Busts, Bitching, and Subversive Seamsters: My Birthday Favorites

Bust Magazine is my favorite!

Since I'm supposed to be using this precious naptime to frantically clean the house so that our dear friends attending Syd's birthday dinner tonight don't realize how filthy we are, I am obviously blogging instead. The very first book I picked up to put away is overdue at the library, but it's an awesome how-to book and I wanted to scan some projects from it and blog about it, and if I'm doing that I might as well blog about the other reference materials I've found recently, and, well, here we are...

I'm a big fan of the Stitch 'n Bitch franchise: I'm not a scarf-and-sweater gal, but I'd actually make a ton of these projects if I could do more than knit back-and-forth in a straight line until someone casts off for me, and the editor, Debbie Stoller, also does Bust magazine,which I adore. Son of Stitch 'n Bitch: 45 Projects to Knit and Crochet for Menis the best of the bunch, in my opinion, because I prefer wearing masc clothing, and this book is all about projects to knit and crochet for men-like people. My favorites are the beer gloves, which are the type of fingerless gloves I rocked in junior high, and the Cobra and Pub Crawler sweaters, which are very understated and comfy-looking. I'd totally make someone knit my kids the Ernie sweater, though, which is, yes, the one of Bert-and- fame.

The Vogue Knitting The Ultimate Sock Book: History*Technique*Design (Vogue Knitting) is also appealing, even though most of the patterns aren't to my taste, because of its lengthy, cogent, and illustrated instructions for sock knitting, which I reaaaaallly, reeeeaaaaallly want to learn. I keep building up the supplies during sales at the crafts store--I bought circular needles when they were 50%-off, only to have my friend Molly the Knitter tell me that it's double-pointed needles you use, and so then I bought a pair of double-pointeds at a different sale only to see in this book that you need more like two or even three pairs...Sigh.

Matt is getting frustrated with sneaking back into work at night to print me some business cards on the fussy and easily-broken color printer there, so I'm thinking about investing in these 2.75"x1" Moo cards--you can upload a beautiful photo, and put your business info on the back, and get 100 for about 20 bucks. That would be nice, because using an actual product photo or a photo of the kids would be much more relevant and evocative of my work.

I'm thinking about applying to sell at Yarncon in Chicago. Even though I don't knit, I'm really getting into the possibilities of creating with felted wool yarn, and my friend Molly the Knitter knits, so... I did apply to the Shadow Art Fair in Ypsilanti. Even though it's quite a drive, it fits my criteria because Matt's granny lives just around there, near Ann Arbor where my favorite store ever is.

The book I just can't stand to return to the library is Subversive Seamster. I had the library buy it, which means I get first dibs, but then someone else went and requested it before I could renew it! The best thing about this book is that one of the creators is an ample woman like I am, so I'm confident that most, if not all, of the designs are ample-woman friendly. This contrasts with some other remaking clothing books like T-Shirt Makeovers: 20 Transformations for Fabulous Fashions, in which I've tried to make a project or two, but I just don't think they work with my body. My favorite projects in Subversive Seamster are the duct tape dress form, which I totally have the duct tape to do, the turtleneck bolero jacket, the Hawaiian shirt pillowcase, the poncho skirt (I'd wear it over jeans), the men's dress pants shorts, the Catholic schoolgirl plaid skirt tank top, the bridesmaid's dress tie, the muumuu peasant top, the sports jersey toiletries bag--yeah, I really like this book.

Babywearing Baby

When Willow was a baby, Matt and I wore her nearly all the time in a couple of ring slings I'd made--blue plaid for him, purple stripes for me. Babywearing is terrific for the baby's emotional well-being, physical stimulation, intellectual growth, you name it. Ring slings are terrific for wearing babies, newborn through sitting up, because they're adjustable, versatile, and comfy. They're not great for older kids, however, because their weight isn't evenly distributed--then you need something more ergonomically correct. By the time Willow was a toddler, however, about Sydney's age, I'd completely stopped wearing her, and that's because of this:

See the package hanging around my neck? That's Sydney, taking her turn at being worn in the ring sling. And that's why my back has been killing me, now that Sydney is almost two and therefore almost a big girl. Thus begins the search for the big-girl baby carrier.

