Sardines!

Hello!

Apparently, it's been a year since I last posted. And what a year it's been! Lots of changes, for one. Our eldest graduated from college in the spring. We sent the youngest off to that same college this fall. The lead-up to both transitions included last concerts, last sports meets, graduation ceremonies and parties and other things that were simultaneously celebrations and mini-endings. And now that the hours in my day no longer really revolve around precision-timed meals and after-school events, I'm finding myself in a transition of my own. It's good, but it's new and slightly weird, and I know it'll have to grow on me. Or maybe it's the other way around.

You're an empty-nester now, people have informed me. What will you do with all your extra time?

Well, I'm surprised to discover that I don't actually seem to have a whole lot of extra time. I mean, the day finds directions to go, so I follow it, and it leads me to supermarkets and the cats and appointments with friends, and side craft projects and who knows what else. What's more noticeably different, though, is the purpose and the structure in my day. I miss the energy in the house with all the kids in it. And I miss the two girls who are away at school - the freshman who left in a flurry of excitement and uncertainty, as is typical of first-years, and the sophomore who moved out a little more incrementally, having already performed the dramatic exit the year before.

In anticipation of this big shift, I'd started teaching some workshops at the Minneapolis Textile Center a couple of years ago. They were a bit of an experiment to see what I thought of returning to the classroom, as it were. Turns out I loved it, and it somehow felt like the most natural thing in the world to be teaching anything again, really, so this winter I'm going to be doing more of that. In the works are more sleeve drafting, and a new bag-making workshop. I'm also hoping to teach a couple of more entry-level soft toy and general sewing classes with community ed. 

I've also organized my instagram accounts and started a new one that's for all my crafty, sewingy things. Come follow me here @ikatbaglab! There's a QR code thingy below and also in my sidebar. The feed itself is laughingly sparse at the moment, but it will fill up in time as I get my sea legs.

Speaking of sea legs, I made these sardines. The internet has informed me that since sardines grow to a length of only about about 6", these - at 10" - are technically pilchards. Same fish, but distinctly named for size. Just between you and me, I like sardines, so oversize or not, let's continue to call them that, OK?

As you can tell from all those prints and hues, I wasn't going for realism, but I suppose their colorfulness was what I subconsciously needed - 

that, and the mass producing which, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, is the sort of obsession that keeps me grounded in that same way that one feels most sane when one is doing something quite silly and frivolous.

So: manic bulk sewing as an antidote to missing one's brood, along with the patterns and familiarities of one's old life. I am happy to say that it helped. I filled the sardines with lavender, so they smell wonderful, which also helped.

These sardines are inspired by a very similar souvenir I bought on an international summer trip, and I didn't initially intend to make bunches more, but then the summer ended and college beckoned and, well . . . let's just say it was cheaper than therapy. I've been giving some away to friends and have also put some in the shop, but here also is a tutorial to make them. They are excellent stash busters and - if the response from the recipients is any indication - make great gifts. 

First, download the template here:

And remember that, like all my other downloads, the templates do not include seam allowances, so you'll need to add 1/4" around all the edges when you lay them out on fabric.

Step 1

Cut apart the head and body of the fish, so that you're working with two separate template pieces.

Step 1.5

Optional, but I thought I'd include this additional step of creating a plastic template for two reasons:

One, it allows you to print a very neat black circle for the eye with a foam brush, rather than trying to hand-paint it.  I cut my plastic head template without SA (i.e. it's exactly the same size as the paper one), but you can add SA to yours if you like.

Two, if you happen to be mass-producing these for Christmas gifts, say, this will speed up the process greatly - both in positioning the eyes on multiple fish heads, and in neatly printing them all with clean edges.

The eye highlights still need to be hand-painted in, 

but they are literally white blobs and dots, and don't need to be precise. I used acrylic paint for both the black and white details.

I should mention that you can paint the eyes at any step during the construction of the fish, even after the whole thing has been sewn up and stuffed. However, for mass production, this - before the head is attached to the body - is the most efficient point in the sequence to do it, 

Fish heads with painted eyes drying

so let's go ahead and call this Step 2 and insert it right here:

Step 2

Paint the eyes.

This is where we begin the assembly. You will need (remember to add SA around the templates!):

• Two x fish heads in white cotton
• Two x fish bodies in printed cotton
• One 4" x 1/4" ribbon
• Some polyfill stuffing and (if you want this to be a scented thing) dried lavender flowers.

