Outside the Frame

I want to start a small but somewhat meaningful revolution.  I want us to stop being embarrassed by lived in space. We all do it, ya know, crop the mess out of our photos. And by mess, I mean the actual mess and clutter of living. And often by the vary nature of our hobbies, we sewcialists have more of it than many. Projects in progress and it looks like a tornado hit the place.

Yeah, right.

I personally have always been somewhat embarrassed by the not-pristine nature of my house. Its rather small and we have three adults, two kids, four cats, and various family and friends that stop by on a regular basis. I use my living room to sort clothes and my love seat to store the clean ones. Now that the kids are learning to fold and put away their own clothes that pile isn't nearly so bad. But this insecurity is something that is fed to us through culture and media.

That's what I'm talkin' about!

Someone I know who got divorced had a mother-in-law that told her "If you'd kept a better house, he wouldn't have cheated on you".  Which just totally flabbergasted me. If you have enough money to pay a house cleaning regularly, or have servants, or whatever, then I can see having a pristine house. Or maybe you are never home? Or never have any fun? I don't know. But the fact that we all do our best to put forth the best possible image of that  pristine house of, in this group of creatives, is probably much of an illusion. Much like the illusion that parenthood is all rainbows and kittens when that's total B.S. Most days is cleaning up bodily fluids, crisis intervention, and bananas getting stuck in the Kliptch speakers.

So all these thoughts running around in my head I though it would be fun to start a hashtag on twitter #sewdontclean and challenge other sewcialists to share their daily mess, the ones we don't normally show in our garment photos.  The following are all the ones that participated.  And I challenge everyone to not feel so bad about a little chaos.

spot the mallet

Please ignore the vacuum, I didn't mean it, honest!

See? We're all just human. What say you? Share your mess too! Just use the hashtag #sewdontclean

Sewing For Boys

You know, its kinda hard to sew for boys. I mean, the pattern options are very limited and while you could probably find some cool vintage patterns there's no guaranteeing that your boy will wear them. While Simon loves his WoW shirt, he doesn't wear it often because its a button down, and that's too fancy for school.

So, I asked him what kind of shirt would he actually WEAR to school. He says "NARWHALS!" (do a google search, they are a real thing). So I pulled up Spoonflower and did a search for narwhals. There are way more options now than their used to be. But at the time we settled on this one:

You can buy it here.

So for the shirt I used a vintage 70's raglan t pattern. Sorry, no link at the moment. When the fabric came it it was much more purple than expected. Which was fine, cause it matched his stuffed Narwhal I got him for Christmas.

This was the "try on" phase, complete with Dr. Dandy (cause he has a monocle and mustache). I was apparently not fast enough because he promptly ran upstairs "for bed' and then wore it to school, and then Grandma's cause she picked him up before I could pry it off of him. Once I finally got it back it had to be washed. Cause woof... boys are stinky. I added contrast bands to the arms and then self fabric to the bottom. Both needed more length anyway.

As an aside, Spoonflower's organic cotton knit is amazing and worth the price. The only thing I can complain about is the fading of dark colors.

Later I made a pair of sweatpants. I'm glad construction of these are fairly straight foward because I'd had a pretty epic meltdown after finding a dead chipmunk in the kids' rooms. That's one in each.  OHGODEEEWWWW.  There was a lot of screaming and yelling about the state of their rooms, making the kids cry, my husband fairly silent and "helping" them clean* and my roommate left the house. My roommate never leaves the house.

All that to say, I constructed those bad boys while heavily medicated. If this were a game I would have gained a skill level.

And, thanks to the wise words of Twitter Sewcialists, I saved the next thing for later.

Constellation curtains!  This fabric is the perfect curtain fabric. Seriously. The designer really thought this through. Again, spoonflower, and you can get this here in two colorways. These were also super easy. I uses every single bit of this fabric, NO WASTE!  And because it was such an easy project I decided to use some glow-in-the-dark fabric paint I had lying around to paint the constellations themselves.

This is the nook, where we just turned the old fish tank table into a hamster table. Next up is covering it with some vinyl for easy cleaning.

All these things seem to have made Simon a very happy kid. I could tell that he was feeling left out with the amount of things I make for Felicity (because.. hello, girls clothes! Seriously, this is why defining what we can wear by gender needs to go away).

So, that's that. I think I'm done here, but gotta go tally up the Sewcialist votes. Tell me, what do you sew for boys?

Oh, and before I forget, here's the Narwhal Song.


*Clean is a somewhat relative term here. We actually did a lot of cleaning this weekend but you can't tell because the living room is currently the laundry staging area and the carpet looks like it hasn't been vacuumed in weeks. Except it was vacuumed four days ago.

What Have I Been Up To?

To be perfectly honest, I've been up to a lot but it feels like I'm spinning my tires in mud for all the good its doing. I got my house organized and cleaned up only to end up with piles of boxes since I agreed to store things for a friend*. She gifted her smaller of two beds to Felicity, which was wonderful of her, as an early Christmas present, and now Simon has access to all of her manga (in book form) and he's a happy camper
too.

Felicity's new bed with a puff quilt by my Mother underneath the stars quilt by my mother-in-law. 

I, on the other hand, have been battling my own brain chemistry.  The unfortunate events happening to friends + getting turned down for a promotion at work blew chunks. Also, I've been worrying (for all the good it does) about everyone affected by Superstorm Sandy, including my niece. She's fine, and the only person that I communicate personally with that hasn't been accounted for is Oona, so if you are reading this, HOLLA BACK LADY! I'm worried sick about you!  But yeah, brain chemistry is no joke.  I spent years self regulating through diet/exercise and when they put me on Elevil for sleep problems due to chronic pain I also discovered a whole world of anti-anxiety and what it was like.  I'm thinking that we may need to adjust my meds now, I'm not sure. I'm slowly getting back on diet and exercise regime that I was on before Mom died, that seems to be helping too.  So, that's all part of my radio silence.

