wienerdog tricks.

I Chaperoned a Field Trip; The Sewing Machine Man Came; Pumpkinhead & Me Made a Purse; Also a New Tutorial

1) I Chaperoned a Field Trip.

I can't talk about it.

But because I chaperoned a field trip yesterday, all I wanted to do was sew today.

 2) The Sewing Machine Man Came.

Because all I wanted to do was sew today, I asked the sewing machine man to come and bring my newly-fixed machine, Lettie, who has been under the weather--Persnickety. Too tricky and ready-to-snag to use lately--until now.

Everyone should have a Sewing Machine Man. They are nice and do good work and say things like, "I took it completely apart, cleaned it, and put it back together and waxed and shined it. Now it sews perfectly." And they don't then take the equivalent of your mortage before they leave.

3) Pumpkinhead & Me Made a Purse.

And because the sewing machine man came today, I could sew on Lettie, who is the easiest, steadiest, happiest-to-use machine ever. And also shiny.

So Baby Pumpkinhead and I could make a purse. Which was her idea.

And because we could sew on Lettie, we together spanned 4 generations on one machine today. Solid use of a Friday.

4) Also a New Tutorial.

Because I sewed a purse with the Pumpkinhead and didn't yell or anything, I immediately wanted to show you how to do it. I have never successfully sewn with any of my children before today. I can't talk about (See #1). But I had good luck today and noticed enough as I went that I wanted to tell you. So I wrote a new tutorial.

I just put it up: How to Sew with a 4 Yr Old: A 5-Step Purse in 10 Steps.

Now you can go make one with your Pumpkinhead.

I'm Not Trapped Under Something Heavy & a DTR

There was no large piece of unmovable furniture smushing me to the ground or anything. No elephant camped on my back.

I just couldn't get here friends. Yeesh.

And I know you are wanting a DTR. What does this mean about our relationship? Are we really going where we want to? I'm not sure that this is what we said it was going to be, you say.

I know. But I love you and I don't want anything to change. I've just been busy at work, babe. It's all about you, though. It's all about you. I swear it, babe. I swear it.

And I'm back and I'll prove it to you and it will all be the way it always was. It will all be the way it always was.

While not physically (but only metaphorically) trapped under said heavy object and unable to get my fingers to my keyboard, I have managed to make one quilt top, 3 pink & white striped polyester aprons, 1 toddler purse. Pics you say? Pshaw. No.

Immediate plans: back for said quilt top and a weird stack of repairs. And just whatever I knock out once I get my legs to walk upstairs.

Which I'm going to have myself do. Because my weinerdog is dying to do some tricks. I'll report back with proof soon.

Until then--don't worry. I still love you.

The 6-Stitch Tote: A Video Tutorial

I wanted to make a basic tote bag that didn't require a master's in physics to make one with lining. As you may know, I prefer not to THINK when I'm sewing, and all the backwards math of lined totes makes me migrainey. So I've attempted here to master a basic, lined tote that requires only SIX stitches.

I know: fancy, right?

Plus, we both know I like talking to the camera. Can't help myself. (Click here for "eleventybillion" minutes worth of proof.)

Plus, I used old seatbelts for the straps. You could use old belts if you wanna. Or whatever other weird strappish things you can get your hands on. (Hello, weird suitcase arm strap I never use . . .)

Here's me USING THE LIP/CHIN CAM to show you how to do it:

  

Now go make one and report back. Please.

I Can't Talk About It

I can't talk about how many t-shirts I have destroyed in my constant, four-year-long attempts at converting a man's tshirt to a woman's tshirts. Scads. Gobs. Oodles. Wonking Heapfuls of shirts cut up, re-sewed, ill-fitting and tossed. Have you considered buying a woman's t-shirt, Ginger. No, thank you. The fabric is not right. And they disintegrate when you wash them. So there.

I even used a PATTERN once when I was doing this. Still a total no-go. 

The Discard Pile of Shame.

I can talk about how goodly I scored at the thrift shop today. One fat handful of zippers; 6 cotton dresses for Baby Pumpkinhead for 65 cents each; one solidly attractive piece of pyrex; 3 big wads of more-than-a-yardish old fabric; one shirt-with-the-tags-still-on for me; and--best of all--this old lady windbreaker:

A photo of me wearing said jacket where my chins appear to begin in the middle of my face.

Inscribed with one of my top three old lady names. Includes translation. 95 cents, btw.

I can't talk about how long it's taking me to call the sewing machine repairman guy. I need to have Lettie fixed. I jacked her when I was sewing late at night and got all agro with the knobs. She won't budge right now. Good one.

I can't talk about how much I miss being upstairs. How increasing my work load has left me absolutely stretched to the edges of my own previously proclaimed convictions about Making Time for Making.

How all I've made recently is this 23-minute bag:

Fastest tote to date. Old skirt + polyester for lining + seatbelt straps

I can talk about how I'm scheming to turn this 6-stich bag into a video tutorial. Soon. Soon.

And--with good reason--it looks like I need to talk about this question [posed by Miss Prickly, re-stated by Fellow Polyester Maven, Emily]: 

"How do we get paid for the "good" stuff? who wants to bankroll our talents??" 

I've been chewing on the freedom I've felt from popping down my store. And it's time that I chewed on this angle: what does it mean for us if we don't want to take our stores down? How do we wrangle the energy to approach our work like it's just Us and It and there is no Other waiting up ahead to pay or not to pay?

I don't have the answer to that one yet. But I'll have something to say soon. Just gotta chew on it a little longer.

I can't talk about how much I love you all and this blog.

I just can't talk about it.

Extreme Scrapping: Volume 862

Now it's even quilt batting. 

I have a shorty little table runner I'm working on for my mom--it's made from quilt squares from that Monster Stash of Granny Quilts that I'm still working from.

And it's really cute. I won't lie.

But I don't wanna go buy more quilt batting.

So I frankensteined it with a little zig zag stitch. And it's totally working.

I love it when things totally work.

I'll let you know when I'm finished. All I am right now Able to Start Without Running to the Store.

Where I Find a Long, Interesting Proof That I Was Right

Rember when I shared this decision with you? It wasn't about becoming a doctor or anything--I just decided to shut the doors on my shop for a while.

It's been a good decision for me. I've had the return of my actual interest in making, the burning internal pain of Empire Building has receded and I don't feel behind every time I walk toward my making desk (well, except at Christmas. Sure.)

I came across this video the other day, and I thought, "THAT'S WHY I WAS RIGHT."

 

Would love to hear your thoughts about it and whether you think it has anything to do with our Making Lives.

I Just Called to Say I Love You

I feel known. Thoroughly known.

I mean, there was this. (You already know that.) But also, I feel known:

As a person who loves big old scissors.

Thank you, Grandma Mary. I really like these.

As a person who thinks that any and all things could and should be made from old (abandoned) polyester.

Thank you, Meredith, for knowing that anything made by Blue Corduroy is a must-have. I have been staring at that jacket for ages--wanting to buy it for Baby Pumpkinhead. So happy to see it on her.

As a collector of stools.