Step 3

With right sides (RS) together, align the straight edges of one fish head and one fish body and sew them together. Press the seam open and then press both SAs to the head side. On the RS, edge-stitch on the fish head along the seam line and through the SAs. This is one completed fish piece.

Step 4

Fold the ribbon in half to make a 2"-long loop. Place its ends together on the tip of the fish head and sew them to the SA of the head. You're functionally basting the loop in place, but using small stitches because the attachment point is so small.

You'll sew the loop to only one of the head pieces; the other is left as is. Here is what the pair of fish heads would look like if I were mass producing; again, it is most efficient to attach all the loops to all the relevant heads before adding any bodies.

Step 5

Repeat Step 3 with the second head and body piece to make a second fish piece. This one will have no ribbon loop attached. Place the RS of the two completed fish pieces together, with the ribbon loop sandwiched between them, and align all sides. Sew around the entire outline except for the bottom edge of the tail fin.

Step 6

Snip or notch the SA along the concave sections of the seam (where the tail joins the body, especially) to allow the seams to lie flat. Turn the entire fish RS out through the tail fin opening. Press all seams flat.

This is my pile of flat fish, after pressing.

Step 7

Fill the fish. 

The photo below shows the general Big Picture plan of what happens next, including the approximate ratio of lavender to polyfill that I used, but go ahead and adjust that proportion to your liking. I decided not to fill the entire thing with lavender up to its tail so that I didn't have to deal with lavender bits spilling out later when sewing shut the tail opening.

The tail itself is like a natural funnel,

but if you want to be extra like me, or if you're mass-producing (i.e. also like me), a paper funnel 

attached to a tube will speed up the process of getting the lavender flowers all the way down into the fish head.

Fill up the tail fin with stuffing. This helps keep the lavender in place so that when you are sewing the tail, nothing spills out.

Step 8 

Using a 1/2" SA (not 1/4"; this will become clear later), sew the tail opening shut.

Step 9

Use pinking shears to trim off about 1/4" (this is why we left a 1/2"SA in the previous step). I used my scalloped-edge shears but regular zigzag edge ones are great, too.

Here is the finished, stuffed sardine.

I took a ridiculous number of photos of the whole lot, in various configurations, because they looked so earnest and silly together.

Come visit the shop to stock up early for the holidays! And check back here soon for more updates, including some very backlogged posts that have been sitting on my dashboard forever. I am determined that they see the light of day very soon!

Two Workshops!

Earlier this summer, I taught my second Menagerie workshop at the Minneapolis Textile Center. 

We had a full class and it was loads of fun. I'd done most of the conceptualizing while preparing for that inaugural workshop in November, along with ironing out kinks in the flow of activity, all of which are par for the course when conducting any lesson thing for the first time. There were twice as many participants this time around, but even though my actual prep work was doubled, it still felt more relaxed, with far fewer unknowns, so it was an overall wonderful experience. 

I also found myself with some time before the participants arrived to take pictures!

Here are the workstations.

The outcome of the workshop was to make a sampler animal, in the process practicing (or learning for the first time) various techniques for adding surface details with applique and quilting-stitching, and making and attaching different appendages within seams. 

It doesn't look like anything you'll have seen in nature thus far, but that's not to say an animal this multicolored might not exist in some far-flung corner of the world we've never had a chance yet to visit, right? My reasoning behind the colors (14!) was purely visibility and clarity - differently-colored parts showed up less ambiguously in photos, and were easier to visualize spatially in the various reference animals set around the room.

Everything that needed to be cut out, from templates to fabric pieces, was done so ahead of time, to allow the participants to focus on simply sewing during our time together. This translated to a lot of physical labor on my part in the weeks leading up to the workshop day, but it was worth it to be able to use our workshop hours truly efficiently.

There were lots of other notions spread out among the participants, including the long funnels for directing pellets down into small spaces. I designed this a long time ago for doll legs and called it The Contraption - the ones in the photo are sturdier, less improvisational versions of that prototype, and the participants each got to take one home. 

This was my table up front. I love the giant monitor that projected a view of my workspace! That said, even with this nifty bit of technology, I spent very little time actually up front teaching and instead wandered around the room doing personalized demos because everyone was mostly progressing at their own pace and needed help at very different times. There were aspects of this experience that reminded me of labwork when I was a school teacher - very much more a facilitative kind of instruction than lecture-and-keep-up.

