Terrible/Perfect

The Handmades: Bags

I managed to make a couple of things for both of my kids this Christmas, so: huzzah! But I procrastinated, and ended up being rushed in the day or two prior to Christmas Day finishing things up. Which meant it was the perfect time to decide to make some lined drawstring bags to wrap the gifts in.

Last year my sister had passed along some remnants of Christmas fabrics she'd used to make pajamas for the whole family, including a couple of Hello Kitty prints, and I knew the girls would really enjoy them. We've done fabric wrapping for a couple of years now, and love it. It's actually very beautiful, simple to make and use and eliminates all the trash that's made opening gifts.

For the new bags, I used this lined drawstring bag tutorial and they turned out beautifully. They're lined, and have a double drawstring and a gusseted bottom, so they're very sturdy and they stand up well when they're filled.

There were paper tags with my kids' names on them, which I did a super duper job covering over in MS Paint.

The books we bought them fit perfectly in the simple fabric pouches I made last year (sitting underneath the new bags in the picture), and the handmade things fit in the Kitty bags. Just right.

Unexpected bonus: my girls stored their stocking loot in them after they'd finished opening the stockings and gifts. My older girl automatically popped all her stuff in her bag, which was a pleasant surprise. The bags kept everything together and they could carry them around or put them in their room or whatever and not lose anything or get things mixed up. Most excellent.

One of my goals for the coming year is to burn through my fabric stash, and I will be making more of these bags as birthday wrapping (if I was going to buy fabric for that express purpose, the Sarah Jane balloon print would be incredibly sweet), as well as some to use as project bags, maybe some to sort and store toys for the girls.

Simple and useful. 

Oh, why not.

At the symphony last week I couldn't help but notice the stream of young girls coming out of the hall carrying their American Girl dolls, all dolled up. And so it was that I had an idea planted in my head, however obliquely, that I might, at some point, like to make my girl and her doll matching dresses. Last night, right after sitting down to watch Män som hatar kvinnor with my dude, I thought I might try to whip out a little matching number for Miss Addy at the opera...you know, without a pattern and while reading subtitles.

Addy would like you to try to avoid looking at her raw neckline (that's a long movie, but apparently not quite long enough for adding the bodice and midriff linings), but I assure you that her seams are French.

And the real point of all this is that now my sister has to bring my loudly dressed daughter and her loudly dressed doll out for some fancy singing. HA! Satisfying.

Pa...pa...pa

The big kid is going to her very first real live professional full-length opera this weekend. She has been anticipating this, quite vocally, for months now. She knows she is very, very close, and she is over the moon.

At this point, she knows The Magic Flute inside and out, which is good; if the opera has subtitles she won't be able to read them. But she knows what they're singing about, in every. single. scene.

I have become more familiar than I ever would have thought possible with this opera (if I ever thought I would become familiar with any opera, ever, which I didn't) over the course of weeks and weeks of feeding her obsession with (repeated) viewings of a recorded production and a film, audio recordings and books, and I can say without reservation that it is enormously silly. And the silliest of the silly persons in this silly opera is a bird catcher named Papageno, who wants nothing more than to find his "Papagena", a little wife to settle down and make babies with. He finds her. It is sweet and charming. This is my favorite performance of their duet at the end. They are singing about how much they want their love to be blessed with children...and arguing, in a sexy-flirty kind of way, about having boys or girls. Traditionally Papageno and Papagena are costumed in feathers. And for this weekend, on this most special of special occasions, my girl requested a Papagena dress.

I stopped short of hand sewing hundreds of feathers into a skirt, which she would have preferred. She did insist on a halter top, so we picked out McCalls 5838 and found this ridiculous bird fabric at JoAnn and trimmed it in a most flamboyant, silly way. I think for the show itself we may be able to arrange some kind of plumage in her hair.

I hope someone at the show gets her dress and what it's all about, although something tells me she will be helping them out by telling everyone who comes within three feet of her that she's wearing her "Papagena dress". And if she does, she will, perhaps, finally be in a place where she has a shot at getting a knowing smile.

Go have a wonderful time, little dove.

Weekend Update

This weekend has ruled. Mr. T brought home this ridiculous Bonnaroo ice cream. I had a wee nibblet. Nommmmmmm. So far the only less than great moment was when I was waiting for the big kid and her dad at the symphony and I decided not to walk one block over and see the Nick Cave exhibit at SAM. Instead we went to Starbucks. What is wrong with me?

Oh well. We'll hit it as a family before it departs, which is better anyway.

