Healing up...

Yesterday, I actually sat down to the sewing machine and did some sewing whilst having a zoom chat with a number of sewing buddies who all used to be part of the now-defunct Stitcher's Guild (Dragon Lady, I do hope you are doing ok...).

That was the first sewing of any kind that I've done since I whacked my right pinky finger on the mandoline on July 2.  Unfortunately, I can't share what it was because of the nature of the thing.  Sometimes things have to be...secrets.

I will talk about it...eventually, lol.

Actually, quite a lot of my sewing over the next  2- 3 months will be of the 'I can't talk about it on my blog'  ilk.  It will all make sense at the end.

I will take pictures, lol.

But...what I *can* talk about is costuming.  We did a first pass at sorting through the costumes...at least, getting like items all on a rack together instead of spread out over all the racks willy-nilly, which is how they were done.  We are, I am told, getting some additional industrial z-racks so we can refine the sorting somewhat once those come in and are assembled.

Then, perhaps, we can do some sort of inventory and see what we actually have now...which will give us a better idea of what we will need in the future.

I wish I had better organizational skills.  Maybe this will force me to learn some, lol.

On another note, the Great British Sewing Bee finale was last week.  Was anyone watching?  We had a discussion about it on the zoom call this morning and lamented that the quality of sewing just isn't up there ...due mostly to the ridiculous time restraints.  But, also, earlier in the series when the choice was between a fantastic vision/ design that isn't fantastically sewn and a well-sewn but less adventurous design that wasn't quite finished, the not went to the design and the person who had executed well but bitten off more than she could chew in the time allotted went home, I found myself wondering if they were looking for 'Britain's best amateur sewer' or 'Britain's best amateur designer'. I think that subtle shift happened when May Martin (a sewing educator) stepped down as one of the judges and Esme Young ( a fashion designer) took her place. In the final pattern challenge of this series, Patrick emphasized 'We have given you PLENTY  of time' to sew a pair of very fiddly opera gloves.  Looking at how everyone faired...I'd say they gave them plenty of time to sew it perfectly but no extra time to go back and fix mistakes that are likely to be made by someone who's never tackled something like opera gloves.  Of course, the winner of that challenge was the one person who had actually made gloves before.  The other two made mistakes they didn't have time to fix, which was sad.  I am not sure the best skilled sewer is one who never makes mistakes...or one who has the determination and wherewithal to undo and correct a mistake.

 I know  I am never the first type but hopefully the second, lol.

Back to Work

 ...an update of sorts.  I returned to my normal work hours last week so I guess I'm almost restored, lol.

My hip continues to improve; I've been released from physical therapy as they said I had improved enough.  I'm supposed to keep walking and do some strengthening exercises about three times a week.

Um.  yeah, sure...meant to do that...

But I am walking.  I've hit 7K steps pretty regularly and have even made it up to 10 k once or twice.  I'm at 8K right now and am planning to do some laps around the house to get up to 10 before I head to bed tonight.

The foot is still swelling slightly...more if I don't wear the compression socks.  At my post op visit a couple of weeks ago, I told the surgeon what was going on with my foot, and commented that it felt like a bad sprain.  I actually sprained that ankle really bad back in 2001, and it was very similar both in how it felt and how it was restricted.  He got kind of a funny look on his face and said, 'You know, sprains don't  really ever go away...in the course of the surgery we clamped your foot in a big boot-like stirrup and manipulated it pretty aggressively.  It's entirely possible we have aggravated that old injury.'

Well that would explain a LOT, lol.

But I can put on shoes and socks unassisted again, so that's a gain.   I feel like I'm about where I was a year ago, before the situation began to deteriorate at a faster pace.  I should continue to improve, so long as I keep moving, lol.

The finger is still bandaged.  It's extremely tender and I keep it bundled more to insulate it against bumps than to bandage the wound.  It is closing but it's slow.  And I'm making much use of the backspace as I'm posting because...9 finger typing...

