glittergoods

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.

procrasti-pillow

Snaps & I continue to get along so well that my productivity claim of yesterday is actually just about true.  I can't say that I am necessarily working on things in order of importance, but sometimes just getting back into the making groove is the most important thing, I tell myself  (though now I have the Pro-crast-tin-a-ting song in my head, probably because my daughter loves that Audrarox album more than I love snaps & so we listen to it all the time lately.  Unless you have your own small child, all the time probably doesn't have quite the depth of meaning to you that I intend, except for those people who, like me, spent their formative years doing things like filling up extra space at the end of mix tapes with Bizarre Love Triangle over & over & over &, yes, over.  (If my husband reads this entry, he will be all "right, USED TO.")).

The other thing, besides snaps I mean, that I wish I had enough time to be inspired by right now, is the amazing Last-Minute Patchwork book that everyone is talking about.   I have only had the chance to flip through it a couple of times, but the book is so beautifully put together (&, really, did we doubt?  Also, holy moly, check out the new fabric line.) that even just a quick picture skim is enough to send me off in a million different directions.  I'm very taken with her version of the stacked coin quilt, & while there shouldn't really be are definitely not any quilts on my horizon until after the holidays (& all of the other Imaginary Quilts are yelling take a number! at it anyway), I can totally justify making a stacked coin pillow or two.

Though are they still stacked if I run the strip this way?  I don't feel that they're all that coin-esque, either, which is fine because this pillow ultimately ended up being less about the stacked coins & more about me deciding that last night was the night to learn free motion quilting (where "learn" means "figure out how to do this one specific thing I have in mind, never mind the fundamental techniques or etc").  The idea of doing this kind of freehand loopy quilting over an entire quilt is pretty daunting (for now), but it's a lot of fun at pillow scale. (And, yes, this one has snaps on the back too.  Did you doubt?)

play on!

First of all, any scoop on Simple Contemporary Quilts?  I've seen it mentioned here & there, but nothing juicy.  Because, you know, I need more contemporary quilting books.  Mm-hm. 

Next:  I thought that I would be so productive when school started, but, well, fantasies keep hope alive, don't they?  I am going to blame part of it on that stack of pouches I was working on,

& some more of it on soccer practice,

but really it's mostly the pouches.

One side has a loop of loopy screenprinted twill tape, the other has a glitter zipper pull.  These are the perfect little amount of patchwork for me lately, though I have to say that seeing this version of the beloved Japanese Log Cabin Quilt [Machine Made Patchworks ISBN457911020X, oh yeah] over at Mason-Dixon Knitting -- combined with the very satisfying feeling of using, rather than warehousing, stash that pouchmania has brought me -- has me daydreaming again about building one of those quilts in a lazy, long-term way.

Anyway, the pouches are coming to shows with me this fall/winter, which is my cunning way of bringing my blog life along to my regular glamscience life.  Even though I've got a mellower show schedule this year than the last couple (after last year's entirely traumatic LA trip, we agreed to stay put this season), it's still coming faster than I'd like (especially because Halloween costume requests were submitted this morning.  It shocks me that it's not too early!).  Also, I am myself involved in organizing a show happening in November, so I have a whole new stressed-out perspective on the entire experience.

I've been strapping on the respirator & getting back to the resin, with -- so far -- only one completely failed batch to show how long I've been away.  I have some ambitious belt buckle plans that I'd like to try out, resin willing.

Except, oh look, it's soccer again.

Two games in, & my kid is over the moon about it & my husband, soccer-player of yore, is not far behind.  I'm having a great time hauling my big camera (Nikon D70) + big lens (Nikkor 70-300mm G) out to the games & trying to learn how to take some decent shots. My setup is more "outdated" than "top of the line" (yes, I have been reading about digital photography on the internet lately), but I'm perfectly willing to chalk up a little graininess (this has to do with ISO, as long-suffering husband patiently explained to me last night) to gritty U7 soccer realism & happily blunder on.  Kind of like the kids.

Our season is 8 weeks long, which means that I will just be starting to have a real handle on taking soccer pictures (grainy, gritty soccer pictures) before everything abruptly stops.  Maybe I'll start taking blog photos from very, very, far away.

see you, summer

I can tell that the beginning of school has arrived just in time, since I had fallen into a sort of end-of-summer daze that results in things like accidentally ordering a dozen donuts, realizing partway through, & then being too embarrassed/conscious of the line behind me to ask the nice donut girl to change the order.  You're all, cha, accidental donut over-ordering, right, but listen, I really only meant to order SIX, which is not exactly a dainty number either, is it?  (Typing right like that reminds me that my children have both taken to saying niiice in a low-slung, appreciative kind of way, which cracks us up every time & is a fine testament to all the hipster twenty-somethings who populate summer camps & preschools around here.)

