Flower Girls in Kansas City

Last summer, I offered to make flower girl dresses for my friend Georgiane as a wedding present.  The only problem was that her flower girls are in Kansas City and I am in Philadelphia. 

 

Libby models the original

She went shopping and found a style of dress that she liked very much and sent me this picture on this adorable little model, Libby.  She also sent some beautiful silk to make the dresses from. 

I used this pattern as a base while lengthening the bodice, but the challenge was to figure out how to replicate those pintucks and ruffles. 

Maggie and Lily play dress-up in the muslins

So I made a pair of muslins and sent them to Georgiane so she could approve them and try them on the little girls to see how they fit.  For some reason she not only sent pictures of her girls wearing the “dress rehearsals” but she sent the dresses back.  (Poor harried bride)  

Lily pretends her First Communion in tucks and ruffles

 I ended up sending the muslins to my nieces who are about the same size as her flower girls and they had a grand time using them for dress-up.   Lily even got hold of her aunt’s First Communion veil to accessorize her outfit.

Thanks for your help, Grandma Betty!

 I cut the dresses out of the fabric she sent and had only these snippets of fabric left over.  Talk about cutting it close!  

As I went to cut the dresses out, I was really struggling, so I asked Georgiane’s Grandma Betty for help.   She really inspired me.  I know Grandma Betty would have made the dresses herself if she had lived to see this wedding.  I felt like I had her on my shoulder through the whole process.  Grandma Betty was love. 

The finished dresses

Here are the finished dresses.  I fully lined them in soft pink silk because I could imagine being a little girl and not wanting anything itchy.  And besides… pink! 

Soft pink lining

Here are the flower girls at the wedding.  Disappointingly, they had one of the few chilly rainy October days for it, so the girls needed little cardigans that covered up the pretty rose ribbon hanging down the back.  Still, it was a beautiful wedding and they had washable silk dresses to wear.  I think they match the original pretty closely.

Madison and Libby with flower baskets and cardigans

Doctor Who Skirt

A few years ago, my sisters (Borgs # 7 & 8 of 8), my niece and my sister-in-law (there can be only one) became fans of the rebooted Doctor Who.  Despite my British birth, I had only a vague consciousness of the show—mostly through my plethora of certified-geek friends. 

I decided to make a Doctor Who-themed garment for my niece when I discovered Spoonflower carried all kinds of fabrics with geek themes.  Do you know about Spoonflower?  You can design your own fabric and they will print it up for you on a variety of fabrics or even wallpaper or gift wrap. 

Dalek and TARDIS exposed!

I chose this fabric, which sadly no longer appears to be available. (But there are many more Who fabrics now than when I ordered this.)  I had this idea that if I folded the pleats just right, I could hide the Daleks and TARDIS so that they would only be revealed when the wearer was spinning rather like the TARDIS. 

 

Peek-a-boo pleats

Pink is cute.  TARDIS blue would have been better!

I  designed the skirt to have a contrasting hem and apron so I could get away with using just a yard of fabric in the pleated section.  I found this hot pink fabric to coordinate with the coppery-rust of the Spoonflower fabric.  The other fabric I seriously considered was a royal blue. Of course I opted for pink at the time.   

(I have since become a fan of the show and regret I didn’t make the contrasting sections the official TARDIS blue.)

Still, I hear my niece liked the skirt very much and loves to wear it with leggings.  Here she is modeling it.  She looks pretty happy.  And I hear her geek-girl friends are jealous.

Raggedy Sleeping Beauty

American Girl-sized doll modeling PINK!

Last year, my niece Maggie had a princess-themed birthday party.  My sister (Borg #7 of 8) had recently introduced her to Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. It’s one of my favorite Disney princess movies despite its lack of a feminist message. It has that glorious Tchaikovsky-inspired score, beautifully designed backgrounds and the most terrifying Disney villain of all: Maleficent. Of course best of all is her beautiful PINK gown. 

Obviously, I take the side of Flora, one of the 3 fairies who raise Aurora secretly in their little cottage in the woods.  Borg # 7 of 8, however, sides with Meriweather who insists the dress should be blue.   

 

Out of print. New version available

I had this pattern in my collection and decided to make the Sleeping Beauty gown for Maggie’s American Girl doll.  In light of the controversy. It made sense to me to make a reversible version of the dress so that Flora and Meriweather could each have her way. 