On a whole 'nuther topic...We have gotten a dedicated room at church for costuming; a crew actually began the process of sorting and organizing the costumes last week; I'm going to stay late a couple of nights this week to do some as well. I'm told we'll need Bible costumes and some Dickens costumes for the Christmas production this year...not sure what else. Maybe we can get a jump on it and get some things created ahead of time; I'm thinking men's Bible costume vests/over coats, for sure. We seem to have developed a real shortage there... 

Not sure how well I can wrangle hangers with a bummed hand but we'll see....

...and the klutz is at it again...

 Got a mandoline (the slicer, not the instrument, lol) around Christmas last year; finally pulled it out to slice cucumbers for salad on Tuesday.

It was a fairly large cucumber, and I thought, 'My hand is a good 3" above that blade, I'll whittle it down a bit and then use the guard."

Stupid.  Stupid. Stupid.

I did fine for about the first dozen passes, then something happened...still don't know what....and the cuke twisted and threw my pinkie finger right down on the blade.

Y'all.  I was still on aspirin to avoid clots, post surgery.  That thing bled and bled and bled...we went to urgent care, where I went when I stupidly cut my index finger last year, but when I told them I was on aspirin they said I had to go to the ER.

So off we went...to the pricier (and closer) of the two hospitals.  It wasn't stitchable, so they put a compression bandage on it but it was still bleeding profusely after about a half hour (at this point I'd been squeezing my pinkie for about an hour and a half to two hours; my left hand was cramping) so they put some stuff on it to help the blood coagulate, wrapped it up tightly and told me to leave it for 48 hours. 'If it's still bleeding when you change the bandage, come back.'

It hurts worse than last year's injury.  Probably because my finger was twisting as it hit the blade.  I actually went looking for my post surgery pain meds  middle of the night on Tuesday, it hurt that badly.  But I had stashed them so well (didn't actually take them after surgery; it was never that bad) I couldn't find them.  I took an ice pack back to bed and managed to get back to sleep.

Well, not going into gross detail but the non-stick dressing completely adhered to the booboo so when we tried to take it off on Thursday...it pulled on the injury and it started bleeding again.

So we went back.  Following directions.  Was SO excited to go to the ER in the evening on July 4th, but they were surprisingly not busy, at least while we were there.

A soak in a sterile saline bath and the old dressing came free with minimal bleeding so I got bandaged back up and sent home with instructions to change it after another 48 hours.

Just changed the bandage again and that puppy is still oozing when disturbed. And it still hurts, although not so badly as earlier in the week.

Stupid. Stupid.  Been saying that a lot.

So much for getting back in the sewing room.

Sigh.

I am going to get myself some of those chain-mail gloves, lol.

I lost my blogroll...

 This hurts...

I had a long list of blogs that I followed from back in the day.  Unfortunately, some of them have fallen into ...other hands?...and were now being updated with non-sewing material, to put it mildly.

I repeatedly tried to edit out the blogs that were now talking about stuff other than sewing, or that set off my Unsafe Site alert when clicked, or that were now just filled with crazy asian script, but I could. not. get. Blogger to save updates.  The Save button just would NOT activate.  I tried over and over, over several months.

Then I hit on an idea...what if I just made a new blog list widget, with the bloggers that I could remember who were still publishing?  I could copy and paste from the old list pretty easily.  Then I could delete the old one and hopefully not get those random non- sewing links showing up

It was sad to go through the list and see all the fine folks who were no longer blogging.  And, it's true, some had even reactivated after several years of being dormant...that was exciting to see.  But truth was...any non- active blog seems to be subject to being hijacked and used for other purposes so I took a deep breath and just listed the ones I thought were active, as best I could remember.

It saved it...in the wrong place.  I tried to move it, but no dice, so I did a new one...again...

It saved, I thought, but all I managed to do was get rid of both the old list and the list in the wrong place.  The list in the right place, for whatever reason, didn't save.

So I will likely have to reconstruct it all from scratch again and that will take some time.

Bummer.

I guess this is the kind of thing that happens when I can't actually sew, lol.

I will say I am recovering from the hip surgery slowly.  It's one week out today and I actually managed to lift my foot high enough to get over the edge of the bathtub, so I could take a real shower.  Hooray for small victories...