So I found a new use for markers this weekend:

Oh, man. Gorgeous. Give me a couple of boxes of Kaufman Kona solids in lights and darks and I'm all over that. It's easy to get carried away. I was supposed to be messing around with color for the big kid's quilt. I'd eventually like to make one for each girl, and I already have a few very dear fabrics set to go; it's a matter of rounding them out with some additional prints and choosing a pattern. 

I keep trying to complicate it. But there's no reason not to finish where I've already started, and keep it simple. Markers to the rescue!

Lovely.

The Top

Do y'all remember this quilt top?

I pulled it out of the fabric cupboard this afternoon, and I feel like I never actually looked at it before. Only a very small handful of those (handstitched) hexagons are repeats; there are somewhere around 230 different fabrics in there. And I don't think they're reproduction prints, either. The fabric is nothing like contemporary quilting cotton (and can I say how much I love high-quality contemporary quilting cottons?). I would love to know more about this quilt top and the fabrics in it. Are they reproductions, or did she buy vintage fabrics, or did she (or her mother) save them up from the 30s, 40s, and 50s? Did she make other quilts, or garments with them? How old was she when she cut and stitched the top? Was it one "she", or a group of women? Fascinating. Best $10 I ever spent at Goodwill.

In any case, I decided that it was well beyond time to stitch this sweet top up into a quilt that we can put on a bed, admire and love. I made a spur of the moment leap of faith buying backing fabric, which turned out to be an exciting and, I think, perfect choice...just the right contemporary companion to all of whoever-she-was's handwork.

Which leads me to the point: I'm going to hand quilt this. It just seems right.

My impulse is to stitch around 1/4 inch inside the edges of all the hexes, which are all about 6 1/2 inches long by 5 inches wide. Maybe I could do one more layer of quilting just inside that line, too? That would bring the longest distance between quilting stitches to about 5 inches. Seems a bit far to me still.

So, what should I do? What would you do?

A little separation

I caught a vivid glimpse of my own ridiculousness tonight. The younger one, who is at the time of this writing 27 months old, is going through a bout of separation anxiety, which has been hellish, for all of us. I had no idea that children her age could have separation anxiety, but apparently it's not unheard of. Anyway, she wants me to carry her around all day long, and cries when I put her down, and cries when I leave the room, etc. Not all the time, but, you know, at every point in the day when it is critical that I be doing something that is not carrying her around. Like when I need to use the bathroom.

I've been really, really stressed out because of it. So today I basically checked out on my kids. I stepped in for the usual and necessary intervals: breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, unclogging the toilet, dealing with various poop situations, but otherwise I decided we would stay home all day and I would do some sewing. The girls were told to entertain themselves. It felt radical, delicious and, yet, neglectful, even though I was there, responsive, and taking care of their physical and emotional needs. Even so, tonight I kept on sewing. The little one had a very late nap, and it was shaping up to be a late, late night with her, but I kept at it anyway. Eventually Mr. T took her into the bedroom to try to get her down, and I just let them go do their thing while I kept at the machine. 

I felt so guilty.

And then I realized that I feel guilty for...letting my husband, my partner, my children's father, be the active parent so I can take a break? For real. Ridiculous.

I am insanely available to my children. It is extremely rare for me to be without at least one of them. Last weekend Mr. T took them both out to the park and left me at home, and I realized that it was the first time that had ever happened; each week, I simply escape out of the house here and there to run errands by myself. I finally realized what a dumb arrangement that was, and how much easier it would be for Mr. T to take the kids out someplace they like to be, and so I got this huge expanse (four, five hours?) of time to myself, in my house. That I used the time to clean and organize instead of take a nap and sew like I intended is another matter, but geez. Absurdly overdue.

I wake up with my children fighting over who gets to be closest to my body. I am their sole caregiver from 6:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. I am still their primary caregiver the remainder of the time. I need breaks. I mean good, solid, regular breaks.

I'M NOT GOING TO FEEL BAD ABOUT THAT.

Yes I am.

I believe, though, that this neverending Mommy shift is 99.9% of the cause behind my being a crankier Mommy than I'd like to be. Being unendlingly available is not good for me, it's not good for the kids, and it's not good for Mr. T, who needs some regular, long stretches of being the active duty parent. So if it's between feeling guilty for drawing a line in the sand about getting breaks and feeling guilty about being a bitch to my kids, well. 

Guilt or no guilt, I got some sewing done today.

The big kid listened to Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH while Baby bumbled around doing destructive things and I added three, nearly four more quilt blocks to the pile (their centers had already been sewn, I'm not that fast).