I found perfect fabrics for it in the Jo-Ann Halloween collection – two tones of each color with glitter embedded in the fabric. I made two dresses separately and then attached them when I applied the collar.  I simply folded up the hems of the sleeves and sewed those together along with the hem of the skirt.  (I skipped the ribbon along the hem because it is not authentic to the dress in the film.) The back is closed with strips of Velcro. 

 

Meriweather (and Borg #7 of 8) say "Blue!"

I think the dress came out beautifully and thought it would be fun for Maggie to switch back and forth between pink and blue.   

Flora and I say "PINK!"

What I didn’t anticipate was that she decided her Raggedy Maggie needed to wear this dress.  The size is actually fairly close, but Raggedy hands are somewhat bigger than American Girl hands and I imagine by now the dress looks a bit more like Cinderella’s rags than Sleeping Beauty’s beautiful 16^th birthday present gown.

Maggie with her reversible Raggedy Sleeping Beauty

Fergus provided inspection services, although from this picture, it appears he is considering trying on the gown himself.  I had no idea he was interested in cross dressing.  But really, who can resist a beautiful princess costume?

Fergus would have tried it on if only he had opposable thumbs. 

Simplicity has re-printed this Disney Princess pattern as #1581.  Get it while it's hot!  (Or wait til it goes on sale for $1.99 at a large crafts & fabric chain)

Hoard-ganizing the Fabric Stash

Long time no blog.

Going through my collection of photos, I realize I have made lots of things in the last year, I just didn’t blog about them, though I have posted many of them on Facebook.  I have been trying to re-create a life for myself and hit a lot of dead ends. Something has to turn around soon, right?

In the meantime, I have been trying to get my space organized.  I have a fabric stash that has its origins in my days after college when I worked for So-Fro fabrics.  Thanks to input from Pinterest, I managed to develop a system to get control over my fabric stash and am really happy with the process I put together.  The origins of this system can be found on my Pinterest board, hoard-ganizing , but I haven’t seen anyone put these elements together in quite this way.

EXPEDIT Before

I have had my beloved 4 x 4 EXPEDIT shelving unit for a number of years. This picture will give you an idea of the “before” way I had been using it. 

Much as I love looking at all the craft and sewing stuff, I found that there was something cluttered about this display, not to mention the exposure to light and dust. 

I decided I needed to re-think this chaos and went out to find containers that would fit both the EXPEDIT and my budget.  

EXPEDIT After

I bought a few hot pink DRÖNA boxes from IKEA. They fit the cubbies of the EXPEDIT perfectly and were just 5 bucks each. (Though they are up to $6 now)  By the time I decided to get some more DRÖNAs, they were no longer carrying the pink ones, so I got a couple of green ones along with a pair of matching inserts with doors  that were on clearance.  Of course when I went back to get more green ones, they were discontinued, so I picked up the blue boxes.  These colors are all part of my personal palette, and I actually like the variety of colors in the white unit. 

Now IKEA has brought out a high-gloss 2 x 4 hot pink EXPEDIT.  I want to line every wall of my house with them. (Either that or the teal one.) But I settled for another door insert and a set of drawers in the pink.  (The DRÖNAs are very useful for storing the fabric stash, but some of my crafting materials and reference books are better stored in drawers and behind doors.)

Of course anyone can fill the EXPEDIT with DRÖNAs, but my breakthrough was developing a system to organize, inventory and label the contents of the boxes. 

 

Binder clip, 1' binder ring holding swatches of contents

As you can see, I attached  a binder clip to the top of the DRÖNA to hold a small binder ring  which holds a set of punched cards with swatches of the contents.  Already this process thrills me because it makes use of office supplies. 

What is it about school supplies and office supplies that bring me to the edge of ecstasy?

With these rings indicating the contents of each box, it is so much easier to find a particular piece of fabric by checking the cards rather than pawing through the boxes to find it.  

Fabric details

I initially made these tags from the leftover business cards I had from my last job.  Eventually I ran out of those.  I tried to buy blank business cards from my local Staples, but found a much better deal getting them from Vistaprint.  I had them made up with a list of content details so I can just cut a swatch and glue it to one side of the card and fill out the card with pertinent information like yardage, where and when I bought it and fiber content.  

Yes, it took a lot of time to cut a swatch, glue it (with either a glue stick or glue runner) measure the fabric, fold it neatly and document it.  But it has saved so much time and money to be able to find out what I already have before going on a fabric store bender. I have been able to combine fabrics from the stash that were bought 20 years apart, but meant to be together.  It was a great project to work on while catching up on Doctor Who.