The mei tai is my big-girl carrier of choice--it's a soft Asian-style carrier, modified in the US to be easier to put on independently (traditionally, Asian mommies were never alone with their babies, and traditionally, American mommies nearly always are). You can wear your kiddo in front or back, vertically, with weight distributed over your shoulders, across your back, and around your waist.

There are a lot of really beautiful mei tais being made by stay-at-home moms just like me, only they sew better and have better taste. McKenzie Shields of Bunchkin Designs makes the most beautiful baby carriers I've ever seen, with lots of rich brocades and gadgety doo-dads. I also really, really like the mei tais at Babyhawk, on account of their awesome punk fabrics. The only problem with this terrific assortment of beautiful mei tais, all of them exactly what I want? They're super-expensive, as they ought to be, and I am super-poor.

I was super-sad for a while, lusting after the awesomeness of the mei tai, but what you have to do when that happens is remember your convictions. I don't buy things new; I craft them using recycled materials. Never mind that I've never made anything this complicated before and don't have the materials to make one now. I need a padded and beautiful fabric for the back--Matt's Aunt Vicki gave Willow a Hawaiian-print baby quilt, actually from Hawaii, when she was born, but the girls haven't used it in a year. I need some long, long straps, made out of a bottomweight fabric or home dec material--I'm never going to fit again into the half-dozen pairs of jeans I wore between Willow and Sydney, and even if I did, hell, they wouldn't be in style.

I was inspired by Jan Andrea's site years ago when I designed my ring slings, and she also has these terrific instructions for a mei tai, but mostly I just fiddled around. I quilted the shoulder straps to the back, and bound all my edges in denim to keep from having to hem and turn, except for the straps, which I topstitched around but I'm going to let the edges fray because that will be very cool. It's not perfect, but I did make it, and instead of ninety dollars it was free, and it's perfect for me and my almost big girl:

Digital Scrappy Scrapper

I won't even go into the huge amount of time I spent today working with felted wool and thinking about felted wool--I'm still working on the stuffed creature for my Craftster swap and I discovered that I can use some of the kids' cookie cutters to make templates for my flower pins and I started, with the little kid on my lap, a cover for her scrapbook and I'm contemplating including felt food into my craft fair next month--but I still had time to do yardwork with the kids and go to the gym and think about this magazine article I'm researching and listen to the kids fight in the car:

Big Kid: You're having ice cream cake for your birthday, aren't you, Little Kid?

Little Kid: Tookie take!

Big Kid: No! Ice cream cake!

Little Kid: Tookie take!

Big Kid: I'm going to tell you what to have! Ice cream cake!

Little Kid: Toooookie taaaaaake!

Big Kid: NOOOOOOOOO!

My newest crafting innovation, though, is that while watching The Office tonight, I created a digital scrapbooking page.

I downloaded a ton of free digital scrapbooking kits from Shabby Princess--each one has a theme, and has alphabet, patterned paper, embellishments, etc., and you can insert them as images into your graphic design program. They're BIG files, but after I download each one, I tend to go through them and delete out the stuff I won't ever use. I have yet to print the one page that I created out, so I don't exactly know how awesome it will look, but I will still have to include some actual elements on my page, since I make my books at 12"x12", and this digital page, like my printer, is 8.5"x11".

So far digital scrapbooking seems pretty nice, though. I'm pleased with the lack of actual stuff it involves, since to me that implies less consumerism, and I often like to make duplicates of pages, for instance if I make a page for one of the kids that includes a good friend or a teacher, and this would help with that.

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Fluffy Felt Flowers

Anyway... I'm feeling much better since I got that poison out of my system yesterday. Today, I was trying to ask Sydney what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday dinner on Tuesday, because you always get exactly the kind of cake you want on your birthday. Our conversation went like this:

"Sydney, what kind of cake do you want on your birthday?"

"Take."

"Do you want momma to make you a cake?"

"Take."

"Or would you rather buy a cake from the store?"

"Take!"

"How about a cookie cake?"

"Tookie!"

Etc.

