We Heart Our Chalkboard Globe

It's our new favorite homeschool tool! Syd, especially, who's my tactile, hands-on, art project go-to girl, loves the chalkboard globe that I made from a 25-cent garage sale globe from the 1960s and a can of chalkboard paint (check out my chalkboard globe tutorial over at Crafting a Green World if you, too, have a globe that still proudly sports the USSR).

It's fun for doodling and artistry of all sorts:

 Fun for geography:

 Fun for math and spelling:

 And fun for copywork:

It's brought us back to an art chalk renaissance, of sorts, and since I have just about 99% of a can of chalkboard paint left, I'm spending this week snooping around my house, spying out other hapless materials to turn into chalkboards!

The Fashion Show Project: Sydney's Dress

Let me begin by saying that yes, I am as horrified by Toddlers and Tiaras as you are, and no, I have no desire to ever walk on a runway, myself. Like wearing make-up, dresses of any sort, or basically anything other than jeans, T-shirts, hoodies, and combat boots, runway modeling is just another one of those girl-type dreams that I had nothing to do with.

For my little girl, however, it's another story entirely, as fashion is queen in her four-year-old mind, and so, bravely smiling but with many secret qualms, I entered us into our town's Trashion/Refashion Show.

I like the idea of showing Sydney that real fashion is, at its essence, about creation, not consumerism. That fashion design is empowering. That dressmaking is a skill, and an art. Never mind that I don't really care about real fashion--the kid does, so that's where we're homeschooling for a while. Whether or not our ensembles are chosen for this juried show, it's now our mother-daughter project to refashion ourselves a couple of runway outfits.

I put Syd in charge of visualizing her design. Here it is:


Please pay particular attention to the tall crown, the color scheme of bright fuschias and purples, the sleeve and arm detailing, and the butterfly wings. Those will be important later.

For a refashion entry, the entire ensemble must be constructed almost entirely from fabrics originally constructed for another purpose. Syd and I went to Goodwill one fine Sunday and found the perfect selection of fabrics for her design. We chose one main fabric, the centerpiece of her design, and then two other fabrics for detailing and accessories. I was worried that Syd would want to adhere so strictly to her original drawing that we wouldn't be able to find anything that would match closely enough, but the true trouble lay in dissuading her from being so delighted in every single thing that she saw that she wanted to completely alter her design to fit every new fabric. The main fabric, however, was an easy pick--here it is, just graduated from its former life as a woman's skirt:

Here it is, reincarnated:

I chopped off the skirt on both sides and then sewed it back together to fit Sydney's high chest measurement. I kept the entire length of the skirt, and so the dress is now about knee-length on Syd. The skirt had an invisible zipper in the back, which is now the zipper to the dress--I goofed on my seam allowance a bit, and so the dress is alarmingly snug, but Syd says it's comfortable, and fortunately the fashion show, if our outfit is chosen, is in just a couple of months.

Out of the extra material that I cut off of the sides, I preserved an entire length of the lace-embellished fabric--I finished the seam on either side of it and used it as a halter strap for the dress:
The tulle shrug is sewn across the entire length of the halter strap; it used to be part of the skirt's underskirt, shown here:

I like the extra bit of tulle at the neck because it covers Syd's shoulders, and I think it looks really nice from the back:

Syd is THRILLED with her outfit so far, and I'm relieved that it turned out so well. There were a couple of shaky moments during construction, and if our outfit is chosen for the fashion show I plan on bringing my entire sewing arsenal in case of last-minute emergencies.

Next up--a crown!

Someone Else's Hand-Me-Downs

Sydney is VERY picky about her clothes. This has made the process of receiving hand-me-downs from Willow tiresome, likely for all involved. The purging of the winter wardrobe and the unveiling of the summer bins this weekend have resulted in a large stack of hand-me-downs that Sydney will not wear at any price and that thus are destined for either resale or donation, a large stack of hand-me-downs that Sydney claims she will wear when (if) I get around to sewing on decorative buttons or flower appliques or stenciling unicorns, etc., and a small stack of hand-me-downs that were deemed suitable for wear as-is.

The girls are nearly the same waist size, only Willow is taller, so, cropped pants still being stylish (I hope), some of these hand-me-downs have actually gone back to their original owner. Those AWESOME camouflage pants that looked so cool on Willow when she was three years old actually look even cooler as calf-length capris, and some other pants are in the same large stack on my work table waiting to be cut into shorts.