Maybe Saturday I'll do a few more.

Octopuses

We had a crazy Easter weekend. I feel like there was something I did on Friday but I can't remember it. Saturday was the animal parade, which is, if you are not a curmudgeon, as I know some of you are, charming. I'll let Wikipedia do the 'splainin, if the drum major dressed up as an octopus frightens, confuses, and/or arouses you. In that photograph it kind of looks like he's wearing tap shoes. I can only dream. Sunday was Easter, and my children became crackheads. They ate chocolate for breakfast and it was downhill from there...just all day madness and then so. much. screaming. at bedtime. I feel bad for being a fascist about sweets and then we have a day like this, when they're eating the same amount as other kids and they get jacked up, can't sleep and then don't fully come back to normalcy for a few days. No more damn chocolate!

CAFFEINE IS THE DEVIL.

But all that is over now. Let's move on.

I feel self conscious posting about bought objects as much as I do, but I really shouldn't. I don't read a ton of blogs but the ones that I do read are about stuff, when it comes right down to it, specifically about crafting and the supplies related to crafting: fabric, yarn, notions, etc. I should just get over it and own the whole thing.

I LIKE FABRIC. A LOT. To a lesser extent I like mid-century pottery.

To be fair the "stash" is fundamental to fiber arts. It's like having the full spectrum of paints. For realz, I'm not making that up.

I stashed it up a bit last week; my JoAnn got the Denyse Schmidt line and I went all the way. Or 1/3 of the way, if we're talking in fractions of yards.

There are two colorways in the full collection, "Picnic" (reds and blues) and "Fairgrounds" (greens and blues), and I love the Picnic fabrics like crazycakes.

The Fairgrounds are less inspiring, but I have an issue with getting so hung up on loving a fabric that I can't decide what to do with it, and it sits unused. So I got the Fairgrounds prints to relax with and actually get quilting.

The bottom fabric is actually "Picnic", and there is a yellow print that is "Fairgrounds" not shown here. Obviously some of the elements are mix and match.

I have a serious log cabin quilting problem. Every time I start pulling fabrics out and plotting for a quilt, I start thinking log cabin. Whenever I say or think "log cabin" I think of Log Cabin Republicans. Anyway, I want Modern Log Cabin Quilting really badly. I think I'd make every one of the projects in that book. And Susan Beal, World of Geekcraft? Say what? We are friends now. I just decided that. I have this dream of a periodic table quilt, and I think she would fully understand that vision. 

So I'm log cabining the DS Quilts fabrics:

Why are you puckering in the middle? I don't care. I'm going to wash you so hard.

I'm going to mix up the blocks between the ten fabrics so they're all a little different (I also have six solids to try and make things pop a bit) and then I think I'm going to do a bento box. A large throw size. I'm stoked. 

I also picked up a bit of this amazing floral, from a line called Botanical Pop:

The baby crunched it all up, but dang! Pow.

I think I've used up all of my creative time this evening writing this groundbreaking piece of prose but I'm fired up for some sewing. I realized I hadn't worked on my Mendocino quilt for many months, and when I pulled it down I was all ahguhguhguhguhguh.

Why did I abandon this project? It had something to do with thread, and a bobbin. I remember that much. How stupid.

DS Quilts Fairgrounds bento box, it has been...satisfactory. But I'm in love with someone else, and I'm leaving you to be with her. I hope you'll understand. She's a freaking mermaid.

Feck it

There was this period a little while ago where the little one kept saying "Fuck it!" really loud in public. It was incredibly embarassing. We don't swear in front of our kids*, so it was impossible that it was something she heard from us ever, or from anyone else enough times that it would seem like something worth repeating.

My firstborn was essentially completely fluent in the English language by two years old, so we never went through the unclear pronunciation thing. It wasn't until the baby and I were standing in line at the JoAnn cutting counter and she started yelling "Fuck it!" and reaching for the stack of FAB-RIC in the cart that I pieced it together. Her sailer mouth had only cropped up in situations where there was fabric.

I was like, oh, yeah...fuck it.

Out loud I was like "Ohhh, you want the FAB-RIC? OKAAAY, sweetie, HEEEERE'S the FAB-RIC," nervously, shamefully grinning at the ladies waiting with us in JoAnn cutting counter purgatory.

Not quite as clear as the toddler who says "Fuck!" instead of "Truck!", but I can see how she'd landed there.

She stopped doing that after a bit. Now she says "faggot".

...

Yup.

