May The Force Be With You…r Hair.

So this year, as I may have mentioned, TLo has given up her Harry Potter obsession in favor of a StarWars obsession.  A much, much deeper StarWars obsession.

It’s super-annoying.

On the other hand, she now gets a whole bunch of jokes in her favorite TV shows that she didn’t get before (i.e. Phineas and Ferb, Wizards of Waverly Place, et.al.).  That’s pretty…. super-annoying, actually.

Annnnyway, The Big One is also moderately entertained by the whole StarWars concept and here’s what she got for her birthday:

Note the pile of (mostly) StarWars junk on the floor.  That would be Legos and PlayStation games and Wii games and such. 

TLo got one of these too (because we’re Mean Parents, but we’re not so mean as to give The Big One her own light saber and make TLo wait another month to get hers on her birthday).

Of course, TLo has decided that for Halloween she’s going to be Princess Leia (she at least has shown true taste and culture by preferring the first three movies… although we still can’t quite get her to deal with the concept that they are the first three movies and not “Number 4” and “Number 5” and “Number 6”).  So I decided I’d do a little research on costumes, figuring anything we got they could use for dress-up as well.

Seriously people.  You would not believe the poor choices of Princess Leia hair out there.

So…. I made some.  Yes.  You heard me.  I made Princess Leia hair.  Basically it cost me $7.95 in polar fleece, a couple of hours of thought and work and the despair of telling not one, not two, but three Hancock’s employees what I was making with a yard of light brown fleece.

They are really nosy, those Hancock’s people.

Anyway, voilà!  Princess Leia Headbands.  They also double as earmuffs in the winter (and they’re concave so “real” hair can be tucked up into them, for an authentic look….  Fortunately, my clients aren’t very, uh, picky about the realism of their hair).

And, yes. You should be impressed.

Although I totally can not get either one of them to say, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.  You’re my only hope!”

Little Pitchers Have… Little Ears

So The Evil Monkeys apparently take after their mother.  They have really little ears.

“And?” you ask.

Well, for one thing, I can’t get “regular” earbuds into my bitty little ears.  You can imagine that there’s no way in H-E-double-hockey-sticks they’re going in the Monkey Ears.  We have six (count them six) useless pairs of "regular" earbuds that came with various iDevices.  But no, I have to buy the in-your-ears kind with the interchangeable large-medium-small gel inserts.  And I use the small.  And sometimes they still fall out. 

The Evil Monkeys, until this point, have been stuck with the traditional over-your-head headphones, which are bulky, break easily, have to be bought special in a size that will fit tiny monkey heads (at three times the normal price) and are generally a pain in the B-U-T-T.

This week they were selling earbuds with interchangeable gel inserts in the checkout line at Walgreens.  For $5.  "Aha!" I crowed. "Evil Monkey Special."

Yep.  I am that mom.  I buy my kids cheap C-R-A-P from the check out line at Walgreens.

After much groaning and cringing and flinching and general whining, The Evil Monkeys have finally figured out how to put in their very own earbuds (I never said they were the sharpest tacks in the box).  Goodbye yucky over-your-head headphones.  Hello.... totally lost iPods.

It hadn't occurred to me, but the giant over-your-head headphones were pretty much the only thing keeping their itty bitty teeny tiny Shuffles from getting lost all over the house.  Plus, earbuds are sort of a pain to haul around loose, because there's just nothing to them and they’re floppy and whatnot.

My point being, I can't win.

Aha!  But I can.  Enter this guy:

I have no idea who this freak of nature is, but he seems to be a little bit of awesome.  He made his own collapsible knitting needles, people.  Why?  Who the flip knows!?  But he did it.  It's geektastic.

He also made a little template (after several trial-and-error efforts) of an earbud winder to be cut from an old credit card.  Now, I totally have a plastic winder that I bought online (with money, people) but I'm not going to go so far as to buy two more for The Monkeys.  Unless there are some in the checkout line at Walgreens.  Which there aren't.  I looked.

