More adventures in resale.

The rare Mac/Value Village (er WORLD, whatever) crossover kill. "Speaker" indeed.

I just happen to have an original pair of Apple Pro speakers on my decrepit, but beloved, G4. One of only two speaker sets to my knowledge that will work with this thing.

I spotted the iSub from across the room, but really just because it looks like a jellyfish. Cleaned the dog hair and dead spiders out if it, plugged it in, and it is a GO.

$7.

There be ties here!

I've spent the past few weeks (months?) working with that bonus embroidery machine of mine -- Rudy? might be called Rudy -- working toward making this little announcement.

I've listed my first batch of custom-embroidered (which really just means I done did it myself) vintage ties on my dormant etsy site. Go check 'em out!

BrocadeLion.etsy.com

Craftster BEST OF 2009

Dig it.

My flamin' vinyl applique dress made it into the Craftster Best of 2009 listing.

I'm a Craftster Best of 2009 Winner!

P.S. Oh yeah, my first Skulls-n-Roses dress was a Craftster Best of 2007 winner as well. I guess 2008 was a slow year for me...

Snowy Monday Morning Interlude

I was sitting on the sofa, ironically uploading pictures from my camera, when this youngster strolled past the windows. I stopped the upload, quietly opened my front door, and even after looking directly at me, the two fawns continued to hang around. They were shortly joined by two more fawns and a doe. None of them cared that I stood there taking photos and video.

Almost worth getting snowed in...

Viva la Value Village

I love the random crap you can find at Value World (née Village). Yesterday I found this spool of steel ball chain (with strange plastic card holdery things) at the VV in Oak Park without a price on it. Usually I wouldn't bother, but I tracked someone down, who marked at it 80¢. Today I unspooled it and measured out almost 300 feet of ballchain. So. If I ever need it...

FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU!

Custom Embroidery!

Got a chance to do a little work with some custom embroidery software over the past week or two, to generate PES patterns for my still-unnamed Baby Lock Sofia. No submissions? Really?

My best, most successful result so far. It's my MCB "logo." ;)

Cross-Promotion: Cinematic Titanic is coming to Detroit!

I posted about this over on motorcityblog, but I'm a giant nerd, so I want to post about it here, too.

Cinematic Titanic has been doing live shows for a while now, and they'll finally be coming to the Detroit area this February. Exciting! I'm not even being sarcastic!

Just got word yesterday that I'll be covering the gig for MCB, so I'm definitely going (and we'll probably be giving away some tickets when the date gets closer). It's going to be a huge treat to meet the guys, particularly Joel Hodgson and Trace Beaulieu. But especially Joel. I admit it, I'm a Joel girl at heart.

And it'll be nice to be in a room that can appreciate my Dr Clayton Forrester t-shirt. For once.

The Mummies are here.

New additions!

First of all, there's this.

This is -- incredibly -- the fifth real animal skull I've put on display in my living room. It is the first, however, that came from my yard. (Though the second that I've cleaned myself -- bone only! I didn't skin anything.)

The lower jaw was still near the skull, all teeth intact, but the jaw broke in half when I retrieved it. It's a bit of a funny story, actually. My friend John was over, and when we were walking to my car, he said, "There's a pretty cool skull behind your garage."

I said, "Oh, I should check that out! ...pause... What were you doing behind my garage?"

"I knew you were going to say exactly that!" Let's just say he had his boy-type reasons for being back there.

Went back behind the garage, where I think I've never been in the time I've lived here, and there it was, sitting in a pile of leaves, almost entirely clean. From another skull I have, I recognized it as a raccoon; looking at the teeth, I'm guessing this guy died of old age. I cleaned it up with peroxide, although I haven't taken the next step of gluing the lower jaw together and then gluing and sealing the teeth. It will join the others at that point. When it's ready, I'll take another picture of this one next to the other raccoon I have -- it makes an interesting comparison.

But! I'm too excited about this right now to mess around with bones! Check it out.

