wienerdog tricks.

Other Progress.

Besides getting a new brother, this is what I've been up to:

1) New furniture from my favorite uber-cheap auction site. These lovelies put me back $12. The chair:

The double-chair-ish Sofa Sort of Thing:

Twelve bucks. Total. And yes, that includes the tax. I cleaned them up (okay, with about another $12 of cleaning supplies.) Solid addition to the house. Thinking about the living room, but they may end up as the answer to my Upper Room Makeover.

2) Finished the Transformed Quilt Scraps pillows for my bedroom. These squares are the edges of these quilt tops of my Granny's (yes: that's what we called her) handed down to me from my mom.

And I did my first-ever freezer paper stenciling (inspired by this guest blogger over at my buddy CraftyTammie's). I went for small letters over big. 

And I gray sewed piping into the "mr." and some lovely vintage beige-ish ric rac into the seam of the "mrs." Solid.

I didn't have any "edges" for these squares since on the original they were sewn right up on each other, so I just re-attached them so that the square corners sort of merged into each other everywhere (kaleidoscope style, I'm thinking). I did it everywhere so it would look like it was on purpose. Classic repurposing move.

They're still a little floppy, so I may try to find new pillow inserts or I might just try Anne's Dog-Bed-Stuffing Technique with my scraps. We'll see. We'll see.

This ticks one more project off the list of Craft Debt 2011. Two more projects to go. [Insert photo of me high fiving myself here.]

I think I'm going to finish that list just in time for the boys to say, "Mom--can we sew a 32-piece plates set out of fabric that will need to hold food but should still be soft, 9 aprons (3 full; 6 half), 3 tote bags and 32 journal covers for our teachers, our teacher's aides, our friends' moms and the school secretary?"

Bring it, June.

Three Really Terrific Things that Happened to Me This Week

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. I learned the word for the polyester that I've been referring to as "the stuff your grandma's pants are made of"--it's FORTREL, a word that I can use with power for the rest of my making life. (Thanks to WDT Regular Krista at Poppyprint Creates for this crucial tidbit.)
2. I was listed in Quilters Home Magazine as part of their "Top 55 Bloggers of 2011."
3. I met--for the first time--a brother I never knew I had.

And now here's what I have to say about lists of terrific things that happen to people: they are not always populated by things that the aforemetioned person ever suspects. This is true, of course, of #2 but even truer of #3. 

And no, I'm not making it up. Quilter's Home Magazine really does consider me a quilter.

Also, I'm not making up #3.

And no, I'm not working on a screenplay for Oxygen or some sort of serial-ed Lifetime TV Movie for Women (although, hmmm . . .)

As it turns out, its entirely possible to wake up one morning with a bigger family than you knew you had and for your life to be flooded with new possibilities--more people to nod with, more people to look like, more people to say more and explain less to. 

And my real take away so far is that I flat out don't dream big enough for myself. I'd say that in the last handful of years, #1 and #2 on the list would have been the sort of things I would consider as solid, Terific Things. Even: Things So Terrific I'd Be Nervous to Hope for Them.

I would say that the message sent to me this week is, "Um. It might be time to dream bigger."

Message received. My telegram in return:

Going to keep Making and Living Differently so STOP If you’re going to suggest otherwise because STOP as it turns out the Other Stuff (money, fame, clothes purchased at retail price) are not Nearly All that I Want STOP I will continue to live fueled by the truth that if I STOP I will miss a boat I don't want to miss: a boat marked STOP There's More

And yes, that's a dramatic ending to this post, but I would like to report that I now have genetic proof in the person of my newly-found brother that Dramatic Storytelling is, in fact, a DNA-given trait. 

I Already Threw That Other One Away.

Well, that's not true. I throw almost nothing of the Fabric Persuasion away. I did, however, FRANKENSTEIN that last cash wallet into these two (and in the process have finally stumbled on to the truly-best-designed cash money system wallet of my lifetime and--in the process--discovered something crucial about Making):

Okay, first--here's what's even better than day-before-yesterday's version of the cash wallet:

• Hidden snaps (none of those pesky Snap Backs showing their backsides to the world
• Handy zipper pocket for change
• Less Hot Dog-ish in proportion (I added an inch to the up-and-down measurement).

PLUS (But wait--there's more!) I made a mini wallet for all my CARDS. Dangit I'm so relieved to have finally done this. I have like 42 membership cards and insurance cards and weird grocery store discount cards and never the right thingy to put them in. So now I do:

It has hidden snaps too. It has hidden snaps too.

Do you all do the cash system? Am I accidentally sharing too much on the interweb right now and all of y'all are running around with no-end-to-the-debit-ing lifestyles and I have just admitted to being the girl at the party who (often feels like she) has (only ) 42 cents to her name? Awkward silence.

