wienerdog tricks.

Super Fanky Linen Napkins

I made these this morning in about 27 minutes for my Thanksgiving table. They are the perfect combination of Fancy + Funky, an important balance for me at all times. (And yes, Fancy + Funky = Fanky.)

More specifically, for the best-ever thanksgiving table of my life. 

In their first life, they were linen tea towels (the ones that I find at all my favorite thrift shops that are inevitably a calendar from 1979 or pictures of Australian kangaroos.) I have hoarded them like crazy because I like to make these bags out of them, but now I have a gob. And I wanted linen napkins for my table. So there I was, making the easiest linen napkin of my life.

The best part: just one straight line of sewing. If you take a biggish linen tea towel and cut it in half, alls you gotta do is sew up that one cut edge. The rest is already finished. Yeesh. A baby with a dull needle could do this while watching age inappropriate 70's reruns of Bill Bixby getting really mad and turning green.

I tromped the kids out foraging (after their third movie this morning) to find Free Foliage (and to keep them from going completely feral) and we had big luck. Big. 

Such table fun.

So, it went like this if you want to make these:

1) Procure a short stack of linen tea towels from your favorite thrift shop.

2) Cut them in half.

3) Fold over and iron the cut edge.

4) Fold the edge over again and sew into place. (You don't even have to use pins, People.)

5) Iron them up into rectangles.

Beauty.

And Happy Thanksgiving, BPF's. Ya'll are a wonderful community that I'm glad to be a part of. Real glad.

Maybe Daniel Farraday Was Just Perimenopausal

I have a lot of sympathy for the way the guy had to keep that book with the contents of his brain in it that he was always wildly checking to figure out what day of the week and what year it was. Now that my, er, Hormonal Realities have required me to accept my need for writing everything down that needs to be remembered longer than 17 seconds, I have decided to embrace my need for an External Brain.

Sure, I could carry a book around. But I am more wildly complex than even Daniel Farraday, so I made this:

And so far it is working quite nicely. Spot for list-making. Spot for lists I have made. Spot for notecards where I might need to write Cute Things down. Spot for sticking those tiny cards that people you make appointments with are always handing over like you're not going to lose them at the bottom of your purse.

Sized to acommodate my new calendar pages. (They are loose-leaf and stuff into a hard vinyl back so I can take them out and fling them around and then stuff them back in. Nice.) So I just stick the calendar pad in there and close it up. 

And it folds up all nice with reclaimed about-to-be-smashed car seatbelt handles:

And I didn't add any sort of side closures because I want to be able to open thing up onto a table and use it like a mini-desk. That's the Vision.

And I made it really just like I made this--same basic construction process. And please do tell me if it's something you'd like a pattern for because it might be fun to pass on the love so you could make an External Brain of your own. A Brain Caddy. A Perimenopausal Sanity Holder. 

One for the Road

I'm going on a roadtrip, and I needed a treat. So I made this:

 A Toiletry, um, Roll. The powder-pink polyester spoke to me of Bags for Holding Things LIke Deodorant, so I whipped up this little number. And if you haven't yet made yourself on of these, then I say: Go for it. 

It's not a bit tricky.

Just gather up all the junk you like to haul around when you go roadtripping and eyeball how biguva bag you'll want.  I don't like putting every last thing in those little If I Were Travelling On An Airplane bottles, so I wanted a big bag to shove my normal sized stuff into. So my panel's pretty Bigish: like, maybe, 3 pieces of binder paper side-by-side.

Before you worry about turning anything into a bag, figure out what you hate to fish around for, and--find the middle and sew some elastic. Because you know, some things you just want to be able to grab--like tweezers, for instance, just in cast you get a, um, splinter and you need it in a fat hurry.

Stop looking at the edges: just look at the elastic. I chose Big Fat Wide Elastic because it makes me think of huge bras in a Jane Whatserhead sort of way. And this big fat wide elastic is the closest I'll ever get to the stuff.

Then I cut a couple of spots for zippers: one on the left that I just clipped in and then sewed the zipper in then I did this Not At All Fancy cover so nobody could see how weirdly and unfinished-ly I do zippers.

To make the other zipper, I just cut the whole piece off and then re-attached the panel back together with the zipper.

Then, like every last other thing you and I ever sew, I just took another panel of the same big size and sewed it together (facing in) and left a space and then flipped the whole thing inside out.

Before I did that topstitching, I stuck a big chunk of elastic in there so that I could roll the whole thing up and it would all hold together.

And I threw down a couple of lines of stitch to close up what would be two pockets

And topstitched my heart out around all the edges and then rolled it all up and flipped the big rubbery bandy elastic around the outside. 

 

Fancy fancy fancy.

The Nutbag Report: Summer Edition

Wherein I Interview Myself.

Reporter In My Mind: How was your camping trip and did those weird duffle bags work or did they disintegrate on the road?

