Pavophobia and Trampoline Punk: A Senior Year Trashion/Refashion Show

Once upon a time, there was a four-year-old who was super into drawing pictures of pretty outfits she'd thought up. She also like to take her mom's fabric scraps and cut and tape them into fancy clothes for her Barbies. 

One day her mom, who still got the local newspaper because it hadn't yet been sold to a conglomerate whose sole goal was to bleed its assets, saw a call for entries for the town's second annual Trashion/Refashion Show. It invited people to design their own outfits from trash and repurposed materials, and if they were accepted they'd get to model them in a runway show benefiting the local sustainable living center. It seemed like a good project for a homeschooling preschooler and her crafty mom, so the mom asked her kid if she wanted to design an outfit and help sew it and be in a real fashion show.

The kid did.

This was her design:

This is what her mom sewed:

And this is the kid getting her photo taken right before she walked the runway:

That was fourteen years ago, y'all. I don't even know how this didn't go the way of gymnastics and aerial silks and Animal Jam and horseback riding and My Little Pony and Girl Scout summer camp. But every year, leaving the theatre at the end of the Trashion/Refashion Show, the kid would be talking about what she wanted to design the next year, and then every next year when the call for entries came out, there she'd be drawing her design for me, and after the age of nine helping me sew it, and after the age of eleven sewing the whole thing, and after the age of thirteen taking over writing out and submitting her entry, too.

So somehow the years have passed until now, along with her Spring ballet recital and our Girl Scout troop's Bridging/Graduation party, this show has become another last thing for her Senior year of high school.

It's a weird feeling to be a secondary character in someone else's good old days. 

As the kids are getting properly grown up now, I've realized that these kid years are my good old days, too. So because this is also MY last Trashion/Refashion Show, or at least the last one that I'll experience this way, I asked the kid if I could go back to our roots and design and sew an outfit for her to model. She said yes, and I immediately set about discovering for myself how inadvisable it is to sew a garment for a human to wear out of a broken trampoline. 

Like, that webbing is SHARP!

This is what it looks like when the kid and I are both working on our entries on the same weekend, because we both procrastinated until the very last minute.

I ended up cutting it with the kitchen shears because I was too afraid to let any of my proper scissors near it, and tbh now I probably need a new pair of kitchen shears. The plastic threads in the cut ends of the webbing cut ME the entire time I was working with it, and they poked through all the seams and cut the kid until I covered every single inside seam with duct tape.

And there was only a certain amount of sewing I could possibly do by machine--

--before I had to just get out the hand-sewing needle and embroidery floss and resign myself to hand-stitching all the fussy parts while cutting myself up even more thoroughly.

The dog looks perturbed in the below photo, but even with all that I was happy as a clam, making a big mess in the family room in parallel with the kid making her own big mess. These ARE the good old days!

Remember that skull quilt block from November? I didn't know at the time what I was going to do with it, but I did happen to sew it from a thrifted blouse and my old wedding dress--

--which made it a refashioned item, which means that I could applique it onto the back of the trampoline webbing dress jacket. And then I cut the bodice off the wedding dress, turned it backwards so the cool fake buttons went down the front, added some spaghetti straps, and that became the dress shirt for the garment:

The trampoline webbing pants were a nightmare to sew (and a nightmare to wear, ahem, if you happen to enjoy being able to bend at the hips and knees) and I kept them super simple, but I did cut the triangle rings out of the webbing and hook them together to make a chain to add a little detail to the otherwise plain black:

And here's my Trampoline Punk!

Trampoline Punk image via Bloomington Trashion

Here's the kid's own design, Pavophobia:

Pavophobia image via Bloomington Trashion

Pavophobia image via Bloomington Trashion

And then one last walk down the runway together for old times' sake:

Model/Designer Walk image via Bloomington Trashion

Some of the kid's friends always come to watch her show, and afterwards I always take them all out for ice cream. Because this was also the Eclipse Weekend, though, every place was paaaaacked even at 9:30 pm on a Sunday. It was bananas! But finally we found a spot where the line at least wasn't out the door, and although they were out of waffle cones they still had one last waffle bowl left, and then a giant group left and we were all able to wedge ourselves around a little table in the back corner behind a bunch of local college students whose friends had all come to town for the eclipse:

The kids mostly talked amongst themselves but because they're nice kids and they've all known me since they were seven, they kindly included me in their conversation, as well. A year from now I'm definitely going to have to find my own friends to eat rainbow sherbet with on a certain Sunday night in mid-April, but this one last year I just enjoyed the heck out of it, like you're supposed to do in the good old days.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Before the Greatest Moment of My Life, I Spent 24 Hours in Columbus, Ohio

You know, as you do!