Thank you, Leslie, for setting aside weird ottoman-ish stools for me. And bringing them to my house. And knowing that I will make friends with them.

As the proud new owner of my Dream Button.

Thank you, Kris, for making this for me. My. Exact. Wish. It is attached to my favorite jacket and I shake my head at my good life that it could arrive to me in the mail out of nowhere.

You will note here that I have only pictures of gifts given to me, and almost no record of what I actually made in this last frenetic Christmas Blowout Extravaganza. I did make some napkins. (Sorry, VCC, I know this was probably supposed to be something that needed more drum rolling, but there you have it. I was just trying to make napkins. NAPKINS for the Good Gracious. And I became completely unable to pull it off. First I turned a straightforward project into a complicated one, and then after I simplified it, I  became ENTIRELY uninterested. I am both complex and mildly silly).

I did make a lovely pillow from more of these old quilts (I used pieces of that one at the top) for my sweet Grandma whose mother made them.

And I sewed some pillow covers. (Have become a Thorough Believer in the Envelope Pillow Cover.) By the by, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, do ask because it is the easiest thing ever and completely impressive-looking after you pull it off.

Mostly, though, I ended up making salsa in jars. I know--right? I love to sew and there I was in the kitchen. It's red and green, at least. What can I say?

I have not finished living out my last year's New Year's Resolution. I promise.

This year's resolution: Remain Un-Mentally-Ill.

Solid goal. I feel sure that your presence in my life will a part of what ensures my success.

What I Got Before Christmas. And How It's What I Want to Give Everybody.

Here's what happened:

My pal brought me dinner the other night. Occasion: none. Look on my face: surprised and really happy. She brought it because she has the great good privilege of hearing me prattle on and on everyday about my regular life stress levels. She knew I was having to grade roughly 60 (well, 64 if you must know) student essays. She knew my house was dirty and that I believe in my deepest psyche that a dirty house is pure proof that I am not a Good Enough Woman (worth the click--trust me). And she also knows that I personally could care less about having my house clean beyond the soulful, psychic attack on said dirty house to said identity. And she never shakes her head and makes that *tsk*-ing noise. Plus, she's a seriously good cook.

So she showed up with dinner for me.

The dinner had cute tags on it.

She was smiling like she knew what she'd done was better than anything.

That's because it was.

And even though my Naturopath didn't turn out to be at all mad at me, I'm still working hard to figure out how to wrap my heart and brain around how to make Christmas make sense. I think it might be in something like this: stopping to make sure all of our gift giving is really intended to share love and not intended to prove anything. Even our love. I know: it's complex. It's a fairly new idea I'm chewing on these days. But I recognize that I am fighting against it pretty seriously at this time of year.

I know for sure that this box of food wasn't to prove anything. It was plain old, well-timed love. And I'm sure we could all be figuring out how to give more of that to each other these days.

I think I might be ditching my mysterious christmas project and trying to think instead about how to deliver some love to my family and my people. 

I want to figure out how to do the equivalent of this box of food for the people I love at Christmas.

Yes: that's it. That's what I want to do. 

In the meantime, just in case I don't pop back on here by the big red and green day: here's a thank you to all of you. For reals. I wish you gobs of cheap fabric. Chunks of time for making--the kind of time where you think you'll only have a little and then it grows and you're surprised by the chance you got to just sit and make something. I wish you good ideas. The luck and blessing to find what you need to make what you need. I wish you a short line at the post office and enough carmel corn to get you from here to Jan 1.

Merry Christmas, Bloggish People Friends. 

My Naturopath Is Mad At Me

I'm not naming a new reality show: I'm sharing.

My Naturopath is mad at me. Has been for some time. "How do you think you can live the life you're living" etc. "You need to slow down" and so on. "I knew you were an adrenaline junkie when you walked in, from those dark circles under your eyes" Blah Blah Personal Health. Blah Blah.

My christmas gift project so far. Wait that looks a whole lot like a fat pile of fabric to me.Yeah. That's what it looks like to me too.

This year-ago conversation has made me do two things over the last few months:

1) Search all over ebay for a button-maker so that I can print a small button than not only I--but all of you whose naturopaths are also mad at you--I mean, there has to be at least 9 of us--can have the grave joy of telling the truth on our respective lapels.

MY NATUROPATH

IS MAD

AT ME

I can see it in tiny font, white on black. You're with me. This has led to further frustration because all button makers are quite expensive. Plus I don't know which one to buy*. Plus I spent all sorts of time oline shopping for something I didn't have the cash or the chutzpah to purchase when I could have been doing yoga.

2) It's made me take an inventory of all that I do to determine whether or not it's My Life Worthy. I have managed to quit doing roughly two tasks in the last 10 months since seeing aforementioned Naturopath and would consider that a small victory, though I can tell you that I now don't sleep from worry over what a pain it is that those things I am no longer doing are having to be done by someone else.

This "progress" as I would see it will not be a shared evaluation, I fear, when I go to see my Angry Naturopath on Tuesday. I am fully expecting to wait a while in the earth-toned waiting room next to a very soothing bamboo plant, be called in to the office, be scolded, and then go home to invent ways to swallow even bigger supplements with names like Mental Illness Chamomile Extract and be forced to give up coffee in favor of Shriveled Soul Wellness Tea. 

I have turned to the solace of my Upper Room today to try to ready my own scattered head for the upcoming verbal lashing about the bags under my eyes, my eye twitch, and the glazed look on my face when I hesitate after she asks me which day of the week it is. 

Here's my favorite shirt. It's too big. I took my huge scissors to it to try to make it fit me and I obliterated the poor thing. Working too fast. Yeesh. Even my scissors are all dull. Literally. And Metaphorically.

Have I been upstairs sewing beautifully-backlit gifts for Others, you ask. No, honey. I have been trying to clean the place up, since I do, in fact, know that this room is a fat metaphor for my insides, so I figure it I straigthen it, I'll be readier with my cool-headed response to the Naturopath.

So when she says, "I think you need to slow down."

I will say, "I think you're right, but I find the need to pay my mortgage greater than my desire for a nap and so while it's true that great Personal Time would be wise for me, I am actually working even more than when I saw you last."

Instead of, "Sure. We'll move in with you, Lady."

I fear I have let down not only her, but all of you. I haven't offered a single decent gift idea for Christmas. I have refused to tell you what I'm (not) making. And I've been downright quiet over here in what is otherwise a noisy little corner. 

Apologies to you, friends. I'll be back at the machine soon. I have a tshirt quilt to make for a friend, a laptop sleeve to sew up for myself, some strange ideas about making books with old game boards, and even more old quilt squares to frankenstein around with. Oh--and my Chenille Dealer just coughed up some new goods. It's gonna be hoppin in the new year.

In the meantime: light something for me. I'm about to get an organic spanking from a woman who will be telling me it's for my own good.

 

*Please do advise, WDT Bloggish People Friends, I need full-blow advice. I'm serious about wanting a button press, unwilling to pay more than about 50 bucks. well, really 10 if I'm honest. And I want to make small ones. And I want to be able to slide a tiny piece of fabric in there if I feel like it.