I have been obsessed with making things out of felted wool lately. I've been suffering through creating and testing and throwing out in frustration pattern after pattern for a certain wool stuffed animal I'm trying to make for a Craftster swap, there's the ongoing felt food obsession, as soon as the girls and I get the playroom walls painted we're going to make a biiiiiiig felt board with lots of felt shapes to put up on it, and today, during Sydney's nap, I made the most awesomest little thing:

And then I made six more: They're pins! Or brooches, if you're old. They're quick and easy to make, you get to cut out fun shapes and stack them up, you get to use buttons, and the only sewing is hand-sewing everything together from pin to button through the buttonholes. I'll probably use them to embellish boxes or fabrics around the house, but felt clothing accessories are also pretty hot this year. Should I sell them for three dollars? Four dollars? Couple hundred?

Birthday Blues

Sydney's second birthday is in one week. Her birthday should be in mid-June, but she was born six weeks early, hundreds of miles from home, on a weekend road trip to visit Matt's ailing grandpa in Michigan. Matt and I birthed in Ann Arbor, in a hospital off the highway, alone in the middle of the night with Willow, not yet two, and an army of inept med students (as a "walk-in," I rated the same status as transients and the uninsured). We stayed in that hospital for three weeks, first with me alone in the mother-baby ward and Matt and Willow on a king-sized futon in his Aunt Peggy's basement, then all of us in a hotel room comped by a pitying social worker on the far side of the hospital. Every morning I'd walk alone across the hospital to spend the next 18 hours with Sydney in the NICU, while Matt spent the day entertaining Willow with crayons and bubbles and trips to the park and the big box bookstore--we had only enough toys to entertain her for a weekend car trip, only enough clothes for two days, only maternity clothes for me, and no baby clothes. Matt's grandma bought Sydney some preemie outfits, his Aunt Peggy bought him enough underwear for a week, and his cousin Kristin let me borrow her husband's sweatpants and T-shirts.

All day I sat with Sydney, spying on the NICU staff and the other families, rocking Sydney and mindlessly humming "Baby Beluga," Willow's favorite song, over and over, feeding her expressed breastmilk through a tube in her nose every two hours, holding her down during blood draws and IV changes and feeding tube changes--she still has scars on her heels from the needles. Some nurses were nice and some were incompetent, some neonatologists were compassionate and some were insufferable, and once when I went out for a sandwich the baby two incubators over from Syd suffered a brain hemhorrage and died; I only found out all the details by eavesdropping on the nurses' whispered gossip during shift change.

Sure, though, there were funny things that happened. Once a code pink claxoned throughout the hospital, automatically locking down all elevators and exits, and a security force came busting into the NICU asking where Baby Shoemaker was last seen. Turns out that the newborn security cuffs weren't sized for preemies, and Sydney had kicked hers off her ankle while I'd been sitting right next to her, setting of the alarm. From then on it was kept taped to the side of her isolette. Connor's mom was another source of amusement, and I watched daily for her visits. Connor, the infant on Sydney's other side, weighed one pound and some change after approximately two months in the NICU, and his mom was always doing awesome things like screaming hysterically that he was going to die and not being permitted to touch him because she reeked too much of smoke and bringing new angel fetish objects every day and arguing with the nurses when they moved the quilts and other crap she liked to arrange on top of his isolette because it was causing the incubator to overheat. She wasn't even there both times they had to restart his heart, but I was.

The weeks around Sydney's birthday are a sad time for me. I have trouble sleeping, and I accidentally keep crying. It's the only time my mind can't repress the anxiety and memories of that time, and my body remembers the grief of not being able to hold, or nurse, or carry away my child. It helps to try to be useful. We can sometimes afford small donations to the March of Dimes, which, now that polio is mostly eradicated, works to prevent premature birth, but in a more practical way it's even more useful to make items to donate to the NICU. Sydney wore many teeny little ugly crocheted hats while she was incarcerated, and the sickest infants got quilts, but what we really could have used were preemie hospital gowns or going-home clothes, or lovies for Willow.

St. Joseph's is the NICU where Sydney was cared for, but they need the same stuff everywhere.

