Blog Reorganization

Hello all!


I think I've finally got the old blog decluttered a bit. I haven't thrown anything out - just tucked it away where it can't be seen. Sort of like how I do my house.


What's changed:


There is now a bar of little tabs under my banner. Most of the long lists in the sidebar (tutorials, patterns, someday projects, resources) are now compartmentalized there. 

There is a new page describing the patterns for sale. This is to hopefully help potential buyers decide if the patterns are something they want or not. It also provides friendly advice on how to minimize download issues. All the old icons in the sidebar are still there (for now) but they all link to this page. I should probably put the prices there too, but I forgot. Will do that soon.


There is a new page of FAQs - these are questions people have actually asked me; I didn't make them up myself. Really!


There is a new page all about narcissistic old me. All old stuff, just a new rostrum.


I've done away with my old corpse-grey background. I liked its corpse-greyness because no one else in blogland was crazy enough to pick a color like that. But it felt heavy after two++ years and I also know people were going blind trying to read my text against it. So it's gone. It's all boring austere white now. 


I am still working on a way to transfer all those Featured buttons onto a new page so I can hide them away under one of those tabs. And then I hesitated because we'll lose some nice visible links back to some great sites. Why have buttons if they're hidden, right? So maybe I'll leave them for now. 

Pants!!!!

Quite excited - I've been drafting pants! And they work! So excited that had to tell somebody, which usually means mum, but it's 6 am in Singapore now and I'm sure she wouldn't appreciate a phone call just to talk about pants.

I'm working on a project that requires properly-fitting pants. Will share later. I don't think I've actually drafted pants before, not that I remember anyway - just upper bodices and dresses. Pants are about one thousand times easier. Who would've thought? I certainly never knew, because I've always just traced around pants that fit well for quick working patterns. It's imprecise, but it works, especially for kids who wear everything loose anyway.

Here are some photos of Muslin 2, which turned out to be a good enough working model to complete for real wear. Muslin 1 is under reconstruction to be turned into another wearable sample - hurrah for having left huge seam allowances to play around with!

The color of this pair is actually a very pretty dark rose with a paler rose waistband, but it's a lousy photo, so it looks like red-and-fuschia, which it isn't. 

Do you like the waistband? I don't know that I will ever use regular elastic gathered in a casing again. This is so much more streamlined, and easier to make. 

Unrelated, I've been attempting to organize the blog, as some of you might have noticed. It will take some time, since the old blog is even untidier than my old sewing room was. So thank you for your patience while I work on it. Hopefully when it's done, everything will be easier to find. 

And finally, I am working on several projects now, but haven't been in the mood to blog much. Nothing wrong - just decided that the blog itself was so untidy that I couldn't look at it without feeling quite ill. Since organizing my sewing space, everything I look at now is vile and messy and horrible and needs to be cleaned up and ordered. Once a person slips into this kind of a mood, it can get dangerous.

But check back soon for lots of tutorials!

Cupcakes

Here's a simple craft the girls and I did over the weekend with polystyrene balls, paper cups, acrylic paint and glitter. We did this especially for Jenna, who adores cupcakes.

First we cut the polystyrene balls in half. Then we cut the papercups down to size - so the polystyrene hemispheres could sit on the cups and not fall in.

Then we painted the hemispheres with acrylic paint.

We also painted the cups. Some of us used markers.

When they were dry, we glued the hemispheres to the cups.

Then we painted a layer of varnish/Mod Podge over the top and added glitter.

Quite a lot of glitter, actually.

And some "frosting" squiggles with puffy paint.

And let it dry overnight.

Yes, it was a little messy. But those are the kinds of crafts we like- and besides, you should see us when we get out our chalk pastels. Awful. Even I regret suggesting it.

Clearing Out 2008's Leftovers

Just thought I'd check in today to say hello. In the wake of my sewing room cleanup, I am making myself finish projects started back in 2008. Eeek. Very shameful. To bring some edge back to what is otherwise several seasons out of date, I am er.... embroidering.

