Cut-off Shorts and Drawstring Pants

Every time the seasons shift, the kids and I go through the tedious chore of going through our huge off-season clothing tub and forcing the children to try on anything that looks like it might fit.

Will loathes this chore as much as anyone can hate something that's not facism, and requires at least one, and sometimes two, Come to Jesus talks before she can finally bring herself to do--the horror!--Something That She Does Not Want To Do.

The pro to this is that she'll wear anything that fits. Just does not care. Literally pulls the top items out of her shirts bin and pants bin and puts those items on and wears them, utterly oblivious to how she looks. Syd, on the other hand, although she is happy to try on all the clothes that I present to her, is far pickier about what she'll actually wear, and since by the time something is her size, it either goes to her or to the donation bag, there's more in-depth conversation about what might go with what else in her wardrobe, if something that she doesn't like now would be improved with a stencil or the judicious application of scissors or perhaps with vat dyeing, if maybe she'd rather wear it in the winter with something warmer underneath, etc.

You'll be simply shocked, I'm sure, to know that my wardrobe is a lot more simple. I made do with one pair of shorts last summer, but I wanted more this summer, so I went to Goodwill, found three pairs of pants that I liked, bought them, took them home, cut them off at the knees--



--and hemmed them. Done and done!

I also wear a lot of drawstring jammies around the house, so I figured that while I was at the sewing table, I might as well mend the ones whose drawstrings worked their way out over the past few months:

Done--



and done!



If you've never replaced a drawstring before, here's how to do it--it's super easy.

So that's our summer wardrobe taken care of, although I know that the kids long for more leggings, their favorite piece of clothing to wear (also the most fragile, easily stained and highly prone to tears, grr!). Leggings are actually pretty quick and easy to make, and I've even figured out a way to make them out of old T--shirts, so they're for sure on my to-do list...

Maybe for winter, though.

I Made My Kid a Shirt

Does anyone actually like making muslins?

Not me! It's a freaking waste of fabric, that's for sure, although fine, I get even more pissed if I sew something and it doesn't fit correctly, especially because it would have fitted perfectly if I'd JUST SEWN A FREAKING MUSLIN FIRST.

I compromise with myself in that, when I DO sew a muslin, I try to make it something that will be wearable in its own right, if it works, but out of fabric that I won't be sorry to repurpose or turn into dishrags if it doesn't work. It's even fun, because I'll make fabric choices that I wouldn't normally make, such as the time that I sewed this muslin for Syd out of mismatched stash fabrics that she loved but that I didn't care for and probably wouldn't use in garments of my own design.

How do I end up with stash fabric that I don't love? I cave to kids in fabric stores, that's how.

I've made two recent "muslins that aren't really," both for Syd's Trashion/Refashion Show garment for this year. One was this basic upcycled jean skirt--

It's sewn from a pair of jeans that fit Syd well in the waist but that were too short and had holes in the knees, to boot--mending the knees of kid-sized skinny jeans is a nightmare repair job! The front piece is stash flannel, the blue dotted bias tape is the last scrap leftover from this hooded towel, and since it wasn't quite long enough for the entire circumference I made two matching pieces of bias tape from the pink flannel to piece it out to fit. See? A little too mismatched for my taste, but the kid likes it just fine.

--which I'm just now realizing the kid tricked me into making shorter than I'd like her skirts to be, but which also let me test out the construction method and desired look for the denim/formalwear fabric skirt that I'm entering in the show.

The other muslin is for a shirt that I'll also sew out of formalwear, but from stretch fabrics that allowed me to substitute jersey knit for the muslin. This turned into a shirt that I really love:

Why yes, I AM using the crap out of that "Think Spring" backdrop for as long as the drive-in owners keep it up. Fun fact: the other night, while I distracted the kids, Matt had to sneak over there in the dark and fix it back, because we came home from fencing and ballet to find that some hooligans had changed it to "Thick Pricks." And THEN about five minutes after Matt had gone out, I saw the lights from a police car RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE! I was about to tear outside and run over to inform the cops that Matt was FIXING IT, DAMMIT, but just then he came back in and said that he'd just finished, and the lights were just a police car pulling over a speeder. Whew!