I've been waiting to post about this. Early in the summer, I entered a t-shirt reconstruction contest online. The grand prize was a computerized embroidery machine, the Baby Lock Sofia. I posted photos of my three-tee hoodie and then waited. The winners were to be voted on by visitors to the site over a several-week period. Every time I checked in, there were more and more entries, and it really looked like I was falling pretty far behind.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I got email from a representative from the parent company of Baby Lock congratulating me and asking for my shipping address! I was so surprised, I was literally in disbelief. I had a thought for a moment that it was someone trying to scam an address out of me... but I checked the contest site, and sure enough, there was my project, front and center. I won!

This is kick-ace for two reasons. First of all, I've wanted a full-bore embroidery machine for the past couple of years. The problem is they're expensive and I couldn't justify the cost. (Plus, there are so many options, I'd need a machine embroidery mentor just to decide on a model.) Second, and maybe even more significantly, this wasn't a random drawing. I won this machine because people voted on something I made. Forgive me for using a somewhat abused word, but it was seriously validating.

Ain't it a beaut? I told pretty much everyone I know about it that day, but didn't want to say anything here until I had the machine in hand. (So so cynical.) It arrived yesterday, and it's killing me that I can't set it up completely and spend the next several days elbow-deep in machine embroidery. There's going to be a serious learning curve involved. Not to mention I have to find a good place for it! I'm considering making the radical move of displacing my (ancient) desktop computer and putting the embroidery machine in its place, in my work studio. This would be the first time in my adult life that I didn't have a major desktop computer set up.

Man. When did I become such a giant craft/sewing dweeb anyway?

Well, wherever it's going to live it's going to need a new name. I mean, "Sofia"? As if. Going to need something much more suitable to join its new brethren, Nigel (the Husqvarna workhorse) and Roland (the Jaguar serger).

But right now? I've gotta finish my ballgown. Pictures of that are to come...

A side note: Motorcityblog.net

I've never mentioned this before here, and now seems as good a time as ever. I am a sometime-contributor, frequent-collaborator at one of the most trafficked entertainment blogs in Detroit. You can find us all here:



And my branded posts in particular here:

The Ambivalence of Halloween

Halloween provokes the very definition of mixed feelings in me.

On the one hand, I love it. Fall is my favorite time of year, and for the past several, I've taken Halloween-week off from work. It's a great time for a road trip, and there are always wonderfully macabre and hoakishly paranormal shenanigans to be found. As Halloween becomes a more legit/adult holiday -- by which I mean selling opportunity -- the gewgaws and thingamajigs and other decorative trappings have improved greatly, which turns out to be important for someone whose primary decorating scheme seems to be "skulls." It's also the time of year I buy all my socks. (Yes, all of my socks feature bats or black cats or dancing skeletons. It's true.)

On the other hand, I hate it. Halloween is for stitchers/crafters/skull aficionados what New Year's Eve is to serious drinkers: Amateur night. Everyone figures that because I sew, I'm going to have this awesome costume idea/execution that I've been working on since June. "Ooh, you're so creative... and you do all that sewing... What are you going to be? This'll be great!" That's a lot of pressure! And why do I have to BE anything?

I'm not so crazy about the idea that I need to come up with something particularly funny or punny or topical or gruesome. How about if I just make something cool? Or pretty? Or elaborate? A big period costume? Well, if I do THAT, then I really do have to go all out, being slightly compulsive (oh come on, it's another trait stitchers tend to share -- that and pack-rattitude). And I've never really done that sort of big project. Plus, the kinds of places I'd go, the parties I'd attend, aren't exactly the... elaborate sorts of affairs.

Except maybe this year.

I'm considering a formal, masks-mandatory masquerade for devil's night. And that means... formal. Not just formal, but dark -- in attitude -- formal. Well. Let's see what we can do about that.

This is the "costume" I'm considering.

And this is the color.