In other words, though, thank GOODNESS for the Goodwill 50%-off Storewide Sale. Along with some more T-shirts for baby bags and quilts (how awesome will a Godfather baby bag be? SO awesome), ANOTHER dinosaur board game, a sheet that will become jammy pants, a brand-new Hello! Kitty Figure-Baking Oven that it's probably wrong to be this excited about, and other sundries, I bought several long-sleeved jersey cotton shirts in Sydney-approved colors and patterns-- --to be sewn into summer-weight skirts and leggings, and Sydney got to get some hand-me-downs that she thoroughly approved of:

You gotta love her sense of style, at least:

I'll try to remember that shirt when I'm up late sewing butterfly appliques onto an otherwise perfectly serviceable pair of pants.

And I Am Martyred by the Color Pink

Certain family members of the in-law persuasion have long made veiled accusations that I will not permit my girls to wear pink. This, I declare, is flatly untrue. Yes, it was completely true when they were infants--I actively put my girl babies in clothing gendered as male, but I'll tell you all about why I did that some other time. And yes, it's true that when I shop for clothing for my girls, I generally don't buy them pink stuff--when my kids don't care what they wear, I buy them clothes that I like. Who doesn't do that?

However, I firmly believe that I have always been extremely accomodating when they do show a preference. Why else does Willow have at least 12 dinosaur shirts? And pants with dinosaurs on them? And dinosaur jammies? And a dinosaur dress? And don't even get me started about the ponies and the rainbows, because I really don't feel like discussing it right now.

And therefore, since Willow has lately been complaining that she has no "pretty" pants (and since my suggestions that, since she doesn't like the pants I've bought her previously, she should really get a job so that she can buy her own pants hasn't led to her actually getting a job, alas), yesterday at the Goodwill 50%-Off Storewide Sale I invited her to come over to the children's clothing section so that we could pick out some pretty pants together.

It's hard, obviously, for a five-year-old to find clothes at Goodwill--they're sorted by color, which does help one zero in on the "pretty" pants, but only a Momma can accurately evaluate fit and condition and quality and appropriateness. Fortunately, it turns out that I'm actually quite good at ascertaining the kind of pants that my daughter will find "pretty".


If the pants are jeans, they should be fancy jeans:Otherwise, light blue is pretty:
Light green is also pretty:Purple, too, is pretty:So, yes, Willow and Sydney both came home with scads of pretty pants, and a few other pretty necessities----and even a couple of other awesome items:The future farm girls have a system for who gets to wear THAT shirt on any given day, let me tell you.

Other than that, some work shirts and work pants were bought for the man, some record albums and vintage sheets and T-shirts were bought for crafting, and the babies got more books, of course. But did I find any awesome clothes for myself, you ask?

Well, you can fail the PhD student concentrating on medieval studies through a feminist lens out of her qualifying exams, but you can't erase the ridiculous amounts of useless information about the medieval time period and its literatures out of her head: And also? When I was a little kid, I never, never, NEVER had cool clothes. And in junior high, one of the MAJOR things that I wanted (along with stone-washed jeans and T-shirts in two different colors so that you could roll the sleeves up and see the color of the shirt underneath and leggings and the dexterity to tie an oversized T-shirt into a knot at one bottom hem, etc.) was THE FOLLOWING KIND OF HOODIE THAT ALL THE COOL KIDS WORE:

Childhood dreams really can come true, can't they?

Especially when they're simple:

Freebies from the Public Library, or, Your Romance Needs Fulfilled

If you can get up at 7 am and get your coffee drunk so that you're ready to face the world, and if you can bully the girls into getting dressed in a reasonable amount of time (not always a sure thing, as evidenced by this morning, when Willow's failure to dress herself in an hour sent her into hysterics when I told her that we were going to miss Storytime at the library), and if you can feed them a breakfast that doesn't contain ANYTHING messy that would mean they'd have to change clothes again before going out, and if they can find their shoes, and if you can find the car keys, then you could go to the free day at the public library's book sale and you, too, could bring home all of this:
The bag on the left is all romance novels--50 of them from which my 46 students can choose later this semester, for their final paper that will be a comparison of a gender ideology within their romance novel to a subversion of that ideology in another cultural artifact:
The bag on the right is my stuff--outdated craft books that sometimes have some really interesting projects or methods, cookbooks, travel guides to use in scrapbooking vacations we've been on, and educational materials that might be good to use with the girls:And the girls' shopping cart--that's all their stuff, carefully filled to the maximum allowed capacity. At the book sale there was this other kid, maybe four years old? Now, I don't necessarily offer my own children appropriate supervision, but my kids fortunately don't go get all up in strangers' business when we're out and about, either. So as I'm trying to pick out 50 romance novels, squatting in the middle of an aisle and the girls are "helping" me and I'm trying to read back covers so I can pick out ones that will be useful for my students, this kid comes up and keeps trying to throw books into my paper bag and I'm all, "No, thank you," and he's all trying to move my arm so he can get the book into the bag and I'm all "NO, thank you!" but trying to be nice because he's not my own kid, so I can't yell at him, and where the heck is his parent?