Eggy Art

Weirdly inspired by My Kid Could Paint Thatthe girls and I are transitioning from a phase of primarily crayon-based art activities into a period marked noticeably by an increase in painting work. Today at Michael's, while Matt was busy across town losing a softball game to the employees of the hippie co-op grocery, the girls and I spent more of my Christmas gift card money on glue gun sticks and brown and gold acrylic paint so that we can continue making these magic wands, and two 8x10 canvases and orange and pink and another shade of pink (Willow's choices--she calls dark pink "moge," for mauve?) acrylic paint and a couple of sets of bristle brushes so that the girls can also be painting prodigies. That's for tomorrow, however. Tonight, while Willow slept, Sydney did this:
Her medium? Easter egg dye, y'all. Make a combo of egg dye (especially nice when you can grab the last 15 after-Easter kits for 10 cents apiece) or food coloring, vinegar, and maybe a single drop of liquid soap if you want to get all fancy and clean up after yourself later, stick it in a little Tupperware dish, and provide one paintbrush per color, to be used only with that color. When your baby's masterpiece is finished, pop the lids back on the Tupperware and stack them someplace out of the way. These make nice watercolors because they're already liquid--Willow has trouble with dry cake watercolors, the wetting the brush and rubbing it on the color and painting and then rinsing and repeating, and Sydney just fiddles with the cup of rinse water. For little kids, also, one or two colors is plenty since it's all about the process and not the product, unless you really just like brown, that is, and then you can go ahead and throw as many colors as you want at them, confident that brown is what you'll get.

Friday Findings

Look at my findings and you can guess what I've been doing most this week--quilting, prepping for the summer craft fair season, editing my photos, and parenting my kids.

I might have mentioned these first two before, since I've had them checked out from the library for more than a week, but I'm too lazy to look back and see. I've been flipping through The The Quilters Ultimate Visual Guide: From A to Z-- Hundreds of Tips and Techniques for Successful Quiltmakingto figure out how to put that wide border on my dino quilt--I've decided (and check out my accurate lingo here) that it will be easier, after all, to cut strips for my lattice instead of trying to cut a frame as all one piece--and to figure out how to piece...sextagons? sextangles? hexagons! for an item for the little girl in my Craft for My Kids swap on Craftster--I've decided to use fusible interfacing and English paper piecing. The illustrations in The Quilter's Ultimate Visual Guide are terrific, but the alphabetical order of the entries is nonintuitive, since you certainly would need a table of contents, anyway, to see what subjects the author has included and under what keyword they're alphabetized. "Inspiration" has its own entry, for instance, but "Postage Stamp Quilt" does not--you'll find an example of a postage stamp quilt under "Biscuit Quilting."

How to Show & Sell Your Crafts: The Crafter's Complete Guide on How to Display Work at Shows and Make Profitable Sales, by Kathryn Caputo, is another book I might have mentioned before, but I only finished reading it today. It's another craft show guide in which the products look really outdated to me (a lot of "country tradional," I now know it's called), and frankly, I didn't garner any new tips, although I was pleased to see that she includes a version of the accordion-folded pegboard display that Matt and I thought up. She spends a lot of her time on booth display, though, so if you're just starting out, her notes on color and height and oh-my-god-the-WIND! might be new.

Although I'm very happy with the combination of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for the editing and final layout of my photographs, I've been interested lately in other photo editing and design programs, perhaps something that would make digital scrapbooking possible. To that end, I've collected the free trial versions of numerous photo editing and graphic design programs:

1. ACDSee has free trials of most of its software titles: ACDSee 10 Photo Manager, Photo Editor, FotoSlate 4 Photo Print Studio, and ACDSee Pro 2.
2. FXFoto is another organize/enhance/edit/layout program, but it apparently has some drag-and-drop layouts especially for scrapbooking, which I'll be trying out soon.
3. Corel is another company with a suite of programs: Graphics Suite X4, Painter X, PhotoImpact X3, and Paint Shop Pro Photo X2.
4. One of the tools that Ulead Photo Impact promotes is the cloud pen, which allows you to "paint realistic looking clouds." Who would not want to paint realistic-looking clouds all freaking over the place?