But with black accents and other nasty details (to be expanded upon later). I ordered both fuchsia sateen and twill -- 10 yards of each! -- from Fabric.com yesterday; I'll decide which one I want to use once they arrive. It's a fairly large project for me-of-the-instant-gratification, so send me some encouragement, or at least wish me luck.

The Skin Corset

In Vegas, on one of the shuttles to or from somewhere, wearing a dress that I'd made, I suddenly decided that I wanted to make a corset. Mostly I thought it would be a cute addition to that dress -- my octo dress, which I still need to photograph -- in a bright yellow vinyl. When I got home, I received an announcement for the Marquis de Sade Ball the upcoming weekend. That solidified the project and the deadline. I can make a corset in, like, 3 days, right?

Truth be told, I've made a corset once before; Simplicity 9769, affectionately known as the Giant Cock Corset, as I built it from upholstery fabric featuring colorful roosters on a burgundy field. It was sort of a test to see how hard it is to do, and what kinds of materials I could use. Looking at it now, I can see how I fouled it up a bit. I had used plastic needlepoint canvas in place of real boning, and that doesn't impart much structure at all. Plus it's a little big.

For some reason, I thought it would be easy to find highlighter-yellow vinyl at Joann. Where did I get that idea? Turns out, I can get vinyl in any color I want, as long as it's black.

I dug through the upholstery flats and found some random vinyl in there, but certainly no yellow, and really nothing that was all that interesting. Except for this one that I found on the red tag clearance table. It was an upholstery vinyl, big leather texture on one side with a sort of flannel backing. And it was kind of... pinky beige. Quite... fleshy. I picked it up and put it down and picked it up and thought, "This is a very unfortunate color. Or... it's a very fortunate color. Gruesome." Finally I just bought the stuff. Made for a different idea than the bright yellow one, so, new plan.

Because I had less than a week to make the thing, I didn't have enough time to order supplies, even if I'd wanted to. That's okay, I like making it up anyway. I've read about a lot of different things people have used for corset boning. I wanted something with some strength, but it's not like I'm doing tight-lacing or waist-training, so I didn't need to get carried away. My first thought was to get some of the biggest zip ties I could get. Lowe's has 175-lb test zip ties in 18" lengths for something like $4.50/8. They were a little narrow and I'd have preferred they be stiffer, but at least they were immediately available and not horribly expensive -- although I would have to buy 3 packages.

Then I remembered someone suggesting that I grab some of the steel banding that lumber yards use to bind pallets of board. Since I was already at Lowe's, I traipsed over to the lumber department to discovery that they use plastic strapping on their pallets, and it seemed kinda wide. Hm, not what I had in mind. On the other hand, plastic might be easier to work with and I wouldn't have to be concerned with treating the metal to keep from rusting. When I found a strip that had been snipped open, I yanked it down and had a closer look. Turned it to be relatively stiff, just over .5" wide, and I was convinced I could cut it with a good pair of utility scissors. Each section was right around 10 feet, and I knew I was going to need close to 20 feet total, so I looked around for more. That strapping is like a lot of other things -- you never notice it until you're looking for it, then you see tons of it. I grabbed, shoot I don't know, probably 100 feet in the end. Just bundled 'em up in a big loop. On my way out, a cashier was looking at me sideways, and I said, "You don't mind I take these, yeah?" She kinda sneered, "Uh, no." So I got my material for free, without stealing. For once.

Taking the measurements from the pattern info, I measured, marked and cut 20 strips, rounding the ends with scissors to avoid the pokies. Easy.

Corsets are typically made from only a few panels. Got 'em cut out and stitched together, careful about how things were pinned. As we know from other vinyl adventures, pinning mars vinyl, but you can always keep the pins within the seam allowance. Normally you'd want to do flat-felled seams here for strength and... flatness. But all those layers of vinyl get pretty thick. So instead I flattened both seam allowances to one side and top-stitched with my trusty Teflon foot, then trimmed the excess nice and tight.