New Parts....

 Specifically, a new right hip.  Installed on Thursday...and I'm really amazed at how little pain I have today.  And today is worse than yesterday, lol.  I figure tomorrow will be about the same and then we should start seeing improvement.  I hope to be consistently walking without the walker in a week.  I can do it a little now...but I'm trying to be good....

Incredible what new tecniques are out there for these things.  That surgery took 30 minutes.  

Maybe in a few weeks I can actually put on my own socks and tie my shoes again....

And get back into the sewing room.  I'm behind. ;-)

A little tomfoolery...

 So, nearly 7 years of planning came to fruition last week when the total eclipse went right over my parents' farm.

The kids came up from Florida.  My sister and her family came in from NY state and Pennsylvania.  

It was a family reunion...and a perfect day.

The best picture was taken by The Artist, who climbed up on the tallest grain bin to get his vantage point.

If you click on the picture to make it bigger you can even see Venus.  The house I grew up in is there in the trees, lol.

My ever practical hubby waited until after the event to order T shirts....he wanted to make sure the weather cooperated and we actually saw it, lol.

We saw the  2017 eclipse at Tennessee's Fall Creek Falls State Park, so the shirt he picked was appropriate.

If you look really, really closely...you'll see two red French knots indicating the approximate locations where we were when we saw them.  It was kinda frustrating, because the map isn't accurate...the 2017 path is marked too far south, and this year's path is marked too far north.  

Ok, adding a closer shot because I could just barely see them in the other:

So, yeah, very approximate, lol.

A wee bit of Fray Check on the back to make sure the knots stay knotted and...custom shirts, lol.

The next Big National Eclipse will be in 2045.  I'll be 86.  Not sure I'll make that one, lol.  But if I'm still around I'm sure I'll try.  

It's that cool. 

Hey! A New Top!

 So I didn't think I would be doing ANY sewing for myself any time soon.  The church choir has dropped the 'seasonal color' thing we've done for so long and are just wearing, well, Janice Rigg's 'Common Wardrobe'...without realizing it, lol.  Denim with neutrals.  So, I figured...no more choir-driven sewing.

But.  Turned out that only sorta applies.  We got word early this week that for Easter we are to wear kind of a salmony pink or a turquoise/aquaish blue, with the neutrals.

Thought I had something that would work, but the scales have crept up a bit over the last year and...it was too snug.

So, what to do, what to do.  I had a sweater the right color in the closet, but I needed a top to go under it.

Dug around in the stash and found a stripy knit print that I got for the Hydrangea wardrobe.  

Timestamp on this photo is 1:26 PM

Time stamp on this photo is 4:08.

Of course, if this had been The Great British Sewing Bee I would have had about an hour and a half to do that, but I went carefully and did a couple of extra steps to hopefully keep things humming along.  Something hosed up in the tension on the double needle hem so it's a wee bit tunneled, but that'll be our secret.  At least the pinks match...

I need something I can get on and off quickly because I will have about 15 minutes to change into my bible costume after the choir leaves the platform before I have to be in place for the mini-production we're doing this year.  And then, when that's done...change back to the choir clothes to repeat the process for second service. 

I will take a mesh bag to put over my head so I don't smear the makeup.  Hopefully. LOL.

But at least I have made SOMETHING for myself this year...

Up late but done

 So, this is the last bit of sewing that I have to sew for the Easter production; dress rehearsal is tomorrow so I had to finish tonight.

I told myself I had to be done by midnight; I have a whole hour to spare, lol.

Another lady is making black costumes for the two Pharisees in our cast, but we needed something resembling the prayer shawls that peek out from under the head drapes.  As I mentioned in the last post, we had some from when we had blue and white Pharisee costumes and at first we thought we'd just sew black ribbon over the blue ribbon.

But, you know, ya never really know what might be useful in the future and we might need those blue-ribboned drapes, since we still have the blue-and-white costumes they go with, so I just decided to make new ones with the black ribbon..