What I did do was print some nice little Hiroshige images on the laser printer, laminate them with some high-gloss laminate, mount them to some illustration board (front and back), and cut them out.  (Well, I also modified the design first because the holes were too big for our particular type of earbuds.)

Aren't they cute? 

Here’s one with my iPhone tether.  I don't have any earbuds here to try it out to be sure it will actually work.  But I figure it's an hour of otherwise-useless work time well spent.

What?   I have commercial lamination and mounting equipment, people.  I have to do something with it.

UPDATE:

These are AWESOME.  They work great.  I suspect that A) they won’t hold up forever, being basically paper and B) one or both will get lost within the next 24 hours.   But they work really well.  It would be worth investigating a more durable solution.

Sorry for all the bad photos, I used my iPhone.

Lemondrop? Lemon Pie? Lemonade… Mouth? Really?

I set the goal on The Evil Monkeys’ wall hanging of making one block per day .  So far I’m only two days behind, which I think you’ll agree is astonishingly good if you know me at all.  I’d forgotten how much fun it is to sew something colorful that doesn’t require, you know, the ability to think coherently for more than ten minutes at a time.  Saying that, I haven’t really been thinking very hard about the fabric combinations, other than to sort of generally have an even mixture of lights and darks… It’s possible the lack of thought used in this project could show badly when I’m done.

I have worked out the setting I want to do (I think) and it only requires 24 blocks… so I’m more than a third of the way there.  Of course, then there are the border blocks… but they’re just straight lines, I should be able to whip up two or three in the time it takes to do one of these curved blocks.

It’s a theory.  Go with it.

Blocks 2-9.  This is going to be one busy quilt:

TLo has decided that this is the “Lemonade Mouth Quilt”, because the (slightly nauseating) Disney movie “Lemonade Mouth” is her current favorite highschool-kids-dancing-around-and-singing-for-the-purpose-of-overcoming-injustice-and-unpopularity movie. 

As opposed to Star Wars… which is just her OBSESSION.  (On the plus side, we no longer have to worry about what will happen when she doesn’t get her letter to Hogwarts in 3 years.)

A Bad Patch. Bad, Bad Patch.

So I started working on the Evil Monkeys' wall quilt.  And promptly remembered why I hadn't ever used this pattern before.  It is Evil.  Pure pure evil.  Which I suppose at least is appropriate.

But O.M.flippin' G.  Eeeeevilll.

Now, the points of Lady Liberty's "crown" are paper-pieced.  The first one took me... oh... about fifteen minutes.  Paper piecing is really, really easy.  And fast.

The rest of the block is patch pieced.  I spent roughly two more hours trying to get three patches sewn.  Well really, one patch.  I am not exaggerating.  Two hours.  Earth hours, not Jupiter hours.

Did I mention that the entire block is only 7" wide?  Yeah.  Seven.  Inches.  Those patches are small.  And curvy. And totally impossible.  Ha.  Like me. Sadly, unlike me they do not redeem themselves with witty repartee.  At all.

I should have known things were bad when the author of the pattern says in the instructions that it's "difficult".  But she also insists (and I'm talking INSISTS, IN BIG CAPITAL LETTERS) that the paper not be removed from the points before piecing the curved patches.

She's a flippin' lunatic.

I tried five times to do it with the paper still on and had to rip it apart each time.  Finally I just threw caution to the wind (figuring how much worse could it really get at that point?) and removed the paper.  It went much better and after two tries I was finally successful.

Although I use that term loosely.

It’s supposed to be, you know, a square.

Only about thirty more to go.

Liberty. A Good Word For So Many Things.

No, today I’m not talking about Liberty of London, although clearly it is one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

  

I’m also not talking about Liberty Valance.  Or the man who shot him.

I’m not even talking about actual “liberty”, the concept of which I’d have to write a doctoral dissertation (or five) to adequately consider.  Apparently.  Good grief.

