, plus I loved those specific  blocks) I settled on doing sets of 3 when it came to some of the smaller log cabins.

Maybe a quarter of the way into piecing the blocks, I suddenly realized that if I just made the center parts & then chain-pieced the centers onto the linen strips, things would go much much faster.  It was revolutionary!   Also head-slappingly obvious, & I am grateful that I was only about twenty-five percent done when I figured it out.  The way I did it was not particularly thrifty of fabric (though I generally don't worry about this, since all leftovers but the smallest trimmed-off slivers go right into the scrap boxes), but it was an efficient way to get the off-center grid look I was after.

I cut my linen, selvedge to selvedge, into strips of various widths (3", 3.5", 4" mostly, though I did use some 5" strips on the smallest of the non-art centers), & then chain-pieced as many block centers as would fit on one strip.  I made sure to leave some blank linen space between the blocks, so I could follow the existing block angle through the linen strip when it came time to cut them apart.  Trim, rotate, repeat.  I varied the width of linen strips I used based on the size of the log cabin center, so that when it came time to trim the blocks to their final 10.5" square, I had plenty of flexibility in terms of angle & centeredness.

Possibly the most challenging part of the entire project was figuring out the final layout for the blocks.  There are three major color groups (reds, blues, greens), & since I was working improvisationally, choosing border colors based on the colors in each child's drawing, I had no particular layout plan other than:  "Oh, you know, kind of random.  In a cool way."  My friend Kirsten worked on it with me, & eventually we came up with something that had 1. a reasonable color distribution of art blocks; 2. a reasonable color distribution of non-art blocks, with careful attention to scattering the three sets of three far enough away from each other; 3.  no awkward clumping of art vs. non-art; 4. no obvious color diagonals of three blocks or more; 5. no accidental straight lines.  It took us kind of a long time, & Kirsten is very patient, but we got there.  Eventually.

(I made sure that this particular square, made by my particular daughter, is prominently placed.  There has to be some payoff for all this work, right?  Kirsten's son's square got good placement too, but sadly I do not have a picture of his fine, fine, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.)

Here it is, laid out in sandwich form for basting, looking more or less like I first imagined.  You might notice that the top is far less bubbly than in the first picture of it above -- after looking at the first pictures I took of it, I fled back to the ironing board to do some serious further work on pressing my seams out.  You might also be able to imagine my relief upon discovering that it was my ironing, not my sewing, which had caused the problem.

Tomorrow it goes out to the woman who will quilt it (2" diagonal grid, natural colored cotton thread), & I will have a week to breathe work on other auction stuff before binding time.  When it comes back it will be all grown up into a quilt (Quilt!), & I will have no choice but to sit under it for three days, watching DVDs & handstitching the binding.  The sacrifices I make, right?

cake & flannel

Alright.

First of all, I believe that if you don't put frosting on a cake & only make a single layer, it becomes "snack cake" & is a completely legitimate breakfast item, thus:

This kind of breakfast is particularly well-deserved on mornings when, say, the roads are kind of icy because of frozen-over snow & the schoolbus decides to skip your stop with no sort of notice whatsoever even though you had all assurances that routes were running as usual, meaning that you then spent the next two slippery hours in the car depositing your children at their various educational institutions (from which you are separated by several large hills + every other cautiously-driving car in the city), so by the time you get home to the cake it's not really breakfast time anymore anyway, & you are even more justified in having it as a late-morning snack.  (I will also mention that if you happen to find yourself in this exact situation, the cake you want is the chocolate one from Joy of Vegan Baking, only with 1/4 tsp ginger + 1 c chocolate chips thrown in.)

It hasn't been all driving through ice & eating cake around here recently, though, oh no.  I've been doing some sewing.

The auction quilt is moving right along, though I am holding my breath nervously as we get ready to start tackling the scary part, where we depend upon printable fabric to put a whole bunch of preschool art into the quilt.  We've tested & compared & planned, & I have a sketch & everything, but still, the fate of the quit depends on a printer, & it makes me nervous.