 I really love the hood that I drafted, and the light blue/black color combo. The black fabric is stash jersey knit of indeterminate origin, and the blue fabric is from the backs of two matching Girl Scout camp T-shirts from a few years ago. I didn't think of the idea before I'd already tossed a couple of outgrown Girl Scout T-shirts, but now I'm saving them all for a couple of someday quilts.

The sleeves of this pattern were too short--see? So glad that I sewed a muslin!--and I was sewing late at night while Matt was finishing up a Girl Scout cookie booth with the kids and I managed to sew the ribbing on one cuff inside out. I just sewed the second cuff to match.

I altered the pattern piece of the sleeves to lengthen them after this, but then it turns out that the formal blouse that I'm using for part of the shirt in Syd's Trashion/Refashion Show garment doesn't have enough material for full-length sleeves, anyway, so that shirt will actually have half-length sleeves.

Oh, well. I like this pattern well enough that I'm sure I'll make a few more. You can't have too many long-sleeved hooded T-shirts!

Trashion/Refashion Show 2016: The Phoenix

My kid has designed and modeled a garment in our town's Trashion/Refashion Show for SIX YEARS now. Here, I'll prove it to you!

Fairy Princess: 2011

Rainbow Fairy: 2012

Rose Dress: 2013

Upside-Down Orange: 2014

The Awesomes: 2015

And now, for 2016, I give you The Phoenix!

The photo above shows the basic garment that Syd and I sewed WHILE I HAD THE FLU. I am hard-core, my Friends! I later added a double petticoat made of sheer curtains from Goodwill and the sash from Matt's high school graduation outfit.

I did my best to recreate Syd's original design, below:

Syd's designs are always this detailed, but fortunately, she gets the fact that construction is a totally different ballgame, and feathers can't always be found at Goodwill, and vat-dyeing corduroy yellow apparently makes it turn green--we did lace instead of feathers, and a red velvet bodice instead of a yellow one. I'm not as pleased with it as I'd like to be, but honestly, I did pretty damn good considering that I had the flu!

Syd, of course, always gives it her all. Here she is practicing onstage the day of the show:

The red Converse that her grandmother bought her kill me with cuteness.

 Tricoci University (formerly Hair Arts Academy) students generously donated their time and expertise to do hair and makeup again this year; Syd's hair designer thrilled her by creating exactly the tri-colored, half-up/half-down impossible hairdo that Syd asked for, and although the makeup artist wasn't able to create the impossible (Syd really wanted this exact look, bless her heart), she did the red flames that Syd later had me fill in with metallic orange and gold, with gold accents:

Who knew that metallic orange would bring out the green in her hazel eyes?

 Syd did her own lipstick, of COURSE:

Every year, this kid amazes me onstage, and this year?

She amazed me:


When the audience starts to cheer so loudly for my baby that the emcee has to pause her spiel? Ugh, my heart can't handle it.

Unlike last year, when I had TWO kids in costume and thus didn't manage to get a single photo of them in the flurry of "stop touching your face, here let me get that smudge, please don't step on your cape, your boot is untied again, pee now so you don't pee on the runway," I actually managed to get several photos of my kid this year!

I did NOT say that the photos would necessarily be in focus, just that they would exist.

I even managed to get a good photo of sisters together--

--just before they started fighting:

And pics with total strangers! Yay!

And just like that, there goes another year of the fashion show. Personally, I am stoked to be done with couture runway design for another eight months.

Syd, however? I kid you not, in the scrum to exit the theater after the show, she began with her patented "I was thinking..." and then proceeded to tell me her design plans for next year's Trashion/Refashion Show garment. 

Something about pop tabs, I think, and silver lame...

My Latest: The Awesomes

My round-up of the week's paid writing is late, because on Sunday I was deliberately NOT doing all the productive things that I usually do on Sundays. Instead, I watched Birdman, and spent a lot of time sledding, and ate Tibetan food--you know, the kind of stuff that the normals probably always do on a Sunday.

Anyway, here's what I got paid to write last week!

a tutorial for making a DIY camera lens cap leash

and ALL about the superhero costumes that I made for the kids and submitted to our town's Trashion/Refashion Show jury

I wrote this tute on appliqueing jersey knit without using fusibles. 