So then he walks over to the girls and starts fighting with them over domination of the cart, and I'm all "It's their special shopping cart, sweetie, but you can have a turn pushing it if you want," and then he shoves Sydney, who shrieks, and starts grabbing their books out of their cart, and I'm all, "NO, sweetie, those are their books!", and then I'm all done, so I tell the girls we are leaving posthaste and the kid STANDS on the girls' cart so they can't push it and I'm carrying two full bags of books and trying to tell this random kid to get OFF and he's ignoring me and I'm wondering if I can maybe just kick him, just a little, but then his parent finally sees him and threatens to whup his ass so we're free to leave, the girls with their ample treasures intact:
If that kid tries it again at the free day of the Red Cross book sale I WILL kick him, because the Red Cross free day is hard-core.

Retro Read-Aloud

By now, y'all probably know what I tend to like: I like handicraft/DIY, I like a dirt-cheap good deal, I like thrifting/garage sales/dumpster-diving, and I loooooooove learnin' with my babies. I make my own panties (sometimes). When something goes on Manager's Special at Kroger, I buy ALL of it and throw it in the chest freezer. I will wake up earlier on a Saturday than I will on a weekday, just to sneak out of the house and hit a couple of 8 am garage sales (today I bought two skeins of yarn for the littles, and although I REALLY wanted the spinning wheel, which was 250 dollars, I did not buy it). I consider it the height of a good time to make Spanish-language flash cards for the girls, or to read to them from the encyclopedia.

I'm a dork, yes, but a happy one.

When two, or even three, of my passions come together into a sort of holy combination, I achieve super-dorkdom, a joy and enthusiasm that my daughters will, one day, put into the memoirs that they will write about their strange childhoods and their crazy Momma. Thus imagine my joy, imagine my enthusiasm, when I learned that the children's department at our public library was selling off its entire collection of VHS and cassette tapes.

VHS tapes? I don't have a VCR. But cassette tapes? I have that player.

We're talking children's music. We're talking audiobooks, both fiction and non-fiction. And because it's the children's department, most of all we're talking picture books and read-aloud cassettes. They're used, so I'm thrifting. They're hella educational. And at 25 cents per item yesterday and 10 cents per item today, they are way dirt-cheap.

It's super-dork heaven.

On Friday, I bought 44 picture books with read-aloud cassettes, 18 audiobooks, and 4 music cassettes. For 35 dollars. Today I went back (of course), and I didn't count my haul, but since Matt was with us and so I could concentrate on shopping (not mediating fights and picking up knocked-down merchandise and shouting across the room for little people to stop running, etc.), I was able to look more at the fiddly fine-printed music cassettes, and I spent 11 dollars.

And look what I got!I'm putting aside all the audiobooks of more than two tapes to bring out for long car trips, stuff like The Mouse and the Motorcycle(and all its sequels), The Secret Garden, The Boxcar Children, Alice in Wonderland, and other awesome stuff. I also might bring these out when the girls are a little older to listen to independently here at home.

But in their collection that they can choose from independently right now are other audiobooks of two hours or less, stuff like Little Bear and Frances and Winnie-the-Pooh collections, and Henry and Mudge, and what seems like eight thousand Hank the Cowdog titles. I hesitated for a second when Willow picked all those out, because she's never read them and I sure don't like Westerns, but then I thought, "Heck, they're 20 cents each," and let her get all of them, and yes, she has proven me wrong by spending two hours this afternoon sitting at the living room table and listening to an entire hard-boiled Hank the Cowdog mystery book, figuring out how to change the sides of the tape and then change to the next tape without my instruction.

