Graduation Cookies: School's Out for Summer

The cookie thing is kind of fun, if maddening.  These are for the reception following my son's "graduation" ceremony for finishing kindergarten today. 

Good job, kid!  One down, a solid 19 years to go!  Hurrah for the class of 2024!

Smartypants.

Baking and decorating these cookies was a true test of my latent perfectionism.  I had to keep telling myself, sometimes out loud, "I am not a professional baker.  In fact, I don't like to cook" and  "These are for little kids who will not care",  "Stop obsessing about them, they are fine!", and the infamous, "This is so stupid!"

Yeah, I need to get back to sewing ASAP.  

For Abby's preschool graduation last week, I went with the much easier flower bouquet.  Not as tasty but way less stressful!

Cleverbucket.

Other Crafts: Thanksgiving Weekend Mayhem

The sewing has taken a backseat this month because I've been busy doing super important things like... arranging plastic foliage and cheering along as people way too old to be photographed doing it played beer pong in a garage.  The pilgrims would be so proud!

Centerpieces, Decorations, Food & Nonsense (no particular order):

Originally, I  planned to use these fake leaves to make a garland, but decided to save myself a few hours and stuck them in vases and wrapped them with ribbon.  Since I had all the stuff I think this cost me $3.

To non-Americans, I assume dressing your child up in paper bags and feathers to celebrate a culture your ancestors decimated must seem pretty odd, but it's done with love and respect. 

I was in charge of the Thanksgiving Feast for Henry's school.  Pumpkin pie for everyone!

The kids' "feast" included me making 50 turkey & swiss sandwiches and buying 3 lbs of dried cranberries.  Also, 250 feet of kraft paper.

While I was turning the parish hall into a Thanksgiving Party Zone, my husband and his siblings were hauling (delicious, delicious!) crab out of the ocean.

Mike & Harry planning their reign of Saturday night beer pong terror.

Their reign did not last long.

Serene & Kim:  breaking the beer pong glass ceiling.

All the world needs is more crayons.

Our real centerpiece.  None of my fake leaves.

MORE PIE!

Halloween 2011: Homemade Kids' Costumes FINISHED!

 Halloween did not go smoothly this year.  My daughter and I are both sick.  Poor Abby has missed a week of school.  My husband lost me and was nearly convinced I'd been kidnapped (I was waiting for him at the end of our driveway... with a flashlight).  My costume is only 90% done on November 1st.  We only trick or treated about 6 houses in total.  It took us longer to drive into town. All in all, a poor showing considering the amount of forethought put into this holiday. That said, the kids sure looked great!

No jacket version with whip and idol.

Henry's costume was a huge hit at his school.  He had to leave the whip at home since it is technically a weapon, but he brought the legendary artifact, "The Glittering Gargoyle".

I tried to get Henry to make up an adventure to go with this "artifact" but his tale sounded suspiciously like the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. "And then there is traps!  And a big rock!"  He knows better then to mess with a classic, I guess.

This was made with a Dollar Store statue, some gold spray paint and about a thousand rhinestones.  And hot glue!  I burned the hell out of my hand before realizing it was way easier to spread the glue directly on the statue instead of trying to dot glue to the back of each tiny stone.  I'm an idiot. 

Indiana Henry prepares for adventure surrounded by his sidekicks.  His "girlfriend" is the mermaid on the end.  Dr. Jones is a ladies man.

Jacket version.  I have no idea why he is winking. He's a charmer!

The whip started life as a complicated five strand weave.   I was using a two lengths of yarn for each "strand" so that it would be thick enough.   This was a disaster that required a glass of wine before I started over.  I gave up on the 5-strand/pair approach quickly.  I ended up braiding two sets of three and then plaited them with another set of two strands of upbraided yarn to make it.   The handle is duct tape as you can see, (which was super stable and by far the easiest way to make a handle).  The tape was wrapped in black ribbon in an overlapping x-pattern at one point, but that did not last until today.  I'm too lazy to re-do it so you'll have to trust me that it looked fine. 

Pumpkins from the garden behind her... we never carved them.  We're slackers.

Snow White, while very ill, posed like a champ for these photos.  Her collar and cape were made without a pattern because, again, I'm an idiot.   I buy patterns and then just do what I want, apparently.  I've yet to follow an entire real pattern.  I alter the hell out of them despite the fact that I don't know how to sew.  I have no excuse!  Her accessory here is a tweeting blue bird like the ones that follow Snow White around.  Abby also has a plastic poison apple that did not make it into the photos.