Swatches ready for a shopping trip

The beauty of this system is that as I use up fabrics, I can just discard or file the associated card.  I can update the yardage if I only use part of it.  I can use the swatches to figure out what combination of fabrics will work for a project.  And most helpful of all, I can clip a group of swatches to a binder ring and take it with me to shop for coordinating fabrics, and notions.  I have brought my swatch ring with me to the fabric store and been asked about it by fellow shoppers as well as the sales people. 

After I made these up, I came across this Swatch Buddy system on line. If you are in no mood to DIY a set, they might be a good solution, but I figure if you are DIYing in fabric, you are probably a dyed-in-the-wool DIYer who wants to make her own individualized swatch cards anyhow. (Especially if you have old business cards lying around which brings the cost down significantly while keeping the cards out of the landfill)

Swatches make contents easy to find.

The other difference between the Swatch Buddy system and mine is that I am using them as a way to label the boxes of my collection, in addition to just having a portable set of swatches.

So just what is in those DRÖNA boxes?  Mostly fabric. One box contains my crafting toaster oven along with polymer clay, clay tools and shrinky dink paper.  One box contains my scrapbooking stuff. Another holds patterns.  I have to get a few more hot pink binder clips and binder rings to finish labeling the blue boxes that don’t have fabric in them. 

Fat Quarters and 1 or 2 yard pieces folded and filed.

Here is what it looks like inside a couple of the fabric boxes.  I am especially pleased with this large collection of fat quarters and one-yard pieces that I have collected to make patchwork.  I used this tutorial as inspiration for how to get all of these odd pieces of fabric folded uniformly.   Using a 6” wide quilting ruler to fold the fabric makes it exactly the right width to make two stacks of fabrics that fit the DRÖNA.  

I got so many fabrics into this box, I had too many cards to fit the 1” binder ring and needed a big 2” one to hold them all.  

Rolled 2-4 yard pieces

 With yardages over a yard or two, I found that rolling the fabric allowed me to tip out the box and get a quick view of the contents. 

Bulky fabrics filed

Bulkier fabrics like flannel and corduroy are folded and stacked in the DRÖNA.  It looks so orderly to me that I just want to start into a new project. 

6-yard dress-length  cottons

 

Of course that EXPEDIT is nowhere near big enough to hold my entire stash.  Here’s the 2" binder ring of swatches for the fabrics stored in this dresser. :)

I hope this inspires you to get some control over a stash gone wild at your place. J

Giving Jo-Ann a Piece of My Mind.

This was posted on Facebook today by Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores:  

What prints do you want to see on fleece or flannel? Sunflowers? Roller skates? What else? Let us know in the comments below.

These are not the kitties they are looking for.

There were about 300 comments when I came across this post, nearly all, I kid you not, consisted of variations on "more of the same!", "puppies and kitties!", "Red Hat Ladies" and "Crosses, there are just not enough Christian images in your pajama fabrics."  

As you can imagine, I had a lot to say on the topic.  Here is what I posted:

I guess you guys are doing a pretty good job since it seems to me the vast majority of requests above are for things I see at Joann's and Joann.com all the time. 

I make a lot of flannel pajama bottoms for my nieces, nephews, friends and family. So what I am looking for is flannel or a nice pajama-weight 100% cotton shirting. (Do whatever you want with fleece)

First of all, I wish you guys would make plain BLACK flannel. It would be so useful for costumes at Halloween that would keep trick-or-treaters warm and then could be pajamas for the rest of the winter. (Think about a black witch costume nightgown, black pirate shirt and pant pajamas etc.) 

Secondly, I wish there were a line of coordinating smallish prints in bright saturated colors. I would love it if there were some small plaids, polka dots, 1/4 and 1/2 inch stripes, checkerboards, houndstooths, herringbones, animal prints and other classic 2-color prints that I would use as accents like cuffs on pj bottoms or contrast collars or pockets on nightgowns, pajama shirts and robes. (These would also be great to have for those Halloween costumes that become pajamas-- tiger for Halloween, tiger pajamas for the rest of the season.) 

I can never find enough prints that aren't too babyish or princessy. There are all kinds of prints that would appeal to girls without being so "Barbie-fied." For every soccer, football and baseball print I see, I wish there were volleyball, field hockey, tennis and softball prints. Girls love sports, but the ones they tend to play are underrepresented in your line. (IMHO, obviously) 

I LOVED a couple of prints I found this year that were great bright colored retro toy prints-- 50s style robots and rocket ships. More please! Nostalgic and stylized toys from that era would be awesome. (Including Lego as someone mentioned above, and backgammon, parcheesi, Ouija, 4-wheeled skates. old-fashioned bikes, skateboards and scooters, hula hoops, jump ropes, marbles and jacks, playing cards, lite brite, etch-a-sketch, or those classic Playskool and Fisher Price toys.) 