I’m talking about a quilt pattern.  One that I’ve owned for about 17 years.  That I’m just getting around to trying out.  This week.

And you thought my garment sewing was glacial.

The pattern is “Lady Liberty Goes To Hawaii” by Karen Stone. 

She re-released this pattern when ElectricQuilt put out a digital edition of eleven of her foundation-piece patterns, but my version is the original paper-printed one that was going ‘round the quilt shops before... y’know… there were personal computers.

Seriously.  Before personal computers. Oy veys mir.

You see, a series of unrelated circumstances occurred:

1) the lovely Stephanie at Venus DeHilo made a fabulous version a few weeks ago. 

2) I just spent two weekends completely rearranging, refurnishing and reorganizing the Evil Monkeys’ bedroom, replete with new bedding.  It’s pretty funky and looks fabulous with their new double bed:

But they now have a very large wall over the headboard that is no longer hidden by a bunk bed. 

3) While rearranging/organizing/sandblasting the Evil Monkey Lair, I discovered that the Monkeys can wear all their spring and summer clothes from last year.  All of them.  Not one piece of clothing needs to be sewn. Not even Easter Dresses.  My mind fairly boggled at the prospect, let me tell you.

 

Three seemingly unrelated incidences.  Mulling around in my brain.  What to do, what to do?

Go fabric shopping.  Obviously.

That was obvious, right?

 

Truth be told, I’m feelin’ the liberty of a totally new, non-clothing related project. 

Now, if I can just finish it.  Cleaning out the closets this week pointed out in glaring technicolor just how many UFO quilt tops I have.   What an oppressive thought.

Kaleidoscopic.

 

I made this little tabletop quilt for my mom for Christmas.  I don’t think she was very impressed.  Which to be honest I’m not totally surprised.  It’s sort of ugly.  It’s the only present I made this year, which is a good thing since it took me waaay longer than I planned.  And that was doing a really sloppy job with it.  I hate to think how long it would have taken if I’d actually used some precision.

You can see my truly awful hand quilting and poorly matched piecing in the photo above.  In case you can’t tell, this is a very small kaleidoscope quilt à la Paula Nadlestern.  I own these two books.

While I find most of her quilts visually jarring, I think her piecing concept is a little bit of design genius.  Her process suits me because you “design as you go”.  I find this a much more enjoyable type of piecing than “regular” quiltmaking where most of the designing is done at the beginning and then the rest is just production.

Unfortunately, you get pretty sketchy results when you scale the whole thing down to 8”x10” and don’t have hours and hours to spend searching through your piles and piles of stash for the perfect combinations.   Despite, you know, what would at first glance seem like a lot of choices.

 

I have crazy stash.

I did rediscover just how much blue and white fabric I had purchased six years ago with the idea of making a full-size kaleidoscope/snowflake quilt.  We’re talking dozens of yards.   I collected the fabric and then I put it aside for a “better time” to start working.  Then I got distracted by making clothes. 

Once while I was shopping in the now-defunct local quilt shop one of the women there asked me why I didn’t take a machine quilting class that I’d expressed interest in. 

“I don’t have time,” I said. 

“Why not?  What are you doing?” 

“I make a lot of clothes.” 

She literally “tsked” and shook her head in disgust.  “Why are you wasting your time on clothes?” she asked.  It was pretty funny.

Although she had a point.

Cashing In My CDs.

Ha.  You didn’t think I meant money, did you?  Like I have money.  Psssht.

No, I have something much richer and more meaningful: used CDs.  I have literally dozens of these things.  My employer send me files on them and once I’ve downloaded them, they’re useless.

Totally and utterly useless.

Unless you want to make one of these:

 

Or one of these:

 

Or even these:

 

Hmmmm.

