Surprise Package

When I came home tonight, there was an unexpected package awaiting me on my doorstep. And for once, it was not:
1. Misdelivered
2. Notice of audit/lawsuit/etc.
3. My stuff being returned from a friend who is going underground.

This time, to my delight, the box contained a new Panasonic DV camcorder with a note of congratulations from the Mountain Dew summer sweepstakes, which I enter maybe 2 or 3 times a week (whenever I drink a diet Mt Dew).

Who's the porn queen now?

Doe and Fawn

I know this view looks familiar, but this is actually a new experience at the house.

Last night I was sitting in the living room watching TV, when once again, some motion in the front yard caught my attention. Initially I just saw the big doe standing there, rather still, not doing much of anything. Since this has become fairly commonplace, I went back to watching TV.

A couple of seconds later, though, I saw the speckled little fawn stroll across my windows. This is why we get this "quick, get the camera!" view looking through my living room and out the front windows. (Yes, that couch really is that orange, by the way.) If you look at the full view of the pic, you can see the little fawn munching on the tree right next to the walkway to my front door, while mama stands in the background, keeping an eye out.

They spent a bit of time around my place, pulling on various leafery. The fawn was almost unbearably cute, but difficult to photograph because he kept moving, and because it was after 8pm, so getting the light was difficult. He would pull some leaves off and then flap his big ears, scratching with a rear hoof, then trot around looking for more of... whatever it was he was looking for.

Eventually, they moved around to the back of the house (with me stalking them from the inside), preparing to move back down the ravine. That was when I noticed the doe's side. I don't know much about deer, but it looks to me like this could be molting. I was much more alarmed when I first saw what looked like scars on her side. I do, after all, have a pack of coyotes living back there, too.

Optical Greeen

Sometimes I take pictures of things after I've worn them. Like I'm either so anxious to wear the thing that I can't spare the 90 seconds to photograph it... or, more likely, I don't trust that it's not going to self-destruct the first time it leaves the house, so I don't want any evidence before it's proven it's mettle. Thence, the wrinkles in the front. This shirt served proudly at a friend's concert Saturday night. And it didn't explode once.

If you view the picture at its full size, you'll see that those are not exactly optical illusions in the print. It's actually a really great stripey, pointy, overlappy three-color (or so) design. I knew it was going to be a shirt, because I like shirts that make people go crosseyed.

This particular sewing pattern -- Butterick 4985 -- has an interesting construction, with the lower bodice being separate. I also like the puffy sleeves. Muttony! My big challenges were doing even gathers (and there are loads of them -- top sleeve, bottom sleeve, under bust...) and installing those button holes. Those are both things I'm not very experienced with. Turns out, not so threatening. I built the matching fabric-covered buttons, too, which I really like.

I admit I'm kind of a spaz for zippers, so I'm definitely thinking about how I'd do another version in a heavier fabric with a zipper in the front. Hmmmmm.

But first, I have to iron this one.

Detroit Urban Craft Fair

Everyone who is in the Detroit area should put this on their calendars for Saturday the 4th. (And if you're going to go, let me know and we can say hello. I'll be the one on the big fat scooter.)

This is their second year, and I'm sure it's going to be a good time. They've been building up to it for months.

And yes, this is a paid announcement. They promised to give me some stuff for posting -- and I'm all for free Detroit crafty gear!

Details at www.detroiturbancraftfair.com

What time is it? Godzilla time!

I'm not hungover today, but I am BORED AS HELL. So I made a Godzilla clock. This was almost impossible to photograph, so click on it to see it more in full.

WTF and Cheez-It Bag

Two blog posts today because, frankly, I'm hungover and not in a hurry to do anything that involves me leaving the island of paradise that is my sofa. (Mmm, I can smell people cooking out nearby...)

This project was for a friend at work who is a copy editor. I wanted to make a pendant that looked like an old typewriter key, but for a character which would be more appropriately impossible. "WTF" it is! The pendant itself is made from a metal clothing button, with two-part resin over paper. (The resin I used was really not made for this sort of project, so it was a big PITA getting it to set properly. At least I hope it's set properly... I made her promise to tell me if anything about it fell apart. [Which is my standard caveat when I give people stuff I made, by the way.])