I have made great use of the few ethnic paisley, stripes and prints you have carried in the last couple of years. Those are great for grownups too. 

Someone suggested an all-Britain design-- Big Ben, Tower of London, Union Jack, Stonehenge, Globe Theater. I thought that was a great idea. I would also love if there were a series-- Britain, France, Australia, Japan, Italy etc. The 50 US States... Along with those, I would love maps, globes and nautical maps. 

Obsessed with Gnomes.  Needs pjs.

 

 

!

I have a niece who is obsessed with Gnomes. She and her friends dressed as lawn ornaments at Halloween-- a Garden Gnome, Flamingo, Jockey, the Kissing Dutch children, the Madonna of the Garden. I think that would be an awesome theme for some pj prints. 

Gnomes with big dotted mushrooms and a story-book woodland design would be awesome. 

What about characters from Hans Christian Andersen and Grimm Fairy Tales? Those would be great considering the popularity of shows like Grimm and Once Upon a Time. 

I think you can still never get enough of medieval knights and wizards while you are at it. King Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot...If there were Joan of Arc or Shakespeare character flannel, I would scoop it all up and be sewing for years for my friends. 

I would also love fabric with busts of great composers, writers and philosophers-- maybe even with a quote here and there... 

Finally, what I have been surprised to see is the complete lack of anything STEAMPUNK. You know the Jules Verne copper contraptions, airships, goggles, gears, clockworks celebrations of Victorian technology and science fiction? THAT. Google Steampunk and then design fabric from that. 

I hope this is helpful. I tried to list things I would snatch up in a heartbeat and that I have not seen anywhere else-- all of which is PUBLIC DOMAIN. :)

I posted that and the very next post was "Pugs! Pugs! Pugs!" 

(See what I mean about puppies and kitties? )

A very sensible woman named Kim Childers-Burns piped up next with:

PLEASE do NOT submit to the pandering xtians! Keep religion off my fabric!!!!! How about some willow trees!

I am now madly in love with the probable-Wiccan Kim Childers-Burns whom I don't know from Adam, but who had more sense than the puppy-kitty-red-hat-lady crowd. 

I had her back and posted this:  

I know how Kim Childers-Burns feels. I am ok with pandering to Christians, though, as long as other Faiths are represented. I am a big fan of that Co-Exist logo made up of symbols of a variety of religions. So if you want to pander to me with busts and quotes of Darwin, Einstein and Hawking, that would be ok too. :)

I hope Kim Childers-Burns appreciates my two cents. 

The thread continued with requests for  Bears! (two different kinds: Panda, Polar) Unicorns! Rainbows! Butterflies! and Baby Owls!  (I kid you not) 

 There was one suggestion in there that was not like the others and I quote:

 Eve Clover Rose Smiling cartoon penises

Thanks Eve, whoever you are, for some real out-of-the-box thinking!

I also realized that despite the pages and pages of demands I posted, I had left out one super-important suggestion. 

Me: I need this on fabric!
Jo-Ann: As You Wish.
Valerie: Do you think it will work?
Miracle Max: It'd take a miracle.

They need to make a licensing agreement with whomever owns the rights to The Princess Bride.   So I posted that too. 

I am done suggesting.  I will wait and see what the collection looks like when they bring out new designs in November.   I am expecting the return of lots of puppies, kitties and crosses for the Midwest Church Craft Association. 

And that's a shame.  Because if the home-sewing fabric and craft industry wants to continue to be an industry, they are really gonna have to think about reaching out beyond the baby-blanket-making Church ladies.   They may want to produce materials that make people want to learn to sew.  And it would help if they remembered that half of American adults are single. Those smiling cartoon penises are a genius suggestion.

 

Forward and Back… to Basics

I know, I know, I have been gone for a long time.  I had been blogging so consistently— nearly halfway through my planned 100 days of making stuff.  And then I stopped cold in my tracks. What was that about?

I began to feel the "making" project was too chaotic and arbitrary.  It was definitely providing me with something to show for my days.  But it wasn’t moving me toward whatever is next for me. I needed some time to take stock.

Toward the end of my time at my last job, I was trying to figure out what I could bear to do next.  I was miserable working on personal property tax for a Fortune 500 company.  I felt like my only value was my neurotic tendencies toward OCD, but not really anything that made use of the talents and skills I value in myself.

