Christmas Gift Sewing

One of the things I love about sewing is being able to make gifts for others. This Christmas, I decided to make an ice skating dress for my niece, who is taking skating lessons. I used a Jalie pattern, because they offer so many active wear patterns in so many sizes. I had already used one of their patterns to make some dance shorts for the Dancer, too. This time, I ordered directly from the company, and bought some patterns as PDFs. Putting all the pieces of this pattern on 8 1/2" x 11" paper together was a pain, but the pattern did sew up wonderfully. We have a large format printer at home; I would love to be able to get patterns that will work on it.

Anyway, here are two pictures of the outfit. My niece loved it, so I'm happy.

What's Been Keeping Me Busy

My daughter The Dancer and Mr. BTEG went to the Origins gamer convention in Columbus, Ohio last week. The Dancer wanted to cosplay as Princess Anna from Frozen, so I put together this costume for her. She and her daddy did the painting on the front of the bodice (as well as the back.)

Oh, and Mr. BTEG also had his gall bladder removed last month. That was a thing that took up a bit of my time as well.

Thinking About What My Daughter Said

I was having a text conversation with my eldest daughter the other night. She thinks she might like to be a writer, so she's trying to write a bit every day. Her roommate was out of town working on a play production for a director they both know. The Musician has acted in a local play with this director; it's how she met her roommate. The Musician said that she was a little jealous of her roommate, and I asked her if she had thought about acting in something again. She told me that it's best for now if she focuses on one thing, in this case, her writing.

I thought today how applicable that is to my own life. What is important to me is fashion history, sewing, and the world of doll collecting. In the past, I have felt embarrassed by the doll collecting, the fashion history is only interesting to a few, and I'm not one of those sewers you'll see on Pinterest who comes up with new and exciting projects weekly. But they are what interests me, what drive me to research and do. The people who blog everyday, that's their thing, writing on a blog. While I love to blog here, and am going to keep doing it, I'm not going to feel guilty that I don't come up with something new and witty to write about every day. I'll just post as often as I can.

Trying Again

I have to admit, it's been crazy around here. I've had so much more energy and drive since the surgery, but too often I can wear myself out so much that I am exhausted for the next day or so. I'm hoping to improve my stamina and tackle things I never felt up to before.

Right now, the household is kind of on a countdown to June. The Musician will be graduating from high school. She's working and trying to figure out what she wants to do with the rest of her life, while she looks forward to her graduation. The Dancer is having a dance recital in June. She is in six dances, which required six costumes, a few of which needed sewing work. Costumes never come completely finished, I suppose to fit the size vagaries of hundreds of kids. Also, the studio owner and teacher asked me for more of my sewing help than I've given her in the past. Out of seven pointe costumes, for example, six needed alterations, including the Dancer's. The bodices are largely made out of a foam with stretch velvet over, and they've been weird to work on. But besides a lot of people being impressed by my skills (which is always nice) we're getting a tuition break this month against the hours that I've put in.

On top of all this, I've been getting more involved in the doll collecting world, which has led to me putting more time and effort into my collection. It's nice to have a fun and relaxing hobby, and I've met a lot of great people recently on the internet, but I've also missed this blog. I've missed the people that I know from here. Which means that I'm going to have to make an effort to write here again. I hope to see some familiar faces around, and maybe meet some new ones!

Latest Sewing Project

I've temporarily gone from sewing to cleaning up/re-organizing my sewing area. I got to a point where having so much clutter slowed me down too much; it was harder to try to work around the clutter than to just try to neaten things up. But I never put up a picture of a project I worked on back in November, a pair of dance shorts for the Dancer.

I've heard lots of good things about Jalie patterns for making dancewear, so I picked up Jalie 3247, Crop Tops and Shorts in 24 sizes. That link will take you to the pattern, being sold by msbonnieb on eBay. Jalie is a Canadian company, and they don't seem to have a lot of retailers in the U.S. It was easiest for me to go the eBay route.

Here is a picture of the pattern mostly laid out on my sewing table. I wish this would have come in more than one paper piece. As you can see, some of those larger pattern pieces are huge, and having to maneuver that large sheet of paper around got a little difficult.

And above you can see how the shorts turned out! She likes them, although they are a little low in the rise for her. But she wears a leotard under them, so it's not too bad, and I think she's gotten used to them. I have enough material left over from making the girls bathing suits, many years ago, that I can make several pairs of shorts for the Dancer, making the pattern a pretty good investment! I have the next pair of shorts, the other pattern view, almost done; I just need some red thread for the hemming and attaching the elastic. I hate going to JoAnn's anymore, and the smaller sewing stores don't always have convenient hours. I may just have to mail order. I'm a little unhappy with having to do that for such a small purchase, but those red shorts have been almost done for quite a while now!