Syd and Will both helped piece the T-shirt fabric for their capes.

I made a template, and their job was to piece together something that was larger than that template.

Then I cut that piece to size, and added it to the cape.

I decided not to take the time to starch, so instead I painstakingly pinned while watching... is that Supernatural or New Girl? Can't tell.

Here are the rest of my build notes for the completed garments. 

I'm not super pleased with how these came out--if I hadn't been spending most of my time last month managing the Girl Scout cookie business, I think that you'd be looking at a much more elaborately detailed, intricately pieced pair of costumes right now--but I think that what you are looking at at least has more of the feel of a homemade, kid-designed superhero costume, like what a kid superhero would actually look like if she actually had the skills to applique herself a cape and sew herself a leotard. 

And, of course, the kids like them, so, you know, fuck you, Perfectionism!

My Latest: Making Repairs and Playing with Food

a round-up of easy repair tutes

another round-up of projects that get kids playing with food

and a tutorial for mending a torn knit dress using a T-shirt

Look how cute it turned out!

I'll pretend that I'm showing you the following pictures just to illustrate to you how well the dress drapes, but really you know that I just want to show off my adorable kid:

In some ways, this project might seem a little odd: the dress itself is from Old Navy, which is known for its cheap, easily-replaced garments, and this particular dress, actually, was free, a hand-me-down from a friend who warned me, when she gave it to me, that it had a hole in the tushy. 

Why bother repairing, you might ask, when I could probably walk into Old Navy today and buy an identical one for four bucks?

Well, because even though it's from Old Navy (I've had bad luck with some of their clothes), it's a good-quality garment, it's roomy enough to fit Syd well through next summer, it's comfortable and she likes it so it will get a lot of wear, and it's so easy to repair that I couldn't have gone to Old Navy and back in the time that it took me to mend this dress. 

Even so, yeah, it did take me about an hour to mend a $4 dress, which wouldn't be worth it to a lot of people. But it's worth it to me, because I prefer to use what we have rather than buy new, even if it's cheap, and I like to see my kids wearing clothes that I've sewed for them, and I to see my kids in interesting, unexpected clothes, when I have the time to make them for them. 

So I had a little extra free time this Wednesday to repair a comfy dress using an interesting detail, and it made me happy, and it made Syd happy, so yay.

And then, of course, we woke up the next morning to see that the weather turned, and it's now freezing here. And now I'm extra glad that I lengthened the dress so that Syd can wear it next summer, too!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Prom Dress Refashions

Prom dress refashioning projects

and Syd's Prom dress pants, the final piece in our 2014 Trashion/Refashion Show entry

For me, it's hard to top the sweetness, prettiness, and innocence of last year's Rose Dress, but I have to say that I really, really, REALLY like this year's outfit, which Syd named Upside-Down Orange (it's colored like an orange on a green stem, only upside-down, see? I know, I know--just don't think about it). Perhaps it's because this outfit, although less sweet, is awesomely fun, it's not gendered super feminine (and if you've known Syd for the long haul, you'll realize that's something that I, at one time, thought would NEVER happen in her personality), and for the first time, this year Syd was really able to help me sew it. I love this outfit, and Syd loves this outfit, and I think it shows:

You know who else is in love? The camera, with this kid. It's a running joke between me and Matt, because we're both hilariously unphotogenic. Matt, in particular, is rarely in a photo in which he's not in the middle of a blink, preferably with his eyelids unevenly closing, and ideally with his mouth open weird. And yet when I'm editing photos of this kid, in all other aspects his younger, female clone, I'm all like, "Gee, which of 100 almost identically beautiful shots of her should I keep?"

Holy smokes, it's 5:00 already! Syd's next to me at the table, working on her math, and Will's at the library, where she asked to be dropped off after horseback riding class (Guess we'll do Magic Tree House Club next Wednesday!), and now I'm off to head into the kitchen, turn on "All Things Considered," and make caramelized onion French bread pizza and chocolate cake. It's a carby dinner, yes, but when Matt comes home with Will, they're also going to bring with them the ingredients to make homemade ice cream, so we'll have plenty of sugar to even things out.