I am the happiest, however, or rather I should say THRILLED, about the picture books with accompanying read-aloud cassettes:I'm not sure, but over the two days I think I bought at least sixty of these. And imagine, it was the children's department's ENTIRE collection, so other than the few that the girls chose before they got restless and left me to it, I had my own entire pick of some really premiere titles. And all the cassettes work (a couple that we've tried haven't been of perfect quality, but most have), and all of the picture books are, though well-used, lovingly repaired. Among the titles that I bought are several Dr. Seuss, Where the Wild Things Are, Runaway Bunny, Babar, The Little Red Hen, several fairy tales, and a few books of poems. Considering that nearly all of these, except for a couple that the girls snuck through, are titles that we didn't already have in our print library, it was quite a haul.

The best part, though, has been the girls' reaction to our new wealth of listening opportunities. Sure, I know a lot of it is the novelty of learning how to work my cassette player (now theirs) and choosing from nothing but a billion new books and tapes, but I think this collection really will become an important part of their lifestyle. We encourage reading books and listening to stories and enjoying music, and we sure as hell encourage doing all of this independently, and every now and then for the past two days, when I've walked through the living room and had the chance to witness this:It does make me feel very enthusiastic and joyful, indeed.

And At Least a Million Buttons

I sort of have a thing for the newspaper Classifieds. Maybe it's because it comes last, and so by the time I get there I've already slogged my way through world news and the political cartoon and the crackpot letters to the editor and all the awful things that happened the previous day to children or nice animals that the paper always seems to need to run. By the time I get to the Classifieds, too, I've been awake for at least twenty minutes, and I'm likely just about finishing my nice big mug of coffee that Matt always hands me on his way out the door (the man does not even drink coffee himself, but he makes a big cup for me every morning. He loves me, and he wants a sane caregiver for his children while he's away).

Really, though? It's because the Classifieds has weird stuff to buy. And do I want to buy it?

Oh, boy, I do. Currently, I'm coveting the $25 log cabin dollhouse kit, and the 30+ pounds of golf balls for $20 (no, I don't play golf). I've also seen a lathe advertised, and a workbench that I'm sure would have been just perfect in the basement workshop, and a bunny costume for a five-year-old, and enough prom and bridesmaid's dresses to have me sewing satin fancy-dress outfits for the girls until their own proms.

So every morning, coffee in hand, when I get to the Classifieds I call out to one girl or another, "Oooh, quick, run get Momma a marker!" And I know in my head that I'm acting, perhaps, the kind of crazy that the girls will write about so evocatively in their memoirs about how bizarre their childhoods were and how nuts their mom is, but I can't help myself, and the girls get just as stoked as I am as I try to describe to them, my TV commercial-deprived babies, exactly what a PowerWheel is and does and why they totally want one. And then I circle all the awesome ads. And then I call Matt at work and spend a couple of minutes attempting to make him, too, understand why we need a model train set-up, or fifty pounds of pea gravel, and I generally can get him to copy down a phone number or two, admitting that yes, he guesses we could perhaps use a trampoline, or 100+ sci-fi and fantasy mags from the 1980s, but he never, NEVER actually calls and purchases any of the awesome stuff that I totally wish he would.

Until yesterday, when Matt came home with a gallon of vintage buttons under his arm for me.

Here's what a gallon of vintage buttons looks like, if you're curious:
There are a lot of buttons that make up a gallon. And they're really cool ones, too. You know how sometimes you get someone's old button collection or see someone selling their old buttons at a garage sale, and all the buttons are brown or white and boring and just really lame? These aren't those buttons:

These buttons are all AWESOME! I do already own quite a number of vintage buttons from ebay, so many that I'm toying with the idea of separating out some that are awesome but that I probably won't use--the shank buttons, for instance--and re-selling them again, but I actually do incorporate a lot of buttons into my work. I'm still hugely fond of my button and upholstery remnant monograms, for instance, and I'm thinking of doing a set of numbers for my pumpkinbear etsy shop, as well, or perhaps an entire name in script (which I have seen done somewhere--Susan Beal, perhaps?).

And when I'm not using my buttons, I set them up on my shelf in the study and look at them with love when I'm thinking about something. Something like how awesome my husband is, for instance, for surprising me with a gallon of buttons.

Talk about knowing someone well enough to know what they'd like for a present.

In other news, I was THRILLED today to practice, for the very first time, a brand-new handicraft. No cheating if you're a Facebook friend or a regular blog friend and saw me going on about it earlier, but if you're not a Facebook friend (although you should be), can you guess?