A Night at Gatsby's

That was the theme for the Homecoming dance last night. Since we're a weird family, we thought it would be fun to actually go with the theme, instead of doing the usual and buying strapless dresses with skirts that barely cover the posterior. The Musician already had the lace dress; we just added some accessories to make it look more Twenties. I made the Dancer's dress out of a pre-ruffled stretch fabric. The headband that the Dancer is wearing was purchased at Claire's and can be worn as a regular headband, so she should get many uses out of it. She just wore it down over her forehead last night for a Twenties look.

We also had fun learning Twenties slang. Not surprising that much of it had to do with alcohol/criminal activity. We did learn that a "jelly bean" is a flapper's boyfriend.

On a side note, why spend money on a pair of shoes that you want to take off before you even get out of the car to go to the dance?

Popping In, Running Out

I am constantly running, it seems. Marching band four nights a week and sometimes events on Saturdays. Dance four days a week, seven classes total. And I am managing to fit more time for myself and things like sewing and knitting and study in there, even though other stuff sometimes gets let go. But this is the Musician's senior year. And the Dancer needs a lot of dance during the week to keep her strong enough for pointe, which she adores. And oh, I need to finish sewing the Dancer's Homecoming dress today, so I'm going to work on that right now. I'll be back soon, though!

Changes

I am at one of those times where I find my life and my interests changing. I'm not exactly interested in anything *new,* I just find my priorities shifting. Part of that is because while I'm many years away from an empty nest, my daughters are becoming more independent. The Musician should be getting her driver's license within the next few months, which will be an enormous help. We had been putting it off, but this year the Musician has a wonderful opportunity. She is taking five classes at the high school, but she will also be spending part of her time either at the local community college, or student teaching at schools here in our town. She wants to be a teacher, and will be earning college credit for this, so it is fantastic that a senior in  high school can already try out student teaching. However, this will involve a lot of driving around, so we decided it was better to pay the few hundred dollars for driving school than have me schlepping her around all day.

This will give me more time for me, which I could really use. I want to get into sewing more seriously. I want to get in to sewing doll clothes more, but a big priority is also clothes for the family. I am down to wearing a t-shirt my husband wore while he was working at Applebee's over ten years ago, as one of my "at-home" shirts. Even buying store clothing on sale can add up, especially for plus-size me, so sewing at least a few things will be worth it.

Plus, the Musician needed new band shoes; her old ones were literally held together with duct tape and I insisted she needed something better for her senior year. And it looks like the Dancer will need pointe shoes every five to six months. Yes, that's a lot of money. The thing is, she's good at dance, and honestly this is the time for her to study it, especially pointe. She'll never had this chance again, and for that matter, the Musician will never be in high school again, so I want them to get all the experiences that they want, and we can afford. By the way, did you know professional ballerinas can destroy a pair of pointe shoes in a night???

Lastly, knitting. I have so many projects that I want to do, that I need to put more time into it if I'm going to have a hope of making meaningful progress on the list. I'm not a very fast knitter, but maybe with more regular practice, I can become one.

I Don't Get This

I'm not going to post the picture here, but if you don't want to go look, or if for some reason you're here past the lifetime of this picture on etsy, it's a pattern for an applique cross, with a large circle in the middle For. Your. Monogram. That's right, take a cross and slap your initials right in the middle. That INRI stuff, that's so old and busted. The new hotness is to put yourself in the middle of the cross. Honestly, I'm not sure where the creator of this applique was going with this one.

Footsteps

There has been much excitement and activity here since a few weeks ago when the Dancer's dance teacher first suggested that she was ready to start work in ballet en pointe. The first step was simply trying to go en pointe in a pair of borrowed shoes. She found that to be no problem. Next was a trip to a podiatrist to get an x-ray to make sure that her feet had stopped growing so that she won't do permanent damage to them. The doctor was happy with how everything looked, so then came finding a time to get to the dance wear store and get the Dancer her own shoes. Next was me sewing the ribbons onto her new shoes, and her showing off the shoes to her dance class last night. I have to figure out exactly where to sew the strips of elastic and take care of getting those on. She'll start working en pointe probably next week. She started this process all the way back in 2006, by her own choice. It's fantastic to me that she has kept at it this long, and that she is now starting on a whole new part of her dance years. These are the things that make watching your children grow up, worthwhile.