As things were falling apart and I could barely even drag myself in to work, I discovered that there was something that did still provide delight and enjoyment in my life.  It was fabric shopping. On days when I couldn’t bear to look at another tax bill at work, I could still find the energy during my lunch break to check out new fabric shops on line.  

One Saturday, I was so determined to get to a particular sale that I ended up taking 3 forms of transportation and walking a total of about 7 miles to get to and from my fabric shopping target.  The chance for a great fabric score is one of the few things I can think of that would get me to walk 7 miles. 

As a product of my “100 days of making” experiment, I learned that I generate an awful lot of ideas for projects, but even with all the time in the world, I don’t manage to make much of a dent in the pile.  I see fabric and am inspired to make a project. So I impulsively add it to my project list.  I am now on a fabric- buying moratorium (no matter what inspiration I have) until the pile goes down measurably.  I am also trying to think about prioritizing the projects rather than doing them haphazardly as the spirit moves me.

While I intend to keep making stuff, I want to re-focus this blog.  My time away made me realize that no matter how much stuff I might make for an Etsy shop, there is no way I could make enough money to turn it into my “day job.”  I was kind of putting myself to work in my own personal sweatshop.  So I quit. (And my boss was ok with that.)

I am working on a couple of other ideas now, which I will share when I have a better handle on them.  In my profile, I describe myself as “Diva, Spinsta, Provocateur.”  I think those words do describe qualities that are pretty central to my identity.  So what can I do that exploits those tendencies?

More importantly, as accurate as that description is, it doesn't account for my passion for making things better.  I don’t know what the word for that would be.  (Fixer-upper? Do-gooder? Bossy Big Sister?)  I do know I am compelled to do it by habit, preference, values, talent and temperament.    

I used to do a lot of care-taking with no sense of boundaries and then wondered why I felt resentful and martyrous.  I have gained some insight, maturity and experience that should allow me to make conscious choices in care-taking that won’t deplete my energy, but multiply it.  It will be good for me to practice boundaried care-taking.  Surely that will allow me to enjoy the process and outcome rather than spinning around in bitter resentment about giving more than I get.

As an appropriately boundaried helper, I want to get back to some of my original thoughts about being a spinsta, particularly one “at large.” My friend Carla and I set up a Facebook group called “Spinster Studies” where we post and discuss articles on the topic of single life in America.

The articles reflect a culture permeated with messages that demean single people in so many ways.  It makes not finding “The One” and being childless the equivalent of social leprosy.   I think I have done enough spinster-studying in the last couple of years to start adding to the discourse through this blog.

I intend to bring my iconoclastic voice, visibility and viability to other folks who live alone, (with or without cats.)  Spinstahood can sneak up on a person and be quite a shock when it finally dawns that it isn’t going away any time soon.   I want to help people who are feeling isolated and less-than as I did.  I can show them how to claim their own space and identity in the face of the culture's attempt to marginalize spinstas of all ages, genders and orientations.

There is  much more to be said.  As a Diva-Spinsta-Provocateur-Make-Betterer I have decided I am just the person to do it.  

Day 47, 53 to go: Striped dish cloth

See? She's not old. But our friendship is.

Oooops! No blog post yesterday! Sorry about that! I met up with my oldest friend in the world who was in town for a short time.  She is not all that old, but our friendship is—we go back to 1968—I was 6, she was 7.  We walked to school together every day.  She was my first real friend.  I feel so lucky that we are still friends after all these years.  She is an extraordinary woman. 

After visiting with her, I ran over to Jo-Mar which was having a big sale on fabric.  I came back with some big fat yellow rick-rack for 39 cents a yard and 6 yards of silk at 3 bucks a yard.  I got there just a few minutes before they closed or I might have scored some more odds and ends.

Once I got home, I settled in with my Downton Abbey dvd and started to knit.  The second series  starts next Sunday on PBS and I wanted to refresh my memory of the first season.  My local PBS station was running it on 3 consecutive Sundays, but I missed the middle section when I was at my mom’s where they were a week behind.

Click on the image to see the twist in detail.

So I am all caught up now and have a dish cloth to show for it.  I used both the ombre and twist lava lamp yarn for this one since I didn’t have enough of either one to make a whole dish cloth.  I like this striped effect—using the exact same color schemes together, but contrasting the two styles of yarn.  If I had enough left, I would make another with twist on the edges and a stripe of ombre down the center…

Since I missed a post yesterday, clearly I need to do two projects tomorrow to make up for it.  Happy 2012—we are all well overdue for a good year.