One nice, though slightly overwhelming, thing about the end of summer is that the Great Wall of Tomato kicked into overdrive.  The front-yard experiment paid off, & will be repeated next year. Although maybe with not quite so many plants.

Things have slowed down now, but for about a week I was picking a colander like this every other day.  I'd say that the all-around winner for both good taste + crazy numbers has been the sungold, which is a delicious orange cherry tomato & which will is very unruly & will completely take over your entire tomato wall bed, insinuating little glowing clusters of tomatoes throughout the other plants, if you let it.  In the middle of the colander there, on the stem, are a few black cherry tomatoes, which are the size of big superballs & just gorgeous, though not quite as impressively tasty as the sungold.  The big tomato winner (seen at the back) is the Black Prince plant, which -- according to the plant list at the Seattle Tilth website -- is supposed to grow 2" fruit but has been producing lots of 4-5" tomatoes for us. 

I have had to be a little inventive in dealing with the harvest, but there are worse things than eating fresh-picked tomatoes every single day.

Back to school for them means back to work for me.  Time to start getting ready for fall/winter shows.

Meanwhile, my (first-grader!) son sets up & photographs more playmobil soccer vignettes.  I let him use the big camera for these, & I love watching him find his shot with a camera he can barely keep steady.  My husband just brought home istopmotion (he's totally been waiting for an excuse), so there's no end in sight to this fad.

Tried my hand at dyeing some fabric, along with some wide twill tape.  Man, I love that chartreuse.

I'm going to be putting some cuts of this lightweight dyed twill tape (along with matching heavyweight tape) up in my etsy shop sometime later today.  I thought I might get to it this morning, but all this back-to-school freedom has me a little scattered.  I think I'd better stay out of the donut shop for a while.

she's trying to convince me she can wear it inside out

I finished this jacket sometime last week, but lousy weather & recalcitrant model have meant no pictures until now.  (Even after I sweet-talked her into the jacket -- which she has, by the way, been wearing basically non-stop since I finished it despite the small run-in we had over the pink pattern illo -- she gave me very strict instructions of NOT HER HEAD in the pictures.)

First of all, I would like to point out that it zips shut.

And then zips back open again.  (No, seriously, I got her zipped into it & then held my breath until she was able to get back out.  If anyone would be capable of accidentally reversing zipper polarity & turning it into a one-way deathtrap, I'm pretty sure it would be me.)

It has a cute lined hood with a ridiculously long point.

And cute little pockets with bias trim.

I am, overall, very happy with it, except for my failure to psychically predict that she would have a growth spurt while I was making it, which means that instead of being all-through-fall oversized, it's already-growing-out-of-it just right (& I wish that I could have found a darker pink zipper).  I was pleased with how straightforwardly the pattern went together (Burda 9676, which definitely redeemed the facing weirdness of the last Burda pattern I made -- I think the longer, patchwork version is also very cute), & for me the big learning experience here was realizing that transferring all of the pattern markings onto your fabric is, yes, useful, just like they say it is, & also, basting fussy & important seams -- again, like they say -- is worth the extra time it takes.  As if those pattern people know what they're talking about, or something.

 

 

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.

my collection of pink fabric just grows and grows

My girl is going to a birthday party tonight, for a complete apple-cheeked dumpling of a friend who is one of those deceptively shy-seeming spitfires & also completely obsessed with ballet.  Now, it is true that unique ballet-themed presents aren't as ubiquitous as some other present genres might be, but I will cop to the fact that it is more true that I thought "Hoorah!  A sewing project!" (I would regret thinking this a few days later, when, at a particularly irritating moment with the bag, I encountered a perfectly excellent wooden ballerina magnet playset in a store, also a very cute ballerina necklace, also any number of tutu-style skirts, because apparently ballet is IN right now.)

I'd decided to give the Simple Tote pattern from Bend the Rules Sewing another go -- I'd been wanting to try a different version (with the pieces oriented "landscape" instead of "portrait," if that makes sense) since I finished my last one, & so this was the perfect excuse.  The first ST I made was my first-ever lined bag, & since then I'd made close to a dozen lined zipper pouches (can you see the very obvious pouch influence here?), so I thought that I'd be able to whip out the bag in the space of one evening in front of the tv, no problem.  Except I forgot about the sophomore curse.

As I'm sure I've discussed before, my second attempt at a project is always somewhat tragic, apparently proportionally related to how easy & fabulous the first time around was.  The truth behind the just-so blog picture:  first attempt at ballerina stencil with glitter that mysteriously would not dry (I felt so betrayed by my glitter, seriously); second attempt at ballerina stencil that worked fine, sans glitter, but was mysteriously half an inch too short, requiring emergency floral strip application to top of front panel; sewing back panel on inside out (cool, actually, but a little more fashion-forward than I wanted for little dumpling's bag); sewing handles inside lining & flannel interfacing, rendering them hidden + useless; sewing handles on a the right place, layer-wise, but twisting one during pinning, rendering them visible + annoying. 