I am either really bad at wrapping presents or I'm really lazy at wrapping presents, so I always prefer to make a little presentation bag of some sort. Add to this the fact that I love packaging and I really love Cheez-Its, and we have the vinyl-covered half-zip Cheez-It gift bag. (To answer the question that's been burning in the bosom of humanity for millennia, yes, one can put an empty Cheez-It bag through a dishwashing cycle.) Woo! Woo? I guess -- she seemed to like it.

Red Shirt Recon

Red Shirt Recon Before

I love men's "camp" shirts -- camp as in canoing and toasted marshmallows, I guess, rather than camp as in John Waters -- and have a closet full of them. I love how colorful they are, and they always seem to be made of these great flowy rayons. However, when I wear them I tend to look as though I am a giant rectangle. Not my preferred shape.

One of my vague goals in learning how to sew is to be able to refit some of these awesome shirts (which I usually get resale for $2-$6). Last weekend, I finally just took matters into hand and hacked at one.

I picked this shirt because I love the colors and because of that great soft fabric. If you look closely, that print is not abstract... there are little skulls in there! But, typically, it was shapeless on me -- fit me okay in the chest, but the "short" sleeves came over my elbows and the hem made most of the trip down to my knees. I wasn't crazy about that tiki border down at the bottom either.

Red Shirt Recon Detail

Red Shirt Recon After

After some experimenting, the entirety of the modifications came down to this: Curve and take in side seams, remove sleeves and recut (using a flutter sleeve from a commercial pattern as reference), add side bust darts, shorten and reshape lower hem, remove collar but leave collar band.

A relative success, but not entirely. I wound up taking a little more in at the side when I reattached the sleeves (for them to fit) which made it just a teench to small for me to fully button across my chest. Ah well, I usually wear undershirts with button-downs anyway. It was definitely good enough that I wore it for a nice long motorcycle ride with a friend that same weekend, and I'm sure I'll be using the same tactics on some other obnoxious shirt before too long.

Kitty vs. Deer

I wish I WISH I could have gotten this in better focus, but it was getting very near dusk when this was taken. I was sitting in my living room when I actually heard the deer in my front yard, pulling leaves. I watched her through the front window for a few minutes, then went out the side door onto the deck. (You can just see the railing in the lower right corner -- hopefully that will give some scale. Zoom in on the picture, it's totally worth it.) The deer was, as usual, quite unbothered by my presence. The cat wasn't even particularly alarmed... and I don't even KNOW that cat. For a brilliant few seconds, they both watched ME as if I were some exotic creature on their turf.

After a little while, the cat crossed across to the right and rolled around in the dirt about 8 feet from the deer. When the deer's grazing took her in the cat's direction, the cat beat a hasty retreat.

I stood out on the deck watching her until it was dark.

The Expo Dress

This dress was kind of a long time coming. Or maybe it just seems that way.

I don't usually discuss projects with people ahead of time, or ask for input. I'm pretty impulse-driven. But when I realized in mid-May that I had actually given myself enough time to make an outfit for the Northern Ink Xposure tattoo convention in mid-June, I asked around for some suggestions. I vaguely believed I wanted to make a dress. I don't know jack about dresses.

I stopped in at two of my usual places, Pattern Review and Craftster to get some input. It didn't take long for me to decide what it was going to be. As of this weekend, I finally finished it.

I didn't put all that much time into actually making the dress. The thing is, I TALKED about it so much that it seemed to follow me everywhere! The dress and the jacket are actually two different Simplicity patterns, which I believe compliment each other well. The fabrics are an Alexander Henry print called "Born to Ride" (yes, really) and a black Italian damask.

The damask is just beautiful, with a woven black-on-black design. Happily, I will be wearing this outfit in the daylight for at least some of the time at the convention, and that's really when the damask looks its best. Oh, and as I have to tell everyone who has seen these pictures so far (I told you I've been talking about it a lot!), the dress fits me better than it fits Heddy.

