Hide your disappointment for my dog's sake.

Because today I present... the owl bag!

In a photo essay, narrated by Winston.


I can't believe she's making such a big deal out of this bag.


I mean, so it has an owl on it--who cares? It's not even comfortable to sit on!


Mother says I have to mention the three owls on the other side and the long strap for wearing shoulder-to-hip across the body.


For this you kept everyone in suspense for a week?


My mother is so embarrassing sometimes.

From the sewing room...

Crafty time! I started this quilt in June and finished it in the twilight of 2007. It's for a baby boy... It came together kind of freestyle, because I'd wanted to do something with weaving stripes... but weaving ended up being a little out of the range of my ambition, when the time came, and I decided to continue the diagonal checkerboard.



Here's a closer look (that backing is the checkerboard dog/cat fabric, but I don't have a photo posted):



Hope everyone is having a great Friday!

Exci...tations...

My current sewing room configuration is not working for me.

A long time ago, after I had gotten my sewing machine, much to the husb's chagrin, and started buying fabric, much to the husb's chagrin, and stated spreading stuff all over the downstairs living room (our upstairs is the main level of the house), much to the husb's chagrin, I decided to take over the "exercise" room and make it a sewing room (because, let's face it, not a ton of exercising was happening in there).

One weekend, while the husb was out of town, I went to the office supply store and bought the cheapest desk I could find. It was $60. The guy at the store carried it out to my car, and then when I got home, I had to open the package and carry it downstairs, one piece at a time. I then spent approximately 12.5 hours assembling the thing.

It's an L-shape, fairly typical of what you might find in any home office anywhere. I like having a keyboard tray because it gives me a place to line up my scissors in an impressive row that screams to the errant houseguest, "DON'T TOUCH ME! YOU ARE NOT WORTHY!"

Other than that, the desk is less than ideal. The little wing that holds the sewing machine is great. The big side wing is not big enough or tall enough to function as a proper cutting table. And the fact that they're joined together means I can only choose one of two room configurations, neither of which is terribly efficient.

So, after deciding last month that I needed to switch out my L desk for a separate cutting table and sewing machine table, I finally got my wish. (Yes, finally, after twenty whole days. What suffering I endured.)

Better yet, the new tables were free, because we actually already owned them. They were the husb's old work tables.

They. Are. Awesome.

Ironically, they were designed to be an L-desk, but they aren't attached. They're on legs that raise up to a height of something like 36", which is a great height for cutting, because you don't have to bend down. The cutting table piece is as big as I could hope to go, AND it has a little curved cut-out where I can stand to be closer to my work.

I am so happy.

All I'm wondering is, (1) how long will it take me to find someone to come get the old desk and haul it away, and (2) how are we going to get the new stuff downstairs? I think we'll have to take the outside stairs on the side of the house. Ah well.

I'll post before and after pictures soon... in the meantime, I'm so darn excited. It's a little sad. It may even be a LOT sad. But I don't care! I'm too excited.

Happy Monday!

A lump of coal for me!

Let's just acknowledge that I get an F for blogging and move on with our lives. Okay? Okay.

In the plus column, I get an A+ for crafting. I have been very productive lately, making several Christmas presents. From Bend the Rules Sewing, I made a lined tote bag for my sister-in-law out of some very cute monkey fabric. I also made an apron out of a similar monkey fabric, and a very odd little trivet out of still more monkey fabric.

I helped the same sister-in-law make some very cute little teacup cozies for her mother, and then I hauled out the serger (rethreaded it myself! only took an hour) and made some coasters for the in-laws' rental properties. Many moons ago, I made a series of crazy quilt squares using four pieces of fabric sewn together and then cut with a 6.5" square stencil. Now I piled those together with pieces of flannel, old sweatpants, or old towels, traced a 4.5" square on them, and serged together coasters. It was extremely cathartic and highly addictive. Only two broken needles brought my fun to a stop... fifteen coasters later.

I'm also working on a quilt for a baby (6 months late--the quilt, not the baby), some totebags for the baby's big sisters, and some late Christmas gifts for a rather understanding segment of my own family.

I have to put the finishing buttons on an infant dress I made a while back, kind of for the heck of it--it's the perfect gift for a baby due any day to some friends in Europe. And I also took a look at my fabric stash yesterday and saw a lot of possibilities for some very hilarious baby dresses, which I will make for my own amusement and then put on Etsy or something.

As you can see, I've been fitting in quite a bit of workshoppy time, when I'm not working or taking the dog to the vet. Yes, I was tossing the tennis ball for Winston the other day, and it beaned him right in the face. His eye swelled up intermittently for the next 24 hours, always returning to normal the moment a vet visit was mentioned and then swelling up once the threat of medical care had passed. It turns out all that was needed to cure it was $81 and a useless half-hour at the vet's office, during which time they confirmed that absolutely nothing was wrong.

I hope you have all had a lovely holiday. Try to capture a bit of the Christmas spirit and take it with you into 2008. I'd love to say I'll be blogging again before then (and hey, you never know), but perhaps as part of my New Year's resolutions, I should try to be more realistic.

At any rate, I'll be posting pictures of many projects before too long.

Thith oneth for you, Tom.

Tom, 365 days seems like a really long time to do something without being certain of the results. Perhaps I'm just lazy (or maybe I'm biased). ;-)

So anyway, there is zero craftiness happening in this home right now. The pants were a total bust, in that I didn't finish them. I think they'll be fine, except that the crepe-backed satin doesn't sit flat at the seams, so the pant legs look like they're collapsing inward on themselves. I'm thinking about ironing on some hem tape to hold them flat.

In other news, Winston is sick. He ate something over the weekend, and as I was in Long Beach for the dog show, no amazing hydrogen peroxide trick was employed. So he'd been a little sick (upset tummy) all week, and on Monday, the vet told us to give him antacids, but yesterday things came to a head and he was admitted for some more x-rays (I will have a glowing green dog by the time they finish all of his x-rays) and for fluids, because the poor baby was very dehydrated.