Making Pep Talk from Grandma Ginger

It was so helpful, that I thought I'd pass it along.

And no, I am not referring to myself as a grandmother already. *ahem* I am quite without double-offspring. I mean my grandma. And I'm named after her--a big honor. 

Anyways, I saw her at Tgiving and did this:

It was, in fact, as magical as it looks. I also schlepped with me a big bag of my mysterious christmas project and showed her what I've gotten myself into. She was kind. She didn't make a single *tsk* *tsk* noise with her sweet little lips. 

She did, however, give me GOLDEN ADVICE: " [insert sweet, embarassing family name that I would never in a half a thousand years want her to stop calling me, but that I'd never tell you], I think you should set these aside and do the other ones first."

"Grandma!" I said. "You. Are. Right."

I was so frustrated and stuck--having over- and re-complicated the otherwise perfectly straightforward sewing project I've tackled. (Why make something easy for yourself, [insert aforementioned family name here], I said to myself.)

So I'm setting aside the part of the project that was making me twitchy and discouraged and am tackling the parts that I can do quickly. 

"Once you get going, then come back to these," she said.

I thought you might need or want to hear this same GOLDEN ADVICE if you're up to your neck in making like I am right now. If you've got a tricky piece you're working on, set it aside and take on something you can stack up.

Keep making, friend. And try to remember that you actually like doing it.

Tis the season to swear at your sewing machine. Maybe that will be my christmas card this year. Sure.

Sometimes I Don't Make Anything.

(Nice nails. Guy--I was digging the garden. Guy.)

It's not because I don't have the time. I've already told you that. It has nothing to do with not having the time. 

It's because I'm storing up ideas--like a squirrel hoarding nuts for winter. But mine are mental. Mental Nuts.

Mental nuts stored until I hit my pace for making all those christmaspresents I'm going to make.

Lately (thanks to my little sister), Pinterest is a piece of this [though ask me later about me super intense fear of finding something that I might have had an idea for on my own later if I hadn't come across it. it's like ohnoiwishiwouldathottathat-a-phobia]. And I'm sometimes making mental lists of the reasons I can't do the projects I'm in the middle of [Need to have old Singer serviced. Need to have scissors sharpened. Need to go buy 34 old game boards at the thrift store. Need to find more old polyester--not in pink. Need my friend to show me that envelope pillow way.] And other times, I think my next idea is just sort of on simmer.

I am braising ideas, you could say.

This morning, I tromped upstairs before everybody had even eaten their pancakes and stood and sort of just looked around my Upper Room studio and stared and then sat down and my desk and stared and then took out my idea book and started writing and listing and thinking with a pencil. And before I knew it, all that Mental Nut Hoarding paid off. 

And I spent the next hour and a half ripping cotten into [insert mysterious, secret, christmaspresent size here] pieces. I'm totally gonna make everybody alive [insert mysterious, secret christmaspresent idea] this Christmas. And once it came to me, I knew it was Just The Thing.

I just had to wait for it to come to me. And then it did.

(I want you to go get yourself an idea book if you haven't already. I can't live without mine. You know those ideas that you have and you think--THat's IT. Well, instead of waking up four days later and going, Whatwas Thatthing Withthe Thing I was gonna make . . . You know. Because you wrote it down in your idea book.)

I Think I Collect Ottomans.

This happened to me when I wasn't looking.

I have been known to collect t-shirts, chickens (non-live: go here for a live-chicken collector), bottles, lint. Now apparently I collect ottomans (not the empires, the foot stools).

I can't stop buying them. And I think it's because they CALL to me from thrift stores and estate sales everywhere, "Helloooooo! I am uuugggllyy. Coooommmmeeee bbbuuuuyyyyy mmmeeeeeeee!!"

I only buy ugly ones. Maybe because there are only ugly ones for sale. But there is no such thing as a truly unattractive ottoman: just an ottoman that hasn't yet been made beautiful.

Here is my latest Ottoman Transformation Activity:  

And you'll never believe it, but I got it for about 4 bucks and it looked like this:

I totally dig the way that I accidentally didn't make it long enough so the brown wood legs show and high five with the brown and white polka dot strip of vintage polyester on the bottom.

[To be clear: this is now officially my Second Favorite Ottoman. My first is here.]

I encourage this particular sort of collecting behavior. It is terribly fulfilling. And if you can sew a straight line, you can cover an ottoman.  I have mentioned this to you before.

And yes, later, I promise to show you how. 

And yes, later, that might even happen on video since it was so much fun to make that last one.

P.S. Thanks for the sweet cheering-on from you all. Your acceptance of my weird hobbies makes the world seem more full of butterflies. Do let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like for me to explain via video piece. I'm beginning to scheme for more of these and am Taking Requests.

Where I Make A Movie About Making a Purse, At The End of Which You Will Probably Not Be Able To Make A Purse

I decided to videotape myself making something. Actually, it wasn't a decision--it was an event. I had the thought, "I wanna make a purse" and then I hit "record" and started talking.

Here's a clip about the video piece, "Ginger Has An Idea About Making a Purse," to make you:

        A) Want to watch it    

        B) Wonder why anyone would do this [especially in their Effectual PJ's]  

        C) Want to go make something  

        D) All of the the above

Answer: D.

The full "video piece" (not sure yet what to call it. Not a movie. Not a film. The word "video" makes it sound like a VHS tape.) is right here. You can just click on this link and you'll get to it. This is where to click. 

And this is what I would say after having shot it and put it together:

1) It's long. I mean, unless you are close enough to know my middle name (well, both of them), you are probably not going to watch it in its entirety. OH WORSE--if you ARE this close to me, you're going to feel like you HAVE to watch it and will then have to LIE to me about it. Shoot.

2) Filming from below one's neck highlights one's multiple chins.

3) I should have added some sort of surgeon generals warning about the Need for Dramamine to the opening. Watching it is like seeing something put together by J.J. Abrams or the earliest episodes of ER.

4) When I am making something ABOUT making something, I am a seriously happy human form. Not kidding. Dangit. I had a really good time doing this. I was thinking of you the whole time. For reals.

[insert clip of my good friends shaking their heads while they wildly call each other to coordinate a brief intervention that might involve medication and plans for special "girls relaxation weekends" where we soak our feet and "let off steam."]

Go make something.

I Stopped Fighting with my Granny

The kids were watching Soul Surfer across the room, and I was trying to pretend to be a part of Friday night Movie Night, but all I wanted to do was work on this one quilt that's captured my attention since it arrived in the original pile.

I'd pin basted it (after finally figuring out that it takes more than like 10 pins to do this well. Oh--and blue tape. Somebody finally told me about blue tape and how it helps make everything stop being so godforsakingly skootchy. Probably her, who I really appreciate.)

And I knew I was going to quilt right within the edges of the stars. I'm a fan of that little line on the foot--it's not 1/4" (any Real quilter will tell you--but this stumps me. Why isn't it? And also--why does it need to be?) but it does the work of Steady There as I trace the shapes. 

So I was making my way through the midle of the quilt and all its funky, puffed-up, made-out-of-her-old-dresses stars. But I could tell I needed more stitching to make the thing really stick. 