I'm not a big fan of "juvenile" fabrics, so this simple ballerina print was a mighty pleasant surprise.  I used one of the dancers for the stencil on the front of the bag.

Here's the pocket on the other side.  I bound the top with one of the other fabrics, & I love the way it looks.  I think that on the next bag, I'll either divide the pocket with a line of stitching or make it a little smaller, though.

Obviously, if you're going to give a little ballerina bag to a freshly-minted four year old, you need to put something inside it.  Like a matching ballerina minimoopy.  &, yes, this is 100% nothing more than me suddenly getting the idea of a minimoopy in a tutu & not being able to rest until I followed through.  Because, ok, look!  At the tutu!  Sadly, my mister has been at a conference all week, so I wasn't able to run upstairs last night & demand that he acknowledge the awesomeness of the moopyrina, but I think he'll be home before we leave for the party so he can do his husbandly duty.

All ballerina all the time, coming & going.  (That's toe shoe fabric on her back.)

Take that, magnetic ballerina set!

PS, in other crafting news, this is my daughter's idea of a properly decorated space helmet:

If she grows up to be an astronaut, I'm totally swiping her helmet & putting glitter glue on it.

the zipper foot is the fastest of all

I've been a little surprised at how much I like making the zippered pouches, because I don't actually like using them that much.  But I do, I love making them.

Especially after having the glitter zipper pull revelation.

Yesterday I hauled everything upstairs & had pouch-mania while the kids swirled around me in various maniacal states of their own.  Given the opportunity, my son will turn machine feet into very fast racecars while my daughter will introduce them to each other & encourage them to be friends. 

I've been getting plenty of other sewing done, too.  I think the sudden productivity is because I just picked up a bunch of fabric for making fall clothes for my girl, & it follows that I have to face the fact that I never really did get any of my pile of spring/summer sewing done.

Luckily, there's a little bit of summer left.

(She is actually much happier about this dress than she looks -- in this giant picture, eek).  This is a cute Burda pattern (9885) that I liked pretty well, though despite it being marked EASY, in actual capital letters right there on the package, I still managed to do something weird to the pleating & had to sort of spackle the neckline together in the end.  No matter, though, she is not wearing it inside out, &, more importantly, I can cross it off the summer sewing list!

Last night I returned to my favorite skirt pattern, added another inch to it for Miss Growth Spurt, & cut it out of a red linen blend.  I added pockets this time (that was actually the first thing she asked me about the dress, "why are there no pockets on this?"), lined in a red dot.

I wasn't entirely happy with the way the pockets turned out (I still like the lining idea, but I think there must be a cleaner way to do it than make a flat beanbag & sew it to the skirt), so I decided that if I made the skirt into an outfit the pocket lining would seem less random.  Skirt + lining fabric wonder-undered in a way that cunningly disguises the badly pulled screenprint on the perfectly good tee, & there you have it, my child in clothes that actually match.

Ok, so the skirt + tee are maybe more transitional than summer, but still, I think this frees me up to start thinking about corduroy with a clear conscience, hm?

how I spent my weekend

So, not too long ago my daughter (you may remember her as the pink & fabulous one around here) received a much coveted "lipstick" as a bribe congratulatory present for having great behavior, & shortly thereafter she informed me that she needed a makeup bag.  My task was clear.

I only meant to pick up a pink zipper, but there I was in front of all of those colors, & oh!  Supplies are always my downfall.  I have only ever put in one other zipper, which did not go so well, & so while I have long admired the ranks of interesting & attractive zippers, I have stayed away.  Until Friday, when the floodgates opened.

First, the pouch for my girl.  I used the pattern from Bend the Rules Sewing on this one, & while the first part of the pouch went together smoothly (long live my zipper foot!), I have to admit that I am not a fan of hand-sewing the lining.  The sewing part itself was fine, I do enjoy some hand-finishing, but when I got to the end, I had a whole big extra bunch of lining fabric that I sort of tacked together & shoved into the corner.  It's functional, but sloppy, & I'm sure there's a more elegant way to handle it that I just wasn't seeing.

Luckily, my son then wistfully asked if I'd made one for HIM, which gave me an excuse to head to the computer & do a little googling.  I found this tutorial at U-Handblog, & I was off.

& off

(I love the linen-blend acid green lining of this one so much)

& off

My husband looked at this one & said oh, it's like a little quilt, which immediately sent me off to this

& then this

& then I was out of zippers.

For now.