I'm waiting to hear, but it's looking like surgery will NOT be necessary, which is good, because not only is there a dog show to be produced (post-produced), but there is a manuscript to be revised, and sanity to be maintained. Barely.

I made a discovery the other day: I can go without craving craftiness for weeks, but the second I'm supposed to be revising my book, I start immediately trying to procrastinate by sewing. Unfortunately for Evil Katie, Virtuous Katie put her foot down in this instance.

Oh, Lordy, I'm tired. I'm so behind on blogs, but I promise I'll catch up.

Hope everyone is well!

PS - I didn't re-sign-up for this round of Wardrobe Refashion... more on that later.

Baby quilt: "Teagan"

This was made for the child of some friends of ours. The baby was 12 days early; the quilt is two months late. Oh well! She hasn't outgrown it. I handed it over at Thanksgiving.



That faux patchwork backing fabric (peeking over the sides and featured in bias-cut squares in the design) is from Joann. I found it on clearance a few months ago and bought the entire remainder of the bolt, which was four yards (and that is a LOT of fabric for a quilter... this was before my bare minimum was three yard cuts).

I must say, I love the colors in this quilt. At some point, I developed an affinity for vibrant colors, and lots of 'em, all in the same place. I especially love red.

This is a bit of a departure from a lot of quilts I make, because I didn't do the quilting "in the ditch" (on top of other seams, for you non-quilters out there). You can see here that I did diagonal squares:



I'm pleased with it. I hope baby Teagan has many happy baby moments looking at the colors.

Happy weekend, all!

I love the smell of fabric in the morning...

First, big thanks to narcissaqtpie for the patterns she so kindly sent me. I can't imagine being brave enough to actually get rid of patterns. Even the ones I accidentally bought while trying to organize the stack at the thrift store (giving back, that's called), I have developed an unnatural attachment to. Probably because I'm anticipating the return of the Executive Linebacker style for women, and I want to be prepared.

In other news, I have had zero time for sewing lately. Zero! Well, I've had four minutes every morning as I wait for the iron to heat up. I'm sewing the border on a baby quilt (which is already two months overdue... the quilt, not the baby), and I get one seam pinned or sewn every time I iron.

This is unacceptable! Especially because I want to try to make a lot of holiday gifts by hand this year (sorry, 4Horses, it is what it is). And that means sewing. And that means I'm going to have to leave cookies out and hope the elves come by and do some stitching in the middle of the night.

This is not to say I've had a lack of inspiration. Oh, no! I'm still buying patterns and fabric. I bought a holiday print from Joann to make myself a holiday skirt along the lines of the Halloween skirt. It's even Sue-approved, so there you go.

I also bought Simplicity 3903, these table runners that you weave through one another... as soon as I got home and looked at the pattern, I wondered why on earth I had to buy a pattern to make table runners. But they were on sale for $1.99 so I stopped worrying about it. But I love the look of them, sort of a tablecloth and placemats put together...



I'm also planning to make chair covers to slip over our dining room chairs, because, really how hard can those be?

The only problem, as usual, is finding the time to get everything done! Maybe I should get together a band of singers and have them sing me a benefit song.

(Sung to the tune of "Do They Know It's Christmas?".)

It's Christmas time, there's no need to be ashamed...
At Christmas time, we make a list with lots of names...
And in my sewing room of plenty, I can make a cool placemat,
Throw your arms around the sewing machine at Christmas time.

But say a prayer; pray for the busy ones...
At Christmas time, it's hard, but when you're having fun...
There's a time-consuming dog show, and there's a messy house to clean,
And the kitchen sink is plugged up, and the plumber is so mean,
And the panther in the backyard is scary cat of doom,
Well, tonight, let's hope I sew a thing or two.

Or there won't be woven table runners this Christmas time,
(oh ohhhh oh)
And the greatest gift you'll get is a placemat,
Which you will want to stow
Because the seams and selvage show,
Won't I get to sew a thing at all?

Okay, that's all. Happy crafting! *sniff* Have fun without me.

(Oh, and no one is allowed to point out that I could have been sewing in the time it took me to create this blog post, do you hear me???)

Dangerously refashionable.

It's been a long time since I talked about Sue, my style-conscious friend, but today's post concerns her directly.

These are scary times for Sue.

I am in the middle of Wardrobe Refashion, and that, coupled with a few other factors, has made me a bit reckless about my clothing choices. There's something about being under stress, I realized, that makes me want to dress a little nuttier. It's like my own person kind of control-freakishness, because heaven knows I'm far too messy to be obsessively clean or anything like that.

Today, for instance, I'm wearing a dress I got at Goodwill. It was a long blue sack-like sweater dress, and I bought it because it looked really comfy for lounging around the house. Then I got it home (and washed) and tried it on, and I realized that I looked like some bizarre mid-90s executive minimalist with a modern art twist. Or a giant blue sock, if that's easier to picture.

This morning, faced with nothing fun to wear, I chopped the (ankle length) dress just under the knee and widened the collar (too much). I folded the widened collar on itself to form a triangular drape and pinned it in place with my orange "k" pin. Then I found the grey sweater I shrunk on purpose (initially with the aim of making a hat, but I'm not sure), cut the sleeves off, and pulled them over my feet.

Voila! Leg warmers.

I have to confess. I love leg warmers. I'm lucky right now because they're kind of "in", but the truth is that I have never stopped loving leg warmers, especially striped ones. The slouchier the better.

Today is a work-at-home day, and that means no one is going to see me except God, Winston, the plumber (should he deign to show up), and the people renting the house across the street. Oh, and the construction workers.

Maybe I look like a monkey who broke into Goodwill in the middle of the night and got caught trying on clothes when the lights came on.

But gosh darn it, as long as I have my leg warmers, I'm a happy monkey.

Just don't tell Sue.

Fun book find

At the thrift store adjacent to my office (which got a monster donation of sewing patterns and magazines the other day, properly culled through immediately by yours truly), I found a 1983 book called "I Haven't a Thing to Wear!" by Judith Keith (her quotation marks, not mine).



