wienerdog tricks.

Rescued-Fabric Apron Kits (and a Nifty Giveaway)

 

I'm giving away a couple of apron kits. Yep. Even better: Apron Kits from Rescued* Fabric. Even even better: Apron Kits from Rescued Fabric to make vintage-style aprons for little people. 

Apron kits as in all-the-pieces-are-cut-and-ready-to-sew. Guy. How fun. I know.

They'll turn into something just like this one:

 

 

 

Every kit comes with fabric all cut and ready to go and super easy directions for pulling off a nifty little vintage-style apron. You just sew 'em. They're even complete with cut-to-size pieces from my vintage ric-rac stash (ric-rac=gold). [I know: I'm. So. Nice. Dangit.]

Just for the hoot of it all, I'm giving away TWO for the annual Sew Mama Sew GIVEAWAY DAY. All you have to do to be eligible is leave a comment below any time before December 6th.  I'll pick a winner by random. If you want to say something more than, "Um, Hi." then I'd love to know what you think of the whole Apron Kit thing and to hear who you'd be giving it or making it for.

Here's the fab fabric for the two I'm giving away. . .

Green Vintage Bells with Red Vintage Bells:

 

Red Vintage Bells with 70s Patchworky Accents:

 

I'm in love with the apron kit. Hope you win and get to make one. 

[*Ginger, What's "Rescued Fabric"? This is the only fabric I sew with, but I thought it would be fun to share a little, so I've put these kits together. How fun! I know. It's fabric that was going to be FORGOTTEN about if I didn't save it: but I did. I found it at a thrift store or a garage sale or on some high shelf of my husband's aunt's barn . . . somewhere like that. And then I rescued it from its sad little hiding anonymity and brought it back out in the world to be purposable. Fabric is always sad when it's hiding. It likes to be out where the people are.]

P.S. I'll ship these anywheres, so if you're an international sort of friend, feel free to jump in this giveaway pool. 

What I Have to Add to the Ditty Bag Conversation.

Okay, it's not much, but I would still classify it as MIGHTY HANDY INSIGHT about the ditty bag.

First off, I was all juiced to write a tutorial about making these, until I found out that I am like 39 years late to the party and everybody has already told everybody else how to make these.

But.

For some reason--a reason which, as you know, I am wont to figure out--nobody has yet talked about making ditty bags out of old polyester AND nobody has discovered my excellent Topstitching Breakthrough.

 

 So, first on the merits of making these out of polyester. All of the things I've been saying are still true:

1. It comes in the super excellent funky patterns.

2. It's dirt cheap at the thrift store. 

3. The stuff can't be destroyed. (Okay, it can be melted, but otherwise not worn out.)

Even better, though, you can make these bags and--with just a little topstitching of a few major seams, they hold their shape without a bunch of interfacing and such. 

 

This old school kleenex box is my favorite shape so far, and i'm loving it as a makeup bag.

You can get a sense of my Topstitching Breakthrough on this purse I just made myself too (same idea: bigger bag):

 

I say Go Ditty or Go Home. 

* One final Sewing Editor's Note: these are just lovely to make LINED, but I suggest lining them by double-siding the main pieces, attaching the zipper and then gussetting, rather than trying to do some sort of fancy two-bag-reversible trick. Here's why: they get too poofy. And yes I know this because I tried it and they turned out, well, poofy. In a bad way. So learn from my mistake, Grasshoppers. I'm just saying.

 

A Joyful, Tepid Thanksgiving

I am embracing room temperature.

Think of me as calling Room T. Empature on the phone and going, "Hi. It's been so long. Too long. Come over. Your friend Hot TotheTable has overstayed. He's become tiresome and has led me toward unnecessary crankiness and general gloom/despair."

I've just decided to make friends with foods that don't have to scald the tongues of all 12 dinner guests. And I've decided to embrace my actual personality and not the persona of the Cooking Witch who tends to show up here about 73 minutes before all dinner-eating friends arrive.

So I woke up this morning to cook for our (2nd-ever) annual Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner and finished cooking all I had to cook about 2 hours before anybody even showed up on time.

This was a super excellent idea, so I'm sharing. Now, this year our friends made the turkey--but I'm telling you that I've already decided to serve Ham That Is Cold On Purpose for Christmas. 

So I was vegetable & potato & dessert girl this year. Here's what I made:

Mashed Potatoes (a la my grandma and, apparently, The Pioneer Woman)

 

The 9 yr old potato peeler in action: I highly recommend getting one of these.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes (These taste like--get ready for it: sweet potatoes. They are marshmallow-free and just lovely and sweet.)

Green Beans with Carmelized Shallots (I just Blanched them like our good friend Julia showed me in her "Vegetable Show" and then mixed them up with some shallots cooked on low until your youngest child turns 5 or they become light brown, whichever comes first.)

Broccoli Salad (you know--the one with the bacon and raisins and the sunflowers. My husband loves this stuff. And it can wait almost-mixed-up in the fridge, so it's a keeper.)

Pear Custard Pie (from this cookbook, which if you don't already have I recommend because it's easy and organized by season.)

Pumpkin Bars (a la Paula Dean. Love her. Just love her. I know everybody loves Tyler, but I think in my heart, I really AM Paula Dean, so I lean on her at the holidays.)

All I'm saying is check your inner Cooking Witch and tell her to leave. Just say this to her, "Halloween's over, Babe. It's Thanksgivingtime."

Over Here

Over here, I have this, so I've eaten like twelve burritos in three days and I'm cutting a lot of fabric. And also scowling at People. (Sorry, People.)

 Just finished this:

And also, this really did happen to me in the grocery store. And it has changed my ways. 

Sewing Party Report

So we hit it last night and here's the report . . . 