Don't forget the sparkle shoes! 

The collar I drew freehand straight onto the satin and used standard interfacing on both pieces to make it stiff.  To get it to fold over properly, i.e. to frame her face but not block her vision, I sewed small pleats into each edge.  I used Velcro to attach it to the inside of the dress-  I sewed the prickly part to the collar and ironed in no-sew Velcro (soft side) into the dress.  If I'd been smarter I could have sewed it to the lining before assembling the bodice, but I didn't think of that. 

The cape, since I didn't follow the pattern, was super easy.  I seamed two rectangles of red stretch velvet together and used a simple hook and eye as a closure.  To keep it from falling over her shoulders and obscuring the laborious puff sleeves I tucked the edge into the back of the dress between the collar and the bodice- the fabric hooked a bit on the Velcro hidden back there and so didn't slip out.  The cape didn't serve to keep her warm since I didn't have it covering her arms, but it was nice enough here in California that it didn't matter.  The velvet draped really well and I'm glad I didn't use more of the cheap satin. 

A grand curtsy.

Notes on the projects:  Indiana Jones was easy, in part because I bought the pants, shirt and jacket... which is kind of the whole costume.  Really I only made the whip, satchel and idol.  But I did hunt down the hat!  Snow White was much harder and required a whole list of things I'd never done before, including (sort-of) using a commerical pattern and all that entails:  a tracing wheel and pattern paper, cutting notches and matching dots, etc.  Plus, the dress itself required me to sew darts, make sleeves and do insets all of which I'd never done before.  I also tried corded gathering for the first time which didn't work out and I was forced to take in the bodice (alterations!)  and use all sorts of materials I'd never worked with (velvet, satin, metallic trims).  If I made Snow White again using this bodice pattern I'd for sure raise the neckline and narrow the shoulder width.  Oddly, there was never any directions for sewing a seam up the back of the bodice which was weird, but I guess it is pretty clear that it needs to be done.  The true work was done by my housekeeper who cleaned up after me.  It's amazing how many bits of thread and scraps of fabric I can create making small children's clothes.

Verdict:  Boo!  Did I scare you?  Halloween rules.  Learned a ton making these costumes.

Cost:  I estimate these costumes cost me between 2,000 pesos and a gazillion euros.  Maybe 600 galactic credits?  I really don't know.  A LOT is the answer. 

Update on Cleopatra as soon as it's finished-finished!  It's crepe-back gold satin and bejeweled!  I know you can't wait.

Halloween 2011: Homemade Indiana Jones Costume Satchel

Much like drunk relatives and Thanksgiving, costume accessories are what make Halloween a real holiday. It's all in the details!

Indiana Jones and The Tweed Suit of Respectability

Indiana Jones is, of course, a Professor of Archeology and Hotness at the fictional Barnett College and therefore needs a sturdy field bag for his journal, passport, and other assorted academic fripperies (magnifying glass, excavation brushes, machete, revolver, etc.). It is also a good place to stash any "rescued" antiquities.

Indiana Jones and The Manly Man Purse

Since I earlier discovered that the real thing is a WWII British gas mask bag,  I had to make one for Henry. I needed it to be easy and cheap too.

Why, yes, he IS wearing a shirt from another Harrison Ford film.  That is a total coincidence, I swear! 

I put the snaps on after Henry tried it out.  I think they could be a little bigger, but it is what I had in my sewing box. Technically, the buckle on the belt and the snaps should be brass, but you get what you get.  It is fully lined in the same fabric which I'm sure my 5 year old really cares about deeply. 

To make the satchel I took the Valentine's Day chairback pattern from the beginning of the year and used it as a base- you can find a detailed tutorial at Our Scoop for the chairback. Obviously, I made some changes to turn it into an adventure-worthy satchel. I skipped the heart cut out, the straps, buttons and ruffles/ric-rac.  To attach it to the belt I inserted squared loops into the seam at the sides between the lining and the exterior, in the same way that you insert the fold over flap. Since the belt is so stiff I made the loops by stitching together two strips of the cotton (both with fused interfacing) and then I back stitched the whole loop to just give it extra strength when I inserted it. Just make sure the loops are centered in the sides, that they are the same size and fit around the belt. 

