The Kitchen Table

kids' clothes week spring 2012

It's back. Elsie Marley's kids' clothes week challenge. I've looked. I've wanted. I've lurked.

This year, I'm in.

 

via www.elsiemarley.com

OMG. An hour a day, that's all she asks for the clothing challenge. Given it took me three weeks to make two wee pairs of pants and a twirly skirt, am I crazy?
What's on my side: I know I can sew and get quite a bit done in an hour.
Bama no longer naps, but she rests AND she can sew buttons on to her fabric while I'm sewing.
Rabbit naps.
I have morning time while she's in school.
I'm desperate to get more pants and skirts done before spring and summer are really here.
I'm in. I signed my name to the comment board. No one will know except me if I flake ... okay, make that no one would have known if I hadn't slapped this post together. And tweeted it.

Have Pants, Will Dance.

I found myself on a furious "I must create" kick last week. I pulled the sewing machine upstairs, hacked the sleeves off of a very expensive French shirt (mine) and stitched them into a pair of pants. I wish we could have flamenco music playing in the background as we walk around town, but her singing "Twinkle, twinkle" will do.

 

I originally stitched them with the detail work on the inside. Oops. I was using two different tutorials for help, but found both sets of instructions needed just a bit more explanation (for me, anyway). (Indietutes is great, but I didn't quite get the bit about trimming the pants for the crotch; I used Luvinthemommyhood was more for reference.)

In the end, the pants were stitched and ... I had 1" elastic, way to wide for the fabric. Of course I had to make the trip to Purl that I'd been putting off. The store is roomier than the old ones were, with yarn and fabric combined. It's still precious, but the staff is generally nice and helpful. I picked up a couple of yards of print to make some treasure bags and a dress as well as black elastic. Yes, black. For the waist of these kind of sheer white pants. The store was flooded the week before and lost a lot of inventory. No matter, who's going to see the top of the waist anyway? 

I have the rest of the shirt to work on -- a dress, I think. I've held off. I need a little help from BaMa (the big sewing guns) for this one. I can't use the online tutorials I've found as most of them suggest hacking off the top. In this case, the top has the cool detailing similar to what you see on the outside of her pants.

In the meantime, the weather has cooled down and we've turned the temperature on the air conditioning up. It's still warm and stuff in our house. Wouldn't you like to know if the windows open? Yes, us, too. The pond is full and burbling nicely in the backyard. I'm hopeful this will cut down on the mosquito population that was thriving in the stagnant waters left behind. We need a few fish, maybe four? One for each of us? And a couple of plants. 

Also in the made category, a sock puppet, pictures to come. From a book/kit ridiculously huge and ugly. It took more stuffing than was included in the kit. Thank goodness I brought a bag of stuffing with us to New York. You know, because who knows when one will need stuffing.

I have to get back to knitting. I'd like to crank out a couple of sweaters for Bama before it gets too chilly. I'm considering scarves for her, too. Scarves. Choking hazard? 

Treasure Bag

Treasure bag and flowers, originally uploaded by gabbyenoaktown.

Bama's taken to picking up rocks, leaves, flowers, whatever on our walks. She refuses to let Mister or me hold any of her special items, even as she becomes overloaded and starts dropping things, which frustrates her (and kills us).
I made her a treasure bag out of sock monkey fabric, lined with a nice seersucker, the former purchased at a quilt shop in Healdsburg, the latter at Purl in Soho. The elephant pocket was test fabric for the valances in Bama's room. It's a little big for her but I think she'll grow into it. Of course, it's also the first of many if my bag obsession is genetic.
The girl totes it around, putting odd things in it. On this day, it was filled with dandelions, well, seedless stems of dandelions.

Finished Objects

I knit up two hats and two scarves for The Salted Dog customers before the holidays, bumping several in-progress projects, including Bama's Placket Neck Sweater which is still mid-sleeve. Between Bama watching, holiday-ing, and general housework, my queue came to a halt. Today I finished my niece's Toast, my mom's scarf, and a fix to my own Toast. I tossed in a picture of one of the Tasty scarves and Bama's stocking. 

Cheers!

Toast: Classic Elite Lush with Inca Alpaca stripes. The stripes are not symmetrical on the warmers.

2x2 rib scarf (Cascade Yarns Pastaza and Stacy Charles Ritratto held together. Almost two skeins of the Pastaza. One skein of the Ritratto). Modeled by my mother. 

 Classic Elite Inca Alpaca (London)

 
 Tasty Scarf (sold). (45 yarns, about six feet long and 10 inches wide)

Bama's stocking, made from a felted sweater (the red) and the collar of a fabulous sweater I bought in Paris in 2000 (for the millennium New Year's Eve celebration). The arms have the same crazy faux fur. I'm making her some rock star pants out of those bits (sometime this week). I still have some trimming to do for her stocking. I have a bell to add and maybe another doodad. We'll see. 

Happy Birthday, My Girl!

Bama looked different to me when Mister brought her into our room this morning. She was one! Of course, she's not different. She's still her same sweet, funny, interesting self, but one seemed so much more of her, somehow. I was a little teary over the end of our first year together, which has been wonderful and exhausting and entertaining and interesting and isolating and all together so much more than any head can wrap around.

Many of our family and friends, people who are central to Bama's life, came to celebrate her big day. Our big day.