Skeel

Oh to hell with the formatting. Here are some squirrels! (And a rabbit.)

Argh, Blogger...

Blogger "updated" my template, in the process losing my custom formatting. Who cares? I cares. Now I have to fix the thing rather than posting pictures of squirrels.

The Geek/Crafter Connection

Commercial Patterns Stats:

Patterns owned: 140
Patterns sewn: 26
Patterns on wish list: 119

How I know this: I designed/developed a custom Filemaker Pro database to track my sewing patterns. It includes tech data, photos (from maker sites or my own pics), changeable focus image and a near-infinite notes area. Everything is searchable and indexable.

Yeah. You're jealous. I know.

And yeah. I'm a dork. I know.

Today's critter: A story about lint.

I'm a little weird about picking up every little piece of lint and detritus on my carpet. This is a good example of why. I wouldn't have wanted to step on this... but he was fun to play with! It was late night when I found him, so it was difficult to photograph him and do any justice to the variegations in green he displayed. Very pretty. He eventually joined the small tree in the front of my house.

Critter-o-Thursday

This is the corner of my slab porch and the little brick enclosure that's to my right as I'm leaving my house. That enclosure is under my front windows, and I've planted some wildflowers there which haven't taken yet. That's why the ground looks so blasted there -- I had to rake up a bunch of stuff and, you know, push dirt.

Which does nothing to explain what greeted me as I was skipping merrily out my door today. After I literally came to a skidding stop and stared at it for a second, it just stayed there and... flicked. I figured it would be gone by the time I unlocked my door, went inside, grabbed my camera and came back out, but... clearly not. It's cute! And I've been seeing a lot of them lately.

Live Life Without Irons

I'm getting pretty accustomed to sewing with commercial patterns, but I haven't advanced far enough to create my own. Not entirely.

But with the help of this tutorial, I made myself a 6-gore circle skirt (sans pockets), entirely self-drafted. It's three parts Jeep fabric, three parts embroidered camo. I had to punt a little with the waistband (zip and button in rear), but it WORKED, which is always a thrill. It's just above-knee and fits me better than it does Heddy Headless, my dressmaker's dummy, which is why the waistband looks a little gappy.

I like bias tape as a finish because it's a lot easier than hemming a circle and also unifies the various panels.

Here's a detail of the fabrics, because they are so cool (both purchased at Joann on the cheap, as usual). One of the slogans on the Jeep fabric is "Live Life Without Limits."

These pictures were taken after the skirt had been worn on a night out, so it's a little wrinkledy. Stood up well, though, which is frankly always something I'm a leetle worried about when I wear my own clothing out.

Pinky Proof

But proof of what?

A: A sewing machine can be hazardous even when not switched on.
B: I am a danger to myself.
C: My new habit of photographing everything... maybe not such a great thing.

Today's critter sighting.

I trotted into the house tonight around 19.30, merrily chatting away with a friend on the phone, and made my way straight to the doorwall to open up the house. (Beautiful day today!) When I saw her out there, I oh-so-rudely interrupted my friend to tell him hush hush, let me tell you what I'm looking at here.

I don't know much about deer, but she looks like a youngish one. My camera was on the table behind me, so I grabbed it and sat on the floor to try to take a couple snaps without moving around too much, all the while describing her over the phone. She really didn't seem very bothered by me; slowly stepping back and forth in the little area next to my deck, sniffing the air, ears occasionally twitching, she even looked directly at me a couple of times. I'm not sure where her friends were, but you know deer -- where there's one, there's a dozen.

What was especially funny -- and unfortunately unphotographable -- was when I noticed a little more movement over to the left of my vision. Oh lookie there, it's our little raccoon friend! I didn't ask him for ID, but the coloring (light patch on his left hip) convinced me that it's the same one I videod. (Videoed?) He was travelling in the general direction of the deer, who had her back to him at the moment, when he noticed her and froze. Then he turned around and ran in the other direction! Who knew the white-tail was the natural enemy of the raccoon?