Invisible

Well, I never heard from Sew News at all, so I guess they don't want me as a subscriber. I'm starting to feel invisible, as companies just don't seem to respond to me when I try to communicate with them. I sent an email to Lily yarns because I was angry that they sold my email and I was getting spam to it. (It was a custom email, not published anywhere, so it should not have been receiving spam.) Again, no reply at all. I tried to call my favorite clothing store to let them know of my disappointment because of the closing down of the only store closer than a half hour radius for me. I couldn't find an option to contact the company in any way, so I ended up calling the company blind, and getting routed to someone's personal voicemail. I'm not even sure this person deals with issues like mine, and again, I never got a reply.

I'm a relatively small blogger, only one person, so I guess my opinion doesn't matter to companies. And to be honest, one customer really does mean nothing to them in the grand scheme of things. However, one unhappy person can sometimes turn into a whole online community of unhappy people. In the gaming community, a huge drama occurred when one lowly gamer tried to get some information from the PR firm for a company that was creating a good product, but had the misfortune to hire someone functionally illiterate and terminally rude to represent it. Here is an email back and forth between the lowly gamer, Mr. Illiterate, and a man who just happens to run one of the most popular webcomics that gamers read. Christoforo thought he could be rude to one person, and found himself the laughing stock and butt of jokes all over the Internet. For a final laugh, look at this Bing search to see how one of Christoforo's more "unfortunate" phrases has gone completely viral.

Some of the blowback may have gone too far against Christoforo, so I will say right here that I'm not threatening anyone. I don't want a huge online flame war, nor people's personal information or family members to be targeted. I'm just one little person who would like her concerns responded to, but it seems you have to have clout before you get noticed.

Shut Up and Sew!

I have a subscription to Sew News magazine. It's fun to read about my hobby, and the articles can be inspiring. However, I was surprised, and then appalled, to see the editor's column this month promoting the radical feminist "holiday" V-Day. Yes, I said radical. If the Tea Party is radical, and conservatives are radical, then I'll call out left-wing socialists as being radical. And yes, the V-Day page, to which the editorial directs you, is political. The first article I clicked on, for girls, is all about Occupy Wall Street, and how those mean ol' policemen are beating up and generally harassing all those peaceful OWS activists. Considering over 5,000 OWS protesters have been arrested worldwide, I doubt all of those arrests were of peaceful, law abiding folk, no matter how many well-meaning people are there. Considering the number of reported rapes, I actually find it darkly humorous that the V-Day page is promoting OWS.

If you want more of my thoughts, and the background on the V-Day movement, see below, but suffice it say that it is a very political movement, and I was disturbed to see that a sewing magazine is promoting it. I really don't care what the politics of people in a sewing magazine are. I don't think it's at all necessary for me to know. A sewing magazine should be about sewing! Now I'm wondering if the magazine just wanted to promote what is at bottom a good cause, reducing violence against women, or if they are so far in the left wing tank that they don't even realize they are left wing. See the latest cover of Newsweek for a media outlet who isn't even trying to hide it anymore.

I sent off a quick email to Sew News yesterday. I'll let you know if I hear back. I'm expecting the "sorry if you were offended" nothing sauce, but I may be pleasantly surprised.

Cough Cough

The entire BTEG family has been sick for about a week. I absolutely hate getting sick around this time. For one thing, it's harder to get back into a regular schedule after the holidays. For another, it's harder to start working on the goals that you want to achieve for the year. Even sewing does not hold much appeal when all that you want to do is sleep, and your body aches. I'm also coughing heavily when I do too much physical activity.

I am thankful that the weather has been unseasonably warm and sunny. It's good to get some extra sunshine at this time of year.

Slowing It Down

One of the things I'm learning to do in order to achieve my goals is not to get ahead of myself. It's very difficult to cook more, and perhaps even experiment with fancier dishes, when the kitchen is not completely organized. I'm still trying to find room for things; a buffet would be great, but it's not in the budget so I need to work with what we have. In the meantime, I shouldn't feel badly when the best I can do is just getting a dinner on the table for my family.

I also need to pace myself better with regards to sewing. I often look at the project as a whole and get overwhelmed, instead of breaking up into tasks. Maybe one day to find the fabric (because a lot of it is still in boxes.) One day to trace the pattern and cut it out (if it's a big project.) Then get the pieces cut out. Then the sewing. One of the hot ideas in accomplishing goals (at least looking at the Android apps) is simply taking, say, 25 minutes to work on something. That way, you've made progress, but the task doesn't bog you down.