Now, I want to say right up front that these are in no way intended to replicate an actual tallit.  This is stage costuming and is meant to suggest it only.  Despite my usual over-the-top dedication to being authentic, this is something I think is better served by suggestion.  Using an actual tallit with an otherwise inaccurate costume just seems ....wrong.  So we have reasonable facsimiles, not actual replicas.

That includes the tassels.  In the older ones, I just used purchased tassels but sewing notion availability being what it is nowadays, the only tassels I could find in the right size (and price, lol) were red and black, which wouldn't do.  So I bought several skeins of ecru embroidery floss and set about making my own.

And I made tassels, not proper tzitzit, because...well, the whole cultural appropriation thing, and I had no idea how to actually make tzitzit and I didn't really have time to research it.  I had made tassels before, as part of a project with my jr high girls class back in the day,  so I at least had an idea of where to start.

And I took a shortcut.  The instructions I'd had on making tassels began with wrapping the floss around a card...and, you know, those skeins are really already looped around.

So I just cut 'em in half.  Carefully.

Then I cut a length from the extra skein I'd bought  and tied off the looped end of the half-skein, after draping a bit of blue floss over it (the blue thread is specified in Numbers, so I used it, even though it's not proper tzitzit)

I tied it tightly , then cut another bit of floss and tied it off just below the bend.

I wrapped the ends of that second piece around and tied it, then wrapped them around to the other side and tied again...several times... and finished it by pulling the ends down through the middle.  This looks rather muddled, but you can see the large darning needle I used to pull those ends through.

Then I trimmed off the ends even

Sewed them onto the corners of the drapes.

And here's the finished product. 

 I don't think it will show much; I think there's a black head drape that will be over it. But I haven't seen the new costumes, just the inspiration picture, so I'm just going off of that.

Now I need to go collect my old costume and head drapes and such to take to church tomorrow.  It's a short production...only about 25 ish minutes...so we will have regular choir first and I'll have to change from church clothes to the bible costume pretty quickly.  Without smearing the makeup, lol.  Gonna try the mesh-bag-over-the-head trick; hopefully that will work.

I have more bible costumes to sew this spring, but they are for the kids ministry at the church where my two younger kids are on staff so they can wait until after things settle down a bit.

Another costume out the door...

 So, here were are at the end of March, and I have not made a single thing for my closet yet this year.  Oh, I've putzed around on the Velvet Hippie Earth Mother Skirt, but it is really kind of a tedious thing to do and my heart is not in making a velvet skirt whilst the azaleas are blooming and the birds are singing and spring is calling.  I want to sew nice linen things.

But, first, the Easter Production.  This costume isn't going in the costume wardrobe, it's for a friend who is on staff at church and is, by default, going to be in all the productions.  He's borrowed one of my personal extra costumes and he's borrowed my son's costume in the past, so I thought I'd just make him his own.

The fabric came from a sale at Fabric Mart...the under robe is made of a wool/ poly/ lycra blend and it's really nice.  I did not make NEARLY as many bone-headed mistakes this go round; I guess I just needed to clean the cobwebs out of the bible costume skills, lol.

I got it to him today; I hadn't told him I was doing it but he'd figured it out, lol.  ETA  a couple of days later:  He thought I was just making a costume for him to wear, LOL.  He didn't realize until we were talking about it at dress rehearsal that this costume is for him to OWN.  

I have a couple of small pieces to make for the new Pharisee costumes that another lady is making.  We had white and blue costumes from years ago, with tasseled shawls, but thanks to The Chosen (you are watching it, right?) we need to put our Pharisees in black costumes, lol.  At first, I was just going to sew black ribbon over the blue ribbon on our existing shawls but, after I thought about it I decided we migh want the blue ones so I found some cotton/ linen fabric on sale at Jo Ann's (the only game in town, now, although who knows how much longer that'll hold) to make new ones.  It's surprisingly nice; I think it will work well.  But I can't find any tassels.  So I got several skeins of embroidery floss and I'm just going to make 'em.  