Dangit.

Here's the part about the massive inner self-discovery that happened as well: I realized that design takes time. And iterations. And tries and fails. And 3700 prototypes.

I had to make one of these before I could make this one before I could do this so that I could get right Here.

And all that making and waiting and testing and perfecting also meant that I could finally arrive at the best naming of my category for Entertainment that I have yet used:

Because nothing says "good times out with the family" like Sweaty Clowns.

And it's striking me too that sometimes I have to Life With Something for a While before I can truly figure out how to improve it. And also that if I keep at the Making of a thing over time, the Best Version will--by some, strange fairy-dustish magic--one day appear before me, like it really was plopped out of the sky.

The Evolution of a Cash Money Wallet

We interupt this endless blah-biddy-blah-blah about Craft Debt '11 (which is sending a message that I am MUCH more productive than I actually feel or am) to share a late-breaking _____ (that word that means when a story appears from nowhere).

It came to me while I was driving yesterday: the perfect, less bulky, wildly cute, heartily practical design for the cash wallet--the one that's been eluding me, the big one, the grandfather of good cash money wallet ideas. And when I drove into the driveway I jumped out and ran upstairs and drew it and started cutting and ironing interfacing (floppiness was a previously reported-to-myself problem) and measuring dollar bills and adding fractions.

Everybody sing it: HAAAAAAAAAAA-LAY-LU-YAH. HAAAAAAAAAAAA-LAY-LU-YAH. HA-LAY-LU-YAH. HA-LAY-LU-YAH. HA-LAAAAAAAAAAAY-LU-YAH.

It is smaller than its earlier cousin (apparently, roughly the diameter of a brick):

And, upon reflection, could quite possibly be constructed from an otherwise-abandoned potholder.

 

Its remaining limitations:

I added the snaps as a last step (which are a SIGNIFICANT practical improvement from the buttons I've used in the past to keep all the one dollar bills I carry around from flying out onto the street), but I added them too late in the game to make them easy to pound in place. Technical note to file under Things to Know About Old Polyester: regular sized-snaps can't make it through two thicknesses of double knit which have been sturdified by heavy-weight interfacing.

It looks, still, a little clunky in its proportions, reminiscent I would say so far, of a hot dog bun

Its song-inducing strengths:

It is really, quite sensible (since all four slots face "up" AND can be peek-a-booed with the use of just one snap or another.

 It still allows me to name my money categories better words than FOOD, GAS, ENTERTAINMENT AND MISCELLANEOUS, which I find to be words tossed about by The Man and phenomenally uninspiring when I'm already walking around trying to spend roughly 72% less money than I'd like to.

More updates as they unfold [oh--heh heh].

I Get [What I Need Without Having to] B[u]y With a Little Help From My Friends

A Craft Debt  '11 Update

You all know that I like to wait and let the solutions come to me--or maybe go as far as to do a slow-motion hunt for them as I trawl the thrift stores in my county.

And I have to tell you: the strategy always works. And this time it didn't even involve any thrifting.

In response to my wailing over not having the right zipper, Michelle piped in and offered an INTERNATIONAL SWAP. And before I could say Sure That Sounds Canadianly Terrific, she'd popped it into the mail so that I could finish this (that is her quite lovely, perfectly cream-ish zipper that was going, instead, to be orange if she hadn't come through for me):

It looks, I realize, shockingly like this, but is, in fact not: it's a big bit bigger. You're right, though: it is from the same vintage upholstery scrap. This one's got sweet little interior  . . .

a funky, salvaged-together bit of interior binding (which only my sweet friend who is finally going to get this bag will have the chance to enjoy when she flips it inside out) and this nifty inside-the-pocket fabric:

And then BLAM right after Michelle's International Niceness, came Vicki K's super smart suggestion to use two not-so-big zippers to stand in for a long one (since I had been Blog Complaining of not having a long one for my big pillows). She, gracious as she must be, offered it as a You Probably Already Thought of This, but then, as it turned out: I HAD'N'T.

And so the Bed Pillows to Replace the F[loral]ugly ones have been completed. Here's the genius part from Vicki K's brain to my pillow:

 
More on the pillows later (there's a story about freezer paper stenciling and friends around my table drooling from concentration to pull off their projects, but I'll save it for later).

And then, as if that wasn't enough friendship to get any regular girl through a week, Michelle included this little fancification: a Just Add Stuffing sort of a project. I said to myself, "Guy I would really like to stuff that, but I don't have any stuffing--but then I remembered my friend Anne did a podcast over at Greenstitch about using all your scraps to fill dog beds and so I grabbed the little ready-to-stuff, deflated Pin Cushion to Be and started mashing all kinds of bits that I dug out of the trash.

And before I knew it. . .

I had this:

Thanks, friends.