What Should I Pin?

Something fun - I am one of the contributing pinners for Family Fun Magazine's board Blogger Ideas We Love.

What an honor! Very thrilled, needless to say. I get to pin stuff from ikatbag to share with over 10 000 followers! When I sat down at the computer today to start pinning, I suddenly realized I didn't know what to pin since I never pin my own stuff! So I started out with some of my more exciting cardboard projects (you can see them in the picture above) because these are the ones that do things - they move, or light up, for instance - or which have resulted in endless hours of play in our home. I'd also like to include some of the simpler projects - the ones that are possibly less daunting on first sight, maybe can be finished within a day, the kinds most people would themselves pin for a rainy day. The trouble is that it's hard to remember all my projects, let alone choose from among them when half my blog is a record of my silly sewing adventures plus random rants about losing favorite CDs and falling apart in my role as people's mother. 

Will you help? Which ikatbag projects should I pin to this board? Are there any projects from this blog you've pinned yourself that you think other like-minded crafty family folks might find interesting and want to take on with their kids?  Given that this is Family Fun Mag's audience, it probably wouldn't make a lot of sense to pin, say, drafting tutorials, or any technical sewing post, but I imagine that anything cardboard, or children-doable is fair game. Incidentally, my assignment is to only pin projects from my own blog (for now), much as I'd like to pin a whole bunch of other people's awesome stuff as well. Thanks in advance, friends!  

Bunny

Kate's birthday's coming up. She wants a party. I haven't planned it. Am I panicking? Nope. I'm still in post-Singapore DullLand - you know, where everything is slow and I react slowly (if at all) to craft stimuli and stare slowly out the window at the snow in disbelief. But - and this is how I know my body has been hijacked by aliens - I'm doing all these handmade gifts for her, when I swore never to do handmade gifts for my children because I go insane trying to finish them in time for their birthdays or Christmas.

So Exhibit A: Handmade birthday gift #1 = that fake corset dress (photos later - am feeling slow now).

Here's Handmade birthday gift #2: Bunny.

Kate has been asking me for a bunny for some time.

"You already have a bunny." I say. "Remember? It's Baby Bunny (that's its name). She was mine (a student gave her to me years ago) and I gave her to you."

"Yes, but she's flat. I want a puffy bunny."

"What do you mean - 'flat'?"

Kate takes Baby Bunny and lets her flop on her belly, all four limbs splayed out. "See?" she explains. "Flat."

"So what's 'puffy'?"

Kate vigorously makes scrunchy fingers in the air and declares, "Like... not flat!"

How succinct. 

Eventually, through an extremely thorough interrogation process, I managed to extract enough information to understand what she wanted. Flat animals, apparently, are those designed to lie down on their tummies a la bearskin rugs or stand on four feet e.g. dogs. Puffy animals are designed to sit up on their bottoms e.g. teddy bears. Who knew?

So Kate wants a Puffy Bunny that sits on its bottom. Someday I want to make the kids a squid but for now, I can do bunnies. Stuffed toys are easy to draft up because there are principles for toy-making, just like there are principles for bag-making and clothes-making. Takes maybe an hour to cut everything out and sew a muslin to test the roundness and relative proportions of parts and so on. Then there is tweaking. The tweaking takes some time because every tweak affects some other part and needs another muslin to test out. And then the muslins must be stuffed and tested for balance. This is an interesting aspect that's absent from clothes-making or bag-making: Does The Stuffed Animal Sit/Stand Properly Or Does Its Gargantuan Head Cause It To Fall Flat On Its Face? Like what happened when I made Chicken long ago and the first muslin did a face plant on my work table. It took a couple more versions before it sat squatly and stably.

But back to Puffy Bunny. Here she is. 

She's about 16"? 18"? long, stretched out from the top of her head to her tippy toes. She's made of some weird woolly-feeling stretchy fabric that I bought from JoAnn Fabrics years ago to make a lamb (never happened). It might've been from the Fake Fur aisle or the Minky Fabric aisle - I don't remember now. It's so woolly that it required very little stuffing to make it puffy.

Here are some more photos of the Important Bunny Bits - ear lining

bobtail

and footpads. 

And her round head, of course.

Kate hasn't seen her yet - a miracle. Let's hope she doesn't read this blog before her birthday. 

How To Burn Out

Have a to-do list like this:

1. Cook all meals from scratch and never eat out, buy in or use a boxed dinner.
2. Sew all the kids' clothes on account of "not being able to find store-bought that fit".
3. Sign the kids up for swimming, gymnastics, art class, ballet, jazz-tap, soccer, piano/violin/both, volleyball, karate/aikido and drama. Personally drive them to and from all of those classes. While also doing 1.
4. Publish a book while doing 1 and 2.
5. Design patterns for sale while doing 4, so as to pay for 3.
6. Exercise at least 4 days a week.
7. Do home tuition/remediation lessons with the kids (what we do in Singapore to supplement actual school lessons, but which I never did as a kid and till this day refuse to do with my kids).
8. Organize and/or accept playdates with each of the kids' 100 friends on regular rotation. Bake cookies and other healthful snacks while hosting playdates.

