mary makes merry

There's something else I didn't tell you

I can embroider. Not well, of course, but I get by. Four years ago, my parish wanted to honor some older volunteers who had been helping out for about 40 years apiece. No lie. At a meeting discussing our plans, I said it would be nice to embroider a certain mosaic that we had in the church and frame them and give them to these folks. Everyone said that sounded like a good idea and looked expectantly at me. I realized I had just volunteered to create these items.

I pulled it off and each of the 6 ended up looking pretty good. This is not one of them; it was the trial run, but I didn't take photos of the real ones.

You can see a photo of the tile mosaic in the top right hand corner of the parish website, if you like.

At the first Renegade Craft Fair, I bought the Chinese packet from Sublime Stitching (and met Jenny Hart in the process!). So I don't intend to stitch saints' initials all my life. Bring on the pirates with knives between their teeth, I say! Or at least the crazy little hotdog dog and hedgehogs by Clover.

I've been holding out on you

This is old news at this point, but I love superbuzzy! Some weeks ago I ordered a yard each of the world-renowned hedgehog fabric, and the cutecutecute frogs+alphabet fabric. The goods came right away and I love them. I couldn't get a really good photo of either, but here's the general idea:

Now, what to do with them?

Irish Scotty

Returning to the football theme, here's a little Scotty I made for my niece-the-daughter-of-two-Notre Dame-alums:

This excellent free pattern from the Allsorts blog can be found here -- then go to her current page and see the great downloadable letters (Oct. 16) she's contributed to the cause of worldwide crafting. Thank you, thank you, Jenny B. Harris!

Ode to bias tape

My mom taught me to use bias tape many years ago, but I had forgotten just how fantastic it is.

I used a whole pack of the stuff in making this kimono. It really cleans up edges so that they look super-fab. This is based on a kimono I bought for Ellie (on sale) at a kids' boutique. I modified the design in a way that's hard to describe, but the result was that the inside front layer drooped until I modified it. Ah, Velcro. You're no bias tape, but you still rock.

I downloaded and printed out this Martha Stewart kid kimono pattern, but it wasn't what I wanted. So, I took my (paper) scissors to the pattern, then retraced the pattern pieces, and was off to the races. My shape for the armhole cap was all wrong at first, but I eventually figured it out. (The pattern has traditional kimono sleeves, score one for Martha in the authenticity dept., so they're cut as part of the bodice.) Knitting knowledge really helped me with this one. And not having to buy a pattern, yes!

I'd like to conclude with a beautiful photo of the kimono on a mini wooden hanger in front of a backdrop of some amazing print fabric, surrounded by little kanji in pink spelling out Love Baby or something charming. If I had such a photo, or even the props necessary to take such a photo.

Mobile KIP and a Nice Try

I'm even more psyched than usual about KIP tonight -- we're taking our show on the road to the Art Institute, which is free on Thursday evenings now! C'mon out -- meetcha on the steps.

Thanks for bringing it into being, Bonne Marie!

I made a hat for Ellie out of an old pair of jeans Saturday and then thought I'd try to enter it in the Whiplash August competition (deadline: today).  Alas, I can't fulfill their (reasonable) requirement of getting the badge on the blog so that it is a live link back to their site, and my continued attempts have made my eyes hurt. But here's what I would have said!

My favorite jeans of the last five years went to seed, or to scrap, a couple of  months ago. An artist's rendering, using their successors, of what they looked like at the time of their retirement:

When I realized last week that my daughter's summer hat was probably permanently missing, I decided to try making her the oversized (that is, enormous) bucket hat that comes with McCall's 4813,  a variety of little girl summer clothes.

I used a remnant of some cotton fabric replete with garden jollies from Joann as the lining, both to have softer fabric against her head and because there isn't enough fabric in one pair of jeans for both the outside and the lining, unless maybe using the pockets in some way would have done it. I had to finagle laying out the pattern pieces on the jeans; both the crown and the brim have one more seam than called for because I couldn't lay out those pieces on a fold. Anyway, here's the result! She'll be able to wear it till she's in junior high, it's so big:

If you're squeamish, look away now...but here are the remains...

I don't even know why I haven't posted

I love the Scotty pattern by Jenny B. at allsorts. Here's a machine-stitched one:

And here's a skirt I made for Ellie, using only two fabrics rather than three, but still relying heavily on the (alas-apparently-defunct) Three Peas' tutorial. Rebecca, who put that together, if you happen to come by here, thank you again and best wishes to you and your peas! I'm glad I made notes in my Ellie project notebook.

Love it! Props to Clark: When I was completely finished, I had a thought that had not occurred to me at any point when I could have done something about it: I was convinced that the green section should have been wider. But Clark pointed out that that would have meant less of the print fabric, which really is the star. And I quickly saw that he was right. It was nice to realize that it really was all right, and that I wasn't just settling for something that was fine, but unsatisfactory, as I often do. In other words, I actually believed him for once!

(The magenta is her T-shirt.)

Sunday afternoon on the Island of Need-a-Gift

Thanks for the excellent tutorial, Mariko! It was crystal clear and a lot of fun. And without it, I would never have been able to make a gift for my wonderful sister-in-law just in time for her birthday party this evening.  (The handles are not as odd as they look when hanging on the doorknob.) Hope the weather Saturday was glorious everywhere, not just in Chicago, and that all were able to enjoy it in some way for at least an hour!!

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the skirt

Once upon a time, I bought a pair of jeans for Kid E on the sale rack at the Gap. They're very cute, but the snaps along the inside of the legs never would stay snapped. So today I turned it into a skirt (sort of using this site, but not always taking their sound counsel:)

Parade Grand Marshal's sash courtesy of Daddy.

On Friday I made a skirt using this really excellent tutorial that I lovelovelovekisseskisses. If you make one (for a kid or for yourself), yours will look more like it's supposed to because you will not make math errors in the first place, let alone when you "check" your math. I finagled my way through without having to start from scratch, which is good because I was using fat quarters I got in a bundle at the fabric store and couldn't just toss everything aside for Minimoopy parts and start over. Thank you, quilters, by the way, for bringing Fat Quarters into the world. The terms of the modeling contract don't permit action shots in two garments on the same day, but maybe tomorrow I'll put one on flickr.

In other news, I worked on my dissertation today, which, for the record, is a picture-perfect Saturday in June. But I was outside for part of it and have a nice window in our office. Things could be a lot worse. Also am ready to start sleeves for the 1,000 stitch/inch cardigan for Skid-a-ma-rink-a-Dink-a-Dink.