Branded

It was a day busy with Pumpkinbear branding, but I did get most of it done--along with a little laundry, a little Numb3rs Season 2 DVD set (my newest obsession from the public library, now that I'm apparently stalled in the hold line for Season 2 of The O.C.), several hands of dinosaur flash cards with Willow, who can now pick out the ending "saurus" AND tell you that it's Greek for lizard (happy homeschooling moment!), and a trip to Sam's for that freakin' EZ-Up and some frozen foods that Matt can feed the girls while I'm teaching in the evenings (neither of us are geniuses in the kitchen, it turns out).

The idea is that our whole family will wear Pumpkinbear shirts all weekend, although since I only made one shirt for each person and the craft fair is two days long...well, one can hope, right? Mine isn't quite finished: The logo is freezer paper stencilled on a green raglan tee, originally from the Gap, but new to me when I bought it at Goodwill some time ago. All the fabric paint on all the T-shirts will need to be heat-set with the iron tomorrow night or, since I teach, Tuesday morning. After that, I can iron some tear-away stabilizer to the back of the shirt and sew on the pumpkinbear applique--I freehand stitched it on my sewing machine with green thread on black flannel, and I am quite proud of how it turned out. I've never tried freehand stitching words before, but now I'm going to do it every day pretty much.

Matt's shirt is totally the awesomest, though. I didn't feel like cutting out two insanely complicated Pumpkinbear stencils, so I decided to reverse-stencil his shirt: It looks really cool and butch and I can't wait for him to try it on.

Then the girls came upstairs from where they'd been "helping" Daddy in the basement, and I had to set up some fabric painting for them. I had them painting onto black flannel because I thought I might then be able to do something with it for Halloween decorations, but now I don't know--nothing jumps out at me. I was able to hover a little less this time over my expensive fabric paints by allowing each girl to choose a color, which I then poured a little of into an individual cup. Halfway through, they switched colors, and then when they got bored I used up the rest of the paint in their cup by painting some simple little designs that I can later cut out and applique as patches onto their clothes or to cover stains: I'm not as totally in love with the girls' shirts as I am with mine and Matt's, but since they'll probably get them filthy and ruined a few minutes after they put them on, anyway, that's probably for the best.

I freehand stitched with orange thread another "pumpkinbear" onto a piece of white linen from a pillowcase dress I was making today, and I'm going to applique that over the Old Navy branding on the back of Willow's orange shirt, and Sydney's shirt will have a "pumpkinbear" applique in white thread on grey flannel below her stencil to cover a couple of stains.

I still need to make either a bunting or a banner and to finish up my second table cover, but I'm so sick right now of my own brand name that I'm instead going to sew up a half-dozen or so pillowcase dresses as a little treat--I had planned to be all cool and relaxed this week, but instead I think I'm probably going to push myself frantically to make a bunch more stuff because I so desperately want to earn enough money for that new serger that I want so badly I can taste it.

Mmmmm, serging.