Dress rehearsal is Thursday; I'm behind, lol.  I will probably go in to work late; I have several hours in over my allotment already this pay period so I can  afford to use a couple of hours to sew in the morning.

Maybe I can squeeze in a bit of me-sewing next week...lol...but it will be a squeeze.  The calendar really doesn't let up until  mid April...and that's only for a couple of weeks.  I don't get an extended period of 'nothing on the calendar' until June...but I'm going to get a new hip that first week, so it's a good thing I have some time with no out-of-the-ordinary demands...  hopefully I can get recuperated enough that when things start ramping up again in the fall I'll be back to normal.  And able to put on socks and tie my shoes, lol.  It's day surgery, believe it or not.  Out patient.  Medical technology is truly amazing.

A little reminiscing....

 So, yeah, I am procrastinating.  I popped my knee a bit this evening and it hurts, so I'm sitting at the computer instead of putzing around the cutting table on the next costume...

I poked around on the blog a bit, looking at old posts, and I stumbled across one from 2007 in which I asked all my readers where they were from.

Saw a lot of names I hadn't seen in a long, long time.  I don't think I'll try it again; I had about 30 folks comment on that post and I'm sure I'd get nowhere near that now.  I don't think people comment like they used to.  I know I don't, lol.  Back in the day, there weren't feedburners and we read everyone's post right on the source.  Now most of the blog reading is done on something like Feedly and it takes an extra three or four clicks to get to the 'leave a comment' box.  I'm just as guilty as anyone else of reading right by...sometimes I think I'll go back and leave a comment but I almost always forget.  So I'm not whining about the lack of comments...just kind of wistfully remembering when it was different, lol.

But I did get a bit nostalgic for the community that we had back in those days; we all sewed and wrote it up and commented.  It was a real treat.  We even had some meet ups on shopping road trips and expo dinners, lol.  It was an amazing thing to see how we all connected via the web.

These days...folks are youtubing instead of blogging.  I do have a youtube channel; I think I got it when I made an account back in something like 2009.  I had no idea it was even there until fairly recently.  But, lawd have mercy, I don't think I could come up with enough content to make the youtube channel a thing.  I'm having enough trouble keeping two blogs active.

Maybe I'll fiddle with it in retirement, lol.  Be a cheesy old lady youtuber. Keep the brain sharp by learning video editing.....

Yeah, right, lol.

So anyway this is kinda pointless except to say that I had a love burst for all my friends...those I've met and those I haven't ...who pop by and read the sporadic posts and sometimes even leave a comment.  I appreciate all of you more than I could say.

I will hopefully be back shortly with another costume to show ;-)

Oof...a rough weekend in the sewing room....

 Good for humility, I guess.  This shoulda been something I could do in my sleep.

It's Bible costume season again.  This is not for the current church production...I am not really involved in that again, too much travel at the wrong time this year for me to be part of that team.  But I did have a friend who is participating in a walk-through program as John the Beloved and he needed a costume.  He purchased the fabric from JoAnns and Hobby Lobby and brought it to me to sew up.

First is the coat... It's a very pretty piece of upholstery fabric that has a sprayed-on interfacing.  I washed it and it softend up considerably but that backing was icky and it's going to start flaking off before long.  The coat will hang much better once it DOES rub off, I think, but it's going to be messy.  He decided he wanted sleeves, so I planned to make a Bog Coat; however, the fabric was only 54" wide and my friend is a strapping 6'4" fellow and, since the width of the fabric is the finished circumference of the coat, I didn't think that would be roomy enough.  So I altered up my trusty McCall's Bible costume...cutting the front open and the back on the fold and adding slits to the sides.  I had to cut everything on the cross - grain because he really only got enough to make a sleeveless vest. So in my humble opinion, between the bulk of the fabric, the spray on interfacing and the cross-grain cut, it doesn't hang as nicely as I would like.  I did manage to get that tried on him this morning, though, and he is pleased so that's all that matters.  I bought it back home to hem up the sleeves.

I already had the under gown cut out and, once I had the coat sleeves hemmed, proceeded to work on the gown.  Shoulda been a piece of cake.