Aunty Cake helped get everything ready. Mister, who is still recovering from pneumonia (no joke, people, pneumonia is brutal) was on Bama-duty, but also had to make sure he didn't overdo it, an easy thing to do if you're hanging out with your favorite birthday girl. Cake and I made cupcakes yesterday; I stayed up to finish her birthday outfit (and learn what bias tape is for, how to make my own, and use it).

At 10am, I checked my email while making the buttercream for the cupcakes. I got teary at a collage of all the babies in our mama's group spelling out "Happy Birthday --" Wow! Bama and I take a picture for their birthdays so this was the group's picture for us. Such beautiful babies! They've become important to us over the last 10 months, and it's been exciting to see all of them grow into themselves.

 

A flotilla of cupcakes (vanilla and chocolate).

An unwilling helper.

Vanilla buttercream, the important candle. Birthday crown in the background.

A garland for our beautiful girl from Piapie and her beautiful girls.

She's more excited by Papa's face then by the promise of first cake.

We don't have as many pictures of our guests as I would like (okay, we have about five), but there was baby-wrangling, visiting, and eating happening. It was more fun to be a part of the party instead of documenting it.

Our girl ended her day in a sea of paper with some awesome gifts -- big girl puzzles, books, snow clothes, blocks, and a pink  scooting princess machine. (The farm cat is driving and the farm dog is along for a ride. She's carrying the princess.)

She amazes us with her sweetness and curiosity, she fascinates us with her intensity. I knew I'd love my girl, I just did not know how big that love would be.

Sew Proud of Myself

I liked to think that I could sew. Notice, it's in the past tense. Because I was working on a pattern (something I'm making to sell) and realized, no, I really don't know what I'm doing. When I brought it up from the basement to show Mister, I had to laugh. It was awful. "It is clear I need to take a sewing class," I announced. While I was figuring out some sewing techniques, I was fumbling around in the sloppy sewing dark. My first French seam technically works, for example, but it's not beautiful and not even.

So, a couple of weekends ago, Cake and I took a class at KnitOneOne, a sewing/knitting studio in Oakland. I'd helped Sile, the owner, out over the summer by making snacks and tidying up during the teen summer session. In trade, I received class hours. On to Kira K.'s sewing class! Kira had taught the summer session for teens so I knew how patient and meticulous she was. I needed a bit of that. 

We made lounge pants. Mine, which I'm wearing at the moment, are huge. A little long and I could take the waist in a bit more, but they are comfortable and loungy, as they should be. I bought enough fabric to make Lentil a pair, and a dress, and another pair. We don't want to be too matchy-matchy because that's too creepy-puff-paint-sweatshirt-motif-mommy for me. 

What I appreciated was how easily some of the techniques I'd been trying fell into place. I came home, finished my pants and made Lentil a pair of leggings from an old sweater (not original, but I like them and will probably make more and sell them on The Salted Dog). In doing so, I mastered the overlock. I can see why people like BaMa, who recently purchased one, move on to sergers. 

When I finished the leggings, I moved on to a baby shower gift for my friend Ellie. I'm also knitting her bebe a sweater, but in the meantime, I made this bib (and one for Lentil) from this remnant fabric -- ooh, aliens with many eyes! 

 
The backing is a bamboo fleece, which the woman at Piedmont Fabrics swore would be fabulous and is. It is soft, absorbent, and lays well. It's also $25 a yard, which would yield about 9 bibs (wow! $$$). In doing this project, I tackled the button hole. I can't say they were beautiful, but considering the thickness of the fabric, I'm okay with how they turned out. I used this tutorial to understand the Brother buttonhole foot, but I found it via SewMamaSew's buttonhole tutorial series.

In the second picture, I'm proudly showing the hole where I flipped the bib inside out. While I was sewing, I was listening to The Windup Girl and in sewing glee/book focus I zipped all the way around, forgetting to leave a hole. At least the seams were even. (I fixed it later.)

For me, the most useful part of Kira's class was finding clarity in instructions that were slightly out of focus for me. My mother and step-mother are regular seamstresses (my mom made a lot of my clothes when I was little; my step-mother made her own -- first -- wedding dress, our dresses for her wedding with my father) but I never sat with them and actually learned what to do. Most of what I did seemed to make sense, even if it was a little sloppy around the edges. 

Now I'm going back to my original project, which uses recycled sweaters in a children's garment. When I make the first one I'll post it. Those, I plan to sell.

(Speaking of selling things, I have three Tasty Hats to whip out for a consignment offer down the street. It will be interesting to see how they do.)

The Art of Sewing. Sort of.

Okay. I don't really know how to sew. I mean, I kind of know how to sew. I can sew things together, like pillows and bibs for Lentil.
But, until now, I did not pay attention to, say, weft or warp. And, frankly, I still don't understand what those terms mean or whether Lentil's pants will turn out. I'm using a pattern from one of BaMa's Japanese pattern books. This is the first pattern I've used since I was nine or so when I made a skirt, a horrible skirt, with my much-accomplished sewing mother.
I can't get the book to pull up on Amazon otherwise I'd show it to you. Maybe I'll take a picture of the pants when they are done.

Along with weft and warp, I'm learning about interface. My question: do I need it? Really?

Sigh.