After several minutes of generally aimless gracefulness, the deer casually made her retreat down a path to the ravine. So damned pretty.

Welcome!

One more thing about this place of mine. It's true that I have a coat rack on my porch, but this is how you really know you're at my joint. This is the beautiful redhead that greets you outside my door. (Yes, she's mounted on my front door. You can just see the frame in the photo in the previous post.)

"It's just grass."

I've been in my house for about 2.5 years now. You may have noticed that I like taking pictures of it. I don't know how long I'll be here, but I do enjoy documenting the place. Today's photo is a slightly different view from my usual top-of-driveway. Semi-ironically, what you can't see is a big part of my inspiration for spending all day today mowing and trimming and bricking and hosing -- my porch overhang has finally been reaffixed with a light that isn't a fingernail away from falling out of the hole and knocking out the pizza dude. And my roof and gutters are clean. Thanks, Buddha! (I'm not allowed to use ladders by myself.)

When I was originally looking at buying this place, it was late Fall, and before letting ourselves in, my Realtor and I paused to watch a crew of about 6 men working on the 1++ acre yard. Bruce looked down at me in that patriarchal way that's almost avoidable from a man a foot taller than myself. "That's... an awful lot of yard," he said, the little lady understood but unspoken.

I smiled in goofy desperation, because from the time I'd seen the place I knew I'd be living here. "It's just grass." flutter flutter

Well, let me tell you. "It's just grass" becomes a lot more fun when you've got the right pardner. And this is my pardner. I won't go all Tim Taylor here, but I will say that the motor on this little golden devil is almost as big as what's in my motorcycle (and quite a bit bigger than my first bike).

Seriously.

Handsome, really.

I know they're pests. I know he would kill me if given half the chance. But still... cayooooot! I'm enthralled by ANY critters in my yard, of course (maybe you've noticed), but in my couple of years at my wildness abode, I've never seen a raccoon here. Seriously. Coyotes? Check. Spiders the size of my hand? Double-check. But this is my first bandito. So I got a little footage through my kitchen windows.



(My original footage is a little better, but I had to let YouTube chew it up for posting purposes.)

Amber Suite

A couple of months ago I went to a gem and jewelry show at a local civic center. I hadn't bought beads in a long time because I still have bags and bags of unutilized beauty awaiting attention, so I went mostly for entertainment, with the idea that something would have to be particularly notable to come home with me.

And then I saw these hanks of semi-raw amber. They were so chunky and unpolished and interesting! I grabbed a strand thinking, all right, this is mine IF I can find something that is going to go with it TODAY. No hoarding -- either we come away from this show with a project ready to go, or we come away empty-handed. After visiting every booth in the joint, I had my collection: lavastone, moonstone and a large carved bone Chinese bat (a favorite symbol of mine) to serve as a focus. A feast of natural textures!

I think it was the next afternoon that I put it all together in a jewelry suite -- necklace, bracelet (on elastic) and ring (wire-wrapped). The bat disc is about 3" across and is attached by waxed cord, looped through Chinese stopper knots, which match the little black lavastones nicely.

Each of the pieces is actually kind of big, so some planning goes into wearing them. Pretty, though. Click on any of 'em to see bigger versions with more of the pretty.

My bedroom is about an hour darker now.

I didn't think I needed a new shade for my bedroom. Then I saw a heat-fusible roller shade kit in the clearance aisle at Joann. Red stickers work like magic. This particular one promised me that if I found a fabric I liked in that very store on that very day, it would join forces with me to make the gee-golly-keenest bedroom shade ever! And thus the hunt began.

I did find that perfect* fabric, and grabbed a bundle. Then home to the big cutting table.

Neat, huh? More subtle from a distance, but practically hollers my name in the up-close.

In addition to the fabric being 5839038 miles long, it's a geometric pattern, which meant that I had to get it perfectly straight to the edges of the shade. Because... I had to. I didn't take any pictures of the assembly process, but using this shade kit is quite simple. However. Have you ever folded king-size sheets by yourself? Working with a big, uncut length of fabric is a bit like doing that. With both hands asleep. Which is why there are no photos -- arms not long enough.