Hahha.  I didn’t put in any photos.  You noticed that, right?  To be honest, I did not find one single solitary “CD craft” that I would even remotely consider making.  And I didn’t really feel like poking fun at the crafts that other people did (in some bizarre way feel compelled to) make.

 

CD crafts.  Suggestions?

I Had A Bad Feeling About This...

And I wasn’t wrong.  But eventually it worked out.  I won't bore you with the gory, painful details.  Suffice it to say, after nearly two months (you heard me, two months) and multiple phone calls to Official Agencies (don't ask) I finally –finally– got my Star Wars Purse Of Awesomeness. 

On the up-side, I actually had occasion to say to a faceless Customer Service Drone -- er... Representative, "Yes. This is the Star Wars purse I was looking for."

Seriously.

While this Star Wars Purse of Awesomeness is, well, awesome, it does have a minor (minor) flaw.  Namely, being a bowling-style bag it only has one inner pocket.  Which is actually one more pocket than I was expecting, but not sufficient pocketness to hold, you know, My Stuff.

But I have Stuff!  What to do, what to do?  Make Stuff Holders, of course.

I used this tutorial from FlossieTeacakes, simply because it was the first tutorial I found online that met my stringent criteria of being roughly the appropriate shape and size and having lots of pretty pictures to look at.  I'm super picky like that. 

In fact, it turned out to be a reasonable tutorial and I can recommend it. 

The only change I made to this first pouch was to add a little strip of ribbon for a zipper-pullifier type thing... um... you know, one of those little tabs that you can grab at the top of the zipper so as to get a little leverage on it when opening it.  I don't know if it's necessary with this particular pouch, I just like those so I added it.  Otherwise I made the pouch exactly as instructed (which as you well know is pretty unusual of me, the following of instructions and whatnot).  The basic concept is pretty simple and I could have figured it out without the tutorial if I felt like putting in the effort, but well... right?  "Effort". 

You can totally take this basic pattern and do lots of different shapes and variations, which I plan on doing this weekend.  I need Stuff Holders, remember?  Meantime, this is the first one and it's about the right size for my small hairbrush and sundry grooming and hygiene products that I keep in my purse.  My next variation will be about half this size for my Ridiculous Collection of Jump Drives and Flash Cards and then I’ll probably make another this size for Pens And Junk.

And why am I telling you all this, you ask?  I'm telling you this because this is a very simple pouch pattern that makes a nicely finished product that can be adjusted in size to fit a variety of uses.  It’s great for using up scraps and if you interface, it’s nice and sturdy.  Aaaaand, if you made up three in various sizes using fabulous silk remnants that you got from your friend in Japan last year (er... just as an example) and tied them up in a ribbon or something, you'd have yourself a nice little holiday gift package.  Now wouldn't you?

 

(Ok.  Fine.  It wasn’t two months.  It was five weeks.  That’s still way too long to wait for a Star Wars Purse of Awesomeness.  I am only human, people.)

Yes. I’m That Bored.

I’ve made two tops that actually fit and started a jumper for TLo’s school uniform.  But I still can’t get my camera to work properly.  Although admittedly, I haven’t really been trying that hard…

Still.  Here’s how bored I am, since I don’t have anything to show you from the sewing room:

Yep.  I made a double-sided meal planner/grocery list.  I reformatted my meal-planning sheet and based the list part off an existing list I apparently got from MelanieMauer.com, although I have no idea what I was doing there in the first place.  Literally.  No idea.

Anyway, meals listed on one side, groceries needed on the other.  Most Frequently Purchased items on the list and then a few spaces for extras as needed.  Fold it in half and laminate.  Voila!  Dry-erase magical goodness for the grocery store.  Or in my case, I use a fine point Sharpie and just wipe it clean with rubbing alcohol when I get home.  That way it doesn’t smear all over you.  You know, while you’re shopping in the 112 degree heat.  That you’ve had for 73 consecutive days.  Yeah.  That heat.