Use your imagination to remove the Calvin Klein embossed logo.  It was a $1.98 at the Salvation Army.  Finding a leather belt small enough to slip across Henry's chest was not easy.  I wasn't going to use leather at all but everything else I looked at just looked... wrong.

All the pieces spread out.  I used a cheap khaki colored cotton, less then $2 worth, but if you are making this spend the money and use canvas.  It will keep it's shape better if nothing else. 

The best thing about this project for me was the fact that it was so plain how much I've improved in my sewing.  This bag took me maybe an hour and a half and I was sipping tea and listening to the kids play in the other room.  It was simple!  Comparing how I struggled with the chairbacks originally it's pretty pleasing.  The notes I made all over the pattern eight months ago seem self-explanatory now. Hooray for me!   Wait, I take it back!  The VERY best thing about this project was how happy Henry was to have it.  "Mommy!  I can put my candy in it!"  Love him so much.

He's probably dreaming about Legos. 

Halloween 2011: Indiana Jones Costume Ideas

**Update:  Indiana Jones satchel making here**

I love Halloween!  But does my sewing machine?

It may seem a bit early to be thinking about this, but, trust me, it is not.  One of my first thoughts when I opened my sewing machine was Halloween costumes!  I'd rather start early in case I screw something up or really can't pull it together.  October is just around the corner. 

Lookin' mighty fine, Dr. Jones.  Mighty fine.

My son made his decision quickly.  This year Henry wants to be Indiana Jones which is a great choice in part because it is so easy. Henry likes to specify that he wants to be Lego Indiana Jones, but doesn't want his face painted yellow, so... you'll just have to take the Lego part at his word.

I poked around on the Internet and found that there are commercially available Indiana Jones costumes, they just suck.  Trying to find a handmade costume for sale is not much easier, although I did find these awesome, related items:

I love this quote, even on a tacky t-shirt.  Purchase here.

I'm sure these taste terrible, but wow do they look good! 

Anytime you can condense a film into an inequality statement you have a blockbuster. Nerd city here.

We already found the perfect hat at Mill Street Antiques. 

Isn't Indiana's real name Henry?  Funny, since Henry's real name is not Henry.

How cute is that?  Excuse the terrible photo quality, he squirms.  It is an actual 1940s fur felt hat so it's super soft and holds its shape really well.  On the downside, it is not readily replaced so I've got to keep an eye on it for the next two months and make sure it doesn't go on any premature "adventures".  The woman at the antique shop impressed upon Henry that it was not a toy, (she may have been insulted that I was giving a 75 year old hat to a kid), so he's been careful with it so far.  He did get into a water fight with his sister wearing it, but it dried.  Technically, the band is supposed to be black or at least a darker shade of brown, but I'll make sure not to go trick or treating at Skywalker Ranch. I'm going to buy the jacket, pants and shirt since they are all easily purchased and can be used in real life.  That leaves me Indy's whip, satchel, and a map or purloined idol to make for him. 

Ideas for the whip:
-Obviously, I have to make it so it can't be used to really injure anyone.  Yarn?  Felt?  Ribbon?  It'll need a handle of some sort... maybe from a jump rope?  Maybe I could just spray paint a chopped up jump rope...a really soft jump rope.
-pants will need belt loops to hang the whip from.  How does Harrison Ford keep it on him in the movies?  Is it wrapped into his belt?  He won't have the revolver or the machete, that is for sure.
-maybe I could braid some black t-shirt scraps like this:

Ashley over at Make It and Love It has a whole awesome step by step tutorial on 5 strand weaving.  I imagine if I'd been a Girl Scout I'd already know how to do this.

Ideas for the satchel:
-The Internet tells me Indiana Jones satchel is actually a British gas mask bag from WWII, so I won't be picking that up on clearance at Claire's.  However, it looks like I could sew up an easy replica sized for Henry with simple rectangles.   

I could do top-stitching that shoddily, with ease!  And no ironing!

-will have to learn to do snaps and the strap will not be real leather
-can double as his candy tote! I imagine I could stamp the inside of it like the real one too.