Once the length of fabric is in place, all you have to do is iron, iron, iron your way to a funktastic new shade! It's not very light-blocking, but the finished product is pretty cool as a detail. Worth the hassle. Oh and definitely worth the $5 it cost me for the kit.

P.S. My bedroom is never ever actually this bright. I had to take a flash-photo to show what was going on.

*There is no such thing as perfection in anything. Ever.

Private Swaps and the Therapy of Creating

At craftster, people do swaps of different sorts. The swaps of the organized variety are typically around a theme -- zombies, maybe, or the color blue. Last summer I participated in my first swap, the Unconditional Wish List swap. The concept for this is that each participant creates a list of things she likes or wants, from which any other participant chooses something to make or simply send. What makes it "unconditional" is that it is not a one-for-one swap. If Blorah chooses to make something for me from my list, I do not have to make something for Blorah -- I just pick any of the participants who has something interesting to me on her list.

I chose to make a skirt and a bag for a sweet girl in Britain. These are the pictures she sent me, as I hadn't yet trained myself to take pictures of things I made.

Because of the design of this swap, me making something doesn't mean I'll get something, if I'm not chosen. And I wasn't. So they listed me again in October and again in November... and I still wasn't getting chosen. Eventually, two people actually did send me things from that swap, but before that happened, I got email from a young woman in Canada. She said that she dug some of the "likes" I'd listed and said that "A Clockwork Orange" is also her favorite movie, so she proposed we do a personal/private swap based on that movie. Apparently this is also something crafster people do fairly often, but I never had. I said cool, let's do it, even though I have no idea what sorts of things she crafts, or really much of anything else about her.

She and I carried on some email correspondence for a couple of months, talking about progress without giving anything away. (We gave ourselves a long deadline because it was the "holiday season.") I learned a little more about what she likes, and more importantly that she wouldn't creep out easily. I initially thought I'd make her a little printed bag with images from the movie (she loved the Zipperhead bag), until I got the idea of making some sort of eyeball shirtcuffs like Alex wears. I thought maybe some taxidermy eyes attached to cuffs removed from a Salvation Army shirt... Which would be cool, but seems so hard -- not difficult, I mean, but physically hard. Wouldn't it be cute to do something like that but in yarn? I thought. Yes, yarn! There's gotta be a way to knit or crochet an eyeball.

I hadn't crocheted anything in years and was probably never very good at it, but it came back pretty easily, and after one failed prototype (big mutant eyeball!), I quickly whipped up two nice blue eyeballs. Now... what? They have to go ON something... something appropriately soft/fuzzy, and variable enough to fit someone whose dimensions I don't even know... Oh, I know just the thing!

Who would have guessed that finding plain white sweatbands would be so difficult?

All the ones I found had logos on them, and after spending $6 on a pair of (pretty nice) Under Armor wristbands, I discovered that getting those logos off is nearly impossible. I couldn't bring myself to go to WalMart, which I just knew would have them, so I did the next best thing -- asked a friend to look at one of his Meijer stores while he was at work. At about 3.45 am a couple of nights later, I got the following text message: "If I do find those plain white sweatbands, what do I get in exchange?" My gratitude, of course. And I'd have repaid him as well, except it turns out he lifted them. My hero.

Plain wristbands in hand, I started plotting the attachments and details. Alex's cuffs are never very clearly shown in the movie, but they seem to have red viscera of some sort next to the eyballs. So I'd have to do that, of course. With a tiny crochet hook and painfully small red floss, I started making stitches, just trying to make some sort of shape.

And this, my friends, is why crafting is such good therapy for me.

My "real" personality sometimes suffers under delusions of perfectionism. But when I'm doing something like this, I'm aware that I don't know what I'm doing. I know the stitches are uneven, the piece is wobbly, and there wasn't really any plan before I got started. I know there is a danger that knots will pop out, or the whole thing may simply unravel through wear, since I've never done anything like this before and can't possibly fully test it before I give it to her. I also know that the person who gets these is absolutely going to love them, in part, I would bet, for the wobbliness, not in spite of it. I also know that if I made a pair for myself, people would want to know where I got them. (Well, except people who know me, who would probably assume I made 'em.)