But the right side and the wrong side are nearly indistinguishable, and that bit me.  I added self-drafted pockets and put the right one on too high, gauging off of the notch that marked the sleeve front instead of the notch that marked the waist line.  I'd already trimmed, turned and pressed the pocket facing before I realized my error.  

Cut it back, unstitched it, patched the hole in the seam allowance, cut a new pocket and tried again.

And noticed when I started to pin up the sideseams that the finished pocket bag was on the OUTSIDE of the robe.

I unpicked it, filled in the hole in the seam allowance and gave up.  He's got one pocket on the left side.

If you click on that to embiggen it you will see my hasty patch jobs.  The edge didn't really waver that much...that's just the unstable fabric showing it's tricks.

The fabric, while it appears to be a woven, behaves like a knit. A very unstable knit.  It wasn't nice to sew as it kept shifting and stretching in odd places.  The neckband (I elected to put a band rather than a facing) twisted oddly on one side.  Didn't want to risk damaging the picky fabric so I left it; I don't think it's going to be terribly noticeable but I'm not happy with it.

The whole thing is VERY heavy; my plastic hanger was threatening to buckle when I took the picture.

I have about 3 more costumes to make in the next couple of weeks...one IS for the Easter mini-production...so that's what my sewing is gong to be for the foreseeable future.

Hopefully the next ones will be more cooperative.  And I won't be stupid.

See Blog Two...

 I write two blogs, for a number of reasons, and most folks don't read the second one.

But, in the interest of not typing the same thing twice...here's a link...

Beer Lahai Roi 2/12/24

Hopefully sewing will happen later this week...

Whittling the WIP Stack --- the Velvet Hippie Earth Mother Skirt

It's been too long since I actually sat down at the sewing machine and made a thing to wear, lol.  

But, as it happens, I have a stack of things I have started ...some really an embarrassingly long time ago...and I just need to clear the Work In Progress stack.

So I started with the velvet earth mother skirt. When I left it...just a little under 11 months ago, gulp, I had finished the yoke with the pockets.  I decided to cut out each tier, sew it up, and then cut the next one, to avoid mixing the pieces up (one of the previous Hippie Earth Mother Skirts may have had that problem...).  

So, today I finished cutting the first gathered tier, and sewed it on, then I cut and assembled the second tier and have it sewn on, although I do need to serge the seam to finish the edges.

I did tackle my cutting schematic to see if I could do wider, and fewer, tiers, but my fabric was 2" too narrow for that to work.  I have to use the narrow tiers to be able to use up the fabric efficiently.

Which means...5 tiers, with each tier 1.5 times the volume of the one above it...the hem is going to be something like 330" around.  Yeesh. Fortunately, for a velvet, the fabric is fairly light.

I made a casing for a drawstring, just in case it's too heavy for the elastic, just the same.

So, anyway, I shall be gathering for a bit, lol.

When doing something so bodacious and hefty, I use dental floss to gather ... Zigzag over it, 

Then pull the dental floss and secure the ends.  This is waxed, which means the gathers aren't terribly inclined to slip once I've got them arranged...but it's kinda stiff, so I do pull it out after the seaming is all done.

That's just a little tedious, lol.

Not sure when I will finish this; likely not in time to wear it this season as 1) all the fancy events are behind us and 2) even though our high was in the teens today, we'll be pushing 70 in a week.  We're likely done with winter at that point, based on historical trends.  But I'll be ready for  any holiday parties that arise in 2024, lol.

Found in a box...

 I wasn't even really aware I had kept this...

Back in 1991, I made applique'd sweatshirts for the family Christmas card photo...

(It's a good thing you can't see much of mine, it was pretty garish, lol.  I used remnants of a bit of piecing I did of some Christmas prints for another project).  Kids at this time were the Princess and the Artist.

Eight years later,  The Actor, age 5, wore the toy soldier shirt to his grandparents' house... pictured with his brother and two cousins...

