Tales of a Shoebox Princess

Yes. Always. I've been on a sewing binge lately. I shared on Facebook this past week that I spent a whole day cutting out skirts, shirts, and a dress. I have started sewing up what I cut out. So far, I have completed two of the skirts and one shirt. Gray maxi skirt.  I love maxi skirts. SO comfortable and they cover up my legs. The pattern was one I got for a dollar and the fabric was close-out priced at Mill End (sniff. I am so sad that they are closing). White pencil skirt I LOVE this fabric, which I also got at Mill End for cheap. It's got a chevron pattern on it, and it is technically a knit so there is some stretch, but it's heavier than a regular knit. The only thing I don't like about the skirt is that I put an elastic waistband. I have half a mind to undo it and sew some darts in the back and put in a zipper and a waistband.  See the lovely chevron pattern? Lavender shirt I've sewed a teal shirt out of this pattern before and re...

I added another blog to the Shoebox family of blogs: Elder Paul's New Groove. Guess what it's about? I've added it to my blogroll over there on the right. We'll start that blog up in earnest when we get our first email from Paul, probably late July. I can't believe how fast the time has gone. Paul will be leaving in less than 3 weeks. Any last words for him? Food to avoid in Peru? We actually heard some advice from someone we met last Friday at the temple: stay away from "cuy." And then the guy added, "although if you do try it, it's pretty good." Cuy is guinea pig. I wonder if Paul will be offered cuy? More likely he will be offered multitudinous seafood dishes, most likely cerviche. Switching topics: Sewing. I don't know why I don't sew more often. I really do enjoy it. And I get something usable out of it. I recently sewed a very easy skirt pattern with a stretchy knit fabric. I'm sewing a knit top currently, and also hel...

Although not so much obligatory as "for posterity's sake." As in so I can remember what costumes the kids wore each year. Because I like to keep track of those things. Hayley had been working on her costume since summer time. She sewed stuff for it, but in her own way; without a pattern, without instructions, willy-nilly, making a mess, hounding me for help with a collar. She likes to create things, but doesn't want too much structure telling her how to do it. And she got a hat and a Pikachu backpack free from some website (she is always getting packages in the mail. It's a bit worrisome, but she claims they are all freebies). But here she is: yes, she sewed the gloves. "Ash Ketchum" from Pokemon series.  Matt had no clue what he wanted to be for Halloween, which was kind of hard to believe since he was the one who went as Dirt and as Fire and one year as "an explosion of Mario" and last year as Jake the Dog. But when kids from th...

And another year of seminary is finished. Paul is done with early morning seminary, and Hayley has finished her first year. I did something I don't usually like to do, which is give out rewards for achievement. I made one slip of the tongue, promising whoever memorized all 25 scripture mastery verses would get a pair of "ugly pants" (mismatched pajama pants). I made good on my hasty promise though. The promise came about when Katie was here for Christmas and she wanted to make pj pants but didn't have enough of either kind of fabric she liked to make a pair of pants. I suggested she make a leg out of each kind of fabric. She liked the idea, and so did Paul, who had to find something to give as a white elephant gift the next day in seminary. He ended up sewing a lovely pair of capri pants out of Star Wars villains on one leg and Disney Princess heads on another. The girl who ended up with the capri pants LOVED them and several others in the class coveted them. My...

Terrible pun in the post title, I'll admit. I sewed yesterday. I bought a piece of swimming suit lycra and made this: And I didn't even use a pattern. I measured my length and width, cut a rectangle to fit the measurements and had enough material left over to cut a circular (not gathered) ruffle. The ruffle was mostly guesswork, but I've had enough sewing experience to guess right most of the time. I used swimming suit lycra because it is extra stretchy (for those times I have to bend over to pick something up) and because it doesn't wrinkle easily. It hangs nicely and it's soft. See the ruffle on the bottom? Yes, without a pattern.  And because it's lycra, I didn't worry too much about hemming it--I serged a narrow rolled hem (like I do when I sew napkins) in a coordinating color. Up close of the ruffle: Yay for a new skirt! A light summery flowery bluery greenery skirt!

Katie's visit is over. We had a good time having her around. There was plenty of happy noise and chatter, and lots of juggling of vehicles (that's a sight to see). Everybody had some time with Katie, and she has left her siblings with a desire to sew pajama pants. Paul and his mountain goat polar fleece pants On the last evening Kate was here, we had cake, an early birthday dessert for her. She elected to have rocks, dirt, lava and a fault line on her cake: Happy 22nd birthday (yesterday) Katie! We really enjoyed having you here.

I'd offer points for people who could give me the reference for my post title, but I don't think any of you would get it without googling it. Here, I'll link to it. Singing the praises of pants I particularly like the line near the end: "Dolphins, one of the smartest mammals on earth. Do they wear pants? No, but they wish they did, that's how smart they are." Then there's another episode of MST3K where Pearl and Observer are in Roman times and they want to have a toga party, but the Romans don't get it. So Pearl comes up with the idea to have a pants party and they all dance around with pants pinned to their togas yelling "Pants party pants party!" but I can't find a clip of it on youtube so you'll just have to imagine it. SO on to pants. Pants. Pajama pants. Kate made some yesterday. First day home, and she's raiding my fabric stash. She found some fabric with planets on it but there wasn't enough to make both...