My kid goes to college in Ohio, not in the path of totality, but I figured that if I picked her up from college on the Friday before the eclipse, and hustled her back home as soon as the Moon had finished its transit of the Sun, she'd only have to miss one day of classes AND she could experience the greatest moment of my life with me.

And as a bonus, she could watch her sister walk the runway in our town's Trashion/Refashion Show, which was ALSO that weekend!

And as another bonus, she and I could go to the live show of our favorite podcast, Welcome to Night Vale, which was performing in Columbus also ALSO that weekend!

So that's what I did!

Around here, people are already joking about how overblown our city's crowd predictions for the eclipse were, as if the city council was just being dramatic because we didn't end up quintupling our population that day, after all. But let me tell you that I drove from here to Columbus, Ohio, and back TWICE that long weekend, and traffic was no fun. There were speed traps every few miles for the entire trip, and although the traffic was moving pretty well, the highways were soooo crowded and it was exhausting to have to constantly be on high alert. Like, just let me put my cruise control on for a few minutes, ugh!

I was SO happy to grab the kid, check into our hotel, and veg out for a couple of hours... while watching the eclipse countdown on cable news, of course!

And then off to our favorite show!

Afterwards, it had been my ultimate dream to go to the Sonic two minutes from our hotel and buy their super weird and disgusting-sounding eclipse slushie float, but Sonic saved me from myself by having a drive-through employee who was all, "Welcome to Sonic. Hold a minute, please," and then... just never came back to take my order? The kid and I waited a couple of minutes, then I thought I'd maybe swing around and take another run at it, and I pulled back up to the drive-through line just as another car was entering and I could hear the employee say over the speaker, "Welcome to Sonic. Hold a minute, please." And then... he never came back. 

We waited another couple of minutes before the kid could convince me to bail and drive over to a different fast food place, also a couple of minutes from our hotel. I hotly protested because I've never been to a Raising Cane's before and therefore have not pored over the menu to decide what I want and practice my order, but fortunately the kid's reassurances that the menu is so easy even I could figure it out while in the drive-through line held true. Now that I am old, I REALLY love a simple drive-through menu!

I also REALLY love a hot hotel breakfast! This one had mini omelets and sausage patties, which are all excellent with toast for making your own breakfast sandwich. One of my favorite things in life is a breakfast that's already included so you don't have to think about it.

In related news, I swear that I find the best things on TikTok. A couple of days before this trip, I'd seen a TikTok about things to do in Columbus that weekend, and in it was news about this fairly new Titanic artifacts exhibit at the COSI.

I mean, we're already going to be there, and it *is* one of my Special Interests, and it *is* almost the anniversary of its sinking...

Here we go!

Is this the most expensive LEGO set? It is $680!!! It would have been cool to be the curator responsible for assembling it for display, though...

When you enter the exhibit, you're given a boarding pass for a real passenger on the Titanic. The kid got to be someone fancy!

I, however, don't like my own particular odds nearly as much...

The exhibit is produced in part by RMS Titanic, Inc., the only company that's allowed to retrieve artifacts from the Titanic site. Recovering the artifacts allows them to be preserved, and the company also works with other organizations to do scientific and historical research at the site. They also produce several exhibits of Titanic artifacts around the country.

Crow's Nest bell

The best part was when they'd put an artifact next to a photo of it before it was recovered:

They recovered so many of these that I think there's a set in every one of their simultaneous artifact exhibitions:

I would be very interested in putting together THIS as a LEGO model--it's the Titanic as it was discovered on the ocean floor:

This is a porthole with a solid bronze frame. Imagine the pressure it would take to warp it like this!

Okay, this is the coolest part: it's a hands-on exhibit where you can touch a real piece from the Titanic!