A couple of weeks ago, I dug all the way to the bottom of the 'Christmas Shirts' box (which also has seasonal towels and oven mitts and such) and pulled out the toy soldier shirt.  I'd forgotten it was still here.  My Sweet Babboo still has his shirt, although he says it's  too small (hm).  Mine was put into a family reunion auction several years ago; I think the Princess's shirt got hand-me-downed to younger cousins, so I was surprised this shirt was still here.

It just happened to fit the Little Prince this year:

The only thing that these three photos have in common, besides the shirt, is the Artist.  

How fast time flies...

A little bit of the gold glitter paint that crisscrosses the soldier has broken off, but other than that it's held up pretty well.  Mayhap in two or three years Little Brother (and that nickname will change once I hit on the right thing...) will wear it as well.

Maybe I need to make a new batch of candy cane shirts.

They were complicated...I first sewed red ribbons (two different widths!) onto white fabric, then turned that into the candy cane applique's.  I have since found some candy-cane striped fabric, which works, but the ribbon looks so much nicer, lol.  I may even have a few extras in one of my scrap bins...

Yeah, that'd be crazy.  Better to just enjoy the old pictures, lol.

Santa Claus is coming tonight....

 ...at our house, anyway.

We have always done Christmas under our tree at an odd time; when the kids were growing up, it was always New Year's Day.  We were typically at grandparents' on Christmas Day itself, so we just made use of the whole 12 days of Christmas thing and had our traditional Christmas on January 1.  

I thought that would be a good preparation for the inevitable day when we had kids who needed to visit inlaws on Dec. 25; we could do our celebrating later on and it wouldn't feel like we were changing tradition.  Much, anyway.  Now, with kids who live out of state and have to be back to work on January 2, New Year's Day doesn't work for celebrating anymore...they need travel time.  But, no matter, we have almost a whole week to work with; this year we are gathering on the 28th.

And we needed three new stockings this year...two weddings and a new baby meant I needed to get crafting again. I have posted before about making stockings to match the original set we got in 1985, but this year was different because one of the stockings had NOTHING for me to trace/ copy...I was on my own.

And I realized I don't have a moniker for the newest grandson, the Little Prince's Little Brother.  I'm going to have to puzzle on that one for a bit; he's a corker of a kid at 10 months already.  But, meantime, his was the easiest since it was just another Teddy Bear stocking...and I'd already made two of those. 

I was a bit perplexed over the Dancer's stocking...she's The Artist's new wife...but when I took a really good look at his stocking I realized it wasn't going to be any harder to replicate than the teddy bears.  I just tweaked it a little...giving her horse blonde mane and tail and batty eyelashes, lol.

 But the Actor's stocking was the Jolly Old Elf himself...so his Little Redheaded Girl needed a legit Mrs. Claus on her stocking and I was stumped.

I took an applique pattern I'd used before to make stockings for my inlaws and also for My Sweet Babboo and me...Snowman/Snowlady...and adapted the Snowlady pattern but I wasn't happy with it.  I did the other two first while I stewed about Mrs Claus.  Last week, as I was finishing up the blonde rocking horse, The Princess was over looking at my handwork and I lamented to her about my lack of inspiration for the last one.  So she did what I should have done...hit up Pinterest and found a felt applique (for sale, of course, not a pattern).  It was quite different from my snowlady adaptation and I wasn't sure I was up to it, but she sent me the link to the picture just the same.

When I fnally couldn't put it off any longer, I pulled up the pinterest picture and decided it was worth a shot.

I think it turned out looking better than the modified snow lady would have...but it's still far from perfect.  I had problems with the sewing order...the arms  are UNDER the dress bodice but ON TOP OF the apron.  And, yes, I messed it up and had to do a plan B but if I don't tell you what I did you probably can't tell, lol.

It'll do.  If they have any kids, I will find a pattern for applique elves, lol.

So, here are the three stockings I made, pretty much since the first of the month, lol.  Nothing like waiting till the last minute...again...

And I kept the stockings out of storage last year so I could work on them before the last minute...oy, the best laid plans...Then, I had a minor accident with the Actor's stocking and an uncapped marker...sigh.  I managed to get the spot, which is fortunately on the back side, down to a rather large shadowy spot, but I'm not posting that, lol.