I started at the corners. There is a nifty place where each block meets and makes a sort of square. So I started sewing squares.

I say "started" because it took me like one "square" to recognize that there was nothing square-ish about them. And the more of them I sewed, the more my quilting of this 50-year-old top was just a big fat fight with with somebody besides my Granny's definition of a square. 

And after sewing about four freakish rombuses trying to tell myself that the unsquared squares were square, I stopped. Set it aside. Didn't like the feeling of fighting with my Granny.

I picked up the quilt the other day and looked at the non-square squares and saw it: triangles. They were right there. Four triangles.

So I'm quilting triangles in the corners now. They celebrate the fast-moving, devil-may-care attitude of my hand-stitching Great Grandmother. From sitting with her quilt tops, they speak clearly of her absolute love for making a quilt block. She lived so far away that I never was with her to see her do this. but the tops themselves seem like almost an afterthought--or really just a way for her to organize her blocks.

And I am absolutely so relieved and warmed to see that my love of Wonk seems now proven to be thoroughly genetic and not at all some boat-missing aberration. 

I am from the island of That's Four Triangles Not a Square. Please do stop by any time.

 

I Look So Much Better Than the Last Time You Saw Me

It's because I hemmed all my pants.

 
You can do this. 

The thing is, I've been trouncing around with slouchy hems for quite some time now. I would say that not only did it not bother me, but that in my mind it was part of my whole "comfortable-dress-like-myself" Style. (The formula for which is denim + jersey cotton + old polyester/and/or/some fabric which is in some way connected to the elderly or the mentally ill.)

So I've not been walking around with slouchy hems feeling at all self-conscious. I won't lie: I didn't care.

Even when my pal [just added her link bc she started posting again and you should cook everything she tells you to.] said to me, "You need to hem your jeans." And that says a lot because this particular friend Knows things like that. She doesn't bother with offering directives where they are not necessary. AND so as to be perfectly clear that she doesn't whisk up to everybody she knows telling them what to do with their trousers, I will disclose here that she has spent a Saint's Amount of Minutes with me talking about what I should wear to where and how to pay for it and why. She is a Clothing Confidante of mine. Just saying--she's earned the right to tell me what to do with my hems.

But I ignored even her. (Sorry, A.)

Then. 

I saw a woman.

At my sons' school.

About my age.

With jeans sort of cuffed up.

(I didn't know her.)

She looked like a regular person on the top half.

And like she forgot to fix her pants on the bottom half.

And I went immediately to my computer and googled "How to hem jeans." And--you already know this--there are roughly 4.92 kathousand and a half tutorials on how to do this. Because, in fact, it's super easy. And, in fact, you don't have to pay a seamstress (who would have done you a good service and so who it would not be unreasonable to pay) to do this for you. I used this tutorial and found it just lovely and perfectly helpful.

It's just a quick pinch and stitch. No seam ripping. No giving your jeans some lame "I will grow into these pants my mom got me someday" sort of a look. 

So I'm writing to say 1) I did it. 2) If you're My Age, um, you might should probably too--nothingpersonalandall. I'm just saying that you don't have to pay anybodies for it and that you might find your personal Jean Self-Esteem soaring after said sewing-related activity. But I'm not judging you--and, in fact, if you are under 40 somehow you don't have to bother with these sorts of necessities because somehow the Universe (thanks to Oprah or whoever is in charge--not Dr. Phil, probably someone who has more than one question to ask) has allowed everybody's eyes to divert away from details like slouchy hems but somehow when you cross the 40 Threshold, all eyes start to question strangeties like this one aforementioned herein.I'm just trying to Be Here For You.

Green Is The New Poor

Wait. I know: I'm not poor.

I'm not a bit poor. I've been reading about poverty for the last couple years and so I know I'm not. 

But I feel poor sometimes. And I talk to lots and lots and lots of people who say these words: I'm so tired of feeling poor.

I thought that while I share my thoughts with you about feeling poor and trying not to feel poor that I would show you the quilts I'm working with right now. I'm actually taking this one apart to use the blocks separately. My Granny seems to have made this and just tacked them together as they were finished. I want to use them and rearrange them into something else so I'm sitting with a seam ripper when I can and extracting the blocks from one another.

What I've been chewing on this last week or so is how many of you responded to the post I put up just a bit ago with such quick and honest stories of your own in-the-same-boatness and your smart choice to do life with one car. In fact, I told a friend just the other night that the most humbling thing about this decision so far has been how many people who've responded with, "Oh really? Yeah--we do that too. We have been for a while now . . ."

Right.

 I've got this one pinned and have started to quilt around the stars and around the corner boxes (those spots where each block's edge triangle meets another). I think I'm going to hang this one on my bedroom wall when I'm finished with it. It's got an old tablecloth as a back.

But I've been struck with how silly it is to call this "green." As it turns out, people without means have been getting by with one car since cars were made. Okay, so before that too. Many manage with no car at all. Many many many.

And so for me to jaw on and on about the Greeness of this One Car Decision seems silly to me. It's all very First World, of course. Because there's nothing inherently true about the maxim that we Need two cars in our family.

So, first I'm wanting to reflect here that I am humbled by the reality that there are those who go without all the time. And I don't want to be so busy talking about Green Living that I (or we) miss the gut check that many, many people go without.

But the other thing going on in my head has been this constant question--as we've continued to cut and cut and cut expenses to make our life make sense: How can I do all of this cutting and spend-thrifting and saving and not Feel Poor?

It's been a question that on many days I've not been able to answer for myself.

 This one has been begun too--but I didn't like the thread color and so I'm starting again. Sure. This picture is how I decided what fabrics to use for the back. Color choosing is not a theoretical process for me. It's all about hucking handfuls of fabric onto other handfuls of fabric.

And so the other thing I'm wanting to share here is that I can see that one way to fight that feeling is to tackle a decision like this one with a sense of Adventure-- rather than dragging toward it like a nine-year-old boy to a bathtub. And so in that way, I think calling it "Green" is actually helping. The fact that it IS Green is helping. 

So I'm just saying here that I'm feeling thankful for what we want, for what we're choosing. Thankful, too, that we are able to choose it. Thankful that doing something earth-loving somehow makes a limiting decision one that's feeling more and more expansive all the time.

It's taking lots of conversation and anticipation and planning and reflecting around here to do this new transpo life. We've only been One Car Only for four days and the amount of conversation it's taken to get Everybody Everywhere has been noteworthy. Comical even. Many people have had to breathe through their noses to remain calm as Details are Decided.

And still, I feel thankful. And somehow, I feel less poor.

Frankensteined Chenille

I sewed this for my newly attacked bedroom that I finished--well, sort of finished--painting last weekend. Am going all white and cream and black so that I can throw weird quilts onto my bed--and maybe even onto the wall--and my room won't look like a weird, overstocked thrift store owned by a color-blind lady with a penchant for prints.

 
So I really wanted a white bedspread. Looked online. Have searched thrift stores. Stared at my stash for ages. Then just this last week this arrived: a fat pile of handed-over chenille that I chopped up and re-attached and combined with the other weird chenille scraps I've been hoarding and then I turned them into the most chenilliest of bedspreads. I just took the widest swath of unstained fabric from each bedspread and put them together.