I got it because there were illustrations (and because paperbacks are 35 cents), but it's actually a very good, timeless book of advice. Apparently Ms. Keith, beginning in the 1950s, traveled all over giving presentations to women about how to dress and how to build a classic wardrobe. There's a section discussing body types and what silhouettes work and don't work, a little bit of color theory, and just a lot of all-around advice.

You could probably find a used copy if you looked.

Sorry I haven't been blogging much... who knew work was so much WORK?

Confession time!

I owe my editor a revised draft of my manuscript next week, so in the meantime, I'm crazy busy.

In sewing news, last week I busted out Butterick 4919 because, and this is not the kind of thing you can really announce in advance on the internet, we went on the husb's company cruise this weekend! I finished the approximately 12 feet of hem Friday morning an hour before we left to catch the boat. The dress was great except that it was soooo low cut in front, especially compared to the illustration on the pattern. Before I wear it again, I'll definitely tack that closed. The result is that the photos are going to require a lot of Photoshopping, because not only is my bra showing in most of them (just the tiniest bit), but that tiny bit of bra has a weird little tuft of thread on it, so it looks like I'm just wearing the most ghetto support garments ever. (Tim Gunn would faint dead away.)

Oh well! The dress was kind of a statement -- the fabric is crazy bright colors that reflect the husb's company colors (what can I say, I love a theme!), and it looked especially bright compared with everyone else's sedate blacks and blues and dark greens. But it was very fun to wear, and I would definitely make the pattern again. I'll post a review over at Pattern Review within a week. I don't have any photos of myself on my camera, or I'd post one.

Okay, off to write! Duty calls!

Neglect

I owe my editor a revised draft of my manuscript next week, so in the meantime, I'm crazy busy.

In sewing news, last week I busted out Butterick 4919 because, and this is not the kind of thing you can really announce in advance on the internet, we went on the husb's company cruise this weekend! I finished the approximately 12 feet of hem Friday morning an hour before we left to catch the boat. The dress was great except that it was soooo low cut in front, especially compared to the illustration on the pattern. Before I wear it again, I'll definitely tack that closed. The result is that the photos are going to require a lot of Photoshopping, because not only is my bra showing in most of them (just the tiniest bit), but that tiny bit of bra has a weird little tuft of thread on it, so it looks like I'm just wearing the most ghetto support garments ever. (Tim Gunn would faint dead away.)

Oh well! The dress was kind of a statement -- the fabric is crazy bright colors that reflect the husb's company colors (what can I say, I love a theme!), and it looked especially bright compared with everyone else's sedate blacks and blues and dark greens. But it was very fun to wear, and I would definitely make the pattern again. I'll post a review over at Pattern Review within a week. I don't have any photos of myself on my camera, or I'd post one.

Okay, off to write! Duty calls!

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

I had to look through all of my RSS feeds for this post at "bits & bobbins" because I couldn't remember where I'd seen it, but it's been on my mind since Friday. I just think it's really important and she says it well.

I really enjoy looking at street fashion blogs (like The Sartorialist and Fashionist), but at the same time, I can't help but think that these blogs are a lot like glossy women's magazines, just on a bit of a different level. It feels like being presented with a look to imitate, rather than be inspired by.

I especially feel a pinch when someone says, "My inspiration is Prada" and they're wearing... Prada. Is that inspiration? Or is that slapping down a credit card? I much prefer when people wear things they've made themselves. But maybe I'm biased.

(If I were ever going to change the name of my sewing blog, I would definitely call it "Maybe I'm Biased". Or how about, "Darn, Maybe I'm Biased" or "I'm Sew Biased".)

Sort of a one-off of the street blogs is Wardrobe Remix, a Flickr group started, in fact, by Tricia of the aforementioned "bits & bobbins". This is a little different because this is people taking photos of themselves and their own creations. It's not limited to one POV, one gatekeeper, and I like the fact that the folks who submit pictures of their ensembles feel good about what they've concocted that day -- regardless of whether they're a size two or a size 20.

Here's a great image from Ivana Clobber -- sewn by her own little self:



Regardless of how crafty and indie we feel, there is a real sort of unification of the craft movement happening online, and if we don't check ourselves, soon we'll all be striving to be "different... just like everyone else."

I don't mean any criticism of the street fashion blogs. I think Fashionist, especially, celebrates quirkiness and inventiveness, and you can't fault someone for having a POV on her own blog. The Sartorialist is a little different -- lots of pics of Beautiful People Wearing Clothes You Could Never Afford Even If You Started Selling Off Body Parts. But still fun to check out.

I just want to make sure that now that we've come this one step from the industrial fashion machine (half step? baby step?), we don't immediately create its replacement and then fail to look behind the quirkiness curtain and fail to see that it's still just the same old wizard back there.

PS - I actually refashioned some clothes yesterday! So look for my post on Wardrobe Refashion later.

Cloth napkins: the sordid truth.

No, just kidding. I just thought "Cloth napkins" by itself was kind of a boring name for a post.

A few months ago, I decided that I was tired of wasting paper towels. When we ate at the table, we'd grab one each, just to kind of have, and 90% of the time, it would go into the recycle bin with maybe a smudgy fingerprint on it. We use the kind that are cut into smaller sizes, so you can get a half a paper towel, but it still felt wasteful.

So next time I was at the fabric store, I found two gingham remnants (with different size checks, though you can't see it in the photo) and brought them home. Gradually, I sewed them all into cloth napkins, which I then stuck in a napkin holder and set next to the paper towels, like so:



The bin to the left is for dirty napkins, although the nice lady who cleans my house every two weeks thinks it is just a place to stash whatever weird stuff happens to be on the counter. Any time I'm doing a load of laundry (except whites), I grab the dirty napkins and toss them in.

I've found that we definitely use a lot fewer paper towels this way.