The pattern calls for twill tape as boning casings, but the plastic strapping was actually wider than the steel bones would have been -- just a touch under the width of extra-wide double-fold bias tape that's been opened up. What a coincidence! (Oh there are no coincidences in math.)

I opened up that bias tape and stripped it over the seams, pinning just through the flannel backing, then stitched close to the edges. More bias tape went roughly through the middles of the panels for still more boning. More boning! Can never get enough boning. This was fun because this was one of those situations where you have to put a layer of tissue paper between the vinyl and the sewing machine so it doesn't get all skippy. No pics of that, but you can take my word that it was a bit of a pain in the arse. Sometimes sewing is a lot like painting -- an hour of prep, 10 minutes of work, an hour of cleanup. Pulling out all the tissue paper was kinda like that.

The previous time I had made this pattern -- the Giant Cock Corset mentioned earlier -- I used a big zipper for the front closure. I like zippers. I was thinking about going the same route with this corset, but struggled with how completely non-18th century appropriate that would be. Not that anything else I was wearing would be... but I do like playing along. As with the boning, I knew I wouldn't have enough time to order a traditional busk, but it occurred to me to call the better fabric store in town, Haberman in Royal Oak, because they have a bridal salon. Turns out, they do have busks in stock -- for $35. If there is any theme that carries through most of my projects, I think you'd agree with me that that theme is Cheap. So I didn't see making that investment. Realistically my choices were zipper or... nothing. I went with nothing. Thought it would be slicker.

As for the rear lacing, I had some two-part grommets here already (and what's the difference between grommets and eyelets anyway? are the grommets the two-part and eyelets the ones without the backing ring?). I took the two bones that were to go in the back edges and drilled evenly-spaced holes -- and how much do I love garment projects that involve power tools? When I installed the grommets, I skipped half the holes that I'd drilled -- there are 9 lacing holes in the corset now, but there are, in fact, 17 holes available. Just in case.

After the grommets were in and all the bones in place, my old friend extra-wide double-fold bias tape finished the top and bottom edges. And that's it! Fairly rigid, nicely heavy duty corset! Here's the price breakdown, as I remember:
Clearance vinyl: $3 for 1 yard
Extra-wide double-fold bias tape: 3 packages (1 for casings, 2 for edging) at around $2/pkg
Plastic boning: Free
Grommets: On hand
Round waxed cotton cord: $4.50 for about 5 times as much as I needed

As usual, the piece looks better on me than it does on the dummy, but Heddy is wearing the same outfit that I wore to the Ball Saturday night; that is a black vinyl pencil skirt. The corset is quite comfortable, although getting into it was... a bit of a challenge. I figured if I got it mostly right I could borrow someone's slave once at the event, for purely wardrobe purposes. You can see that I tied it in the front, so I was able to keep it well adjusted. Well, enough so that whenever I dropped anything, I had to have someone else pick it up for me. A small price to pay, I'd say.

My only "complaint" at this point is that it's too plain. Because it was largely a test, and was in a bit of a hurry, I didn't do anything decorative to it. I really want to play up the fleshy aspect of it. I had considered doing some semi-random Frankenstein-style stitches to make it look like the panels were pieced together from smaller pieces of skin. But I also thought it would be cool to have someone draw some old tattoo-style art on it. We'll see what I wind up with before it hits the city again the next time.

Footsies

The more I get the hang of using my adjustable bias binding foot, the more I love it.

Are you dying to know what I'm making there? I'm dying to show it, but I'm busy packing, and it's coming with me.

My birthday trip is BOOKED!

I'd been putting off locking anything down because, when I'm traveling alone, I tend to keep hoping that someone will be able to come with me, or maybe I'll find something worthwhile locally. [Not strictly true, but an expedient explanation.] And this is a big trip for me -- I usually only go away for a weekend at a time. A whole week? Major.

I finally made my reservations today.