Hayley has been bugging me to put pictures of her Halloween costume on the blog. She finished it last week and we got a wig to go with it. This is the cartoon character she is trying to look like: Princess Bubblegum from "Adventure Time" And here is the dress: She's trying to be pretty Here is Princess Bubblegum Hayley with the wig and crown and the stuffed Peppermint Butler she made a while ago: And one last picture because we found it funny. See if you can guess why: Do you see why we found it amusing?  Here's a hint mixed in with some labeling requested by Hayley: Did you guess Paul's face on the computer is what made us laugh? Cuz that's what it was. I'm still chuckling.

One of the perks of my job is that I have a sewing machine in my office. If I'm facing my desk and I want to get a bit of sewing done, all I have to do is swivel in my wonderful office chair and say the magic word and my office chair turns into a sewing chair and I am seated at my machine. I haven't done much sewing until Monday, when I began on EJ's Halloween costume. He had gone to the local Renaissance Festival twice this season and wanted his costume to be like the clothes he saw at the Ren Fest. (Honestly, I don't know what he needs a costume for; he certainly isn't going trick-or-treating. But I actually kind of wanted to sew and this seemed like a perfectly legitimate excuse to exercise my sewing muscles). I got some muslin and a peasant shirt pattern and got to it. Unfortunately, on Monday, my ring finger on my left hand was in a tetchy mood and picked a fight with the sewing machine needle. The machine chunk-chunk-chunked to a halt and I had to extrac...

Matt and Hayley have been working hard on new projects. One kid did it for a school assignment, the other is ignoring school assignments to work on her own personal idea. Remember the post I wrote about Matt looking for bugs for an insect collection? He finally finished it (a week early, so technically he could still find some more bugs and add to his collection, but he was tired of all the killing). Yay! I am done forever with dealing with kids who need to collect, kill, pin, and label insects! Here is Matt with his assortment of insects: He didn't go much for decoration and layout; he just wanted to get the buggers pinned and labeled. Personally, I am proud of two of the insects. If you looked very closely at the picture above (with a microscope), you would see my name on two of the labels signifying that I caught them. I will have no one think I am a pansy when it comes to bugs (spiders are a different story completely because they are murderous beasts with only one thoug...

I am now going through the third major room remodel in as many years. Holy carp (yes, the fish), it is tiring. I have all my canned food on my kitchen counter at the moment--it looks like I went nuts at Sam's Club. I really should take a picture. Jim got three new bookshelves set up in my new office/sewing/pantry room and I am slowly going through all my craft stuff and....ahem....it pains me to say this....I am throwing some stuff away. I have decided that I can only house as much as two bookshelves can hold (and that includes all my sewing stuff except for the actual machines). The other new bookshelf joins an old bookshelf as my pantry. Oh, you'd like to see a picture? Here is what it looked like BEFORE. You can see my work computer on the table, sharing space with my sewing machine. It really is too crowded. And here is a little knot of cables and boxes on the floor. One box is a firewall, one is a modem and one is a WAP. Guess which one is which? 5 points for each right...

I was in a T-shirt redesign mode yesterday. The gray shirt cost me $3--clearance rack happiness! I bought two. I had beads on hand, so no cost there. Here is what I did to the gray shirt. I call this picture "Robbing the Peter shirt to make the Paul shirt look prettier." Here are three of the circle piles I cut out. I cut out a total of five. They are going to be flowers. I hand-sewed them on the neckline of the shirt. Bead detail. Black beads, clear beads and white beads. On me: I made the fabric circles by cutting a three-layered square off the scrap shirt, folding it in half, and cutting a half circle. Some of the squares I cut were on the edge of the shirt so they included a fold. This is what Matt did with those folded scraps, which had two holes in them: Can he get any weirder? (And I see Other Jim's face in there) Hayley got in on the chin protection action, under pressure from me. I think I owe her big now for posting the pictures on the blog. I don't owe Mat...

This time with a coral-colored T-shirt from Target. I'm amazed there was anything as colorful as coral in the plus-size section. On the clearance rack, no less. I fiddled with the shirt at my mother's while she gave piano lessons to Budgie and Cheeky (yes, Cheeks is back on piano lessons after 8 or 9 months off during school--it was at her request too. She said since Honor Band and jazz band were over, could she have piano lessons back? Would Grandma allow that? I chuckled and said Grandma would be very happy to have her back). I don't have before or during pictures of the shirt, just the end result. And this time, I got fancy with some leftover tulle and beads. Bead detail And on me. I think it looks a little top heavy, and I don't like the pocket (which you can't really see in the photo), but it will do. I was going to cover the pocket with a rosette made out of the hem of the T-shirt I cut up, but...ack!...I left it at my mother's house. Mom, don't throw ...

Their selection of plus-size clothing SUCKS ROCKS. Big giant boulders. Big giant boulders covered with algae, oil slicks, and bird poop. It's bad. As I wander among the racks of clothing for juniors and misses, I see all manner of cute tops with ruffles and patterns and in lovely colors. I go to the four racks dedicated to the more generously proportioned, and everything is grey or black and blah. Nothing fancy, nothing cute. Not a ruffle or a twist or a tuck or a pleat or ANYTHING. There was one t-shirt in an aqua color and I thought it would go nicely with a green/white/aqua skirt that I have. But it was so bland, so plain, so...so....T-shirty. I wanted a nice shirt with ruffles on it. And this certainly wasn't ruffly. Or cute in any way. So I bought two of them. And I cut one of them up into strips. And I got out my camera to take pictures. And I took these pictures: If I were afflicted with ADHD, flowers and kitties would be the "Ooo, a shiny thing" distractions t...