Post Birthday Reflections

DD2 made birthday Oatmeal Raisin cookies.

I want to thank each of you for your kind birthday wishes!

I don't know for how many more birthdays I will be able to play with the kids – who knows where they might end up post college. So I will enjoy it while I can.

We first ran to Fabrix for a piece of birthday fabric. DD2 quickly discovered a polka dot brocade. Only 1-1/2 yards was left, and it may end up as an overnight bag.

The reverse side of the brocade is shown on the left. The fabric is photographed with something I gave myself. I ordered the latest Alabama Chanin book, which was waiting for me at the end of the day.

We then went to North Beach (Little Italy) and behaved like tourists.

We started with cappuccinos and biscotti and then proceeded to eat our way through North Beach.

We enjoyed the shops and ambiance of the neighborhood. The most interesting boutiques are closed on Monday, which saved me from any temptation, but I peeked in plenty of windows. This gate belongs to a very cool jewelry store.

And, I should mention, that today featured our typical chilly, coastal, windy, summer-in-San Francisco weather, so warm clothing was the order of the day.

I have three garments completed that I want to blog about. I have not yet taken pictures. Hopefully I can trot these out over the next few days, once I get some photos taken.

July 9th!

Happy Birthday to Me!
I'm now fifty-three!
Blah blah blah blah blah blah
Blah blah rhymes with Me!

Remember last year when I thought I was fifty three? I was fifty two. The advantage of this mistake is that I remembered my age all year. ;)

I'm playing with my daughters today. Happy Monday to you!

Scrap Busting with Post Mastectomy Pillows

A dear friend of mine was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. About three weeks ago she had a mastectomy which included removal of lymph nodes. I did not know this, but evidently most of the post operative pain comes from removal of the lymph nodes – there are many nerves in that area.

My friend was given a small pillow to wear under her seat belt. (She now has a million appointments - I had no idea that fighting breast cancer is such a full time job.)

This seat belt pillow was made from a brightly colored quilting cotton with giant ladybugs. This friend has a similar aesthetic to mine and, while she appreciated the utility of the pillow, the fabric was bumming her out, especially since it is something she uses in public.

When she mentioned the existence of this pillow to me, I started researching these on the internet. I learned that there is a whole category of pillow called Comfort Pillows and they come in different shapes for different purposes. This article on about.com is helpful.

There seem to be several basic shapes: heart, crescent, rectangular, and something called a "dog bone". The crescent- and heart-shaped pillows often include ribbons so they can be tied onto the shoulder. I sent her several pictures so she could give me some guidance on what would be most useful.

My friend thought that the crescent shape would be good for sleeping but without the ribbons - she envisioned becoming entangled.

I made her two pillows. I also provided her with some black minky to cover said ladybugs on the seat belt pillow.

The first pillow used a pattern provided by Husqvarna Viking – the PDF of the pattern and instructions can be downloaded for free here.

For this pillow, I used scraps of a stretch woven cotton left over from my Hexagonal Tablecloth skirt. I stuffed this one fairly tightly.

Then, just today on Stitcher's Guild, someone posted another free pattern for a crescent shaped post-mastectomy pillow. What perfect timing!

The PDF instructions for this pattern, from emlibrary, can be downloaded for free here. The PDF of the pattern itself can be downloaded for free here.

I made this pillow using more scraps of the same sweater knit I used for several travel accessories for DD2. (I still have lots of scraps left. :) ) I stuffed this one more lightly.

These were both very quick to sew and stuff. I plan to deliver them tomorrow. I am eager to hear which shape and stuffing density she prefers. I will report back on this post.

Scrap Busting with Travel Accessories

Some of Barbara de Jounge's work
What follows is a parental moment. Feel free to skip to the sewing content of this post.

Let me talk for a minute about younger daughter, or DD2, as I often refer to her on this blog. She is 17 and about to enter her senior year of high school. This kid, who marches to her own drummer, decided sometime around January, that she had a burning need to learn Swedish. No, there is no Swedish ancestry anywhere in either family tree. It just came out of nowhere. (For the record, both her parents are monolingual, as was she.)

She covered her bedroom with yellow stickies, labeling everything in Swedish. She downloaded the Pimsleur Swedish language course to her iPhone and practiced every day - she contacted the Pimsleur people to ask if they planned to add more advanced courses, such as they have for Spanish and Italian. (She tells me that Pimsleur is much better than Rosetta Stone or other language courses she looked into.)