I am supposed to not be buying fabric, per my own orders to myself, but I was at JoAnn the other day and saw the Alexander Henry Farmdale fabrics (this is the pink colorway, whatever it's called). I know Alexander Henry has a few other fabrics at JoAnn (and if you know what you're looking for they're all very obvious) but seeing this particular line felt a little bit like looking out of a window up in poor, poor Forks and seeing a gazelle.

I've admired these particular fabrics for a long while now, and at JoAnn sale prices it felt too good to pass up. It's funny...they were just hanging out on the rack, trying to pretend they weren't awesome, but when I got to the cutting counter all the women in line asked me about them and cooed over them. At least three of the women who were after me bought several of the prints. The ladies is crazy about fabric with chickens on it.

My fabric stash is getting a little out of control considering how little I actually quilt right now, so I think I might just bust this out as a strip quilt...something I can piece, quilt and bind in a weekend. Any other suggestions? I've discovered Film in the Fridge and there's a ton of inspiration there. A ton of fabric to admire, too, but I'm trying to keep my eyes on the quilts.

I haven't seen any of the fabled Denyse Schmidt fabrics for JoAnn, so either some inconsiderate entrepreneurial-type person bought all of the bolts when they went out, or my JoAnn hasn't or won't get them in. Which is all for the best, really. I seriously need to bust through a big portion of the stash before I buy into another quilt I may never finish.

Of course I'm obviously I'm full of crap.

I'm buying that fuck it the minute I see it.

*This is a lie. I say "goddamn it" a lot. What can I say? I'm a very flawed human being.

This time.

Well hey there.

It's January!

....

ehhhhhhh.

I'm feeling a little seasonally depressed right now. I'm having a little malaise. I've written about this before, so I won't stretch the subject much further but over the last several days, swilled in the murky, turbulent neural juices of post-Christmas shock and gazing across the long, soggy expanse of Pacific Northwest winter ahead of me, I realized that this feeling, this shifting shapeless fog of ennui, has become so very old hat to me that it's very much like being, say, nauseated. We all know when we're nauseated, we all hate it, we know that it has some cause or origin and we know that it will subside eventually (and if it doesn't, we know to seek medical help). We use comfort measures, like fizzy drinks, hot broth, and lying on the couch wrapped in a warm blanket watching television to help it along a little faster. That's exactly how I feel about this brain feeling when it pops up (predictably, this time of year). What I mean to say is that when depression crops up, and when my thought patterns begin to trend towards the "despair" end of the spectrum, I realize it's just my head needing to hurl, figuratively speaking.

This week I've been applying comfort measures (chocolate and copious amounts of caffeine) and forcing myself to expedite the departure of the sadness train by dragging myself around the house putting Christmas away, sorting and organizing the kids' stuff to make room for their Christmas bounty, and eating good-good-good-for-me food. It's helping, and this feeling shall pass. Hopefully without regurgitation of any kind.

(I hate vomiting so. much.)

I left my camera at my father's house on Christmas day, so that's the other half of the reason for not checking in sooner. I'm not sure anyone needs to read my writing without pictures to look at.

Baby was hugely, fabulously cute at Christmas. The whole gift thing was still very "Whaaa...?" to her, but every time she opened a gift she made a face, with her eyes popped open and her mouth hanging down in a perfect gaping oval, that was a perfect cartoon expression of surprise. I wish I'd been able to get a clear picture of her doing it, but in the fray (of the whole day, really), I was only able to capture a handful of small, quiet moments.

Like these.

She is an unmitigated delight. Even when she's waking me up repeatedly from the hours of 1 a.m. to 7 a.m., I love her to distraction. And I also want her to be quiet and go to sleep. 

Sleep! That is my #1 goal for this year. More and better. I like that goal best of all.

It is #1 because a lot of the shit that I don't like about my life directly follows from not getting enough sleep. My other goals are, in descending order of importance, #2: Be nicer to my children, #3: Stay on budget, #4: Eat less crap, #5: Get some exercise, and #6: Make some shit.

In pursuit of goal #5 but directly contravening goal #3, I've been doing some fabric stash building.

I would like to make a bunting for Baby's birthday two weeks from now, so I've been picking up fat quarters that seemed cheerful. It wasn't until today, unpacking my bag from Joann, that I realized that my bunting-fabric collection was shaping up to be something else entirely.

Well, would you look at that.