Me: Back from 7 nights in our tent and would like to report, first off, that the duffle bags were just the thing. They did not melt or fall apart. They withstood excessive flopping around. Beautifully.

 

I won't pretend that the Brothers did a whole lot of Dirty vs. Clean clothing sorting, but the pillowcase insert did give me a place to stash, say, The Shirt One Brother Barfed On As We Drove Through The Mountains. And other things like that. 

Reporter In My Mind: Is that really your laundry or do you just make up those shots for dramatic effects so that everyone will feel bad for you?

Me: Yes, that's my After Camping Laundry. ONE of the three piles. Not lying. I don't make this stuff up.

Reporter In My Mind: Were you glad to be home?

Me: No. I love camping. I baked an apple pie in my dutch oven. I worked on a poem that's been bugging at me. I sort of read in between chasing the Baby Pumpkinhead and falling asleep. It rained and we got to hole up in our tent together. I ate a lot of bacon. I I wanted to stay out.

Reporter In My Mind: Was there anything that soothed the pain of your return?

Me: I came home to a happy stack of little fabric-filled packages ready to be sewn into wonky stars for my first-ever quiliting bee (click here for the Queen [of the] Bee).

If you're a fan of mail, I highly recommend signing up for a bee. What an international hoot.

Reporter In My Mind: Speaking of your odd interests, do you have anything else to share?

Me: On the add'l life weirdness front, I purchased a lot of printers--and I mean, actually, a Lot: 18--from my favorite strange public auction site for a grand-spanking $11.37. We needed a printer. Now all I have to do is find the one good one in this batch of 18. Just one more Rest Stop on the Road to Finding What We Need in the Sea of Used Goodies Lying Around Everywhere.

I picked them all up today. Action shot:

Reporter In My Mind: Do you have plans for further summer travel?

Me: Next up, we're all heading back out tomorrow for a nice long weekend visiting my very own Grandmother, where the kids will swim in the pool and she and I will talk about sewing longer than I'm able to talk about sewing with any other person on the planet. I am planning to drag my vintage Singer with me (the one her mother used to sew on) so that my grandma can tell me how in the heck to thread the thing. 

Reporter In My Mind: Is the sewing machine genetically attached to a heavier-than-rock table? 

Me: Of course it is. 

Reporter In My Mind: Will you schlep it 250 miles north in your minivan anyways? 

Me: Of course I will. 

Reporter In My Mind: Will you tell us what you discover about its happy little quirks and mighty ways when you wrangle that information out of your Grandma? 

Me: Of course I will. 

Reporter In My Mind: Will you eat bacon at your grandma's even though you have avowed only to eat that much bacon when you're camping and not when you're doing regular life things?

Me: No comment.

His & His Duffle Bags

The Brothers needed camping bags. They tend to LOVE to bring along Rolling Suitcases. This is both impractical, annoying to pack and, well, strange at a campground. So I whipped up these:

And when I say "whipped up," I mean it. Pattern: none. I cut out a fat circle, sewed a big rectangle around the edge of it, then up the side--then I added the top piece just like a super wide piece of binding, cut slits (Gorgeously-manicured buttonholes? Nope.) and put a piece of leftover laundry line through it (with a safety pin). And then I added the big, completely fray-able pocket on the front with all the zipper parts absolutely showing. 

Full disclosure:

And the best part about it all is that the Brothers love them. 

And the other best part is that they were made entirely from my Everest-sized mountain of thrifted scraps & notions and that I didn't spend $25 twice for bags for them. Oh--and also that they'll squish nicely into our over-packed minivan when we leave to go camping this week.

But wait! There's more. Here is the truly, tricked-out part of these bags that makes them the Best Ever for camping: I sewed a pillowcase right into them so that they've got a seperate compartment for stuffing their truly gross and so-dirty-not-even-they-would-wear-it-again-before-we-get-home clothes. Super cool.

  
So there you have it. The best way to get what you need is to just sew it. Dontcha think? Fortunately, I didn't need a ball gown.

First Ever Vintage Polyester Couch Cover

Here it is, Folks--the World's First Ever Polyester Couch Cover. 

 

(Our staff is verifying that claim, but for now, let's just go with it.)

I've been staring at my wonderful flowery brown couch that my buddy Bon gave me and that holds down the tv room faithfully, trying to figure out how to put some more spring into its, um, couch step. And it came to me in a rush: this couch is begging for a cover, and I can swing it. 

Plus, I have THIS in my stash (a GIFT from a super nice Blogger Friend who understands my love and reverence for the medium of polyester), and it's begging to live in my tv room where we do all our real hanging out and living and jumping and cuddling and watching and everything.

Plus, I happen to have a fat bunch of shockingly-coordinating red and white flower polyester that looks like its Polyester Sister. So there's that.

Plus--AS I continue to say to anyone in the world who will hear me: Old polyester is easy to sew! It's unbelievably forgiving! It's stretchy! And it comes in wonderfully weird colors and patterns! A shoe-in for the what-to-cover-the-couch-with variety of fabrics.