Top-stitching + outdated crafts = a bit of hope.

Owl Lunch Bucket

This is Part II of the birthday gift for a good friend of mine. After decades of loving cows (we called her Walking Milk), she recently expanded her scope of adoration to include owls and hedgehogs. Very fashionable choices, yes, but what do I call her now that she worships three animals?

But it's her birthday today, and I thought I would make her something owlish. And practical, to make up for the ridiculous Part I of her gift.

So a lunch bucket.

with a drawstring opening

that can be tucked inside


or folded back down outside.


The strap doesn't have to stay up all the time


and unbuttons into a regular fabric bucket.


Very much like the old craft bag,
except it's normal-cylindrical and smaller.

I lined it with oilcloth so it can be wiped clean if it gets lunchy. This is the first time I've cut into my roll of oilcoth. I'd read all kinds of horrible things about how unusual it is to work with, and how one needed special tricks etc, so I attacked it with a healthy amount of skepticism. Found nothing weird about it at all. Sewed like paper, didn't stick in the slightest to the presser foot, behaved quite nicely, even around circular edges. What gives? Became suspicious that maybe mine wasn't real oilcloth if it didn't give me hell.

So that wasn't hard. The hard part was finding owl fabric. Owls are everywhere, but they're print, and print is hard for me. Spent more time tracking down unhideous (there are a LOT of them out there) owl fabrics than actually making the bag. This one, conveniently out of stock everywhere except ebay and etsy, is Kaufman's Urban Zoologie, in case you want to know.

I finished it today, and it's her birthday today (Singapore time). And she lives 14 postal days away. Oops.

Ma Bunny

Remember this book?

Now see this:

This is Momma Bunny, but I like to call her Ma Bunny. She is not the most beautiful thing I have made. But she made me laugh. I especially like how her ears remind me of Dilbert's pointy-haired boss. She is Part I of a birthday present for a very good friend. I gave this friend the Dumb Bunnies book when we were in our twenties. We loved the parody and the satire and the general daftness of the story (which, incidentally, I think is lost on children). She keeps me young, this friend. And on her birthday, I thought she'd like me to do the same.

Tune in tomorrow for Part II of the birthday present - not so daft as Part I.

Serpentine Rainbow

Now that Emily has her own Sewing Tub, she has been quite motivated to sew. Last week she asked for felt with which to make her own small felt board, so we stocked up with the 29c craft felt sheets at Michaels. This week she wanted to sew something, so we decided to use up as much of her stash as possible, to make this simple snake (which I thought could also be a good draught-stopper if placed close to the bottom of a door).

It is a large item, which to a child, translates to A Substantial And Challenging Project. It mostly involved straight line stitching to connect the bands of the body, and some sewing-around-curves for the head. In attaching the head and tongue, Emily got to learn about laying sticky-out-things inside out and pointing backwards, so that they stuck out the right way when the whole thing was turned right side out.

Because she's watched me make so many softies, she was already familiar with the concept of leaving an opening for turning out and stuffing. But it was a new thing for her to sew that opening shut! She was given a threaded and knotted needle, shown how to pinch shut the opening and do the whip stitch (we'll teach her the ladder stitch when she is older). She did really well, and I'm thinking that we can now make any number of 2D projects that involve whip-stitching and stuffing. Preferably not with pillable, synthetic felt, though!

Jenna, who, if you remember, loves all things rainbow, immediately wanted to make her own rainbow snake. Fortunately, it was dangerously close to dinnertime, so we didn't. But since I owed her her own DIY rainbow project, we made cupcakes (for eating) yesterday and used 6 different frostings.

This (the snake, not the cupcakes) took us about an hour and a half to make, from the time we started cutting the pieces out to the time Emily stitched the opening shut. Emily used the sewing machine for everything except that opening. The eyes were glued on. For those interested, here and here are archive links to two other sewing projects to do with young kids.