Finally, I spent a couple of hours yesterday happily tying a quilt (it looks awesome!) and watching , a documentary about Marla Olmstead, a four-year-old (she's more like eight, now) professional painter--abstracts, of course. The documentary focused a little less on the meaning of her work (is it "art"? Is she a primitive or a prodigy?) than on the admittedly very intriguing controversy about its authenticity. A LOT of people, myself included, now, believe that her father, even if he didn't hold the paint brush himself, which he might have, at least directed, coached, and otherwise manipulated his daughter into producing many of the works. In a lot of his interviews he just seemed really shady to me, really product-oriented instead of kid-oriented, and often when the cameras would try to film Marla working, she'd dip around with the paint and say really incriminating things to her dad like, "Your turn now," and "What do you want me to paint?", and he'd smile nervously and give these really long explanations to the camera about how she only does that when there's a camera.

There's also a mom, who is sincere and loving and possibly clueless about what goes on between her husband and daughter when she's not there, and a younger son, whom the dad often obviously ignores and who clearly understands, even at two, that he's not as important as his big sister. That being said, a lot of the artwork is also quite beautiful and also quite moving when you think that it's being produced at least even partly by a young child. There's a purity and a naivete that you want to see in it, which you want to believe points to some sort of absolute truth. Really, what you see in Marla's art probably says a lot more about you than it does about Marla.

Cloth Diapers How-to: Sew a DIY Cloth Diaper Insert from Stash Towels and Scrap Flannel

First, the bummers: I ate cookie dough for lunch today (urp!), the big kid lost one of the new ribbon headbands I made her, and my partner, who is, bless his heart, the most oblivious man, was for some reason wearing my favorite brown with pinstripes pants that I bought at the big Goodwill sale for $2, even though he is four inches longer in the inseam and narrower in the waist than I am, when he of course brushed against the fresh paint I'd applied in the downstairs bathroom and got green paint just all over them. Rest in peace, awesome pants.

In other news, I'm teaching a cloth diapering workshop at Barefoot Herbs + Barefoot Kids this Saturday, April 26, from 4:00-6:30. Cloth diapers are better for baby and better for the environment for a myriad of reasons, and overall they're also cheaper than an entire baby's worth of disposables, but they can have a large up-front cost. Fortunately, the actual diaper material that goes into the cute little moisture-proof cover is something that it's possible to make yourself with a bare minimum of sewing skills and using recycled/repurposed materials. This takes a LOT of the cost out of cloth diapers, and it's all terrific in that since a diaper's insides are purely functional, not necessarily attractive at all (though they can be!), you can use fabric so unsightly that there is hardly any other way to usefully repurpose them. To wit:

1. Go through your linen closet and pull out all your old, nasty, beaten-down bath towels. You know you have them, and you know you need to get rid of them before company comes over. The one below is the one I'm going to be cutting up today. Notice the old fingerpaint stains in the middle, and the big tear there where the sun is shining in through the window. This was in my linen closet, y'all!2. Find a nice, big rectangle or square to use as a template. Below I'm using my 12"x18" cutting mat, which is a really nice size, but lots of sizes would work--pizza boxes make good templates, or large picture books.

3. Cut up the towel using the template--with my template, I got five big rectangles. It's fine to include the stains, because this diaper is going to be purely functional here, but do not include worn parts of the towel--they won't last. Notice that you're going to have to vacuum later, because little bits of terry will get everywhere.
4. Using the towel as a template, now, cut a piece of 100% cotton fabric for the facing. I used some flannel leftover from the ring sling I made when the big kid was the baby, but stained cotton T-shirts are also really terrific--I often like to use fabric for these that is so ugly, stained or just stupid, that I'd never repurpose it in anything else. You can either cut out one piece of cotton fabric for each piece of terry, ending up with a diaper that is terry on one side and cotton on the other, or cut out two pieces and make a cotton-terrycloth-cotton sandwich out of it. I'm making an open-faced cotton-terry sandwich here. 5. Pin it or don't pin it, but put a sharp, strong needle in your sewing machine, and begin to stitch your two pieces of fabric together.
You will be interrupted at this point by a diaper-wearing child who is tired of independent play, and you'll likely nurse, read books, make a cheese quesadilla that no child eats, switch over the laundry, go to a children's dance class, etc., before you can get back to sewing. Frankly, I don't mean to be pessimistic here, but you may never get back to sewing. 6. However, if one child is at preschool and the other is napping for the moment, awesome, and don't forget to leave a space open so we can turn this puppy right side out when we're done. 7. Clip the corners so they'll turn right side out neatly......and turn that baby right side out. You can iron it flat, now, or just smooth it out some, but get back to the sewing machine and sew that opening closed. Sometimes I like to topstitch around all the edges to disguise the spot where I sewed the opening closed, but really, that's just fanciness, and regardless, your diaper will now look like this:

To see how it looks nice and folded inside a Bummis cover, check out the photo at the top of this post!

You can also stuff these inside a pocket diaper such as Fuzzi Bunz, and you can stitch on or just lay on top a nice rectangle of fleece if you want, which will wick moisture away from baby's butt and keep them feeling dry.

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Dinosaurs on Film!

It's only 2:30 and so far:

1. Since the little kid now has the high fever that tormented the big kid this weekend, we didn't go to storytime at the local library this morning, and so while the little kid napped fitfully in the other room, the big kid and I worked on the dinosaur quilt for her mid-July birthday. This consists mostly of looking at all the dino T-shirt panels and dino fabric we've collected, re-stacking and re-sorting them--she's not even four years old yet, and the big kid already knows the best part of sewing. We did make a plan, however. Here is the big kid's concept sketch of the plan:

It really is a pretty accurate sketch: basically, we decided that each T-shirt panel would be surrounded by a wide border of printed fabric. I'd like the border to have the pattern match perfectly on all sides and to be pretty seamless, like a picture frame, so a log cabin quilt it is!

2. After the little kid wakes up howling and we nurse, have snacks, read books, have more snacks, spill some milk, do some laundry, eat watermelon outside, read another book, and I bully the big kid into getting dressed (I may have raised my voice just a smidge, but honestly--what did she do with her toothbrush? We never did find it!) so my partner can come get her, he takes her to school and then puts the little kid down for a nap while I eat some Minute Rice and read some more of this awesome blog I discovered the other day. The author takes beautiful photographs, makes awesome recycled sweater creatures like I'm learning how to do, and is a self-taught sewist, as well. Her blog entry on the Simplicity 3835 shirt pattern actually sent me to ebay to bid on one for myself. If I win it, it will be my very first pattern ever, so don't snipe me, y'all, because I swear I always get sniped.

3. After I finish my lunch (it was actually pretty gross, so yay, calorie deficit!), I spend an episode of Friday Night Lights finishing up a super-large item for my Craft for My Kids swap on Craftster. I'm almost finished, with maybe one or two smallish-mediums or large-ish smalls to make for my partner's little girlie.

4. I go in to nurse the little kid back to sleep (Matt has gotten me into Superman, oddly enough, so I'm working my way through the Superman in the Sixties collection. It is so weird), then creeeep out, holding my breath, and actually have time to finish tweaking and printing the dino photos I'm going to put in the kids' downstairs bathroom. This is Sue, from the Chicago Field Museum:

These are some of the kids' dino toys. One night the big kid and I got down her Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals (Smithsonian Handbooks) (gift alert: the kids totally need all these Smithsonian Handbooks) and she actually found the right picture for each of these dinosaurs and spelled their names for me so I could label their bellies with a Sharpie. This here is a velociraptor up front, and possibly a pachycephalosaurus behind it:

4. And now it's 3:00, the little kid is now sitting on my lap pestering me while I finish up, and we're about to go get the big kid from school. We can't go to the YMCA like we usually do because of the little kid's fever, we can't go to Sam's even though we need cookie dough for my last day of class tomorrow because my wallet is MIA, so if we're lucky we'll get invited to hang out with another mom and gossip while the kids run around and get dirty, and if not we'll come home and rock the neighborhood playground, and if those are our choices for spending the afternoon, then that probably just makes us pretty lucky in general.

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