July 4: Leave for Vegas. (I'm sure there will be some KILLER fireworks, and I'm staying at the Imperial Palace, across from the Mirage. Love that volcano!)

July 5: Bill Maher at the Orleans.

July 7: My birthday! Penn & Teller at the Rio; who else could I possibly want to spend my birthday with? (And the Houdini x-stitch will finally be going home.)

July 9-12: The Amazing Meeting, one day of which I will attempt to attend (probably the 9th to see Jamy Ian Swiss speak).

EDITED TO ADD:
July 10: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe dinner. It's going to mean me haulin' ass to the airport, but my spot is reserved!

July 10: I fly home (and some poor soul picks me up at 5.30am the next morning).

In the meantime, there will be Bodies, there will be helicopters (I've always wanted to fly over the strip), there will be me in octopus- and skull-encrusted sundresses (trust me, this is an event unto itself), and any other ridiculousness I can get in on (suggestions will be taken, dirty and otherwise).

Aside from the fact that I feel like I'm going to vomix* from the amount of money I just spent this morning, I'm super excited. Happy birthday to me!

*Something of an inside joke.

Another addition to the site.

Those are my (largely irrelevant) tweets in the sidebar, in case you were wondering.

I'm giving away this dress.

Update: The dress has been claimed and will be on its way to California soon!

I have made a version of View A of Butterick 5348, initially as a "muslin" but not so much of muslin. I needed a quilting cotton of a similar type to the real fabric I intended on using, and believe it or not, the crazy fabric I wound up finding -- perfect for me -- was also the cheapest of its type available at my local Joann that day.

The dress is a shape that I had questions about, so I went with a larger size than I would normally make. The ultimate result is that the dress is both too big and too small for me. The waist sits nowhere near where it should on me (way too high -- my top takes up too much space) and it's otherwise a little too wide. But this is why we do muslins, right?

Because it's such a cool fabric and the dress is very nearly completely finished, I'm hoping someone else will want it -- someone who suits these measurements better than I:
Butterick Size: Misses 24
Chest: 44"
Bust: 46"
Waist: 39"
Hip: 48"
Back Waist Length: 17.5"

I take no responsibility for how accurate any of these measurements are. I usually make size 20-22 with some adjustments for a longer bodice, but I made no adjustments to this one. Aside from it really not fitting me correctly, it just doesn't suit me. I'll keep trying to find a dress pattern that does, though, beyond the one A-line that does seem to work well for me.

So! Does anyone want this dress? Someone who will actually wear it? My sewing dummy is not showing it off very well because, well, nothing ever looks right on my sewing dummy.

It is not my best zipper insertion, and it will need a hook/clasp at the back neck. It is also unhemmed for your convenience, and I will send along with it the rest of the silver satin that I used at the neck, which would make a perfect hem band if you want more length. There's also enough to make a purse or something if you'd like.

The images show the print pretty accurately -- isn't it awesome? The circles that look silvery actually are silvery, which is why I went with that satin at the neckband. Matches pretty well.

Comment on this post and let me know.

Thanks, CRAFT!

The first thing I do most mornings is wake up my iPhone (and not the other way around) and scan through my email for anything good (rare). This morning I noticed a handful of new comments to this here blog. Now, since I almost never get comments, I had a feeling something was up. Sure enough, one of the commenters mentioned getting to my blog from CRAFT magazine's website.



How cool! CRAFT is a favorite magazine of mine, which I've bought since issue one. (And I do faithfully read the blog, so I'd have seen the post by Monday -- weekends are typically my RSS-free zone.) CRAFT has gone fully digital now, which I suppose is good for me, because this way I get to get a mention!

The FINISHED Houdini Portrait!

At the beginning of February, I decided to make a birthday present for Teller's birthday (yes, that Teller) which is, memorably, February 14. He's one of my favorite performers (slash-essayist-slash-teacher-slash-skeptic) and I've made gifts for him before. It's always worth it.