Action Shot of Newly Covered Couch:

 

I have to say that I was most surprised by how pretty straightforward it was to sew a couch covers--this was my first. Really--it was like making closes for Rosie--I sort of just draped the fabric and built the thing one panel at a time.  . . which made me think about making clothes (which I've been thinking about, as you know), and how all you really need to do is make a couch cover. For yourself. We are all just couches waiting to be covered. Which was why this was like sewing for Rosie, the Jetson's Robot Maid, and all I need to do is to figure out how to cover curved robot parts, and I'm home free as a seamstress. (Loved this post, which got me to thinking in this direction, btw). More on all that later (when I unveil the MATCHING POLYESTER SKIRT that coordinates perfectly with my couch cover. I know: amazing.)

In the meantime, consider all getting together to buy the URL www.oldpolyester.com for my next year's birthday, because I feel like I'm destined to own it.

 

Thing for Me #6: Ottoman Cover

This is a Sew Sew Selfish Month update.

I found this low-pile fuzz-covered ottoman (think: your godmother's sofa that she protected with a crinkly clear vinyl cover) at a thrift store and covered it once to match a rocker I also re-covered. But I made the slip cover too short on this puppy. And it looked like it had highwaters. Un-pretty. Here it is naked in a dramatic Black&White BEFORE version of itself:

And today I added happiness to it from my fat stash of thrifted, garage-saled, handed-over fabric. I found some nifty fake silk that gives it a happy Old Lady's Boudoir sort of feel. 

(Close up with stains that apparently it picked up somehow while I was sewing it downstairs with the rain pouring outside and the Baby Pumpkinhead climbing up onto the table and trying to rip it away with her spaghetti-covered hands--thank the fabric gods that this thing is acrylic. Can't imagine how it got smoodged. Right.)

Here it is in its happy AFTER state:

I'm working on this dimly-lit corner of my bedroom (back to B&W for increased drama):

 

And yes I got that chair at a garage sale and yes I haven't covered it yet because I love the fabric even though it is 987% worn-looking. And yes, I am considering making slipcovers for it (and its sister) out of red and white polyester. Because I can. It's Sew Sew Selfish month, remember? I am almost sick of sewing for myself. But only Almost.

In Praise of the Ostracized Duvet.

We never give these puppies away because they're so freaking expensive. AND they're made of really nice fabric that we like. AND what if we buy a much bigger house and someday have three guest rooms and might need a bed cover and we'll be able to decorate an entire room around the duvet cover. OR maybe someday we'll change our minds and really like the look of the thing on the bed. EVEN THOUGH all five times we've given it a go, we've hated it.

So they live in the backs of our linen closets. Staring at us about someday. Mocking us for keeping something pretty pent up and hidden. 

So cut 'em up, sistahs. Have at it with the scissors. I'm telling you it is a huge thrill to cut up something expensive. This probably speaks to the same part of me that likes to watch ice skating just because at any moment someone might fall down wearing a fancy lycra outfit.

But I've had two great successes with duvet re-purposing. First, I made curtains for my friend's ENTIRE HOUSE out of a couple of beautiful linen duvets she had hiding in the back forty of her linen closet. That was early this summer. (That cutie pie hanging over the window was actually a linen table runner I chopped in half and sewed curtain rod loops for. Like taking a candy curtain from a baby.)

Then just a couple of weeks ago I finally conquered the Nothing-at-Bed-Bath-And Boogeyman-Matches-the-Puke-Pink-Bathroom-Tile-My-House-Came-With Dillemma I've been boggled by for the past year and a half with a big gorgeous, funky duvet cover a friend gave me from her stash. (She got it at a garage sale thinking she'd use it someday . . .)

I even made curtains to go with (and I mixed it with an irish linen tea towel with game birds on it that I've bee hoarding like Gollum).

A couple of words about cutting up and re-using duvet covers for house projects:

1. Don't be afraid to use existing seams. These things tend to be sturdily constructed (sort of because the whole concept of a cover to cover up a cover is a skoshe high-end to begin with) and so I say never re-sew what's just perfectly fine as it is. Re-use existing hems where you can.

2. Don't feel the need to be too fancy. I had great luck letting the beautiful fabric do the talking in both of my curtain-making projects (for windows big and small, and for the shower). I did add a small detail to the shower curtain just by playing with the direction of the fabric. Nothing life-changing but it added some interest. And I mixed it up with the smaller bathroom curtain. But with the big stuff (large window curtains and shower curtains) it's okay to let it just be about the fabric.

3. Remember to have a really good time when you're cutting it up. Come on--when did you get to do this as a kid? Never. You're a grown up and if you want to cut up something expensive, then you can. Just because you said so. Don't miss the moment.

Good times with scissors, expensive material and filling an otherwise exhausting-to-shop-for house need.