 
Not bad, Scrap Yoda (sometimes I call myself that when I'm calling myself something). Not bad.

The underbelly of this coverlet is, well, some seams. Here's how much that bothers me: -32%. I may go back and sew a second seam to keep the fray at a reasonable level, but that's all. (I did try topstitching the seam down, and let me just tell you: Step Away From The Machine when you feel like topstitching chenille.  Topstitching chenille is like putting lipstick on a dog. No it's not, but that's what came to me. Topstitching chenille makes weird bumps. That's what I was trying to tell you.

When I do supersized projects like this, I skip laying it all out on the floor and use the thing I'm aiming to cover (in this case, the bed) as the cutting mat. So I sewed the big scraps together with one good, end-matching side and one all-kinda-different-lengths side. This one:

Then once it's on the bed and I arrange it to be whatever size makes sense for my bed/thing I'm covering, then I trim the already-sewed-together pieces and add whatever last-step trim I'm going to add.

This keeps me from having to:

1. Take out a tape measure.

2. Search the interweb for "Queen Bedspread Measurements" (after which, I would need to go back to #1

3. Fuss

Once I have the thing right where I want it, I just cut right there on the bed. Volare:

I have a long strip of fringy-fringe that I will next attach. Um. If I ever do. Because I'm that way.

The real moral of the story here: If you let yourself become the sort of person who talks in loving terms about scraps of old fabric, people who know that you mean it will start leaving things like piles of chenille on your doorstep. 

* Thanks Grandma Suz & Meredith for the lovely piles from whence this bedspread cometh.

The Decision and Its Offspring: The Bike Warmer

I made the decision when I started sewing a few years back to work entirely with reclaimed fabrics--anything I could find in a thrift store or a yard sale or whatever anybody dumped on my front stoop. You've heard me jaw about it already. I finally wrote it all out recently to make it Real. (It lives up there on my nav under The Decision.)

Here's the thing, though--that Decision, in addition to ending up being Green--has slowly morphed into more decisions. The most recent one for our family has been to choose to reduce our expenses and use only one car. 

I know: you're shaking your head.

What are you going to do when it rains? What if you're tired and you don't want to ride? What if you're late where you're going? What if you fall off? What if those butt bruises you get when you first start sitting on a bike seat never go away?

Solid questions. And I've been relly thinking about them lately. And I've even trying to figure out what it is we--and I mean me and my tribe but also the bigger, culture We--really are so committed to pay for when we have two cars.

I think it might be Self-Reliance. I've been sitting with the obvious Convenience answer. And I don't underestimate the impact of that cost to us because I am, to my very bones, Decidedly Impatient in general. Excellent personal trait. Totally excellent.

Anyway, we're going for it. And so the first thing to do has been to get the whole fam suited up with bikes. Like better than I could have dreamt up, there's a guy nearby who does with bikes what I do with fabric: he scouts around and uses old bikes to build new, useable, made-for-transpo bikes. And then he sells them at a price that doesn't make a person cry when they're trying to outfit a hoard of us.

So I got this bike. It's mine:

  

And I hopped on it the other morning to bike the five or six blocks to the grocery store to get some coffee. And I was riding and smiling. 

My only beef with the bike is the color combo: turquoise and pink. I think I spent too many awake hours in the 80's because I am practially traumatized by these two colors next to each other. Something about them just feels like they are trying too hard.

And so I've invented the Bike Warmer. (I know that you are not in the least bit surprised that I did this.)

Here is my bike, newly claimed by Polyester-Loving Me:

I told my friend the Bike Yoda I was going to do this and he said, "Sounds about as useful as putting a sweater on a poodle." To which I said: Exactly.

Because if I'm going to do this, I gotta do it just like I would do it. So I am.

Before:

After:

I know: way. better.

Old Quilt Explodes Into Three Pieces: Film at 11

I'm just trying to be competitve with bigger breaking stories. You know how it is.

Here's the story: An old, tattered quilt--that anybody else would have chucked into the garbage and said a little eulogy standing over the can--has stayed Out of the Can. And I've told you about a bit of it, but I wanted to share the amazing explosion [she alludes to the title so as to justify its overblown, even misleading dramatic nature] of projects that issued forth just from the decision to Not Chuck It.

Not Chucked Old Quilt Project #1: Baby Quilt.

I showed you this one already. I handed it over to the baby his-self last night and he seemed quite pleased. Looked at me, farted a little, then closed his eyes. I feel sure it will get lots of love and good use over at his house. 

Not Chucked Old Quilt Project #2: Long Terrific Pillow.

It was a puzzle-like activity, really--an absolute stance against trash.

And then I just pieced it all together, trimmed the heck out of the uber wonkfulness of it all 

And I used a wonderfully soft and slinky, tight linen-ish tablecloth for the back. And then I ended up with this.  

There's even a bit of strange monogram at the left edge there you might see.

Solid.

Not Chucked Old Quilt Project #3: Baby Quilt for the BabyPumpkinhead.

First, I'd like to report that she loves it. "Thank you, Mommy, for making me this quilt." C'mon, she actually said this. C'mon.

The top is actually pink and gray and white with tiny, tiny, tiny little alphabet letters in the pink.

 The main panels are the the four best I could scrap from the original. All the white panels are either the backside of an unusable front one (with the faint hint of the old, tattered pink peeking through when when it's held up to the light) or salvaged pieces of the back. I was even able to grab some usable pieces of edging. Love that edging.

The enormous amount of handstitching here is staggering and I didn't want to mess with it in any way, so I quilted in the ditch of each panel and then around the stars and even around the little arches on the edge pieces.

The back is a vintage piece of embroidered cotton from my great grandmother Mer.

And then I did the binding with pink gingham. Because now I know how. And the answer to the question, "Should I use gingham?" is always yes here at my house.

My conviction as of late: there's no such thing as an unusable quilt. 

Old Man Jack's Shears

I got Old Man Jack's upholstery shears, the ones he used in his shop. They are big and heavy and beautiful and still sharp. And they arrived via my Grandma's luggage from Tampa swathed in cotton and tinfoil and still whizzingly sharp.

Old Man Jack was my Great Grandmother Maisy's second huband and he got her by leaving a six-pack of RC cola and a small boquet of flowers he'd grown right there on her doorstop every day. For a year.

My mom says she visited my Granny once and heard her bragging about the piled-up sodas in her pantry and she knew Granny would eventually marry him.

They're crazy big and so dangerous that my Man Spouse has made me promise to hang them at least six feet up on the wall. Got it.

Those are my standard sized cutting shears up there to give you a sense of their mega jumbo size.

Seems like I feel sure I have everything I need to go about Making and then something nifty like these shows up.

Hope you're well. Hope you're sewing. Hope you're making what you need.

 

I Gave in and Stopped Fighting: A Binding Tale

If Elizabeth Hartman were here, I'd hug her.

But I'm ahead of myself. From the beginning:

When I envisioned this, it had a lovely dark brown binding. I put the baby blue gingham up next to it and it screamed Too Cute right at me, and I knew I was right about the brown.