I had been considering a slightly more detailed than usual cross-stitch project, and this seemed like a good choice for timing. I'd given myself two weeks -- approximately two weeks more than I usually give myself -- and already had a subject in mind: a hero of both Teller and myself, Harry Houdini.
Cross-stitch is not something I've done a lot of, but creating a pattern is very much the same as creating a square-stitch beading pattern. There are three main variables to know before you start: Number of colors, resolution (aka size of beads/stitches) and finished size.

Starting with a recognizable but relatively simple portrait of Houdini, I decided to go with six shades of grey plus white, which brought me to 7 colors. I wasn't even sure if I was going to be able to find six discrete greys, but that seemed to me to be enough differentiation without going totally overboard.

Turns out, even a simple craft store like Michaels is likely to have 15 or 20 greys. The tricky part is what kind of greys they are -- blue grey? Green grey? Beige grey? I spent a good hour or more combing through the color bins, hunting for six cool/neutral greys that looked like they belonged together. Then grabbed a roll of the finest resolution cross-stitch fabric I could find, which turned out to be 28-count.

That's two variables down. Next question was what size. I already knew I wanted it to be a small, detailed piece. How was I going to present it? I had an idea that I might be able to make a round frame out of one side of a pair of handcuffs. I even had a friend ready to donate an old pair. ("They don't have a key... is that okay?") Without actually having the cuffs on hand, I took some guesses about average wrist size ranges, did the math and decided on a 2.5" across portrait. Little.

I've used Photoshop every day of my life for, like, 50 years, so doing the actual conversion wasn't difficult, once I had my variables in place. Above are the before and after images, at finished size. Of course, I separated out all the colors and printed my charts at 1 bazillion % scale so I could see the durned thing. And I still had to use super-magno glasses to be able to see the stitches at all! One strand of floss, by the way, is all 28-count x-stitch fabric can take. And sometimes even that seemed to be pushing it.

I was so excited that I gave myself enough time to finish for once! Two whole weeks! I got all my stuff together, put on my brightest light, settled into my comfiest spot on the sofa (with Sevie attendant) and proceeded to ruin my eyes and my back. For six weeks.

Granted, it's not like I worked 8 hours a day, every day... but there were more than a couple of weekends that saw double-digits of hours getting put in. Holy moly. I'm not good with guessing how much time went into something after the fact, because I'm almost always doing other things at the same time, putting in a few minutes here or there, but my gut is telling me this was something like 80 hours. Eighty? Really? Does that seem possible?

When I was about half way finished, I was at TJ Maxx doing random shopping, and in their home décor department stumbled across The. Perfect. Frame. I was so excited, I snatched it up without even registering how much it cost. Of course, this was TJ Maxx, so it turned out to be about $3. That took another problem off my mind, though -- didn't have to figure out how I was going to mount/back it inside a handcuff frame. The little red frame was not only the perfect size, but look! Rope/knot detail!

This little portrait has been a part of my life for so long, I just don't know what I'll do without it. I was hoping to make it to Atlantic City next month for a getting-rarer Penn & Teller road performance, where I may be able to give it to Teller myself. (They have their own theatre at the Rio in Las Vegas these days.) That's a bit up in the air, though, so my little project may wind up in the mail.
A couple of friends who have seen it in person have said they'd have a hard time giving it up, and suggested maybe I should just keep it. It's a tempting thought, but I couldn't do that. As is always the case when I make things for people, I can't keep it because it was never mine to begin with.

However, I do still have this big ol'roll of 28-ct fabric... Maybe Poe next.

PS
I almost totally failed to mention... for the eagle-eyed among us, yes, there is a hidden message in the image.

The Houdini Portrait

Harry Before and After

I honestly thought this was going to take a week. Maybe two. Ultimately, it was the only crafting I allowed myself for six weeks.

I need to take photographs of the finished object itself, and will probably write a little bit about creating the pattern, but that's to come. Right now I just wanted to put something up so I feel like I accomplished... anything!