I've had a picnic quilt in mind for a long time now, because over the summer I take the girls all over the place and often set down on a park lawn with a basket and a blanket (which is, I think, my favorite confluence of conditions ever: dappling sun, children laughing, a cold drink, blue sky, a book...I feel contented just thinking about it). I've been using plain, unsightly bed blankets these years, or a flannel rag quilt that belongs to Big Kid that shouldn't be out like that, but I don't own anything exactly right for throwing down on grass or sand or springy aromatic forest litter. But these fabrics! Shazam!

With significantly less "Shazam!", I ordered and received these fat quarters from Heather Ross's Far Far Away 2 line.

All along I have planned to use these fabrics as the foundation for a twin/full size quilt for Big Kid's 6th birthday, and they are just wrong.

Let me be clear: the designs are absolutely as charming as I'd hoped, and I love the fabric. But they are printed on what seems like an unbleached linen-cotton blend. There is nothing wrong with that in and of itself; the fabric is beautiful and sturdy, the printing is great...but if standard quilting cottons are Wonder Bread, this is Dave's Killer Bread. That's not a bad thing, but the designs look faded, for lack of a better word, in such a way that when they're placed side-by-side with crisper, brighter quilting cottons, they recede. The other issue is that the Rapunzel print is huge. One repeat, with the whole tower and surrounding flowers included, is about 12 inches tall by 4 1/2 inches wide. It either needs to stay whole on a project that will take a really large print well, or be cut up into fragments, which I really don't want to do.

Unfortunately I'm back to the drawing board with Big Kid's quilt (so far I have a collection of pinks and purples; I was relying on the Heather Ross fabrics to draw in marigold/orange tones and make it less saccharine). I'm also sitting around with six Heather Ross fat quarters that I love, but don't quite know how to use. I would like to make a quilt with them, and I have seen some that are lovely, but maybe bags or something would be better (tea towels might be nice). Suggestions more than welcome.

I'm also daydreaming about other quilting projects (I'm freaking out about Anna Maria Horner's quilts right now...this one is amazing, but I am thisclose to getting some Folksy Flannels) and, ahem, digging my other Heather Ross WIP out from under the mess it got buried in.

This weekend I'm working more on getting the house straightened up, starting out each day with a few cleansing breaths and a reminder to myself of how I want to be remembered as a mother, taking a (wet) walk or two, and maybe, hopefully, putting in some time on the sewing machine and at the knitting needles.

And buying some fabric. It's legit; I have a birthday bunting to make.

Homemade

I have a quiet house for once, so I can hang here for a moment or two. Not too many moments, though, because I have a rather full plate. I'm hoping to make some miracles happen this next week, and with my dude home from work on vacation for pre-Christmas chillaxing and to celebrate our Solstice wedding anniversary I might be able to actually make some of the things I bought supplies for.

This is the project for tonight and tomorrow:

All cut up and already being stitched, huzzah huzzah.

Less pressing on my agenda were cupcakes, but I made those, too, and they are Red Velvet, except they're not red, because I refuse to put red #40 in food that I give to my children. So they're vanilla cupcakes that happen to be brown. And tasty.

These will get the cream cheese frosting treatment in a little bit NOM NOM NOM.

While I haven't been anything resembling productive recently (Molars. All we have left are those two year molars. And then the teething is over.), Big Kid has been busily working away at her little table. It's inspiring, actually. She just goes for it with scissors and paper and tape and markers and now needle and thread and felt and buttons and turns out all manner of funny little objects.

I showed her how to piece for a quilt today, using felt that she cut into squares (more or less) and a little running stitch. She's doing great.

She also rolled some beeswax candles this week all on her own to give to her ballet teacher. She drew a bow on paper, wrapped it around the candles and tucked a little note in. I don't know that her ballet teacher has all that much affection for her (they're only in there 30 minutes a week), but she could not wait to go to ballet so she could give it to her teacher. It was incredibly sweet.

Lately she's been making things to put in Baby's stocking. We have a book (it's like this, only the first volume) that collects some of the Christmas stories from the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House series, and in one of the stories Laura and Mary make a "button string" for Baby Carrie. Big Kid decided that Baby needs a button string of her own, and despite the fact that Baby will be allowed to have the button string for all of two minutes before it gets tucked safely away, I think it's lovely that she thought to make one and took the time to do it.

She also made her a ball. Out of a sheet of felt.

These little treasures are now down in the toe of Baby's stocking.

There are SEVEN. DAYS. LEFT. until the big day, so I'm sure she'll be putting together all sorts of other silly/sublime gifts for people. 

Creativity and generosity are pretty great.

Give a shout out in the comments if you're making something (food? drink? toys? clothes? soap? hot buttered rum?), I'd love to hear what other folks are up to.

Happy week, all!