But!  Over the past few days I've had to put all things quilt aside & instead whip up a package to be mailed off to a short-notice baby shower.  (Ok, had to, you can be sure that I've been wringing my hands over being forced to sew tiny cute things with the excellent owl flannel I have been admiring all over the blogs lately.)

Bibs:  flannel front, terry back, adjustable snap closure.  I was going to use the Bend the Rules pattern, but had a hard time getting my scan to print out at the right size (though I now have the pattern pieces to make a truly gargantuan one, in case you're in need), & then I discovered this very similar but smaller bib pattern (in handy printable pdf form!) at Chickpea Sewing Studio. 

Here's one on my girl's 14" doll for scale.  I think it's a really lovely tiny size for a shower gift, so of course I had to make three. (I will actually be making four, it seems, since Rosyanna's modeling fee turns out to be a doll-sized version.  My daughter drives a hard bargain.)

Also, burp cloths:  11" x 18" each of flannel & terry, with a 1/4" seam allowance, turned & topstitched.  I think these are slightly bigger than the blog norm, but I wanted them to be large enough to usefully put under the baby if needed.

And a couple of blankets, each 36" x 36".  This one is a single layer of flannel, with dark brown flannel binding.

This one is doubled, with owls + green flannel basted around the edges & then bound with the brown flannel.  I thought the bibs were my favorite thing in this bundle until I finished this blanket, because, ok, those OWLS, plus the doubled flannel has a really wonderful weight to it.  (I am imagining these blankets will be put under or tucked around the springtime baby.  In my experience, the absolute best swaddling blankets are just big squares of flannel with serged edges; binding or doubling makes them too bulky to get a a good tight wrap around a tiny baby.)

Now it's back to the quilt & facing my fear of technology, which, now that I really think about it, is actually already rapidly diminishing in the face of my fear of the deadline.

the jazz hands were an accident

It's hard not to feel like a big dork when modeling a pair of gloves, no matter how much you love them (& your cool new ring) & how charming your six year old photographer is.

On the other side of the lens, focusing a camera you can barely hold up turns out to have its own set of challenges.

They are, perhaps, better suited to still-life photography.

Now is the season of my freezing fingers, & I have picked up another new pair of fingerless gloves since last I talked lovingly about them, but shortly afterwards I realized that though I think (in a purchase-justifying kind of way) I want to wear them while working, I sort of can't because they're too nice.  So then I thought, well, what about that drawerful of felted sweaters that you keep collecting but not doing anything with?  Two seams each once I got the pattern figured out, & the felted wool is the perfect combo of warm & slightly stretchy.

Of course, now I love these too much to work in them.  Oh, cozy, cozy, dilemma.

sugar crash

Oh, tiny cowgirl, refusing to actually participate in the preschool Halloween parade for which we made a special trip in the middle of our hectic day.  Probably you're saving your energy for heading out to the range.

With your cowgirl trick or treat bag.  (Simple Tote!  Such a surprise to see you!)

Around these parts, there can be no cowgirl bag without an accompanying cowboy satchel.  (There's a whole accompanying cowboy costume, too, but we have no good blog pictures of it (as I lamented last night, to much not-entirely-disguised eyerolling from my husband)).  I am going to have to talk him into a reenactment. 

Anyway, the bag is a messenger-style adaptation of Simple Tote, though I guess once you make the whole thing a little bit bigger, add a strip to make a boxy bottom, a flap to go over the top, & a long strap to go cross-body over the shoulder, it's less an adaptation than an entirely different bag, hm?  I owe every little bit of my understanding of how to line a bag to Simple Tote, though.  It's a Simple Tote in spirit!  Also, another important similarity is that my Simple Tote Curse applies to this bag, too (probably because I looked at the ST pattern while touching the fabric I'd be using, thus creating evil psychic connection), resulting in me completely forgetting any type of interfacing.  So, you know, pardon the flop.

When I went to look for the bag this morning to take a picture, I discovered that had he already loaded it up with Very Important Things.  Way to make your mom proud, kid.

Today:  stack of crowns.

lately

Lately it looks like this here.