There's quite a variety of shapes and styles. At first, I ironed every hem, all the way around each napkin, but that got old really fast. Then I tried making a double-layered napkin, but that burned through the fabric too quickly (and now, using those as well as the single-layer ones, it's a level of protection I really don't need). Then I decided just to fold them hems as I sewed. Voila!

The sizes are varied, ranging from about 9" square, to the about 13" square (I like the bigger ones better). I just keep them all folded together and don't try to match up sizes or gingham square size when I pull them out to use.

Here's a top view:


Even though it's a napkin no-no, my gingham fabric is 100% polyester. Cotton would be more absorbent, to be sure, but for my casual crumb-catching use, the polyester works fine. Also, it doesn't wrinkle (like the single 100% cotton napkin I did make, which I always feel like I want to iron), and it doesn't attract lint in the dryer. Plus, it was half-price.

The husb and I are trying to take stock of our lifestyle and make little changes that we hope will add up. I recommend cloth napkins to anyone who finds themselves using a lot of paper goods and throwing them away barely-used.

Happy Tuesday!

PS - Stephanie contacted me and we really do think we want to start a "One Project From Every Book" mini-movement. So start browsing those pages! More info soon.

One project from every book...

I own quite a few craft books, and I keep buying more (kind of like the fabric and patterns situation). My new goal, which goes hand-in-hand with the concept of Wardrobe Refashion, is to create one project from every book before I go out and buy more.

*pause*

Wow, I just went downstairs to get my sewing books, and the stack was so heavy I could barely carry it. Whoops. So maybe I'll break this into multiple days. On today's roster...

Amy Butler's In Stitches "Kitty Tunnel" -- this cool lined burrito-thing that cats can crawl into and feel safe. Unless someone steps on them. Note to self: find someone with cats. Also, "Document Duvet", which is a cool fabric envelope that you can carry papers around in and everyone will think you're sophisticated. I'm thinking about making this for my editor.

Denyse Schmidt Quilts Definitely "Three Faces of Steve", this really cute stuffed cat pattern. Oh, and "A Muff Is a Muff", because when we were in New York, I hated wearing gloves but also hated having freezing hands.

Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing The Yoga Mat Tote in this book looks pretty doable. Also, the Doorstop is on my list. I even bought a ten-pound bag of dried pinto beans from Costco (yech!) in anticipation. I keep the door to my sewing room open with a boring old plastic doorstop right now, so I think it would be nice to use something handmade.

Amy Karol's Bend-the-Rules Sewing (Amy blogs at Angry Chicken.) I really like the Sugar-Sweet Curtains, and I especially like the idea of using curtains on a blank patch of windowless wall. The Simple Tote also looks worth trying, and the Charming Handbag.

(Oh, ha ha ha, can I just say, there are short-term renters in the house across the street, and I know for a fact that they were up very late (because I could hear them), and I can only imagine how thrilled they are by the SUPER loud construction going on today?)

Okay, back to business:

Celine Dupuy's Simple Sewing with a French Twist I really need to make the Bourgeois Bag Organizer, because our plastic bag situation is getting a little out of control. I even have a fabric in mind, although I think when it comes time to cut, I won't be able to use that piece. I might modify this to have an addition "shelf" for folded paper bags, which are also taking over our kitchen. I also like the Ballerina Drawstring Bag. (This book is probably the least "accessible" of all the contemporary craft books I have experience with. Some of the projects seem a little far-fetched... but maybe I'm narrow-minded.)

Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts In fact, I have already made something from this book! I made one of the little birds on the cover, and I like it so much I'm going to make a whole tree of them as a Christmas decoration, although if Winston ever sees them he might assume they're dog toys.

(See? You can't say I never use my treadmill!)

Cynthia Treen's Last-Minute Fabric Gifts I really love the idea of the Wrapping Cloths, reusable cloth wraping paper that you embellish more and more over time. (This would require saying to the gift getter, "Hey, I'm going to need that back.") And the garden play mat is pretty priceless, as are the Recycled Sweater Hats, for which I've been collecting felted sweaters (and felting a few of my own)... because apparently I want a LOT of hats, even though it never gets cold enough for them here... Hmm. Oh well.

"Tomorrow" (there's that word again!), I'll go over my quilting and apparel books...

In the meantime, what's on your project list? Anyone have any questions about any of these books? Because if I have to be a shopaholic, I might as well use my flaws for the greater good.

Baby quilt: "Adelaide's Birds"

Once again, displaying my creative use of the word "tomorrow"... here's part 2 of baby Adelaide's gifts, the quilt.

Birds!


My inspiration for this was a tablecloth pattern from The Big Book of Quick Rotary Cutter Quilts, by Pam Bono Designs. The tablecloth was just blackbirds gathered around cornstalks, but instantly I started imagining a scrappy quilt of colorful birds. Eventually I decided to set them on a tree, and the rest is history.

The birds themselves were pieced using a method that mimics foundation piecing, mixed with the traditional flying geese piecing method. In short, put the little piece of fabric on the big piece and sew a diagonal line Then unfold, cut off the excess seam allowance, and voila. You gradually combine your pieces and eventually you get a bird. Or sixteen (although four didn't make the final cut).



In this photo, you can see the details of construction. I quilted this by outlining the birds and then using variegated thread to make "bark" on the tree, and a zigzag stitch for the grass.

I played with all sorts of color combinations to get my sixteen birds. Eventually it became obvious that they turn out MUCH better if you use the lighter fabric on the wing and the darker fabric on the body. All of the rejects were light body/dark wing. They just didn't look quite right. Thus we were left with 12, which I think works better for the size of the quilt anyway.

I used 100% cotton batting, which I don't always do. For the non-quilters, cotton batting, unlike polyester, shrinks (some say 5%, though I don't believe it) when you wash it in warm water. So if you sew everything together first and wash later, there's a chance the shrinkage will look wonky. Ideally when you do this, you will get a sort of rumply-wrinkly antique effect. All of the quilts I make should stand up to warm-water washings (how could they not, when they're for babies and dogs?).