I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to Me

My calendar birthday was August 3, but because the celebrations that I require for my birthday are many and varied (and specific), the family and I traditionally wait to celebrate it until after we're home from our California vacation. So Saturday may have been more accurately entitled my Un-Birthday, but it bravely stood in for my official birthday in all reasonable capacities.

First on the birthday schedule was early-bird garage sales. This wasn't our usual leisurely waking, cup of coffee, read the paper, bully the girls into clothing pace, but instead consists of one parent (me) waking up sneakily early, and sneakily getting dressed and sneaking out the door. I found Syd playing quietly in the living room of the otherwise sleeping house as I went for my shoes, and so I invited her along, but the sleepers stayed sleeping and the little girl and I hit the sales as soon as they opened.

The best part of hitting the garage sales early is the excellent selection--if you're in the market for anything that might be at all popular, like tools, nice wooden toys, or any kind of professional-level supplies, early is the way to go. The downside is that you can't haggle nearly as well at 8 am as you can at 1 pm, say. So if I see something that I really like early on, but it's way overpriced, I actually might swing by the sale again later that day to see if it's still there and ready to be haggled over.

Syd and I were only out for an hour, but we bought several fat quarters at 25 cents each, a wooden ballot box that used to be in an Ellettsville Kentucky Fried Chicken owned by the guy running the sale for 30 years, now to be the all-new Pretend Mailbox (the cardboard version that the girls worked on for weeks is already trashed--Pretend Mailboxes get a lot of wear and tear), yet another map of the United States puzzle, and a still-packaged calendar math kit (I bet homeschoolers, especially, LOVE garage sales). I passed on a really nice mat-cutting kit because it was 20 bucks, and some boxes of Fiesta Ware because they were 40 bucks each.

The map of the United States puzzle, oddly, didn't have the pieces actually in the shape of the states, it turned out, but was still, apparently, quite a bit of fun: Matt and Willow were awake when Syd and I got home, and coffee and newspaper and breakfast commenced. Then Matt left me home alone to do some sewing while he took the girls out to get my cookie cake (everyone gets the cake of their choice on their birthday, and the main pleasure of my cake is that I don't have to bake it). Matt actually found the garage sale that had the Fiesta Ware--I'd admitted that 40 for a box of it really wasn't unreasonable, especially since I could sell the pieces I didn't want on ebay, and so he was going to surprise me with it. When he got there, though, and asked about it, guy running the sale was all, "No way, buddy. It's not 40 bucks for a box. It's 40 bucks for a five-piece set." Um, five pieces? For forty dollars? At a garage sale, to boot? What kind of fantasy world do they live in? This little old lady who was shopping at the sale even snuck up to Matt a minute later, thinking he was a guy, you know, and therefore probably a garage sale rube, and said, "Do NOT buy that Fiesta Ware at that price." Matt's, all, "Don't worry, lady. I fully understand the problems with that scenario."

Perhaps searching for the mat cutter, or perhaps just enjoying themselves, Matt and the girls hit enough other garage sales to provide him with some Xbox games and them with stuffed unicorns, and then they drove home just long enough to pick me up, and we went to a matinee of Ponyo. It was an awesome movie, fully in the vein of Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, and, just for my birthday, perhaps, it included a shout-out to breastfeeding. Not to spoil the movie or anything, but at one point Ponyo tries to give a baby a sandwich, and its mother says something like, "The baby drinks milk from me, but I can eat the sandwich to help make milk for him," and Ponyo looks confused (she's a fish-girl, remember), and her friend says, "Yeah, my mom made milk for me, too, when I was a baby." Hells, yeah!

After the matinee was the cookie caking:Every year Matt takes it as his personal challenge to trick the bakers into putting as much icing as possible on my cookie cake. Last year, he did pretty well with "Happy 32nd Birthday Julie" and a couple of flowers. I think he topped himself this year, however--"Happy Birthday Congratulations Julie." Nice, huh? Matt even tried for "Happy Birthday AND Congratulations Julie", but the baker insisted that the "and" just wouldn't fit. So maybe next year, the same wording and a flower or two, and Matt might have reached the absolute limit of possibility.

Now, one of the most crucial parts of the birthday--I wanted to finish The Watchmen comic so that Matt and I could watch the movie that night. Therefore, for the next two hours, while the girls played, I hung out and read, munching on the odd piece of cookie cake, and Matt cleaned the house. For two hours. And I had a good vantage point for observation from my place on the couch, as well, so insert happy sigh.