Still not entirely knowing the plan, or even feasibility, I stitched two "optic nerves" (I know there's only one per eye) to one of the white cuffs with the fluffy blue eyeball in the middle, making stitches that are impossible to hide (though I did my best). I stretched it out, put it on my own wrist, and I gotta say, I was totally tickled with how the first one turned out. It's great not only to make something, and from scratch, but to do it strictly from imagination. I mean, yeah, the movie was the inspiration, but it's been a long time since I did a concept that was totally my own.

Some time during the next week, I finished the other cuff, then took a good handful of pictures. I was sure to get close-ups because I had every intention of making another pair for myself, but... I probably never will.

And whatever my swap partner sends me, I know I'll totally love it.

Pyramid Bags

Here are a couple of little bags I made from a pattern I found online. They are about 6 inches tall.

The one on the left was my test go. Sometimes you can look at a pattern or instructions a thousand times, but until you actually DO it, it doesn't come together in the noggin. So I did the beigey one with a light interfacing and no lining to see how to handle the zipper. Then I made the bag that I really wanted to make.

The black and red bag is made from marine vinyl, which is nice and heavy with a very interesting feel to it. I made it to wear with an all red and black outfit, thus the red topstitching etc. The white spots are mother of pearl studs which I got from a swap with someone on craftster (she sent me 300 of them!) and the wrist strap was cannibalized from a $3 resale purse (which also yielded two zippers and a silver tone slidy/clippy closure). The studs are more evenly-aligned than they look in the photo -- it's an angle thing. It IS.

"Dead Pets" Hoodie

This is definitely one of my favorite projects of recent memory.

The inspiration came from this craftster post. Craftster is fantastic, by the way. You'll get overloaded with ideas, techniques and inspirations and love it.

The finished hoodie started life as one Dead Pets concert t-shirt (friend's garage sale, $5), one acid green t-shirt (Value Village, $.80), one black t-shirt (drawer, $0), one green stripy sweater (Value Village, $3.50), one yard of woven trim (Joann, about $1.50) and one 24-inch zipper (Joann, $2.50).

When I saw the green sweater, I knew it would make great sleeves, but it had short-sleeves. Until you cut your own, it's easy to underestimate how much fabric sleeves take -- pretty much the entire width of a front panel! Fortunately, the length of the sweater was enough that I could make one sleeve from the front and one from the back, using the bottom hem at my wrists.

While I was planning this project, I found this great woven black and green trim at Joann, and decided I had to find a way to work it in. It wound up trimming the front hood edge.

I finished the hoodie one week ago, and I think I've worn it three times already. It's a great way to make t-shirts more wearable -- I have bunches that I like, but I never just wear a t-shirt alone.

Fun with Electricity

This is a long story which I believe is much more interesting to the person having experienced it (me) than to anyone hearing it. And besides, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a little snippet of video is worth millions.

So let's keep it to a timeline:

0230 15 January
Freezing rain has been coming down for a few hours. Inside my house, awake, watching a movie and doing some needlepoint, I hear a BZZT and see a faint orange flash through the window in my front door. After unplugging everything in the house, I go outside to investigate. That's when I see the two downed wires on my driveway, flashing, crackling and carrying on. I call 911.

0245 15 January
With the presence of mind to grab my digital camera and put it into video mode, I am standing in the turnoff section of my driveway, waiting for the fire department and documenting the zap-and-smoke show. That's when this happened:



Yes that's me and my rarely-heard yelp there. My two favorite comments about this video are "You sound really cute when shitting yourself!" and "I've never heard you sound so innocent." Aww.

0248 15 January
The fire department arrives, stops at the end of my driveway with floodlights trained on the pole and my driveway, and sits there. For about 6 hours. I come in and out of my house during this time, in the freezing rain, hoping someone will come and tell me something. No one does. I return to my house, change into dry clothes and attempt to nod off in the 50-degree living room. It doesn't work. Until around...

