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in bear news

In recent bear events, there was the declaration that only dresses would be tolerated. Being a devoted mother, I set about sewing just that. Little did I realize that there were dress specifications. I mean, I'm talking about a 2-year-old. Surely, there can't be that many specifics. Foolish. Last. Words.

I purchased the most darling Oliver + S pattern; Tea Party Sundress, Bloomers, and Playsuit. You can see the dress patterns here and don't blame me if you spend the rest of your day clicking through their website. I have to give them high marks, not just for the excellent design and packaging of the pattern but for the high quality pattern paper and specific instructions. My proverbial hat is off to you, Oliver + S.

Here is the top of Little Bear's sundress (because you won't get a decent look at it in any other picture).

 

I made that bias tape my very own self, and I made it incorrectly. But still...I made it! It matches the lining and the bloomers, which have yet to be sewn together.

 

 

The buttons are my favorite part aside from the bias tape. (that I made!)

 

 

My first mistake was showing her the dress while I was still sewing it. She cried when she couldn't wear it that very moment. My second mistake was trying to get her to wear it when I was finished. You see, she didn't want to wear it when I wanted her to wear it. As with all Little Bear things, it had to be her idea first.

I whisked the freshly pressed dress into her room and asked, (excitement shining in my eyes) "do you want to try on your new dress?"

"No." Little Bear wrinkled her nose like it smelled bad.

"Mommy sewed it just for you. Look, it has blue kitties on it."

"NO!" Little Bear shouted. "Dress!" she said and pointed at her green Easter dress. The one with the FULL skirt that twirls. (You know who else required dresses with full skirts that twirled when they were little? Little Bear's Nonna. But that's a whole 'nother post.)

Her new dress with the blue kitties hung in her closet a full week without being worn, and every day I asked if she wanted to wear it. Every day she said no, and each day I cried a little bit into my coffee. OK, so I only cried the first day. Then I decided to get sneaky.

The thing about bears is that in a head-to-head confrontation, you'll never win. Bears are strong and willful with claws. I realized that I had to present the dress as if I could care less about the outcome. So I hung it on the handle to her closet with a nonchalant glance, like, "oh I'll just put this here temporarily while I'm busy doing something else."

Five minutes later Little Bear brought me the dress. "Dress," she said.

"Do you want to wear it?"

"No," she said.

"Fine. Well, I'll just hang it here until later." I turned my back and left it there, but Little Bear couldn't resist and carried the dress downstairs to The Husband.

Ten minutes later she was back upstairs handing me the dress. I put it on her and she wore it the entire day. The entire day!

So Creative Peeps, I am one happy girl today. Not only did I complete a sewing project but I outmaneuvered a bear. (I'll have to savor this moment, because they're few and faaaaaaar between.)

stitching for skulls

Doesn't seem my usual style, does it? Hey, we've all got a dark side.

 

I was one of a hundred artists invited to participate in an exhibition as part of Skull Appreciation Day in Richmond, VA on Saturday, June 4. We were given an unpainted paper mache skull as a base, and our imaginations did the rest.

Noah Scalin is the creator of the Skull a Day blog (and book) and the author of 365: Make Something Every Day Challenge workbook. The man is seriously busy being creative.

As you all know, I have tons of quilt pieces from my Grammy and two Great-Grandmothers but I'm not a quilter. Yet. I say that but by the time I actually get around to it, I may be old and living in a condo with a herd of cats. I figured the fabric pieces might be perfect for the skull project, and after giving it a lot of thought, I decided to sew flowers.

 

 

Images of Georgia O'Keeffe's work got stuck in my brain. I loved her juxtaposition of bones and flowers, and with that in mind as inspiration, I began sewing.

 

I broke just about every sewing rule while doing it too. I left threads hanging and showed every stitch and knot. The messy chaos of it reminded me of pulling clover from the flower bed. The roots go everywhere. The plant may look small at the surface, but there's a forest of roots beneath it.

 

 

Thoughts of my grandmothers stayed with me as well. Quilt pieces are like small snips of time, remnants of a shirt or dress or coat from long ago. There are memories attached to each, and it felt like I was working with their past lives as I stitched the fabric together. I wished the grandmothers were with me to tell me their stories and to laugh about where their quilt pieces ended up. (After the initial surprise wore off.)

 

ME NO LIKE!

Little Bear is a two-year-old of definite opinions. See that expression? She has decided that she doesn't like having her picture taken. Nor does she like to wear pants.

EVER.

One fine spring morning not so long ago, I pulled out a pair of pink pants from the Pants Party Days that are now about an inch to short (although I ignore that and pretend that they're toddler capris) and proceeded to go about getting Little Bear into them. She promptly burst into mad tears and wailed, "ME NO LIKE!" As if I were trying to squeeze her into a mohair bodysuit, not a pair of soft, cotton pants that she's worn a bazillion times before.

"What would you like to wear?" I asked.

"Pretty dress," she sobbed and covered her face with her hands.

I trudged back to the closet, rolling my eyes where she couldn't see them and pulled out a dress. "This one?" I asked.

"No. Red one," she said between the cracks in her fingers.

My loud sigh coincided with her dramatic sniffle, but I produced the desired togs and we went on with our day. I thought the incident was a fluke, but I fear it's now a full-blown stage. And I've been so busy with writing and preparing my submission for Skull Appreciation Day (more about that in the next day or so) that sewing for Little Bear has fallen by the wayside. For the time being we rotate the same dresses (sometimes twice depending on how bad the blueberry stains show up) every week. This morning I saw a spot of dried porridge on the dress of the day but just turned it to the back. She'll never know the jumper's on backwards.