She converted her computer and iPhone to Swedish. She found some Swedes online to Skype with. She read books in Swedish and watched Swedish news and television programming via the Internet. Much to my surprise, she found a Swedish preschool near my home (I didn't believe, at first, that there was a Swedish preschool near my home and I've lived here over 20 years) and she started volunteering twice a week, speaking in Swedish with the toddlers, their parents, and the teacher. She began working for several families as a babysitter, house cleaner, and errand runner, in Swedish.

She learned to speak Swedish in three months and cheerfully informed me that it's much easier to learn a language once you start thinking in it.

Okay...

She then decided that she had to go to Sweden this summer. Her father donated some frequent flyer miles, and she used her savings, plus her babysitting/house cleaning money, to pay for her trip. She found a program to attend in Sweden, but also plans to do some couch surfing, some with a college friend of mine who lives near Stockholm, and also with some of the folks she has been working for here in the states who summer in Sweden.

Yes, she is going by herself.

I decided to make her a few items for her trip.

I had large chunks of sweater knit scraps left over from this Sandra Betzina sweater jacket, that I used for several of these projects.

First, I realized she could use a sleep mask. She wants to sleep on the 14-hour plane flight and can't sleep when it's light. I found this free Prudent Baby Sleep Mask pattern. I made a couple, using a rayon batik scrap from FabMo, as well as some scraps in my own stash. I have enough scraps to make 5000 sleep masks. :)

Scrap of rayon batik from FabMo

The bottom mask uses the FabMo rayon batik. The top mask uses scraps from a jacket that I finished several weeks ago and have yet to blog about.

This sleep mask is reversible. It uses 2 fabrics for the front and back, fusible fleece for each side, and two pieces of 13" elastic. Easy peasy, it takes only minutes to sew.

The flip side of the sleep masks. Sweater knit on the top, and a stretch woven on the bottom that I have used to make at least three pairs of pants.

Next, I decided she needs a u-shaped neck pillow for the flight. Rather than figure it out on my own, I bought a PDF pattern from urbansparrow. This nice little pattern includes a loop at center back (I used a piece of rayon grosgrain ribbon) so you can attach the pillow to a rolling suitcase, for example, with a caribiner - a nice little touch. This also uses the sweater knit.

I used Silky Soft polyfill stuffing and stuffed the legs of the U more tightly that the back.

I then made her a zippered pouch for makeup (or whatever) out of FabMo fabrics. It's a bit thick, so I may make her another one out of lighter weight fabrics.

It's been raining quite a bit in Sweden this summer and the weather has been on the cool side, so she wanted to take a warm scarf. I used an 18" by 44" piece of the same sweater knit to make a Koos infinity scarf, with one twist. I really like this scarf out of the sweater knit and need to make one or two for myself.

The weather in San Francisco recently has been typical "summer in San Francisco weather". Meaning it has been in the 50s and 60s, at least in my part of town, and the fog has been so thick that you almost need an umbrella, particularly when walking under trees and a gust of wind causes large droplets to pelt you. You do need to use the windshield wipers when driving. I love it.

My backyard this afternoon, wet from the fog.

However, this morning, while standing in line at JoAnn's waiting to buy polyfill stuffing, I heard folks complaining about the weather. I had to wonder what they were hankering for: wildfires, floods, or 106° F heat. Wherever you are, I hope you are comfortable and safe.

Barbara de Jounge - RIP

Last week I was saddened to learn of the death of one of my favorite lagenlook designers. Barbara de Jounge was a designer I truly admired. She was especially well known for her creative sweaters, often closed with her trademark giant safety pins, her interesting use of wool felt, and her clever jewelry from unusual materials.

And, correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like the necklace she is wearing in her photo might be made from those little plastic sizing tags used on hangars at some department stores...

The photo at the top of this post is from her website. In addition to her amazing creativity, she was elegant, stunning, and incredibly gracious. She was always one of my favorite designers at Artistry In Fashion and, last year, I bought a sweater from her, as did Margy.

I am sorry I don't own more of her work.

You can learn more about her life from her obituary. She will be missed.

Jean Paul Gaultier - Take 2

In honor of the exhibit, I decided to wear my Shoes of Death.

Though I did see the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit when Margy was here, there was a blogger meetup to see it and I couldn't resist another visit with some great local sewists.

Amy has already written up our gathering and wow, she got some great photos with a real camera. (I tend to use my iPhone for these things. The pics are good, but they are not Digital SLR good.)