Luckily, this quilt did not disappoint. Here's a closeup after the washing:



So you can definitely see where the texture is a little different. I also used this batting in Ida Millie's pig quilt in June:



I've heard that some very hardcore quilters don't even preshrink their quilting fabric in order to amplify the shrinkage effect. I'm not that brave yet. Nor do I have any unshrunk fabric, since it all goes right into the washer when I get home from the store.

I handed this quilt over last week with the sushi dress, although why I didn't bother to get an in-focus picture of the whole thing I'll never know.

(search term: bird quilt)

And so it begins...

My 2-month commitment to Wardrobe Refashion begins tomorrow, although technically it's not like I've bought any clothes this week (well, for myself), so I'm just that much harder-core. Hard corer. Hardy.

In honor of this pledge to refurbish, remodel, refashion, or re-love (via thrifting) existing clothes, rather than dumping my money into the industrial fashion machine, here's a list of some projects I really want to get done soon:

(1) The maxi dress.


I have a few patterns that are either this length or could be cut to this length. I just want something breezy and casual to wear around the house on weekends, so when I walk Winston, my neighbors don't always have to wonder if I only own one pair of sweatshorts. (I do. But I wash them a lot.)

(2) Pajama pants that don't really look like pajama pants at first glance. Again, for walking the dog, mostly. My current choice of pajama pants right now have either poodles, cherries and lipstick kisses, or large cartoony bugs (the "bug pants" are sort of the bane of the husb's existence). It would be really nice to have, say, a nice muted rusty brown or an army green, something that doesn't immediately shout, "I JUST ROLLED OUT OF BED AND I DON'T CARE ENOUGH ABOUT FAMILY HONOR TO GET DRESSED BEFORE I WALK MY DOG."

(I should clarify that we live on a cul de sac, so it's not like I'm parading around on Ventura Boulevard in my jammies. There are just four houses-worth of neighbors who know what I sleep in.)

(3) An orange dress. Orange is the theme color of the husb's company, which is a family business in many senses of the term, but not in the mafia way. For all the social occasions that revolve around the company, I think a nice swingy knit dress made from the never-used orange king-size jersey sheet set I thrifted is highly appropriate.

(4) A coat for Winston. Here's a tip for you neophyte pet-outfitters: NEVER use fleece in a dog coat unless you live in a very humid climate. Last year I whipped up a little fleece ensemble for Winston, and when I went to take it off of him after our toasty walk around the neighborhood, it shocked him approximately 400,000 times. I had to pull it over his head, and he was just giving me this look as if to say, "WHY, Mother? WHY?"

The new dog coat shall be corduroy with a nice cotton lining and polyester batting, and it will fasten around the chest, not slip over the head.

(5) The dye-job on my brilliant orange coat. Yes, orange is the family color, but this jacket is really really super orange. So I'm going to give it a dye bath and see what we come up with. Sue says I need to be careful because homemade dyes often don't come out consistently, but my thinking is, when was the last time you saw someone wearing a mottled-colored garment and said, "What a botched home dye job!" No, you just assume they paid big moolah for it. Especially if the buttons are still bright orange.

Okay, there's a lot more, but we're going out to dinner and I need to go put makeup on. I have shamed the family enough for one day.

Sushi dress!

I've had this sushi fabric bumping around for ages, and could never think of anything to do with it. Our good friends recently had a baby girl, and I began having visions of a baby decked out in sushi print. A fortuitious discovery of lots of uncut baby patterns at a thrift store left us with this:



The pattern is Simplicity 7486, out of print, a basic little girl's dress with lots of collar options. I decided just to leave off the collar, though. There are lots of gathers at seam of the yoke and skirt, so I made a facing and used it to cover them up, so they wouldn't rub on the baby's skin if she decided to wear this without a shirt underneath:



The black detailing is all just bias tape.

The size is "1/2", which I initially took to mean "6 months", but this dress is definitely too long for a baby who isn't walking. Based on the sizes listed on the envelope, I'm thinking it'll probably fit her when she's about a year old.

My friend was thrilled and now I'm a total baby clothes addict. They're so small and quick and they eat up the stash like nobody's business! Plus baby clothes are like dog quilts... you can use fun and funny fabrics and the baby doesn't complain at all.

Tomorrow, part 2 of Adelaide's gifts: the bird quilt.

Too small vs. too ugly

I love quilting... I just love to do it in small doses. Also, our house is 1960s boxy-modern, so the down-homey look doesn't really fly (except on my clothes!). That's why the perfect solution is for me to confine my efforts to quilting for dogs and babies.

I've made Winston a few quilts, and I'm gradually working my way through all the other dogs in my life. If you check out my Flickr photos, you can find a set called "unwearable" that includes all of my dog quilts. One of my favorite things is that these quilts come with built-in design names -- the name of the dog or human baby that they're made for.

Right now I'm in a total quilting crunch because there were two babies due this month and they were BOTH born early! So I'm frantically varying between the two efforts. One is a very (very very) colorful patchwork and one is a slightly more artistic and agonizing bird motif. They'll get their own post when I finish them. Which should be soon, considering the babes are already here.

My most recent dog quilt was made for Sydney, an Australian Shepherd-slash-something (Malamute?) that belongs to one of the guys who owns the company I work for. It's a continuing theme that Sydney's owner thinks I am nuts, primarily because of the way I coddle Winston and dress him in clothes. So every once in a while, I'll put something really girly on Sydney and send her in to see her owner.


Hilarity ensues, as well as threats to my employment status.

Sydney always makes a big show out of sleeping on the wood floors, so I thought it was time she got a quilt of her own. I thought it should be kind of low-profile (i.e., long and narrow) in order not to cause hundreds of on-the-job quilt-based slip & fall incidents. One evening I set out to make the whole thing -- it was just plain patchwork, so it shouldn't have been a big deal. Out of consideration for Sydney's owner, I chose colors that I thought were less girly.