Ideas for map/idol:
-these bits I'm not as concerned about coming up with before October.  Some gold spray paint and a tacky figurine and you have an antiquity! A folded up road map I have from Costa Rica that I leave in the sun for a couple of days and voila! Adventure map!  If anything, this will be the fun part.

Updates as they are made. 

P.S.  Someone needs to send me this for Valentine's Day:

Other Crafts: Super Easy Lego Table & Doll Bed

Other Crafts!  These two were super simple and a hit with the kids.  These are what I like to call Weekday Projects- I can do them on a weekday afternoon, start to finish with little to no direction.

LEGO TABLE

My friend Holly, who is quite crafty herself, mentioned the existence of such a thing a couple of weeks ago and how expensive they could be.  So I got home and Googled it and found she was totally right.  Outrageously expensive.  $250 outrageous.  But, I also discovered a bunch of DIY Lego tables that looked awesome.  Really awesome.  Most of them required power tools and a whole bunch of space once it was complete to store it and I wasn't up for either of those.  I needed easy and small.  So I took matters into my own hands and made this in less then 15 minutes. 

I know better then to move blocks during construction so this photo is candid. It's a big surface with a small footprint.

Not difficult in the least.  I used museum putty (to avoid both math and glue) to secure the Lego base plates to the top of a Target Ikea "Lack" knock-off table and my son was THRILLED.  Big Mommy points for me!  The museum putty is really stuck in case it strikes you as flimsy.  The plates don't lift or move at all and if I ever wanted to I could remove them.  My word of advice is one that only became obvious once I started piecing the plates together- they need a bit of space between them, ever so slight, so that legos will fit across the plates evenly and lock like they are supposed to lock.  The best way to get the distance right is to attach a block across them as a guide while you're puttying up the plates.  Since my table was white and I used white museum putty you can't really see it between them- if you had a different color table you could always use clear museum gel instead. Or really commit and use glue.

if you look close you can see the slight, very necessary gap between the plates.

Cost:  $39.11 (each of the base plates were $6.53 which is really a form of Danish terrorism, right?)

Verdict:  Legos are the most amazing quiet time toy ever.  Should have made this a year ago.


DOLL BED

Abby has been wanting one forever but I couldn't find one that was the right size or that wasn't made of plastic or plywood.  Even those I did find were way too expensive.  $78 for a doll bed and blanket, plus tax and shipping?  And I have to put it together? I kept putting off buying her one.  So when I saw this bright green solid wood Ikea doll bed for $10 I snatched it right up. 

It was violently green.  Brain searing green.  Radioactive frog green.  GREEN-GREEN.  Like greener then my startling green bathroom.

A bit of spray paint (Krylon this time, seems to work as well as the Rust-o-leum for a small project and is cheaper) makes it pink.  I'm still not doing great at the spray painting.  I did go back and fix this because it was just too drippy for me. 

not cute

much better.

I then used an extra flat sheet from my daughters' linens to make a doll duvet set to match her room.  I took foam I was going to make a dog bed with to make a mattress and covered it with white cotton as a "sheet".

Cost:  $10 for the bed, $4.99 for the spray paint, everything else I had on hand already.  Took me probably an hour to paint, sew and stuff everything.  If you are curious you can buy the doll bed at Ikea un-painted for $20, no mattress. 

Verdict:  Super fun!  My daughter loves that it matches her bedding and I love that it didn't cost me a fortune and isn't plasticky.

Linkys:

Sewing Project: Space Shuttle Tribute Embroidery & Patch T-shirt

The last Space Shuttle mission is about to come to an end with Atlantis en route back to Earth and it brings on a not-unexpected or even unique wave of nostalgia given my age (I'll be 35 in a couple months). What can I say? I'm a Cold War kid and I love the stars.

I always thought I'd go see the space shuttle lift-off in Florida. You know, one day.  Unspecified future tense.  It is by all accounts a truly awe-inspiring thing to witness.  I wished for years that they'd reinstate the West Coast launch program from California, but they never did after Challenger.  This is not the place to get into the politics of funding the space program, but our nation's history of flinging humans off the planet in a dangerous (and yes, expensive) bid to understand the fundamentals of the universe and how it operates is something I'm happy to share with my children.  The space shuttle is cumbersome and outdated and needs to go, but I hope it is replaced with something just as innovative and iconic.  And one day, I swear, I will go watch it, whatever it is, hurl brave people into orbit or beyond. 