I'll admit it's difficult not to be impatient to get a project done. Especially when there's a deadline you've created for yourself. For example, I really wanted to get the living room cleaned up more before the Musician's birthday party, and before Christmas. We have no attic and no basement in our current abode, so there are lots of boxes with no place to go. However, there was enough room for the Musician's friends to enjoy her party, and enough room for the Christmas tree to go up, and for the family to sit around it. No use beating myself up over it not being better.

Stability

Do you know why I actually have some hope that I can accomplish some of my goals for this year? Because for the first time in a long time, we are not planning to move, and we are living somewhere that we have close to enough space. When everyone in your family has some type of hobby or interest, you need more space. Mine is sewing. While I'm going to attempt to cut down my fabric stash, I still need room for my cutting table, my table for my machines, my patterns, my reference books. Sewing makes me happy!

It was only late last year that I actually started to realize, however, how much stability can mean. It's such a nice feeling to unpack, to really settle in, not to have so many of one's possessions packed away in boxes. You can actually use everything you have, not have most of it stored away. It's nice to be able to take a nice long break from living out of boxes, and just concentrate on living for a while.

Roadblocks

Hope today's sewing adventure goes better than yesterday's. Spent a good bit of time cleaning up after the last project, thoroughly cleaning the lint out of the serger, getting the cutting table re-organized to get space to work. Only to have the serger stubbornly refuse to serge. The threads kept getting snarled and breaking, and I couldn't really see a reason why. So I pulled all the threads, and I'm going to try to absolutely thread it from scratch. I really hope it works, or it's going to kill the positive, productive mood that I'm in.

ETA: I did get the serger working, and I got some sewing done! One or two of the tension discs feel a little bit loose. Wonder if that is normal, or how they could be tightened. Yes, the machine could use a tune-up, but I'd like to wait until after the holidays, and until our financial situation improves.

The Modern Sewer

Anyone else have an Android phone and not an iPhone? I got an issue of my sewing magazine the other day, and one of the features was ten sewing apps. Before I even turned to the page, I said to myself, "I bet most of them will be for the iPhone." Well, I wasn't *entirely* right. In actual fact, 9 out of 10 were iPhone exclusive. Mr. BTEG tells me that there as many apps out there for the Android as there are for the iPhone, but not for the stuff that I'm interested in. I have found one knitting app, called County, which helps you keep track of which row you're on. I can't even find a grocery list app that I like.

Another problem I have with sewing magazines is that too many of the projects assume you have an embroidery machine. And the embroidery is a big part of what makes the project. It just makes me feel poor and out of the loop, and I hate that.

On the other hand, there was a "survey" about how much fabric people have in their stashes. I'm a total piker compared to a lot of these women, but that, I'm totally cool with. I feel guilty about how much of a stash I have as it is. Although I'm getting to a point where more and more of it is leftover bits that are big enough that I don't like to throw them away.

Running Again

I found my machine oil. It was in a little crate with some other bathroom items. I keep it in the bathroom because, where else is easier to clean up if some of the oil happens to spill?

We're going to be very busy for a while here, and I hate having so much on my plate. Curriculum night at the middle school tonight, ice cream social for the high school marching band tomorrow. Fortunately, Daddy will be the one taking the girls school supply shopping on Saturday. I will probably be the one taking the girls shopping for a few new clothes. Next week, marching band preview night, then the first day of school. Then the football games start, then the dance classes start. I guess it will keep me out of trouble. :)

Needing Dusted Off

I'm really trying to be good and get some sewing done, but I can't find my sewing machine oil, and both of my machines really need it. Mr. BTEG says he has some out in his shop that I can use, but the whole day will be gone by the time he gets home. His shop is nowhere organized or neat, which is why I have to wait for him. It's really important for me to take advantage of times when I feel up, because I have far too many down times when not much gets accomplished.

I'm also tired of how dusty things get. I hate having to dust things around here before I can use them. I'm starting to think I would love to have everything in big cabinets with doors. Maybe some of them could have glass doors so you could see what was in them, although we have a bookcase out in the garage that still needs a glass door replaced after the Dancer broke it many years ago. We'd just have to make sure the cabinets reached all the way up to the ceiling, so the tops wouldn't gather... dust.

So Much to Do, So Little Time

The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
--Robert Louis Stevenson

I go through dry spells where everything is dull and boring and the world a yawning wilderness. Then I go through periods like where I am now, where I want to sew things and knit things and buy things and sell things and be wildly crafty and do it all all at the same time! Right now I feel like the world is *too* full of wonderful things! Since I am getting better at understanding my motivations and my moods, I'm hoping to have a productive winter, but not getting unrealistic. :)