Check Out These Tags I'm Poppin'

I've got my own labels!

So I posted this to instagram and facebook a few days ago and got lots of positive feedback and questions. Which, AWESOME!! I love them too. I've started going back and sewing them into my clothes, but started with what I finished this weekend.

more selfies, ladyskater tshirt, hummingbird skirt

I keep promising actual real photos of what I've been making, haven't I? *sighs* I'll get to it, eventually. So lets talk about the labels, which is the main feature. The design itself was made by a friend of mine, Jason, who is a graphics designer. He's currently without steady work, picking up contracts here and there, so any business I can send his way would be awesome. as you can see, he does wonderful and subtle work. Email me ladykatza (at) gmail and I will introduce you.

The second bit is where I had them printed. I actually found this Etsy shop through another blogger whom I cannot remember at this moment  you can find here at The Seeds of 3.  http://www.etsy.com/shop/ananemone  is the shop storefront and you can use your own label (which you send via the Etsy message system after you agree to pay) or you can use her art. She has both iron-on and sew-in tags, and from personal experience the sewn in ones are not scratchy at all.

Love y'all, mean it! XOXO

A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

I don't know why setting up my dslr and taking photos of my makes has felt like a tedious chore of late. Cause once its done I have lots of taking and editing the photos. So I'm going to give you a sort of high level overview of things that have been going on.

IOW: I'm just going to post photos from instagram cause I'm lazy.

So, y'all saw the photos of Felicity in my raglan skater hack dress. I finally got around to tracing out and doing one in my size, with no modifications other than grading from a 6 in the bodice to an 8 in the waist. This is the trial run, fabric courtesy of Oona.

 I completely failed to match up the stripes, but I'm OK with that. I decided I didn't like the cap sleeves AND they are a bit tight despite being knit. So I modded the pattern to have elbow length short sleeves that fit my Brunhilda biceps and a "cheater fba" that Miss Katie blogged about. Which was awesome because then I dragged the family and all my sewing stuff out to the wilderness and taught D and her sister S to make LadySkaters. D also needs FBA, but she doesn't have Brunhilde arms, so large arm adjustment not necessary. And I finished my static dress for Dragon*Con (post to come).

This is not the actual costume, just an awesome dress.

So that was all awesome and good and then my car blew a gasket on the I-285 north side. In the middle of construction traffic. At 9pm at night. And AAA said they couldn't get to us before midnight.  Which put us down BOTH cars and we both had to be at work at 6am Sunday morning.. I worked two 12 hour shifts from home on less than five hours of sleep (in a 48 hour period) and called in sick Tuesday because my body threw a hissy fit, and my husband had to use my car to get to work. The car fix was cheap but that cost me a LOT of "spoons" in energy.  I did go into work on Wednesday and xanax is the only reason my coworkers lived through the day.

I slept in on Thursday, and then I made my last video post. Which, btw y'all. THANK YOU. I mean really. Your words of support and the fact that I may have helped others cope means that world to me. I cannot even explain. You're all awesome and beautiful people. 

And because they were already cut out, I made matching skater dresses for Felicity and me that Thursday. Next photo shoot, D*CON costume, one after that, mother/daughter dress photos. I think I'm also going to do a post on "What to Wear to an MRI" (not a joke).

Oh hey, remember the Tofino's and the swatch in one of my videos? Yup, totally made that. Here's crappy selfie with gratuitous belly button and stretch marks (or as husband calls them "lightning scars", cause I'm awesome and gave birth to a mostly hairless bi-ped. Two of them, but not at the same time.). By the by, double gauze is YOUR FRIEND if you live in hot humid climates. I officially want three dresses from the stuff for outdoor activities. Like Ren Fair or craft shows. For serious.

And HERE is my ripping off Heather B and making a LadySkater t-shirt*. Now I want one in every color.

I know, I'm teasing you with my shoe collection you can't quite see behind me.

To be honest though, that is a really bad representation of the red. Here, have a better one from my new webcam. Its the "Cayenne Red" from the bamboo knits Fabric Mart got in sometime ago. I bought it full price because I was certain it would sell out quick. It did, like  it was gone a month before it went on sale. I snagged two other colors on sale though. This stuff is amazingly comfortable.

This is the un-cropped version. Check out my #sewdontclean sun room.

Oh, that brings us up to what I'm currently working on, which is fitting the Hawthorn (4 hours so far) and working on the Hummingbird skirt. I've traced out both views.

Humming Bird!

I did decide to do a wearable muslin out of the same turquoise denim that I made my latest pair of Clovers from... and I just realized I haven't blogged about that either. Sheeit, I'm just all kinds of slack. You still love me, right??

FBA Phase 1

Oh, what's missing here is the forward shoulder adjustment. And the Brunhilde Arms adjustment I did to the sleeves. I ended up adding 2 inches in diameter for the sleeves to fit around my biceps.  The one nice thing here is I don't think I need a rounded upper back adjustment. I don't have the web-cam fitting photos with me.

Here's the markings that I change on the muslin.

And here's where I transferred to my already poor Frankensteined pattern piece. I traced out a new one, I may move the bust dart over later, I dunno. But that's it for the Hawthorn. I did cut out a blouse version from Fabric.com's solid rayon challis collection called "darkest navy". I hope I did the sizing up on the peplum correctly.