Alternatively, here's how to not burn out, at the expense of being heinously unproductive as far as "involved parenting" goes: have a to-do list like the one that often drifts in and out of my head:

1. Employ elves to cook meals and clean the house. Eat out on the days when the elves are out sick. 
2. Give the kids sacks to wear when they complain about store-bought clothes. Say: "Sacks are one-size fits all!" Invest in fabric markers so kids can personalize their own sack-outfits. Screen results before kids actually wear them out, to eliminate incorrect spelling, unwittingly-coined rude words and (worse) poor color choices. Personally buy and wear store-bought clothes yourself, even if they don't fit at all, just to set a good example and avoid being accused of hypocrisy.
3. Sign the kids up for cooking lessons and driving class. Then enlist them to help with all the chores that normally consume all your time by slotting them into the elves' roster (see 1) when the elves are on sick leave. Pay them (the kids, not the elves - elves usually choose telepathy over technology when communicating) in cellphone minutes, which you can also take advantage of by texting them links to recipe websites containing dishes you like to eat.
4. Only buy books that are about world history, politics, outer space conquest or improving personal financing, knowing that they aren't written by anyone you know who has a creative blog, thereby avoiding comparing and feeling inferior to people who write creative blogs and who have published books on crocheting dinosaur-shaped oven mitts.
5. Hit "delete" when people email you demanding free patterns and tutorials.
6. Attach weights to your feet (or let the smaller children cling to your leg) and walk around and up and down the house carrying large loads of laundry for natural and incidental calorie-burning. Punch fist in air at regular intervals for sense of solidarity with other equally-resourceful home-exercising SAHMs everywhere. Feel extra encouraged that fist-punching counts for extra calorie-burning because of action against gravity. 
7. Believe that kids learn best by playing. Then give them an old electric appliance (minus CR tube because dangerous) and tell them to extract all the resistors and stick them on a card in order of increasing value. Offer prizes to everyone who collects resistors whose total value (in parallel for older kids; in series for younger kids) exceeds 50 megaohms.
8. Tell the kids that school counts as one big playdate; snacks optional.

Of course my real to-do list looks nothing at all like either of those. It only has stuff like, "Buy cereal", "Wash K's snow pants" or "Replenish toilet paper in upstairs toilet if you know what's good for you". Charmingly repetitive.  

Boy, is it hard to come back to real life after a vacation. I'm getting there. Real life, I mean. 

A Grand Way To Procrastinate

What to do on a Saturday night in winter in Minnesota:

A   Sew fake corset
B   Write tutorial on sewing fake corset
C   Take photos for tutorial on sewing fake corset
D   Ditch A,B and C and go solo to rock concert and watch Kevin Max sing live.

Wow, that's a tough choice. Gimme a minute to think... um...

Duh.

Although, I'd forgotten how loud these things can be in an enclosed auditorium. Forgot to bring earplugs. Luckily had my ipod with me so shoved the earbuds in my ears (music off) and strategically positioned my hair to hide the wires so nobody would see and (correctly) guess how uncool and old and feeble I was.

Today: back to domesticity. Sniff.

I Am Sewing A Fake Corset

It's a princess dress for Kate's birthday, in cotton candy colors. Here's my question: should I add those Tiny White Buttons for grommets? I think I should, but I'm lazy and want to leave the bodice as is.

It's hard to resume sewing after a break away from it. But I know that if I don't sew something, I'll take up, I dunno, knitting or something, just for something for my fingers to do and maybe never return to sewing. And now that Kate is turning five, I'm panicking at the thought that my children's Dressing Up Days might well be numbered. So I'd better sew costumes while they still want them. Especially when I have so much costume fabric in my stash that needs to be used.

This is a short-sleeved non-fleece costume, which is something I haven't made in a while. Usually, every costume is constructed like insulation for arctic temperatures because it's for Halloween and Halloween here is arctic. So this was a nice change. And to make it even more exciting, I set some rules for myself: 

• Must use only fabric in my stash
• but can go out to buy zipper
• and, while at the fabric store, can buy more yardage if it means not compromising on twirl factor (e.g. circular skirt rather than gathered skirt).
• Cannot be scratchy on the inside, especially since it isn't lined with fleece.
• Must finish in three days.

Kate is allowed to see it, of course. I've long given up with the Secret Gifts concept in our house. I teased her a bit, when I caught her spying on me. 