Emily came to help me set up in the beginning, so if the room displays look put-together and intentional, it was to her credit. And it was also for this reason that I had that extra bit of time to take these photos before the class began.

We brought a large number of my prototypes from home - some are the familiar faces of the first Menagerie pattern, 

and others are newcomers who will be in the sequel.

We also brought the Spring Birds collection - the birds, the kits and the pattern-in-print.

Sharing the table were the classroom kits of the Rabbit, Ladybug, Grey Cat and Calico Cat. After completing their sampler animal in class, the participants got to pick one of these four kits to assemble on their own during the remaining time.

Speaking of, they were kind enough to allow me to take and share photos, so here are some shots of the class hard at work. 

In this shot, someone's sampler animal was really close to being finished!

When I've made the sampler animal myself at home and timed the process, it usually takes me about an hour and a half; perhaps two if I am also pausing to photodocument each step. However, most of the participants ended up using the entire workshop time to work on just their sampler animal, and took their choice kits home to work on. In class, there are so many factors that stretch that time out to the full four hours - or longer. Obviously, the learning process is a huge one - it takes time to read and digest instructions, for example. Temperamental sewing machines were another. Almost every participant had an issue with their machine handling fleece, although I'm happy to report that most were resolved by giving them a fleece needle. My old Pfaff has been able to sew through multiple layers of fleece with standard needles for years without issue, so it took me a while to figure out that an ineffectual needle might possibly be the problem for the frustration being experienced in class that day. Sometimes the simplest solution is the truly the best one! 

I thought I'd mention this here in case some of you have had the same issue with fleece - if so, try a fleece needle, or just any stretch or even knit ball-point needle. You wouldn't imagine that fleece is in the same category of fabric as a T-shirt, but it strangely is. It's only recently that I've begun to notice specific Fleece Needles in stores - they're essentially stretch needles, as I'd mentioned earlier, but labeled for fleece. Maybe enough people have had difficulty with this that Schmetz has finally decided to market these specially. 

I would love to run a third Menagerie workshop next summer if there is interest. If you're in the cities and missed the earlier two, look out for announcements here and on Instagram (I'm trying to post more regularly there!) In the meantime, let me tell you about my second workshop that's coming up in October. It's all about sleeves and armholes and how to put them together so they fit well and are comfortable.

You guys know I am obsessed with deconstructing drafting and trying to demystify it for regular folks who haven't done fashion courses or interned on Saville Row or wherever. But to teach a full drafting course just isn't feasible - it takes too long, and I honestly believe a person would need a lot more experience in real-world drafting for a very wide range of bodies to bring what is truly helpful to teach such a class. I have drafted for many years, yes, but mostly for people in my family, and sporadically, at that. 

Sleeves, however - one particular, niche aspect of drafting - I thought I might realistically attempt. I've deconstructed the theory to some degree in this now-somewhat-well-referenced post, and I've inferred from the response that the information has filled a gap in the content currently out there. I'd like to take that theory a step further in this workshop with a hands-on portion in which we'd measure a partner and draft a sleeve from those measurements. The plan is not to use the usual drafting textbook rubrics but to freehand the drafts, the way I've always done them, using sleeve theory principles together with customized preferences. It will be rule-breaking and dangerous! Haha! No, not really. My goal is liberation from the rigid Hows by providing some Whys, and if I can reduce someone's frustration in the drafting experience, I will have been successful.

Anyway, if you're in the cities and are interested in drafting more comfortable sleeves, come join us! Half of the time will be a lecture-of sorts, but I will bring lots of props for show-and-tell, like multiples of this crazy vest that I'm fine-tuning. 

Because there was no one here to accurately measure me, I had to use as my starting point my most recent sloper, which was still 13 years old and had to be heavily modified to fit current-me. The plan is to graft on differently-drafted sleeves to demo various effects: high sleeve cap, low sleeve cap, large armholes, small armholes, etc. I foresee myself repeatedly zipping and unzipping myself in and out these throughout the afternoon. It will probably be chaos. The participants will probably think I'm insane. So be it. It won't be the first time someone thought that. At the end of our time together, I hope to make them feel comfortable with their own bodies, so they don't so much focus on all the ways they depart from the commercial standard as leave feeling that there's a sleeve cap for each gloriously unique arm that's in my classroom that day. 

Register here. 

Some quick details:

Date: Thursday, October 16th 2025

Time: 2- 4 pm

Place: Minneapolis Textile Center

I hope to see you there!