0830 15 January
After I finally doze off for a minute, I'm awaked by what sounds like a harsh alarm clock buzz. My first thought is that my power is back on and my alarm clock is going off. Then I remember I don't have an alarm clock, and I'm on my feet at a run. Something new is going on. I step outside with my camera once again, to this:



Those of you who have been to my house should recognize this as the view from my front door, a post I was reluctant to leave. Realizing the fire truck was no longer at the end of my driveway, I make my third call to 911. "Where did my truck go?" I ask the dispatcher. "I show them at your location," she tells me. "I'm looking right now... they're not here." "Oh, well, hang on, let me call them. ...pause... Apparently they had to go for gas. They've been there for six hours." "I'm well aware of that. I've been here, too." Which is how I also knew that the tree now lying across my driveway had not been there the night before. It didn't break -- it simply toppled out of the ground at the roots.



I still have no idea what it was going on at that pole, but it took until noon on Monday for the power company to show up and do something about it. In the meantime, the lights in my house which were on soft dimmer switches were flashing like in a haunted house. Oh, and a fireman finally greeted me at my door, telling me that I should stay inside with the door closed. At 4pm that day, I was finally told it was safe to leave... Although that was easier said than done, with 4 trucks in my driveway. Taking matters into my own hands, I cleared some downed branches and drove across the far side of my yard to get to light and warmth.

Miraculously enough, when I got home Tuesday night, my power was back on, and the electrical, telephone, cable and fiber optic communications lines (whatever those are used for) had all been restrung. Of course, there's an entire tree's worth of hastily-chopped, frozen wood in my front yard... But at least I can finish my needlepoint.

Lines Down 2.30 am

Lines Down 2.30 am
Originally uploaded by shefightslikeagirl.

This is the view at the end of my driveway on the night of January 14th. Much more I want to say about this, but for now, just try to imagine walking out of your house and seeing that. For six hours.

Faux Leather Kimono

Last week I decided I wanted to try working with one of the faux leather "home decorating" fabrics from the local Joann. They are very interesting to look at and to feel and are typically pretty cheap. I wanted something simple which would show off the texture without details that would create too many layers of the thick fabric. I chose a kimono, as this crappy picture with a random scarf at the waist shows.

I already had the sewing pattern (Simplicity 5839), which apparently approaches kimono fabrication from a fairly traditional viewpoint. This included a lining which was very integrated into the construction, but which I wanted to omit. This meant some pattern editing on the fly -- skipping the lining made it simpler in some ways, but trickier in others since I couldn't actually use the instructions. The most complicated portion (and I hesitate to say "complicated" since the whole garment is traditionally quite simple) was the sleeves. But the sleeves really do make the kimono. (The outer corners really are radiused as they should be on those sleeves... Just doesn't show in the crappy picture. Did I mention the picture is crappy? I did? Carrying on then.)

I chose a black/brown printed faux leather lightweight upholstery fabric from the clearance table (ultimately <$3/yd), with a fairly dense, plain knit backing. After folding it and flipping it around a little at the store, I decided it would be sufficiently floppy to make a garment, light enough to actually wear, while stiff and glossy enough to at least look like it was trying to be leather.

Cutting was easy and no-ravel, and the stitching went well with longer stitch-lengths and a Teflon foot where needed. Seams could be trimmed very tightly and left unfinished because of the plasticky nature of the material, and it took topstitching like a dream. The only problem I had was my own fault, when it came time to attach the neck band. I tore the thing off and restitched it at least 3 times. Grr! Too many layers moving at different speeds was the culprit. Once I figured out a way to keep everything cruising together, it went just fine.

I intend to wear it with either a large mesh/elastic waist cincher or a corset (to be named later). I was considering making some belting out of regular webbing covered in the same faux leather, terminating in some big silver buckles, and attaching 2 or 3 of those to the kimono, but I'm reconsidering putting anything permanent on it. I think I'd like to be able to wear different obi-substitutes as the mood strikes me. (As if I'm going to be wearing this thing every weekend. In this weather?!)