I asked her, "Hey, Kate, I like this dress. I think I'll wear it when I'm done making it."

"You can't!" Said Kate.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because it's too small for you! It's for me and I'm four years old and you're, like, seventeen!"

Bless you, Kate. Just for that, I will finish this dress in three days and not procrastinate by knitting or something. 

Just for the sake of sharing, here's the inside of that front bodice piece:

It's lined with jersey, which isn't scratchy (hurrah).

Here are the back pieces. The left piece is flipped to show what it's supposed to look like. The right piece has a row of pins, one of which stabbed me viciously in the foot while I was photographing the front pieces. 

 

Incidentally, I pin stuff along the stitching line, not at right angles to it. Someone has asked me this before and up to that point, I never thought about pin direction. This was how I was taught - pin parallel to the seam allowances, preferably IN the seam allowances (so the holes don't show on the garment) and never sew over pins. There are times -like in this garment - when I pin exactly on the stitching line itself, and pull out each pin as the presser foot approaches it. Of course, I was also taught to hand-baste everything, even paper patterns to fabric, but it's hard to be so assiduous all the time (or at all).

Later (like, not tomorrow or even next week), I'll show you some of the drafts for this dress. The sleeve, especially, is interesting. Provided it works, I mean. It's a semi-raglan puff (ugh) but with horizontal pleats. So it's a draped cut-in sleeve that's puff. I know, it sounds just awful. The draft looks like a Christmas tree. 

Confections

Ignore Melissa and Doug box- it's just a photo prop. 

The kids have been watching The Great British Bakeoff recently. My lovely friend sent me recordings of the first season and we have become instant fans, albeit several years late. Particularly Jenna, who loves all things baking, and watches the episodes over and over again and, before she watched the finale, took polls among family members on whether Ed, Miranda or Ruth should win. Then all three girls held their own bakeoffs at home with all our felt food. I got to be the judge and walk around their tables, looking imperious and commenting on their novel flavor combinations (green beans and strawberries, anyone?) and congratulating them on avoiding the fatal "soggy bottoms" in their pastries and cakes.

Our felt food is so loved that it has been played with to death in our home. All kids should have felt food, I think. And wooden food, too. Unfortunately, wooden food takes skill to assemble and paint. Felt food, on the other hand, can be made by anyone who can cut circles out of fabric. Including exhausted and jetlagged anyones. And so, now that I'm back home and needing a low-intensity sewing project to ease myself back under the presser foot, I made some felt confections for Kate's upcoming school fundraiser.

First, some doughnuts.

Very similar to the old ones I made for the Donut-Shop-On-The-Go, but with revised designs and some glass beads. These were packed in a bakery box,

all ready to go.


Next, some cookies.


With frosting removable or permanent.


I don't remember ever sharing my recipe, so here it is now:

Two felt circles, RS together, layered on batting. I used two layers of low-loft.

Obviously, if you are making permanent frosting like this:

you'll want to applique the frosting on the RS of one of those felt circles BEFORE sewing both felt circles together.

Sew all around through all the layers, leaving an opening.

Peel back the top layer and baste the bottom layer onto the batting, within its SA. This is just to hold the batting to the felt when hand-stitching the opening closed later.

Trim the batting.


Turn RS out.


Ladder-stitch the opening shut.


Make a lot.


Cut out frosting shapes from felt.


Embellish.

Iron fusible fleece on the underside to cover up all the knots and thread.

Make a lot.

Add a piping bag.


Here's how.

Cut a quadrant of a circle from white fabric. And a small quadrant of a circle from fusible interfacing.

Iron interfacing to the corner of the WS of the fabric.

Fold fabric in half, WS out, so the straight edges line up and the shape is an eighth of a circle. Sew the long edges together and serge/zigzag.

Finish the curved edge of the resulting cone - I made a rolled hem.

Knot a double-length of thread and sew basting stitches partway down from the opening, all around the cone.

Stuff with polyfill

and pull thread to gather the basting stitches into a tight neck. Wrap thread around neck a couple of times, poke your needle through the neck and then secure with a knot.

Combine cookies, frosting and piping bag. Invite children to give comments. Panic when children run off with cookies, deaf to mother's feeble cries of, "But they're not for you. They're for the fundraiser! Please don't get chocolate all over them. Did you wash your hands? Go wash your hands! Please wash your hands!"

If you want a short cut, you can buy printed cookies and layer them on felt and batting to get the same puffy effect. 

See - so cute, right? And totally should've been done for Valentine's Day except when am I ever in time to observe any holiday?

Throw in another piping bag.

In fact, make multiple piping bags and let your kids hold their own cookie-decorating version of the Great British Bakeoff. They're going to run off with the rest of your felt food anyway.