I, however, have been deep underground in chilly basement studio doing things like:

trying my hand at some colorful pillows,

taking eighty zillion photos at the last outdoor soccer game of the year, in which my kid proved that all that time he spent begging to watch The Soccer Channel actually had some real-world payoff (note that I said outdoor, his first indoor season game is on Saturday because we are apparently those kind of soccer people, though I think I might be on duty with his sister then at the girliest birthday party place on earth),

making another Simple Tote from Bend the Rules for a birthday present (though not for the upcoming uber-girly one) -- the enormity of my love for this bag is matched only by the inevitability that I will screw seriously up at least once in every attempt, this time being putting the inside pocket on (with plenty of cunning partition & detail stitching) upside down & then sewing the top edge topstitching with bobbin so out of whack that the bag was practically filled with loose loopy thread when I was done,

& then tucking the tote into a be-princessed gift bag,

making an excellent geeky birthday shirt for my excellent geeky husband,

& then cooking him a birthday feast, including but not limited to vegan carrot cake cupcakes with "cream cheese" frosting.  (We also had roasted squash soup, salad, fancy goat cheeses with good whole wheaty bread, individual seitan pot pies with biscuit tops, & pumpkin ale, but I was too busy eating to take pictures.)  I have probably mentioned before, but I think it's worth saying again that the Real Food Daily carrot cake recipe is the best vegan carrot cake recipe I've ever tried, & also, if I may digress into the world of vegan frosting for a moment, here is my tip for very easy, very tasty vegan cream cheese frosting:  1/2 container tofutti better-than-cream-cheese + 2T or so buttery stick creamed together thoroughly, then beat in enough powdered sugar to make a nice spreadably stiff frosting.  If I'm remembering correctly, the recipe in Vegan Cupcakes has a higher margarine to cream cheese ratio, but I prefer the flavor this way.

I managed to finish the second of the cowhand costumes today, at the last of the last minutes, though I still have two treat bags to finish.*  Simple Tote, I'm coming for you again!

*On top of working full steam ahead getting ready for the Queen Anne Artists Trunk Show!  It's going to be good!

stick 'em up

This tiny rogue cowgirl refused to appear in front of the camera without her clever bandanna + hat disguise.

Simplicity 3997, with stenciled & glittered stars on the pockets.  (Fairy face paint courtesy of preschool.)  This pattern was plenty quick to put together, though I thought that the instructions were awfully optimistic about the tininess & nimbleness of my fingers when it came to the very small size of openings for turning the lined vest right side out.  On the other hand, I am very pleased to finally have legitimate use for my 28mm rotary cutter, since it turns out to be genius at cutting a whole big lot of 1/4" fringe.

One cowgirl down, one cowboy to go.

Friday WIP

All plans for today were derailed when my big one fell asleep at the dinner table last night, always a sure sign of sickness.  The worst thing about having a high fever, in his opinion, was missing soccer practice, oh my little single-minded athlete.  Worst thing in my girl's opinion was that he got to control the TV of Illness, which meant soccer vids all afternoon.

But she & I found some things to work on while he was feebly but enthusiastically hooting about Arsenal.

Can't get into the resin when I'm likely to be interrupted for a piece of toast or a piece of Hello Kitty puzzle, but I found a way to occupy myself.  The thing I learned while working on today's pillow is this:  fast needle, slow hands (as google tells me they say) are words to live by. 

return of procrasti-pillow

Shockingly, the second loopy pillow did not follow my failed-sophomore-effort rule, though this is perhaps because there was enough failed effort involved in the first go-round. I even managed to make the cover a little bigger, though am told by certain significant others that they are still too stuffed. (I don't know what happens, I swear, I cut them out the right size & then the ease just melts away. It's like magic, ruinous, irritating, sewing magic.) Better overstuffed than flabby, I say!

Thank you for all the wonderful comments about my free motion quilting. I'm finding it both easier & harder than I imagined, which is to say that I quickly learned that the whole effort has a lot to do with a relaxed but controlled touch, which is easier said than done. It actually reminds me of spinning, especially the incredibly tense hands & forearms of the novice part. Ow, a little bit. But it's addictive, plus more forgiving than the straight-line quilting I'd been doing on the pillows, so I'm hoping that the more I try it, the more natural it will feel.

Good thing I'm already planning my next one.