In related news, thank goodness for this one shot of me, because all the other dozen the kid took of me TOUCHING THE TITANIC are... unflattering, ahem. I have a bad habit of wearing an exceptionally gormless, open-mouthed expression when I am beside myself with delight, and am, for that reason, considering making a sticker for my phone that contains one of two phrases: either "Close Your Mouth" or "Fix Your Face." You can see how either of these phrases would be endlessly useful in a wide variety of circumstances!

Mouth closed, face more or less fixed, and TOUCHING THE TITANIC!

Please also note that in the photo above I am representing in my Maritime Museum of the Atlantic Titanic merch.

I found where I live!

The exhibit actually had a LOT of paper artifacts--these luggage tags, several currencies of paper money, playing cards, etc.--and I never did learn how they hadn't dissolved in the water:

The occasional recreation was peppered among the artifacts, and I was SO INTO IT:

Found the doorknob to my cabin door!

Okay, y'all: I am so in love with the third-class dishes! I found out that the Titanic Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, actually sells recreations, so that's now on my holiday wish list...

More paper artifacts--how did these survive?!?

Here's a glimpse of the kid's fancy first-class cabin:

I'm also a really big fan of my third-class floor tile. We DO have a couple more rooms in the house that need new flooring...

Here's MY room! I also want that blanket...

Okay, this is horrifying: did you know that something like 1/5 of Titanic's boiler room crew were CHILDREN?!? Look at those little faces!

Lol that they had an iceberg--with some kind of condenser involved because that is real ice!--that you could take your photo with:

Mouth not closed. Face not fixed. Oh, well!

This is one of the lifeboat hoists:

And this is also really cool: they projected the footprint of the lifeboat onto the floor so you could see how you fit into it:

Closest my third-class self will ever get to a lifeboat!

Of course this kid is examining the lifeboat like they're old friends. Lucky first-classer!

They had some portraits of people they KNEW we'd know from the Titanic movie, of course:

ANOTHER PAPER ARTIFACT!!!

Okay, moment of truth! Do I live or do I die?

Poor Johannes...

Now it's the kid's turn:

I love that she devoted the rest of her life to charity. What a beautiful response to tragedy.

I was also surprised to see clothing on exhibit. How did THIS also survive?!?

Look at that beautiful visible mending. I didn't even realize you could hand-sew that stitch!

Afterwards in the gift shop, my mean kid would not let me buy a tiny Titanic and iceberg in a floaty thing OR a Titanic and iceberg ice cube tray. To be fair, they both *are* on Amazon at nearly half the price, so it was a good save on her part, but still. I have longed for that floaty Titanic thing every day since.

Since we were already at COSI and who knew if we'd ever come again, we decided to quickly swing through a couple more exhibits before we hit the road. This Oceans exhibit was actually an amusing interactive water play area that we enjoyed just as much as the toddlers we were playing alongside:

And this Dinosaurs gallery features artifacts from the American Museum of Natural History!

Here are a couple of Apatosaurus vertebrae:

These are Ornithopod tracks on sandstone:

You had to check out the labels very closely to see what was a cast and what was real. I feel like I'm the only person annoyed by that! I strongly believe that casts should be a non-realistic color:

I love a good Dinosaur As Bird model!

I also don't usually see amber on display, so I was VERY stoked about this:

And then just when we thought we were about to leave... we found an augmented reality sandbox. We must now sculpt all of the landforms!

I am still distraught that I didn't come home with this Layers of the Earth candle--every layer is a different color and scent!--but the kid managed to wrestle it out of my hands, and good thing, too, because it was FIFTY DOLLARS. For something I WILL LITERALLY BURN AWAY.

Also this Sun stuffie at FORTY-FIVE DOLLARS JUST NO:

Sigh...

After a lovely morning spent at the museum, the kid and I were hoofing it back to the car when suddenly she announced, "I am STARVING!" I said, "OMG me, TOO! Let's grab lunch before we head home." I pulled out my phone to see what Dr. Google Maps recommended for lunch nearby, but then when I looked at it I was all, "Oh, NO!!!" We had accidentally spent five hours at a children's hands-on science museum! I'd thought it had been maybe... half that? Maaaaybe three hours, tops? I think we must have been in some kind of fugue state to not notice all that time passing! 

So that was ixnay on a sit-down lunch, and full steam ahead on a gas station lunch so we could get back into the stream of traffic headed towards the path of totality. It was an absolute slog of a drive, but the kid was back in time to surprise Luna before dinner!!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!