Questions I anticipate:

Q Where did you get that heart cookie fabric?

A Random fabric store. I think it was Mill End Textiles. Saw while looking for lycra for Emily's swimsuit, thought of Jenna, and bought. 

Q Where did you get that checkered tray that's holding the heart cookies?

A In Singapore. I think Daiso, but it was about 6 years ago.

Q Do you have a pattern for the round cookies?

A No, but they're circles - go ahead and make your own pattern.

Q Do you have a pattern for the donuts?

A No, but again, they're circles. Concentric circles, to be precise. You can go to the donut-shop-on-the-go post that I linked to, and find the link to the tutorial I used.

Q Do you have a pattern for the piping bag?

A It's a quarter of a circle. 

All three confection sets are going to Kate's fundraiser tomorrow, not my shop. However, if anyone is interested in the heart cookies, let me know and I may make some sets for the shop at some point in the future. But not the doughnuts or frosting cookies - too much hand-stitching to be a viable project at the moment.

Where I Am Today

 

Sorry for the food photo, but fear not - this will not be a recipe post. I made nutella chocolate chip cookies today. We're back home after two weeks in Singapore and we are dreadfully jetlagged. I know this is normal and it, too, shall pass, but I miss being able to tell night from day. So, to cope, I went out and bought a jar of nutella. I've been off nutella for some years now, because too much of a good thing -even nutella - can be bad. Now, though, is the perfect time to re-addict myself- nutella is not really chocolate and it's not really candy and it can be incorporated into every baked confection to make it even sweeter and sillier. The ultimate unhealthy sweet fix comfort food, in other words. 

Hence these nutella-infused chocolate chip cookies. Friends, they look better than they taste, okay? I love dark chocolate and any chocolate-flavored thing I eat has to be deeply chocolate, preferably ebony-dark. I am sad to say that nutella has the opposite effect - it makes the chocolate flavor of dark chocolate chip cookies shallower and sweeter, not chocolatey-er. Boo. Hiss. They're not bad by any stretch of the imagination; just not chocolatey. Still, it feels as if I've totally ruined a good batch of dark chocolate chip cookies by nutellaing them. I'm sure I can find someone in the house who will eat them, though. Hopefully. So no, I'm not sharing the recipe. Stick to real chocolate when you make chocolate chip cookies, friends. Leave the nutella in its IV drip and enjoy it uncompromised. 

 

Okay, so back to where I am today- talking about settling back into normal life after a whirlwind trip back home. I don't consider a trip to Singapore a true vacation. It's mentally exhausting, in addition to being physically so. Sure, I swim in the sunshine and eat curry but I'm constantly torn between feeling fully at home there when I actually miss my house in MN. It's a bizarre state of limbo. Then there are the wonderful friends in Singapore, some of whom I've known since I was a kid. When we hang out together so our kids can play together, I am struck by how I've known the mothers longer than the children. Here in MN, every single playdate-mom friendship is the result of our children meeting in school or church; between us, the mothers ourselves, though, there is no shared history beyond, say, the last 4 years. No complaints - I love meeting and making new friends as well as keeping old ones, but it's hard not to notice the difference. 

Shoppingwise, I didn't buy as much as in previous years - annual Singapore trips mean that I don't need to stock up quite so desperately each time. These linen fabric and trim were from a tiny independent knick-knack shop in Bras Basah Complex. 

I made my usual pilgrimage to the Textile Centre at the corner of Jalan Sultan and North Bridge Road, and bought a bunch of utility notions - white thread,

ric-rac, twill tape, spotty bias tape, buttons, various chalk markers and refills,

ribbon and velcro,

and a couple of random Japanese books.

That left book is more licensed-characterish than I'd like, but it was for Emily, and it contains Hello Kitty in various manifestations,

along with Little Twin Stars, which I adored as a child,

as well as other characters I don't recognize, but which will be fun to stitch.

The Cotton Friend pattern magazine, of which I have an earlier issue, is full of fun things to make. In this issue, I found two well-drafted outfits - this sweater on the cover

and this mandarin-collar shirt.

Other garments, sadly, were misses. I know this next one is probably a deliberate fashion style but - whoa  - it doesn't fit, period.

And this one needs help, too:

A couple of bags - backpacks

and a waist pouch/fanny pack.

And waiting for me at home in MN, were new catalogs of my favorite kid stores! These are what I read for sewing inspiration and to keep abreast of kid fashion - more accurate than reading sewing blogs for design trends, at any rate!

So quite a bit of sewing inspiration! But before I act on any of it, I must sleeeeeeeeeeeeep. I need sleep so badly. The kids have been keeping us awake at nights while their bodies adjust to MN time - they wander around the house at 3 am and attempt to hold conversations with us. Bad! Bad! Go away! Grrr!