Matt fed the girls a quick dinner, then we went to:

The Roller Derby! It was Bleeding Heartland home team versus home team, the Slaughter Scouts versus the Farm Fatales, and it was crazy-close, with the Slaughter Scouts coming from behind to win by several points, ALL IN THE FINAL JAM!!!

I watched the roller derby on TV as a child, so it was quite nice to be sitting there knowing what was going on, and have Matt sitting next to me all confused for a change, and I got to whisper the rules to him and explain the action. Very simply, you have two teams racing around an elliptical track, with one point scorer for each team--she's the Jammer, and she'll have a star on her helmet. The rest of the team is the pack, with a pivot person for each team to set the pace of the pack. The pack skates together, and they serve as helpers for their own Jammer, and blockers for the other team's Jammer. A race is a Jam, and it lasts for two minutes, tops, although the Lead Jammer, the one who breaks out from the pack and races ahead first, can end the Jam anytime for strategical purposes. The race starts with the Jammers a little behind the pack, and they have to race through the pack, break ahead of them, and circle around the track to lap them. Every person on the opposite team that the Jammer laps scores her team a point. There are a few other rules and some penalties and a penalty box and stuff, but that's basically it, and it's very awesome and exciting. Oh, and there are costumes, which is almost the best part, and stage names, and at the end of half-time there's a raffle for some sock monkeys made by Hell-No Kitty, and if I had won that raffle, I can't even tell you what the world would have become after that, because all of my lifetime goals would have been achieved.

The roller derby ends kind of late, and the girls always end up all roller derby riled, if you can imagine, so it was crazy getting them to sleep, involving a little screaming and more than one episode of MythBusters, but eventually Matt and I were left alone with our birthday feast of Pizza Express, cookie cake, and The Watchmen movie.

I dare you to have a better birthday than that.

It's a Wrap!

By all rights, the girls should have been tearing the house apart on this rainy day until we finally gave up and left to spend the day at the library or Wonderlab or wherever, but after a nice breakfast together and an hour or so spent dying dried pasta weird colors, the girls basically spent the rest of the day having one long playdate with each other, leaving me to blog and sew and bake banana bread and catch up with my reading (You should totally be my Goodreads friend, by the way). I know, I know--the life of a stay-at-home mom is dang hard. But today was not one of the days in which I wanted to tear out my hair by 10:00 am.

Hallelujah.

And that is why I am basically done with the yard sale wrap skirt I've been sewing from:



Basically=I'll tell you in a minute. And ad nauseum. And I know you want to hear all about the many and varied modifications I made to the pattern. First, however, I'll show you the photos that occurred during a break in the rain when I changed into my new skirt (I'm also wearing the new bra, and I offer the news flash that non-nursing bras are not as comfortable as nursing bras), took the girls outside, and asked them to take turns taking photos of me in my new skirt:

I'm trying to get my head in the shot:

Still trying to get my head in:Shot nearly missed me entirely that time:I took this one (and yes, I do have funky tan lines on my feet, and I do let my daughters paint my toenails, and those are acrylic paint stains on our sidewalk):I give up--who needs another shot of my face, anyway?I'm much more pleased with this skirt than I thought I would be, mid-sewing--and also, I NEVER wear skirts or dresses, but a wedding is an emergency, wouldn't you say? And I haven't ruled out making a peasant top out of this same fabric and wearing it with dress pants, either, so don't think I'm skirt-committed, now.

This skirt was made from part of a queen-size sheet that I found at the Goodwill Outlet Store--I bet it cost me no more than 25 cents. And there is enough left of the sheet to make a peasant top, I really think, although I might have to do part of the sleeves in a different fabric.

And yes, the fact of the sheet begs the question--yes, I did find both the matching pillowcases, as well, and yes, I will be sewing matching dresses for my daughters to match with me. The campy transvestite in me wants to make Matt a matching tie, too, so we can look like we're going to some creepy family prom, but I will definitely restrain myself and perhaps just hem him a matching hanky for his suit pocket.

For you fellow plus-sized ladies, my waist is about 36", and I had to add two entire extra panels to this six-panel wrap skirt. This means that I also can't use the waistband and ties part of the pattern, either. I haven't finished the waist, but I'm 99% sure that my solution will be a bias tape hemmed waist, and kilt pins (read: safety pins) to fasten the skirt. Instead of the hand-sewn rolled hem that the instructions also called for, I machine-stitched a rolled hem with a satin stitch set to a short stitch length, and I think it looks very nice.

Now...shoes?