Alas, when I laid it all out, it was kind of weird looking, and I couldn't get the colors to look right. I ended up dropping three entire sets of squares -- the pineapple squares, the flowers-on-cream, and this one other that I can't remember.

When I finally had it the way I wanted it, here's what it looked like:


(Don't you love how funky quilt squares look when they're off-kilter?)

Here is the quilt sandwich all pinned together:


So it was saved from ugly (of course that's a matter of opinion, but we'll run with it). But right about then-ish is when I started to realize that it was going to be... you guessed it, too small.

I bravely finished it, which took forever because I had planned to self-bind it (which is where you just fold the backing over the front, instead of using a separate strip of fabric), and then I accidentally cut too much off the backing to self bind.

Approximately five hours after I started it, here is what my easy 2-hour quilt looked like:


And I was totally right -- it's way too small for Sydney.

Not that that even matters, because she won't go near the thing. It's the darnedest thing I ever saw. Every single other dog in the world sees a small quilt and immediately wants to sit on it. But not Sydney... I even set it down in her usual spot (thinking to myself, "Sure, it's too small, but maybe she can use it to cushion her shoulders and hips"), and she went and lay down NEXT to it, taking great pains to look as uncomfortable as possible.

So alas. Anyway, it was still a cute quilt and it looks great in the office.

And Winston likes it. Obviously.

My favorite remnant ever.

When I was primarily quilting, I spent a lot of time sorting through the remnants at Joann Fabrics. I was the bane of the cashiers' existences, because every piece had to be rung up completely by hand, no handy little barcode to scan.

I've since cut back. Usually I'll only go to the remnants if I have a specific need.

A month or two ago, I wandered by and happened to see a one-yard cut of red jersey knit in a thickish weight. I think it's the fabric I used last year to make the Robin Hood dress, and soon discovered that it laid so heavily that it accentuated every single figure flaw, which resulted in a day of sucking my stomach in so powerfully that I actually became nauseated.

Naturally I had to have MORE of this torturous fabric. No, really. I had just dug an old stretchy tube skirt (remember those from the 1990s?) out of storage and cut it off below the knee, creating a really fun and comfy house skirt. Inspired by this, I thought I might make another one, so I grabbed the red.

The other night while working on a dress for a bridal shower (which is Sunday and who knows if I'm going to make it or not), I needed something to wear during the sew-and-fit-and-sew-and-fit stage of construction. So I grabbed my red remnant and wrapped it around myself, tucking it into itself like a bath towel. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror --

-- And it was really cute! I stood there and rearranged for a couple of minutes, and found that this piece of fabric looked really cute in any of several draping options. Today I'm wearing it as a skirt, safety pinned with a little drape (I'm planning to sew, I'm not just wearing it to wear it, I swear -- I'm not that bold). I'll be darned if it isn't really cute. And the red makes it look so festive.

So that's my fashion discovery of the week. Alas, I fear that if I were to try to actually construct a garment to mimic the impromptu stylings, it would instantly be ruined.

So I'll just enjoy knowing I look freaking adorable sitting at my sewing machine.

Heck yes, I am on top of the latest trends.

This is McCalls 5328. It was pretty easy to make -- I messed up the notch collar (and forgot to interface the underside, whoops!), but you can't tell unless you know to look for a problem. The fabric is a thick black cotton, with almost a duck or light canvas feel to it, and a big weave. This fabric basically shredded itself during construction. Too much handling and I would have been left with a fringe. But I pinked the seams and that seems to be holding.

The bubble sleeves took forever, especially gathering the two layers at the shoulder (which would have been much easier if I'd used a lighter fabric). My thread kept snapping and I kept having to go back and redo.

I didn't add the button yet, because I kind of want to keep it versatile. I was thinking of hiding a hook and eye or using a frog closure.

I'm excited to wear this... it's the perfect light cover for a summer evening. But due to the cut, it must be worn with something that shows where your hips are -- anything baggier and you look like your body follows the silhouette of the jacket!

I've seen these trapeze-style jackets around. In fact, we went to a very hip little barbecue party thrown by some very hip design folks we know, and a girl there was wearing something similar to this. Being by a long shot one of the two least hip people there (the other was the husb, but don't tell him I said so), I was pleased to see her, because I knew I had this pattern at home waiting for me.

Then someone complimented her on it, and she practically blushed and said, "I got it at The Gap!" And then I felt REALLY good, because I have the same jacket as a very hip girl, only nobody else in the world has the same one as me, and everyone else at The Gap has the same one as her.

One point for our team!

Dotty dress triumph!

So I was absolutely right that sewing the stretchy knit would send me to the madhouse. Fortunately, I made it there and then back in time to finish the dress and wear it to a wedding!

This fabric was the devil's own. I used a special needle for stretchy fabrics -- it's supposed to keep the machine from skipping stitches. I don't think that was accomplished, though. I found myself going over seams two and three times (which, I discovered later, is what you're supposed to do anyway). I didn't read the directions very well, or I would have seen the part about pulling the fabric as you sew. This is what allows the seams to be stretchy. Apparently that would have prevented the "maybe all the seams are going to pop open" feeling every time I pulled the dress over my shoulders.

So, without further ado, here she is:



Yes, I look very smug, and I think I have every right to. Every step of this dress was a pain in the neck. I kept thinking, "This will be the last seam I sew," planning to give up, and then I kind of realized that even though it was pure torment, the dress was actually getting made. I remember the feeling of sewing the darted pleats (my name for them) in the bodice and all of a sudden seeing that it looked real.

The pattern was Simplicity 3678, from the Threads collection. I actually really like the dress. It was comfortable, easy to move in, and the gathers under the high waistline were perfect for camouflaging the old tummy. I know it's black, but I thought the dots made it cheery enough for a wedding. And the feeling of looking around and knowing that absolutely no one else at the party will be wearing the same thing as you is addictive.

The cons were mostly related to the fabric. Despite the rocky start, I was sewing pretty well by the end. I don't know if I just started handling it better, or what, but there did seem to be fewer skipped stitches. The fabric itself, being fully synthetic, was just not that great to wear. It was fine once the sun set, but at one point I was a little warm, and the dress didn't breathe at all. So it was a little strange feeling. Like wearing a wetsuit.