On to the sewing!  There is currently a print of a small piece of embroidery on Atlantis, (the original was too heavy if you can believe that) experiencing zero gravity right now-  it's by Texas artist and fellow craft blogger Rachel Hobson and earned its place through a contest sponsored by NASA and Etsy. 

Her blog is all kinds of fun, check it out.  I totally agree with her win, but the other entries were pretty damn amazing.

It is truly a great piece, the texture is incredible and the stitching is both intricate and simple.  It is needlework at its finest, I think.  If it were a painting it would be called painterly, in that you can see the evidence of the artist's hand at work.  I have no idea if there's a word for that in embroidery or not. But it is inspiring and beautiful.  My embroidery is far less artistic and way more juvenile in part because I made it for my kids.  The concept could easily be transformed into something more chic and sophisticated by ditching the shuttle entirely or removing the booster and flames, doing it entirely in black and white, putting each of the capsules and the collection of stars into their own mini hoops and adding considerable texture... it would actually be quite lovely with an entirely different execution, but this was for my son and he is five, so no subtlety here: 

In case you don't recognize them, which is likely since I drew them, that's the Space Shuttle and beneath it the Gemini, Mercury and Apollo capsules.  Each star represents a person who has died on a spaceflight.  There are 18, counting four Soviets, thirteen Americans and one Israeli.  5% of all humans that have EVER been launched into space have died doing it.  The occupational fatality rate for an astronaut, i.e. the percentage who die while on the job, in space or not, hovers right around 10%. To use that hated statistical mis-analogy of the imaginary meal:  if you have dinner with 10 astronauts one of them is going to die at work.  Go Science!

xkcd, the webcomic that would really hate that I didn't explain how the fatality incident rate for astronauts is skewed since TOTAL number of deaths have to be counted per astronaut- there are so few astronauts, there is no other way to do it.  After doing my own math I checked around the web and it seems people have come upon this problem before and either ignore it or call the whole calculation off.  The mortality rates for other professions (like firefighters, roofers or loggers) which can be calculated per 100.000 and on an annual basis are difficult to impossible to compare.  THAT SAID, generally speaking, being an astronaut is ~60% more deadly then any other profession over the last six decades, making it the deadliest job in the world by far.  Then again, I took a year of statistics 15 years ago and use a calculator to balance my checkbook.  So yeah.  You might want to ask someone else.  I can't believe I bothered doing all that math for my sewing blog.

Back to the sewing!  Sewing and the Space Shuttle have an intimate relationship.  The thermal blankets that keep it from disintegrating on re-entry were hand sewn with glass thread for the last two decades, mostly by women, using industrial Singer machines, one of which is from 1918 and originally was designed to sew saddles for horses. The blankets have to be perfectly tailored, obviously. NPR ran a great bit called "The Homemade Spaceship" back in 2006 which I found fascinating and then followed up just this week as these highly skilled seamstresses are about to be put out of work.  I don't think making slipcovers for couches is ever going to quite compare.

This is one of the thermal panels- it is made of woven silica fabric, woven glass fabric and silica thread and quilted by hand.  This one is from the National Air and Space Museum so you can see where it has been marked "scrap" with a red stamp.  Lots of awkward shapes to lay across the ship.  I had a hard time quilting a runner for my perfectly rectangular, flat dining room table.  With cotton.

And the patches!  NASA loves embroidered patches!  Here's a retrospective on some of the mission patches. Totally worth a look.  Most of them were designed by the astronauts themselves; some of them are better then others. I think the most successful ones are those that were designed with thread in mind, you can kind of tell when a design didn't quite translate to embroidery.  Each is unique and nearly all include their names which is a nice touch.  My favorites, purely based on design:

Apollo 13.  Lucky or Unlucky?  Great design, but the horses didn't quite make the transition to thread.  There are three horses, 1 each for Lovell, Swigert and Haise.  One of them was intended for Ken Mattingly- guess it was a good thing this patch didn't include the names since he was kicked off the mission two days before launch).

Final servicing of the Hubble space telescope in 2009. 

Insignia in patch form vs.

in emblem form:  the only insignia that I think looks GREAT as a patch and boring as an emblem.

I made this t-shirt for my son Henry.  Nothing too special, just patches, but he needed something since he didn't get a 4th of July dress:

 

Linkys!