So on to the good stuff. I finally finished the cropped jacket! YAY!! That only took me almost two years. *chortle*  I love it and have several items planned to make to go along with it. Here's a few instagram/phone photos, cause I couldn't be arsed to bring out the good camera.

mmm, self made piping!

Before adding the lining and hemming sleeves

THE FINISHED PRODUCT!

In making this jacket I discovered I need to have broader shoulders on my dress form. Yes indeed. I also regret that I didn't block fuse the entirety of the jacket instead of just what it called for on the instructions. Leh Sigh.  In all, I did a combination of couture and RTW tailoring.  It fits, looks nice. I'm happy with it.

OH OH OH!!! And for those of you following me on Facebook and Instagram may have already seen this, but Dad finished my shelves and cutting table. I'm stoked!  Lots of photos:

The white cubes are from Michaels, not from Dad, but this arrangement was what I had in mind when we were working out specifications. The black spot on the floor is a hair scrunchie.

Check it out, a space to hold BOLTS and my cardboard matt, and the wax paper.

Add caption

 You can't really see it, but the bottom shelf  has my Mom's machine and the Bernina serger. Its no longer kicking around on the floor.

Seasonal fabric rotation will happen here.

Action shot from when I was doing my layout. 

Best part about this is I can take the rotary mat off and block fuse on the table. WOOT!

This is what it looks like now with my old curtains now acting as a skirt of sorts.  I used upholstery tacks. Now I don't have to worry about the sun fading my fabric. YAY!

Peek-a-boo

Oh, lets see, what else? Oh, I made a Renfrew wearable muslin.  I did an FBA using VickiKateMakes tutorial.  I'm about to transfer it over to the view A+C version, as I did B here.

I'm just going to pretend that gathering in the center was intentional. While there's not much stretch to this linen/poly blend (2.98 a yard fabricmartfabrics.com), its too light weight.  I can wear a skin-tone cami under it and its solves most of my issues, but otherwise it needs knit with substance.

So, I have a few more Renfrews of the cowl neck variety planned, a beignet, and then I'm starting on Felicity's coat.  I finally was able to order the lambs wool interlining.  My daughter doesn't like the cold so much. While she inherited my hair (she's slowly getting more and more red, like i did) and build, she inherited her father's melanin and ability to tan and her paternal Grandmother's distaste for cold weather. Harrumph.

So tell me, what are y'all up to? What do you have planned for the next few weeks of holidays? Or as I stole from a friend "The Gauntlet".

*Its involved a lot of drama that I am not going to discuss on a public forum. Its a family matter, 'nuff said.

Decor With Elder Gods

Remember my going nuts over the "Picnic Cthulhu" fabric on Spoonflower?  Well I totally ordered some... and made placemats for my table.  Hee!  They make me stupidly happy because I get to be Susie Home Maker and subversive. Its win/win.  

Craigslist Table

We bought this table years ago when my husband had been out of work for over a year and we desperately needed a family dining table. Its huge and scratched up like mad (one day I'll refinish it), so I like to keep a tablecloth over it to hide its fugliness. Its a majorly sturdy table out of real hardwood, so I'm loathe to give it up.   Given the messiness of my family, placemats were in order.

Outside of the actual Cthulhu fabric, this was a exercise in stash busting.  I used store bought bias tape (I inherited tons from Mom), and also used up some of the quilting cotton I bought prior to understanding fabric.  I'm probably going to try and bust the rest of those uninformed choices out sometime between now and February (the time I actually get Christmas presents done).

This quilting cotton looks like dragon scales. 

Cthulhu is thinking about pie. Tasty tasty pie. 

They aren't the prettiest things in the world in terms of accuracy.  I'm hoping people will be too busy rolling sanity checks to notice wonky stitching. That and they were smaller than the average placemat for reasons of frugality, or eeking out as much as I could with what I had.  I do need one more package of the brighter blue double fold bias tape for the two I have left to finish. I have a navy blue, but my husband pointed out that two different shades of blue would trigger my OCD tendencies.  When he's right, he's right. *sighs*

Soo... that's one less thing off of my UFO pile.  Now to make a few minor adjustments to the 70's pattern and get ready to cut it out tonight,  after the second half of my circle skirt class. WOO!

Spoonflower Fabrics; Something for Everyone

  I was poking around Spoonflower trying to find fabric that my husband might actually like. Something kinda dressy that I could make for him.  He likes dragons. Ok, so I found this:

He kinda liked it, thought it wasn't bad.  But then he came across this:

FOR THE HORDE!

Oh yeah, that's way more his style.  There was a time he practically lived World of Warcraft.  So I've bookmarked it.  Then I went looking for something I could make a tablecloth and napkins out of.  I was pleased to find there was an entire range of Cthulhu fabrics.

Please to be making a sanity check.

Even Christmas Cthulhu!

Christmas decorations my husband won't complain about!

Something on my "to do" list for a while has been to make curtains for the kids' rooms. For sure they have very unique personalities.  Simon was all about this galaxy print.

Hubble!

I asked Felicity and she was like "No, I want horses!"  So I did a search on "horses" and this came up. I said 'Skeleton Horses?!' and she goes "YEAH! That's what I want!".

Horsies.

I think there's something wrong with this family.