Check out one of Little Bear's favorite dresses:

 

My mom made this for me back in the day, and it fits Little Bear perfectly. She wore it to church on Sunday even though she dripped maple syrup on the skirt. (By the way, an extra thanks to the man behind us who permitted Little Bear to take his hymnal for her horses to read.)

I think the embroidered flowers are my favorite part:

 

 

And lest you think Little Bear changed her mind about the photo shoot...

P.S. She practices that face in the bathroom mirror. (I wish I were kidding.)

 

the mash-up post

Today's post was intended for this:

 

I pieced together quilt squares from my Grammy Stash to make curtain ties. Now the summation of my knowledge of quilting would fill a cat's thimble (ie. a really teeny tiny bit). In fact, I can summarize all my quilting know-how in the following statement: it's like making a fabric sandwich. Ta-da! as Little Bear would say. Since I don't know anything, I began with piecing some squares.

There aren't any pictures (yet) of my collection of quilt squares, but permit me a one word description; Voluminous. I have several shoe boxes of cut fabric from both great-grandmothers and my Grammy. There are 2x2 squares, 4x4, and 6x6, hexagons and circles. And there's A LOT of ugly fabric in those boxes. Enough that I worry about what these ladies were wearing back in the day. Maybe the fabric was given to them by well-meaning friends...that's what I tell myself. 

Little Bear loves the ties as well. So much so that she just pulled the entire curtain rod to the floor. "Uh-oh," she says. "Mom, break!"

Even though my post was reserved for quilting, I got distracted at breakfast by A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, a writer so skilled that he requires two middle names. I'm not typically a fan of the high fantasy genre in general, but this book hooked me from the first three pages. (I was giving it a twenty page head start before I decided if I liked it or not.) It's not so fantastical that the magic (there's only a little bit so far) or foreign words pull me out of the story, and the characters are full and vibrant.

I've been reading at lunch sometimes and right before I go to bed which causes me to wake up in the middle of the night to roil about the many intrigues of the book. I'm so close to the end that I gave myself fifteen minutes of reading time after breakfast. (If I don't set a timer I'll spend the entire day reading and the house and bear will run amok.) In that short time one of my favorite characters died. I was in shock, followed by a short bout of crying over my coffee cup. Thankfully The Husband had already left for work, so he couldn't tease me about it.

I warned him that the series (it's a trilogy) had a huge following, but he went into work and made the comment about his wife "being into that nerd stuff." Three of his co-workers spoke up and told him that they were big fans and had read all the books. Ha! The Husband was pretty embarrassed and stammered out a confession of liking Lord of the Rings. Point to the nerds.

The difference between The Husband and I is that I wear my nerd badge with pride. I openly profess my love of space and knights and comics while he considers himself "the cool one."  But we both know the truth.

Last but not least, I sneaked a peek at the royal wedding shenanigans going on and watched Princess Kate and Prince William share a chaste kiss on the balcony. Much to my surprise I got a gushy feeling at the modern fairytale. (I choose to ignore the over-exposure, souvenirs, etc.) I guess we're never too old to love a prince and princess, although I prefer my princesses with swords. Gah, it appalls me that I possess such a sentiment and goes against my general fight the power attitude in life. Oh well, we all have our dark sides.

my first shirt and the subsequent sewing lessons learned

After two and a half months, my first summer top is finally finished.

 

I bought the dotted swiss ages ago when The Husband first broached the subject of moving further south. I figured the light fabric would make a great summer top, and since I had never sewn a shirt, I thought this was a great place to start. That was back in late February.

Now, I did pack up an entire household and move a state away in between cutting and sewing, so I'm accepting this excuse for the hilarity that ensued. This also prompted the first lesson learned on this project: don't cut out a pattern then pack it in a box then discover it (again) and try to piece it together from memory.

By the time I began sewing it together, I had four rectangular pieces that vaguely resembled one another. My beginner mistake was that I didn't make some indication on the material as to what pattern piece it belonged to. Which led to me sewing the cuff of one sleeve with the piece that was supposed to make the front placket where the buttons go. I had a feeling that something was awry when the cuff was waaaaaay longer than the gathered end of the sleeve. That didn't stop me, though. All I could think about was finishing the darn thing.

Second lesson learned: when basting or making gathers, use a contrasting color of thread. Although my mother had told me this before, it wasn't until I was ripping out a permanent seam (when I was supposed to be taking out the temporary threads that pulled together the gathers) that it made sense to me.

And finally, the placement of buttons and buttonholes should be done precisely so that they line up correctly and so that plackets line up as well. Mine are off just a hair, but I'm leaving them as is and claiming that it's artistic license. I'll just make sure that I'm constantly moving when I wear the shirt so that no one will have an opportunity to stare at it and find the mistakes. Although, when my mum comes to visit in a couple weeks I'm going to have her rip out the too big-cuff so that I can re-sew it. When I put the shirt on the dressform, I couldn't help but notice the gargantuan sleeve hanging lower than the other. (sigh) And now that I've noticed it, I won't be able to stop noticing. You can see it too in the picture.

The best part of this project was choosing the buttons. With a sewing room devoted entirely to my craftiness, I had room to unpack my button stash inherited from my Grammy. She was not only a saver but extremely organized. I'm hoping to never have to buy another button again.