First, the Thanksgiving garland. I won't lie: I'm officially obsessed with these. This is ONLY the beginning. I've got about 5 in the works for Christmastime. And those are just for me--I haven't even STARTED the ones I just might make for gifts. Or I might make 38 and hog them all for myself and my house will look like a crafty 70's used car lot at Christmas. Maybe I'm okay with that.

 

Face shot . . .

Plus, I started on the first day of the rest of my Glue Gun Life with these.

And yes, as she has already said by offering this brilliant idea, there's no tutorial necessary. Step #1: find monstrous hoard of buttons you are currently squirreling away for some Sewing Apocalypse.  Step #2: start gluing them to whatever paper clips you can scrounge up in the house.

What I already told the Good (Enough) Woman when she asked about the garlands, I repeat here X 1000 about these button clips: This is the closest thing to mental ward occupational therapy I've ever done in my Making Life, and I can honestly say that it was drug-inducingly calming. Wow. If I ever yell at my kids again, I'm just going to walk zombie-like upstairs and start gluing buttons to paper clips. Call me if you need me, I'll just be upstairs for a while.

And while I was garland-ing and button-clip-ing, my friend was making these from this book:

They are so cute, I almost passed out and fell down the stairs. Shoot.

She also made a garland out of this same brown and white polka dot polyester, but I don't have a picture of it because she asked me to sew part of it and I effed it up (sorry for the phoul phonetic) because I sew everything at the speed of light and then rip it out and sew it again and she sews everything slowly and doesn't have to rip, so she thought I sewed faster than her but really she didn't know about that whole rip-and-resew part of my Creative Process. 

See, not only are we making stuff, we're Getting To Know Each Other Better too. Excellent.

Bliss(es)

1. Finishing my Thanksgiving Apron and Getting the 7 yr old Man Boy to Model it:

 

No, there is not a single turkey on this apron--but I made it for Thanksgiving and my little sister is making one from another chunk of that funky fruit fabric for our own private sew-along. And yes, I got that fabric at a thrift store. Did you really wonder? The back:

 

 

2. Getting a thank you picture from my fave 3 yr old for the bday purse I whipped up for her:

 

3. Finding this rad glob of almost-purplish pink polyester--3 or 4 yds at least--at a thrift store this week (I think old polyester might be my love language):

 

4. Working on Thanksgiving and Christmas garlands. (Sooooo satisfying.)

 

5. Making homemade pretzels with the (aforementioned) 7 yr old Man Boy

 

because he got this book from the school library (Mom, I saw it on the "new books" shelf at the library and I RAN so nobody would get it before me. Classic. The boy loves to cook. He totally has an apron in his Christmas future.)

 

6. Dirt cheap garage sale fabric for Christmas gifts. Woo Hooo!

 

 

7. Raising goofballs. 

 

(A requisite cave man shot from the 9 yr old Man Boy at the rib joint where we ate last week).

. . . and then yesterday when I was in the front picking up . . .

Yep, those are matches. 

 

And still these two acts of evil danger come nowhere near to what it was like to try to keep her brothers alive at this age. 

Worst day I can remember? Yeah, that's the one where I found the oldest Man Boy (about 2 1/2 at the time) digging through my sewing box playing with needles. Good one. So I sent him out to the backyard to play so that I could find them all and put them away. Cleaned up the needles. Told myself what a nightmare I was for leaving them in a box he could find, went to the kitchen. 

Heard the sound of breaking glass in the backyard. Found him outside throwing glasses onto the cement. Went to save him--and his brother--from the shards of glass all over the ground and found him covered in red. Thought it was blood. 

Turned out to be red nailpolish he's swiped from my bathroom drawer.

This was one morning, ladies. A single morning. And where was the 1 year little brother the whole time? Watching I think, but I really couldn't tell you because raising two boys 18 months apart totally obliterated my memory of their actual childhood--apart from the occasional disaster vignette . I think I started actually cacheing memories when they were like 3 1/2 and 5. 

And no the big boy doesn't go to some special school for angry boys. I think he just liked to see me run around with a mortified look on my face.

And apparently she does too.

I was doing the dishes.

A good idea and also sorry about that.

Super good Get-Ready-For Christmas idea:  my pal is dropping off her machine today so that we can hole up and sew a handful of nights together before Christmas hits. Why sew alone when you can sew together? Exactly.

This was one of our good ideas when WE were talking me down after the tiny little panic attack I gave myself after my last post about getting all I HAVE TO BE READY FOR CHRISTMAS. I practically had to use my son's inhaler from the pre-Christmas stress of it all.

 

So my genius pal suggested I make a list of FUN and NOT FUN holiday things I do. It has since calmed me considerably, and also given me great ideas for what to SKIP and what to ADD to the holiday line up of cooking, making, hosting, sending and eating.

Here's my list of NOT FUN: making too many gifts for too many people; cooking food that I don't like to cook that is all supposed to be hot at once when it hits the table and I only have one oven and I don't like hot ham; complex, expensive stocking stuffers.

Just the thought of removing those three things has lightened my holiday perspective considerably. I have cut my Make List, planned for a picnic-style ham dinner and am currently thinking about stuffing my boys' stockings with a CRAPLOAD of just one thing (all gum, all pennies, all . . . I don't know. I'm still working on this idea.)

And so those are my good ideas, friends: sew together; make a SKIP IT list; don't serve hot ham if you don't want to.

And sorry for maybe making you use your son's inhaler too. Guy.

P.S. I'll share my FUN list soon. I'm hitting the first thing on the list: make MYSELF some great new christmas decorations. So I'm tackling the fabric garlands head-on with a bunch of nifty old christmas fabric I just scored at a garage sale last weekend. 4 BUCKS FOR THE WHOLE BAG. I'll let you know when it's all ready to hang.