And lo, does this stuff smell! I thought it was my washing machine, but Sue told me that this stuff gives off a strange synthetic scent no matter what. No cottony fresh scent here, that's for sure. And after wearing it on the dance floor... let's just say I'm glad it was a pretty chilly evening. To have sweated in this dress would have been a stinky disaster.

Speaking of Sue, I have yet to break it to her that I wore this dress. I don't think she will approve. Especially since she lined my closet with several beautiful dress options, one of which left her nearly speechless, saying, "You look so... fashiony," in this hushed, awed voice.

Alas, I guess I am more of a stinky polka dot homemade girl than a fashiony girl.

I'll blog again soon, because I finished what is, in my opinion, an extremely cute little unlined jacket, and I need to brag about it.

Things I couldn't do if I tried.

I'm sorely tempted by Wardrobe Refashion. Basically, you pledge for 2, 4, or 6 months not to buy clothes from a retail establishment. The idea is to work with what you have (dye, alter, etc.), to make clothes for yourself (buying fabric is okay), or to buy stuff in thrift stores and either wear it or make it into something.

You're allowed to buy ready-to-wear work clothes (but my work clothes are the same as all my other clothes), undergarments, shoes, and one item of clothing per month, but you have to post on the blog and confess.

I haven't been buying much lately in general, and I am definitely in favor of cutting back on (1) cheap items of clothing that everyone else in the world owns, and (2) items of clothing made in less-than-ideal conditions, say, by the fingers of tiny Chinese children. (No, I don't know who makes my fabric, but I'll look into it eventually.)

As for #1, one of the most surprising moments of my life was when I showed up to a wedding wearing the exact same dress as another girl. And it wasn't your basic black shift, either. I actually got really embarrassed and annoyed, a much stronger reaction than I would have thought I would feel. Erica B. blogged about this and proves that pictures are worth a thousand words. (Here at katiesews, we get the 1,000 words.)

We have a family wedding coming up. I don't want that to happen again.

I'm also trying to keep an eye on trends, since fashion is all of a sudden fascinating to me after having ignored it for, oh, 30 years of my life. And in doing this, I learned that for Fall 2007, purple is the new whatever-was-the-new-thing-last-year.

That is why I bought purple fabric to make the new and improved, smaller and all-around better pineapple dress (that's what it will always be called, no matter what fabric goes into it). I labored over this new dress with the help of my dress form, Katie Jr., adjusting pleats and pinning and basting and safety-pin sewing and trying my hardest to be worthy of wearing the season's hottest color.

When the husb got home, I tried it on for him, even though there's still no zipper because Sue made me promise not to do to this dress what I did to the last one, and that means I have to wait for her to come over and show me how to sew zippers.

He said, "Maybe you should wear that to the party."

"I want to wear it to the wedding. Purple is the new hip color, and I want to wear purple."

"You could wear that to the party, though..." (wait for it) "...and get something... nice for the wedding."

Grr!

Especially because I went to the website of the company where I bought a dress last year for a different wedding, and no lie -- out of six pages of dress options, two items are pantsuits, two are knee-length, and the rest must be stapled to the poor model's underpants. They are so. so. so. short. You can't show that much thigh at an outdoors Pacific Northwest wedding. I'm pretty sure it's just not done.

I do have another pattern and another fabric that I'm going to try to whip into a garment. This one doesn't have a zipper so it doesn't depend on Sue's whims and/or schedule. It's a really stretchy, heavy knit, though, so perhaps my next blog entry will be about my nervous breakdown caused by dealing with a stretchy, heavy knit.

Speaking of refashioning, here's an old picture of Winston wearing his tough-dog sweatshirt. It does have a heart, but it's still a tough-guy shirt because, cough, whoever appliqued the heart did a really terrible job. The actual shirt is the cut-off leg of a pair of sweatpants I cropped to be capris.

Clearly, he loves it.

Fall reading lists

I know it isn't fall yet, but a girl can dream!

In other news, I made a dress the other day and you can see it here. Now I need to get working on a dress for the wedding coming up in a few weeks.

So, as usual, I'm stockpiling book upon book and looking forward to reading them all. Wait, didn't I promise not to buy any more books until I'd read the ones I had? Oh well. Recent additions:

Lottery by Pat Wood
The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by AJ Jacobs (and just the preface had me laughing, so I have high hopes)
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Blue Angel by Francine Prose (whose non-fiction book Reading Like a Writer I'm listening to on audiobook)
a bunch of Meg Cabot books

One great thing I've learned is that barnesandnoble.com stocks bargain books the way the stores do -- so while it might depress the author of The Historian, I'm quite happy that I got a hardcover copy for $6. Also, they have the same free shipping on orders over $25 that Amazon does, but bn.com is "FAST and free", which beats "SLOW and free" any day (and no, I'm not getting paid to say so).

Yesterday I placed an order that won't ship until October, because I preordered this book: The Year of Living Biblically. I just think the concept sounds so hilarious and intriguing.

Plus I have a new download credit waiting at audible.com and I haven't finished the last one, what's a girl to do? I'll have to break my "nothing under 8 hours" rule and pick out something quick.



In writing news: I have a phone call today with the Delightful Editor to talk over the direction for this revision. I discussed the changes with the husb last night and it was pretty amazing to realize that a lot of what I'm doing is a bit of info-shuffling -- the structure of the book feels essentially unchanged. There are a few discoveries being moved for greater impact, but the bones of the story are still in place. Let's all cross our fingers that she likes it!

*** Back on topic... any good reads coming up on everybody's roster? I'm always looking for new books to buy... even though I said I wouldn't buy anymore.

A very balanced weekend.

No, not in the sense that I accomplished anything other than sewing. I mean balanced between myself and Mary Lou.