But I didn't have brown binding. And, as you already know about me (and which I've just recently set out to explain for those of you who don't), I use what I've got. No running out to the Brown Binding Store to get what I need.

I had gray, though, so I tried that. It was skinny, but whatever, I'll just swing it, I said.

Then I went out of town and was stubborn enough to take this little baby with me. I tried hand sewing the binding into place. You'll never believe it but: it didn't work.

You already knew it wouldn't.

Then I came home and sewed the first seam down with the machine and set into hand sewing it closed, but it was just Too Blasted Skinny.

Plus I just knew it was just truly not what I wanted. And I just love this little quilt. It's scrapped together with the Highly Discardable pieces of a quilt my Great Grandmother Mer used until it was literally translucent and holey in places.

So, in summary: I had envisioned something better. I settled for something not as good. It didn't work and I pushed to make it work. But it didn't. 

So I gave up.

And I found myself digging in my srap bin. And then I remembered PAGE FORTY of this book (which I bought for myself even though I never buy books with directions and which I really like) and its Wonderfully Unfussy explanation for how to use (non-complex) scraps for binding strips. 

And I actually read the directions and they didn't make my eyes itch from unnecessary detail. And I morphed them into this: A Binding Buffet. Four different scraps for four different edges.

If you want to pull it off sometime, just follow the Very Clear directions in the book and add 1/2" to the length of each edge and sew your pieces right together and they'll line up just like you hope they will to the corners of your quilt. It's particularly nifty for this white quilt and helps the vintage sheet back sort of wake up and come to the party that this little quilt is throwing. 

And I think it's just fantabulous. Wonktabulous. Super swell. 

And I know my friend who is over forty like me and crazy enough to have another baby is going to love it for her Samuel. 

Where I Stop Talking and Actually Make Something

Just wanted to make sure that you know that I'm not all Post-Capitalism and Imperfection and the Pursuit of a Life of Making Blahbeddy Blah Blah.

Sometimes I actually sew.

Lately, though, my sewing has bee more about cutting (as in the cutting up of old quilts). 

Here's what's coming from all that cutting:

A little baby quiltish playmat-sized thing. It's a complete scrap cobble--my very favorite sort of project that keeps scraps off the floor and out of the bin and sends them off into the world to be Used. Love it. The binding on this little bugger is giving me a time of it since I've been traveling. I gave a shot at hand sewing it but it's too wonky--even for ME. And you know that must be quite wonky.

 
About finished, though. I'll tack this binding tape down with a sewn stitch and then hand sew it closed on the other side. That's the best means I've found. It's old quilt scraps on one side and a vintage sheet on the other. 

And it needed the darker binding, I think. I wanted dark brown but didn't have it so went for gray. It works nicely to calm it in a nice way.

Beginning to piece together Baby Pumpkinhead's quilt (she saw it and declared it as hers before I even had the chance to give a Moving Mom Speech about how it was made from the scraps of her Great Great Grandmother's quilt.) She saw the pink and the deal was done.

Not sure what I'll bind this with yet. Might go gray again. Depends on what's in that big trunk of notions I've scavenged. Came across wonderfully clear instructions in this book about how to make straight grained binding out of Whatever Fabric that I may use. (Am liking the book, by the way. I'm not a fan of patterns and directions, but this is a lovely book.) 

Re-connecting the good panels makes for a mushed-to-the-edge design, but I find that if that look is consistent then it looks like it happened on purpose.

Have another quilt top pinned and ready to go (the lavender one that's going to give All of America a reason why I have a purple couch, once it's finished and draped demurely across the thing like it was Always There and it's not Deeply Strange to have a purple velveteen couch in an otherwise very UnPurple house. The true reason for the purple couch being that it was given to us and therefore otherwise Just Right.)

And two more quilt tops just arrived today.

I know: don't hate me because I have so many quilt tops. I can't help it. It has to do with my gene pool.

I'm off now to give my friend Sunshine this:

It's another one of these (such a good 79 minute project).

No pithy ending today, friends. Gotta get dressed to go out with the girls. xo

Post-Capitalism & Wonk

Mab said something this week that I have said many times to the sort of friends that I can fall into Making Revelry with (translate: the sort of people who will hear me wax on about The Way It Should Be Out There) and I absolutley think it's worth digging around about. It's this:

"Afraid your project won’t look like it came out of a catalog? It won’t. It’ll look like something you’ve created with your hands. If you want it to look like something from a catalog, then have it mass produced in a factory."  --Mab.

Highly Wonky-Highly Useful-Highly Happy Pillows from Old Quilts. Crazily unmatched corner meeting spots that some would deem Un-Okay.

I think we're at an interesting time in our country. Am I an Economist and do I have the credentials to say this? No. I think more people feel poor and disconnected from the life power of an actual dollar bill than any other time since I can remember. Am I a historian? No. I think we're all scrambling to get more dollars because we don't like to feel powerless. Am I a social psychologist? Nope. And because, of course, we need stuff.

The weird, imperfect back of my favorite summer skirt (made from old jeans) that turns out to be just the spot for my backside but looks super wonked on the hanger. Easy to judge, still wonderful.

And also we're diving in and trying to make the stuff we need. And we're doing this with gusto (at least some of the time--I was glad to hear in your comments that for many of you it's a LOT of the time. Woo hoo!). And so great mothership sites like Craft are guiding us and we're corralling the power of googling How To Do Whatever We Feel Like and we're all helping each other by putting up free tutorials. We're up to our necks in the really fun effort of providing for ourselves.

But then we finish what we made.

And it doesn't look like what we thought it was going to.

It looks, well, Wonky. Off just a bit. 

And we say: Guy. That doesn't look right. I must not be good at this.

And we set that one aside and go buy a (cheap) one that looks more like the one we had in our head.

I know all the flaws in this bag, and I also know that my daughter's teacher really liked it when I gave it to her.Wonk and all.

And we pay double--for the supplies we bought to make the one we wanted + the cheap one that we bought. But WAIT: we pay even more--we pay the cost of this message ping-ponging around in our heads looking for a place to land fester: I. Must. Not. Be. Good. At. This.

I think we have to shift our heads aroud a bit about all of this Making we're tackling to get what we need. And it's exactly what Mab said: "If [we] want it to look like something from a catalog, then have it mass produced in a factory."

We need to make friends with Wonk. Invite it to tea. Service it biscuits. Ask it about its childhood. Consider its finer points and stop judging its obvious irregularities. Because when Wonk is present, it's a sign that an actual human has constructed the thing we're looking at. Wonk indicates Humanity. I mean, sure, it might indicate some factory mishap where fire shot out of some gnarly big machine and smoke blew everywhere and all the little stitched-on animal logos landed on the bellybutton spot of all the shirts, but that's not the scenario I'm envisioning here.

In the things that we make ourselves to provide for what we need for ourselves and for our homes and our familites, Wonk just means that we didn't walk into a store to meet our own needs. And it probably means that we or whoever made the thing in front of us Experienced Something in the making--joy, relaxation, the frustration of trying something never-before-tried and straining toward pulling it off decently.