So that's all the randomness for now. For the finally I give you a sneak peak of the costume I will photograph sometime in the undisclosed near future. And yes, I really was that pale.

Oddly enough, I was the only one with decent cellphone reception that day.

Love ya, Mean it. xoxo

* I had some sort of interesting footnote to put here but I forgot what it was. So um... KITTY!

A Very Personal VLOG

Before you decide to watch this I am going to tell you up front that this is NOT a sewing post and this is about my very personal struggles with anxiety, depression, and chronic pain disorder. Its a long video sparked by a twitter conversation the other day. If you do not have any interest in this go ahead, mark as read, and I'll have some happy sewing posts for you soon. (Please note almost finished Tofino's in background). I promise I won't be offended.

I am also posting a number of links below this for those of you that are inclined to read and research.



Something of note, the only reason my initial back injury did not put us in the poor house is because it was covered under worker's comp even after my contract was up. However, after four years they really wanted to get rid of me so that's when the settlement proceedings started. It was a paltry sum of money in the grand scheme of things but it kept us afloat until I was able to get full coverage under my company and not get denied treatment for "pre-existing condition" thanks to the "Patient Protection Act" (aka Obamacare, and anyone who tries to troll political is going to get deleted, that's not what this is about).

"The Spoon Theory" or the origin of the term "spoonies". If nothing else, read this.

Brain scan of depressed and not depressed brain from Mayo Clinic

What SSRI's are and what they do for depression.

General Anxiety Disorder

What is clinical depression?

Serotonin  and Dopamine

Stay Fabulous! XOXO

The Raglan Skater Dress

So y'all know the Skater Dress from KitchyCoo  first debuted for girls, and I really love it. One problem, it was just a little too small for Felicity. Then the Lady Skater debuted (I've made THREE! Will blog later) and its for teens too. But it was too big, except for the skirt. So I had a lightbulb moment. I decided to take her favorite raglan t-shirt pattern and hack it off at high-waist height and add the skater skirt. I had to cut the size 3 and then shorten the size one length by two inches.  It seems Viking Mom has had a Viking Daughter.

DO NOT be fooled by this adorableness. She's a bruiser when you make her mad. 

Thus, the raglan skater dress was born. It suits her broad shoulders very well and I may have to create my own hack for this too. This was the test run made out of a thick cotton/poly jersey blend that I inherited from Mom's stash. I had a moment when I remembered I was suppose to help Mom cut a dress out of this fabric for her and it sparked a short crying fit. But my family and the #sewcialists pointed out using it this way would make her happy. Especially with the added iron-on kitty bling. I'd had the iron-on for so long I forgot where it came from.

Hello Kitty!

See? The iron on gives it just a tiny bit of visual interest. Tractor and farm cats help too. I should mention we took these photos up at my friend D's place. They have lots of animals as D's Mom (its a multi-generation house) rescues animals. Anyway.

The great thing about the Skater Dress is that its perfect for active girls that like to wear dresses. Make it out of a durable washable fabric and you have a play dress you make up from cut to finish in an hour. No joke! Its no wonder these are so popular, it really is a great pattern for a sewing quickie. 

Lets see, how high is this?

Watch this!

WEEEE!

"Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuses" - Robert Heinlein

Lets give horses apple treats!

Ooof, sour apples are sour. Good thing horses like them!

Run! 

Jump for joy!!

And there you have it. I'd say she's pretty happy with the dress.

VLOG2 A Cautionary Tale about Pre-Treating Fabrics.

Yes, that's right. ANOTHER BLOG POST! WITH VIDEO!

In other news I have cut out in five hours two lady skater dresses, a lady skater t-shirt hack, a dress for my daughter AND the Tofino pj pants. I'm taking them all with me to my friends house along with my two main machines. My Brother sewing machine and Singer 4-thread serger.

See y'all later!

Sewing Plans! My First "Official" Vlog

So the still image for this vlog is kinda hilarious. Also, I apparently I like to scratch my upper lip when I'm thinking about what to say next. Who knew? But I'm actually enjoying doing vlogs cause I can use my hands when I talk.

One note, the green denim is from Fabric.com, I forgot to add that part. I was also trying to say the red knit would go well with the gauze.

Patterns mentioned by me:

Lady Skater
Sewaholic Tofino, Thurlow, and Salspring dress.
Cake's Hummingbird
Colette's Hawthorn and Jasmine
By Hand London's Victoria Blazer

Ok, hope this wasn't terribly boring. Tell me what you have planned, please?!

In Which I Say Things Out Loud (Word Meme)

So EONS AGO *dramatic echo*, in internet years, Miss Isis did a thing called "Blog Voices". I've been wanting to do this for ages and ages and finally entered the 21rst century and got myself a nifty HD webcam. This is what I did first. You might have to turn the sound up a bit, I was talking a bit softly in some spots.

After watching myself do this, which was weird, I realize the fact that my parents came from two entirely different parts of the USA comes into play. And if I'm around my southern in-laws, well, I get a thick accent. But years of doing IT work on the phone has made me fairly clear good about enunciation.

And below is the list of questions/words.

List of Words:
Aunt, Route, Wash, Oil, Theater, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, Toilet, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Probably, Spitting image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pajamas, Caught

List of Questions:

What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
What is the bug that when you touch it, it curls into a ball?
What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you change the TV channel with?