Because this was my second time, and it's a huge exhibit, I decided to zoom right to the middle. This is when I started to overload last time and the second half of the exhibit includes my favorite rooms: the ethnic room, the punk room (with the "runway show"), and the movie room. This allowed me to absorb things I had missed last time around.

First up is this grey fleece jacket. It is probably the most wearable piece in the exhibit, at least for this sewist. There is black ribbing on the hem and pockets, and black trim all over it. The ribbing is probably on the wrists too, but they were obscured by enormous silver bracelets and long strands of (fake?) hair.

I lightened this picture to show the swing back and the pointed, embellished, hood.

I also lightened this picture to show a bit more of the hood.

We've moved on to the punk room. See that punk on the right wearing the tulle skirt and leather jacket? I thought the detailing on the tulle skirt was very cool. Though made from layers of cream tulle, it has denim detailing.

Just look at the closeup of the front of the skirt. It features black top-stitching, and a "hidden" button placket, just like the classic 5-button fly Levis. It even has metal rivets. In tulle.

It's hard to see, but I was trying to get a picture of the back of the skirt. You can just make out the denim-style back pocket, complete with top-stitching.

In the punk room there was also a runway with moving spotlights - I had to try and time my photos to the spot lights since the room was dark and we weren't allowed to take flash photos. My friend ReAnn had asked me what I had thought of the "button dress", but I had missed this one on my last visit, so I kept my eye out for it this time.

What is cool about this dress is that the stripes, all the cream detailing that you see, is achieved with buttons.

Another cool feature of this exhibit, is that for each piece in the exhibit, there is a plaque stating how many man hours were required to create the piece. The button dress required 65 hours.

The last room is the movie room. I really enjoyed watching the collaged video showing his costumes from all sorts of movies and TV shows. I watched that twice. ;)

I forget which movie this is from but I think either of my daughters could rock this piece. For prom, maybe? ;)

We ended up in the museum cafe, where we gabbed for about three hours! It was serious fun.

I just had to feature Vanessa and her son, Dominick. Vanessa knitted Dominick's pants, and sewed his incredibly cute jacket and hat. (That plaid is from FabricMart and I thought I had recognized it! In fact, I think I have some of it.) Isn't he precious? What a cutie patootie.

It was a bit difficult to get these pics because Dominick had some sartorial issues with Jean Paul Gaultier. Or maybe he was forced to leave the punk room before he'd finished taking notes. Or maybe he'd had enough of parental gabbing. ;)

I still haven't cooked, but I made an apple pie!

I used this recipe but I found it to be way too sweet. Oh well. Even a mediocre apple pie is better than no apple pie at all. (It wasn't for guests, so I didn't worry about making the crust pretty.)

Liberty Shirt with Pulled Collar #2

I recently made a Libery Top with Pulled Collar. I mostly liked the collar, but felt it was too tall for my neck. So I decided to make it again, this time shortening the neck by 3/4". This works better for me, I think.

This fabric, which was fabulous to sew, is a textured cotton from Emma One Sock. EOS sold out long ago, but I recently saw it for sale on the Sewing Workshop site. I purchased the buttons for another project at Hart's in Santa Cruz, when I was on my way to a sewing retreat. I like their little cross-hatched design.

This amuses me.
I haven't cooked in months.
This cayote squash was purchased in maybe January for a pot of soup. The cayote, now called Gerold, decided to sprout. When I took this picture, a couple weeks ago, I measured and the tendril was 3 feet, 1 inch, not including the squash.
Gerold has been composted. I like to think Gerold is happily growing away on some compost pile.
I still haven't cooked.

I've been busy at work and this weekend will be busy. A blogger meet-up at the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit and some daughter time. I hope you have a good one!

Artistry in Fashion 2012

Artistry in Fashion is one of my favorite events of the year. I have already put it on my calendar for this year.

I've talked about it before, but in case you missed it: It's a one-day event that benefits the fashion department at Canada College. It is held in Redwood City at their beautiful campus (about an hour south of SF and right off Hwy 280). In fact, they take over parts of the campus.

This year the guest speaker is Marsha McClintock, the owner of Saf T Pockets. There will be a fashion show of garments made from her patterns.

During the day, the fashion department is open for tours and, usually, a couple in-depth talks also given by in the fashion classroom by the guest speaker.

But my favorite aspect of the completely fun day is the shopping! Many booths will be selling juried treasures, including some wonderful lagenlook designers. And this year, for the first time, my friend Sue (whom I have mentioned in several posts) will be selling her handmade felt and straw hats!

If you plan to be in the area, save the date of September 29th! I will see you there. :)