Wonk means a Something happened for a Somebody.

A highly Un-Factory-Like Zipper/Pocket treatment on a duffle bag for one of my boys. Still useful. Still charming. No need for perfection to be Just Right for camping.

Wonk is lovely. It's not an indicator of lack of expertise of failure or some sign that maybe you should try paper crafts instead. It just means that you made it.

And I'm so glad that you made it.

Time to Grow a Pair, Ladies Part II & Also a Winner

First: congratulations to Holly whose #3 comment was chosen by random to win her very own Go!Baby from the nice Quilt People at AccuQuilt. I'll email you soon, Holly, about how to get your nifty prize. Fun.

And also, I have more to say. 

I was recently sent a review copy of a book about sewing. It's a perfectly fine book. Probably terrific for a beginner because the pictures are clear and there are a lot of them. I would likely use it as a reference if I ever referenced anything myself. 

I'm tackling this ratty one now. Wasn't sure what I was going to do because it's so Completely Tattered.

And that last sentence makes it sound like I know all the stuff in the book. And, in fact, I don't. I regularly botch zippers (I mean, they work, but the ends of them are not Beauty Pageant Material), only recently heard that gray is a better thread color choice than white for quilting, and my eyes roll into the back of my head and the room swirls around a little when anybody talks about warp and weft. (Terms make me queasy.)

And the book I was asked to review could have fixed all of that for me.

But this is all I could think of while I was reading through the (very thorough) sewing book: we don't need any more information about sewing.

See? Way. Tattered.

We just need more guts and less nervousness and more surety that nothing bad will happen if we just tuck in and try.

I really don't think anybody out there is rightfully confused. And hold on, here's how I mean it: there are plenty of resources (many, many of them completely free now) that will help us figure out the snazzier tricks of sewing. And there are a few pretty friendly guides for getting started (this one's still my favorite). 

But we still just all need some more gallons of bravery.

Somehow, though, publishers believe we need more guides--that our big glitch is informational, some dearth of data--so they must be getting some word that we want them, which mean we must, in fact, be doing something to make them believe that we do (that was Capitalism as an Idea, Working Backwards, by the way).

And I'll allow for this VERY real possibility: maybe everybody does feel this way. Maybe I'm off my thrifted rocker here. It's always a possibility. I recognized that. Sometimes the bats in my belfry need more water and less caffeine.

So I just started cutting it up into panels. And then I put some good ones back together. And now I'm working on turning it into this.

But I'm still wondering what you all think about this.

Why do we feel like we need to know what we're doing in order to do it? What are we afraid of, ladies? What can go wrong? I'm not yelling this. I'm leaning in across a small table at a coffee shop, asking you. What can go wrong? Why do you need to have it all figured out before you dive in?  And I haven't been to some blogger conference that's told me to ask you questions to get you to leave more comments. I'd really like to know what you think about this. And that desire is probably mostly selfish--I mean, I don't want to be the girl at the party with her Creative Philosophy Skirt tucked into the Pantyhose of Her Ideals.

It's just what I kept hearing in my head as I read that perfectly lovely book: We don't need more information. We need more fearlessness, more unbridled willingness to Try.

Because when we do, we figure out all of the things that the lady in the book has tried and figured out and is showing us so that we won't have to try to figure it all out for ourselves.

My favorite part: because I could get panels out of either the front of the back of most of the whole thing, this is the entirety of my Thrown Away Scraps Pile. Excellent.

But having to figure it all out for ourselves is the best part. I'm sure of it.

One Strippy Quilt Back & Also You Are Now Popular Too

I finished the quilt back I started last week. Couldn't stop working on it. 

I think I tried roughly 37 different layouts for the strips, and ultimately opted for this chunk-o-lavender set up. I like it. I think it's going to talk with the top my Granny made nicely.

And I wanted to tell you the good news that one lovely by-product of my new-found semi-popularity: the Quilting People have one of those fancy cutters for you too.

AccuQuilt is giving me another Go!Baby Fabric Cutter to give away. (I know: they're nice. I agree.) So to enter, just leave your name and tell me this: do you work with old quilt tops?

I need to know if I'm alone in the world. I need to know if the lady at the local quilt store who looks at me with eyes that tell me she wishes I was not allowed to quilt (me with my refusal to measure, with my willingness to cut up old quilts, my unwavering commitment to thrifted fabric, my brash love of scraps) is truly the image of Quilter that I should be holding on to. Is there anybody else out there cutting up old stuff, dying to use these lovelies and not just shrine them away?

Do you work with old quilt tops? I'm only seeing people start quilts from scratch, and I have this funny feeling that there might be a corral full of you who have Hoards of Vintage Almost Perfection up on some shelf somewhere that you tell yourself you'll pay somebody else 39 kathousand dollars to Appropriately Quilt someday. 

Is it true? Do you have them and you're hiding them in your closets? I need to know.

About the contest (to be perfectly clear): to enter just leave your name and tell me about your experience with Old Quilt Tops (if you have any). Otherwise, I'll just need to know who your favorite Glee character is, because as an Intentionally Lagging Culture-an-ado, I am just now watching the series from the beginning. Most things in my day now happen with the sound of 12 voices singing behind me.

I'm leaving to go camping, so I'll pick the winner at random when I return next Friday, July 22nd.

Also: this top's up next. Can't wait.

How I Am Finally Popular

The first time this happened to me was in high school when I had kids. All of a sudden, everybody wanted to hang out with on to me. My phone head was ringing off the hook with the sound of voices calling yelling my name. And every time I turned around, I was leaving the house all dressed up barely dressed to go somewhere somebody wanted to take me me to take them. I was finally popular.

And it's happening again friends. Remember when I told you about how I was listed as a Top Quilt Blogger in Quilter's Home Magazine. (55 of us having been chosen from the roughly 19,556,732 Kazillion* currently writing about sewing on the interweb.) Well, now the Quilting People have found me. And even though when I typed that I imagined zombies, that's not how they are. These Quilting People are nice. They keep wanting to give me stuff. Not bad. Not bad.

And so one really nice thing that the Quilting People have given me is one of these:

 
The folks at AccuQuilt sent me one to try out. So I did.  I love free stuff. Plus, I was curious. I don't mind cutting a bit, but the cost of replacement blades for rotary cutters does drive me batty, so I wanted to see how this thing worked.

The Go Baby is a Fancy Cutting Device basically. It looks to me to be spot-on perfect for people who are in Betty Ford type programs for the Use of Applique, but I asked for basic shapes, knowing that I'd love to see if it had sort of workhorse potential for my more basic projects. So when they asked me, I opted for the 2 1/2" strip cutter and a couple of basic squares and triangles. 

And I decided to tackle this:

Remember these? I'm going to make a quilt back for this one--I know: can you believe it? I'm going to take an old quilt top and turn it into . . . wait for it: a Quilt. Crazy. (For other Old Quilt Top Escapades, click on over here).