My part of it is McCalls 5315, constructed with my very finest pineapple fabric. Sue, my real-life Mary Lou, hates this fabric with the fieriest passion you can imagine. I ordered it online and took it to her desk when it arrived, and she stopped speaking to me for the rest of the day. Apparently the problem is not the concept of pineapples -- it is in the execution.

Sue would like to execute the pineapples, but I used the fabric to execute a dress. So there you go.

And here it is (you would think that someone with a basket of dirty laundry in the background would not look so smug):



So this dress was notable in many ways. Sewl Sista #1 down there on the blogroll made this as well, although I didn't realize that until I hit an impasse with the instructions and Googled the pattern number (more on that at the bottom of the post).

Notability justification #1:
Zipper. My first ever. And I did a pretty respectable job. I mean, it hasn't fallen off the dress yet, so I must have done something right.

Notability justification #2:
Based on the sizing chart, I made a 16. I ended up taking in seven inches from the top of the bodice piece and five from the bottom, then about two inches on either side of the skirt, plus straightening out the ginormous hip bubble they included. Mind you, I probably should have tried to keep the bodice pull-up at 6.5", but a little not-being-able-to-breathe never hurt anybody. When there are pineapples involved, we must suffer for our art.

Alas, I'm no good at alterations and I messed up the lining in that I sewed right through it as if it were just another seam. Therefore the pinked edges of that new seam are just the weensiest bit painful. I'm thinking about getting a packet of bias binding and encasing the whole shebang.

So that was my fun. I also sewed the straps on, when they were supposed to just tie behind my neck, but I'm starting to realize that I hate the feeling of anything pulling on that part of my body.

Now, as for Mary Lou:

While I sat upstairs drinking imaginary mimosas and wondering why the air conditioner had to break yesterday for only the length of time it took for the repairman to show up this morning, at which point it whirred into action...

Mary Lou took on the sewing room. And when I say took on, I mean took apart.

No, no, forget Mary Lou, I want credit for this.

Every single piece of fabric that wasn't stashed in the door organizer got refolded and put away. Including all the pain-in-the-neck leftover double-layer blocks of fabric I get when I make wrap skirts.

I even went through my scrap box, mainly because the scrap box had turned into a scrap heap and had infected everything around it with a horrible irredeemable messiness.

I also did something that I happen to think is a pretty good idea -- I made a stack of "fun" scraps -- a lot of fabric from I-Spy quilts, anything with an interesting shape or color or just something that caught my eye -- and made a "kids' scraps" box. This way, when friends bring their toddlers over, we can hand that box to the child and off they go.

I'm really happy with my new clean sewing room. Now I've decided that I want a magnetic bulletin board -- or maybe just a long magnetic strip -- so I can hang pattern pieces, instead of dropping them on the floor and standing on them.

This is getting long. I will leave with this parting thought:

"FINISH SKIRT BACK (7) self-facing at top and long edge" does NOT mean "Finish skirt back by self-facing at top and long edge." Thankfully I figured this out before self-facing the top edge of the piece. I did, however, finish the whole thing with a nice stitch on a quarter-inch seam allowance. Fortunately, most evidence of this is gone now due to the alterations.

Commas, who knew they were so useful?

Another reason not to be seen with me in public.

This mushroom-related post over at angry chicken has made me desperate to make myself an Amy Butler skull cap that looks like a mushroom, with red fabric and white spots:


It reminds me of the many beautiful mushrooms we saw last year in Ireland, as well as this helpful sign on the streets of Kinsale:


I'll have to do all of this behind Mary Lou's back.

Speaking of uncontrolled shopping urges, Joann Fabric is having a $1.99 sale on McCall's patterns. Suffice it to say I was there for like two hours. I did actually go through and cull them down after pulling like twenty. I think I ended up with twelve or so. One is currently being turned into a dress featuring a pineapple print that is sure to disappoint everyone with fashion sense.

The best thing about sewing clothes (as opposed to quilts) is how much fabric you use up, and how quickly. It might take four quilts to use up a yard and a half of something that is instantly decimated (uh... transformed) when devoted to clothing.

I went out of my comfort zone yesterday and bought some fabrics I'm not used to working with. I actually got a few prints that are quite cute and Mary Lou-worthy, but I balanced them out with five yards of an eye-bleeding black with white dots.

Speaking of clothing, I hear it's quite en vogue to show up to the office not only clothed but clean, so I should probably go make that happen for myself.

Sharing one's feelings through fabric.

One of the things I'm obsessed with sewing lately is coasters. The "why" of it is easy -- they take about ten minutes each, meaning that I can start and finish a project in the span of an hour. I've made poker-themed coasters for the husb, I've made Caribbean-style coasters for the in-laws, and I've made admittedly countrified coasters for the downstairs family room:


But that wasn't enough for me. Sure, I liked my coasters, but not everyone needs or wants six matching fabric coasters. And as my craft goal is to slowly infiltrate the whole world with my creations, I decided to take a practical approach and find a way to make a coaster that serves its owner on more than one level.

The result is called "Moody Coasters", and I'm very proud of them. Basically, instead of having one patterned side and one plain-colored backing, they have two patterns. One is cheerful, or some object or image that makes a person think happy thoughts. The other side is bad and sad and evokes feelings of anger and rage (okay, maybe not that extreme).

This way, when you're in a good mood, you show the world the happy side of your coaster, and people who drop by your desk/kitchen table/wherever you're drinking will know that you're having a good day and it's safe to tell you the TPS reports will be late. But show your bad side and those same folks will run away in terror.

Here's an example... these are the first ones I ever sewed, and incidentally are up for grabs. If you want them, just ask, and I'll drop them in the mail.



Since sewing those, I've started personalizing the coasters for the people I work with. My goal is that everyone remotely connected to the dog show will have his or her own moody coaster with images that enrage or delight on a very personalized level. So far I've done Snoopy on a surfboard (good) vs. a tractor (bad), and butterflies (good) vs. ballerina fairies (bad).

I'll post a coaster how-to very soon. Happy Sunday!