Or you can print on both sides, cut it in half and have double-sided disposables.  I actually have both, dry-erase and in a pad. 

Because I have padding compound at work. 

So I make notepads.  Lots and lots of notepads.

Did I mention I was bored?

Yep.

I was going to make a link to download the planner.  But of course, that would mean that you have to buy what I buy.   My co-workers seemed to think having bamboo shoots and coconut milk on my “frequently bought” list was weird. 

I have no idea what those people eat.  We wouldn’t make it through the week without bamboo shoots and coconut milk.

 

Ok fine.   If you want a blank one you can download it here: The I’m-Bored-What’s-For-Dinner Planner.

But it’s not nearly as much fun if you have to write everything in yourself. 

I’m just saying.

Boxing Clever

So last winter I printed out a bunch of decorative papers with the idea of covering my really ugly pattern storage boxes.  Because they’re banker boxes.  And really ugly.  And I have access to a 60” color printer. Two, actually. 

Unfortunately, in winter it was too cold to spray-glue.  (It’s a verb.  Yes, it is.  No, really.  Deal with it.)   I decided to wait until spring.

Uh.  Except, we didn’t actually have a spring and I forgot about it.  I also might possibly have lost my spray glue.  (That one is a noun…. also, I think “She has totally lost. her. spray glue.” is a fabulous idiom that we should all start using immediately. Yes.  We should.)

Here’s an ugly banker box.

 

I downloaded some free vector files, changed the colors, tiled them into 60” strips, printed them out and wrapped the boxes.

Here are the finished boxes.

 

Here are the labels, which I printed on my printer at home and glued on to the box lids.  Yes, “spray-glued”.  They’ll probably fall off next week, at which time I’ll think of some other method for attaching them.  Maybe.

 

All you need to complete this project:

1. five banker boxes and lids
2. free vector files in assorted patterns
3. graphics editing software to tile the patterns and edit the colors
4. a 60” color plotter
5. spray glue
6. a bazillion patterns in file-folders.  Or 9”x12” envelopes.  Or both.

It couldn’t be easier.

Schrunchable

cut rectangular strip

press, right side facing

chain piece, cut apart

press, wrong side facing

insert hair elastic

serge with rolled hem

quilting cotton

RPL knit

corduroy

dupioni

more quilting cotton

Scrunchies!

Many, many schrunchies.

Achoo!

What do you say when someone sneezes?  My grandfather says, "Gesundheit!"  My mom says, "Bless you!". My grandmother used to say the very very old-fashioned, "Opchee!"

Yesterday after a long day of working, cooking dinner, reading to the kids, fending off mysterious interrogations by men in black, I decided that I had no energy to deal with my pattern fitting.  No energy to plan a summer wardrobe for the kids.  No energy for much of anything.  But I felt sort of guilty about it.  What to do? Crafts, of course.

You've seen my fabric collection.  Well.  Actually, you've seen my garment fabric collection.  I didn't show you the tubs and tubs and tubs of quilting fabric I have stored in the garage.  You see, I've been quilting for over 20 years.  And my fabric collecting propensities are hardly a new thing.  So it's fair to say I have some stash.  Of course, my quilting stash is a bit less unwieldy than garment stash, since most of it is in 1 yard or less lengths.  Still.  It's there.

So last night I thought I'd do something to use up a teeny tiny bitty little chunk of it.  Eight charm-pack squares worth, to be exact.  Which is laughable if you're aiming to reduce your stash, but fun if you're aiming to make something cute. And I made this:

front back Tissue Holder with tissues in it

I got this pattern from Angie A's tutorial.  It's super-duper easy to make.  Even I, slow-poke that I am, finished this in less than half an hour (that time included at least ten minutes spent trying to figure out what fabric to use and then trying to remember where I had put it).  Of course, I managed to sew my pieces together in the wrong sequence, despite several sessions of careful trial-and-error layout, but whatever.  It's still cute.  And practical! 

Tissue, anyone?