And I could see a super strippy back that echoed these colors being nifty. This particular quilt top is such a wonderful, funky combo of colors and I didn't know where to start. So I did the smartest thing ever--I let the quilt tell me what to do. I just dug through my stash and started looking for a glob of fabric that agreed with one block at a time. Turned out to be real smart. It's a method I'd used again for color matching.

Then I tried out the Go Baby to cut them into strips. 

You stack fabric on what they call a "die" and then cover it with a cutting mat, then crank the whole thing through. 

And it worked pretty well. You can stack fabric (it says it cuts up to 6 layers at a time--I could swing about 4 or 5 un-ironed, mashed-in-there pieces without having to sweat when I turned the crank) and I ended up with a nice, fat stack. I don't doubt that somebody else who was a more fastidious quilter could have gotten 6 layers, it's just not how I work--as you already know--and I wanted to see what it would produce in the way that I work.

This stack is probably just about an hour's time of running scraps through the hand-cranked mechanism. Pretty impressive, really. The cutter made even cuts and only faltered when I overloaded it. (I couldn't help it--I wanted to see what it could do.)

My summary thoughts about working with the Go! Baby: helpful, inventive way to turn scraps into shapes you want with minimal waste. (I monitored my trash can as I went and I was pretty confident that I wasn't losing too much.) 

I think they may send me one to give away (!) More on that soon. In the meantime, I'll keep you posted on this Old Quilt Project. I've never actually quilted anything this big before. Yeehaw.

* All estimates calculated by hamsters who drank Dr. Pepper from abandoned cat dishes.

Rearranging Furniture & Related Deep Happinesses

Unrelated family photo acting as anchor to a post vaguely related to family: all five of us in an elevator at the end of my little brother's wedding. Film: digital. Creative expressionist angle: bounced off elevator mirror while travelling to 7th floor at the moment I realized we never took a picture of all of us actually dressed up at one time.

As part of my commitment to chronicle all of my various Mental Strangenesses, I am sharing here the weird satisfaction I receive from rearranging my furniture.

What does this have to do with a life of making? Get to the part about using old fabric. Are you going to tell us something about polyester? Don't you quilt?

No, friend, sorry. Not today. Today is about special sharing and about giving you some reassurance that you are not, in fact, the weirdest person on the planet. You can always find somebody weirder-er.

Here it is: About every 4 months I completely rearrange all the furniture in my house. There: I said it. I know--you probably do it too, right?

It's not the rearranging that I think is strange. It's this: I am SO HAPPY after I do this. I am strangely satisfied. All seems right in the world. I walk down the hallway into the New Configuration and feel completely assured of butterflies and unicorns appearing to me in the coming hours. I am kinder to my children. I play nice music. I feel like washing the dishes so that the counters will be pretty. Sometimes I write more letters to aging relatives after I do this.

I am, frankly, surprised by the things that make me deeply happy. Other activities in the Personal Deep Happiness Category:  Playing Ms. Pacman while drinking a regular coke with ice, for instance. Not just fun, but Deep Happy Making. Especially when I beat the high score. Sorry to brag. Sorry to brag.

Yesterday's Furniture Rearrangement Extravaganza flipped the little room I've been using the tv room with the big room I've been using for the sitting room. We were just a little too cramped for Movie Night.

And also it was when Mr. WDT smacked Baby Pumpkinhead in the face with the Wii controller while playing Bowling that we decided it was time for a change. I know: we're smart. Super smart.

Limping Toward My Sewing Machine

I have broken every personal rule I have for my own sanity:

1. I haven't sewn anything in more than 11 days.

2. I have talked about almost only abstractions for more than 37 days.

3. I haven't been inside of a thrift shop in the current calendar month.

I am pushing the limits here, People. I am pushing the limits. I am standing in the face of all I know to be good and true and Available to Me In Order to Kep My Own Facial Tick at Bay. I have spit in the face of my own self knowledge. And it's left me in bad shape.

And while there are no excuses, it was because of my day job. Sure. 

I limped upstairs last night and made this.

Weird mirror photo shoot.

And when I came down, I felt much better.

The fray is the best part.

Not all the way better.

Just much better.

   

I really, really like this one uneven hem spot. 

I cut up something old and trashy, touched thread, had to make some guesses. These things all helped.

I recommend them highly if you are on the Edge of Battiness. And if you are, Friend: there there. Sew some straight lines. I promise it will help.

P.S. If you wanna make one of these, this tutorial will do the trick. And if anybody wants more words on how to pull one of these off, just let me know. Happy to jaw more about the how-to of it all.

1) I'm Floorbergasted*. 2) For You.

1) Sure, nice things happen to me. Terrific things, actually. And I am completely committed to sharing these with you. 

But still, I was surprised to receive this in the mail:

 
It was a package! To me! From one of you! Vicki K the Creative Conquistador (so dubbed by me for her smarts about What I Should Do When I Didn't Have a Long Enough Zipper) popped a veritable PILE of goodies in the mail to me. 

A. Pile.

First, I have to show you this:

Hello. Why have I never seen anybody do this? (What? Take something you've said and turn it into stitchwork? Oh--yes, but also why have I never seen anybody use blue thread and red thread and muslin and make it LOOK LIKE A PIECE OF NOTEBOOK PAPER. Sorry if I am completely 15 minutes behind and everybody already made this for everybody else 13 Christmases ago, but this blew me away. I. Just. Love. It.)

Wow. That was nice of her. Oh--there's more.

And they all had super cute little stickers on them.

Sometimes I get excited and open everything in a hurry.

Not kidding: it was better than Christmas. Even Christmas 13 Christmases ago.

Handmade bag (using totally classic weirdish blue retro mushroom fabric that made my eyes water with happiness); little pretty cotton dishcloths; vintage tea towel; HAND STAMPED wienerdog tags (C'-mon.); and a super sweet tutorial for zippers that I totally needed (and will share here so that you can know about it too):

Oh--and GOBS of zippers! I forgot about the GOBS of zippers. And STICKERS. Gobs of stickers! AND some lovely light blue polyester (because no gift is complete, if given to Moi, without the inclusion of some old polyester. Raise your hand if you know my love language. I see that hand. I see that hand.)

2) All of this True Kindness (and the Care of Giving Real Time) has made me want to do something nice for all of you. I remembered this morning that I have a super useful pattern for making a messenger bag over at my cobwebby store and I thought I CAN GIVE EVERYBODY THAT BECAUSE IT'S SO HANDY AND THEY CAN ALL MAKE THEMSELVES A BAG AND BE HAPPY AND IT CAN BE FROM ME.

And I went there to make it free, but those store people don't like things to be free since they send it automatically and all. So I made it a quarter. I was going to make it 43 cents because that's how old I am--but even I get tired of cracking myself up sometimes, so I left it at 25 cents. And somehow I thought that twenty-five cents was sufficiently Free-Ish.

So go over here, friends, for a super cool pattern (I've used it to make this and this and this and this and this and this and this, but I didn't have it all figured out so clearly yet when I made this. Now you will.): A Messenger Bag Pattern Just For You Because I'm Floorbergasted.

*To be "floorbergasted" is to be Floored (confounded, perplexed, amazed) and Flabbergasted (astonished and mystified) at the same time. Of course it is.

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.