As a note, this year I actually noticed a manufacturer's tag in the stockings.  Facepalm; I hadn't paid any attention to it at all in the past.  They were made by Russ; I did a quick google search and actually found Ebay listings for the three original stockings ...Used Santa and Teddy Bears, selling for about $8 each, and New Rocking Horses (3 of those!). Selling for about $16 each.  So they are not particularly valuable collector's items, lol.

The Flute Player chuckled that I had no idea what I was getting myself into when we got those first three stockings...

ETA...and here's a picture of the whole lot of them with their stockings.  Prince Charming's is just barely visible behind the Princess....

Left to right: The Little Redhaired Girl (who is married to) The Actor: The Flute Player and her hubby The Jokester; The Artist and his wife The Dancer; The Little Prince, Prince Charming, The Princess and ...The Little Prince's Little Brother, who shall have a nickname before long....

That was not the plan....

 It has been an ...interesting...couple of weeks in these parts.  I typed up a whole backstory and deleted it; it's tedious, lol.  The upshot is that my hubby went to Indiana to help his mom, came down with covid after he arrived, and I tested positive for it myself after I found out he had it; I was on meds for a sinus infection after a negative covid test earlier.  

So I spent last week at home with the cat.  I didn't really feel bad, and I never developed the bad cough and sore throat that other folks have had, but I had zero stamina.  Just walking up the stairs pooped me out.  I did manage to get some of the Christmas decor up, around working from home, but the sewing stuff I intended to do last week just didn't happen.

But I got the lights swtiched around on the porch rail garland.  That was a PAIN.  Because, stupid me, I made assumptions.... I ASSUMED that the white lights I bought from Hobby Lobby were the equivalent of the colored lights I'd bought from Hobby Lobby and switched out all the purple lights with the white ones, only to find that it didn't work when I plugged them in (why didn't I check after switching one light?  Well...it matched visually; I thought it was the same....bonehead  move...).  So I had to take all the white lights back off and put them back on their original string.  Then I got a couple of the multi-color light strings that had been on the bushes two years ago and pulled red, green and yellow lights off and stuck them in the spots where the purple ones had been on the garland lights.  I even switched out about 1/3 of the blue lights.  Once I verified everything was working (I learn slowly but I do learn), I put the colored lights back on the garland, then I wrapped the white lights around the garland also.

More than one way to skin a cat, right?

The photo still looks a little blue but in real life the white makes it sparkle...I like it, even though it's a cooler white than I have on the bushes.  My thumbnails have pretty much recovered.

We put the tree up before my Sweet Babboo left town, but it took me a while to  get  the needles it shed  vacuumed up so I could put down the tree skirt and the traditional Christmas book selection (a tree's gotta have something under it, lol).  The teardrop lights that failed utterly as outdoor lights last year look really nice on the tree, although I do have some mini incandescents on it too, so I can run the 4 ornament spinners...  It is an artificial tree this year since it went up so early.

We got a new tree-topper this year...I liked it when I got it but when we got it out of the box we found that it is one sided; the back is just lights and wrapped cord, lol.  

Later on I managed to get the rather pitiful throw-back tree up on the porch...

My grandmother had an aluminum tree with a rotating light when I was little enough to believe in magic, lol.  This one came from a hoarder's stash about 10 years ago.  I don't know how long it will hold up but it is fun and nostalgic on the sun porch.  About half the ornaments on it were some that my grandmother bought late in her life. 

I had to move furniture around in the family room to get what we call the 'stocking tree' up.  We used a little tree by the fireplace to put the stockings around before My Sweet Babbo added the mantle; now we can hang the stockings but the tree is a tradition.

Putting up the tree only takes about 45 minutes...and most of that is fussing with the multi function lights. But moving the furniture about did me in.

Each one of those tasks took a separate day.  So, while I did putter around in the sewing room a couple of times, I don't really have much to show for it yet.  

But at least the house is mostly festive; I have a few household decorations that I opted to forgo this year.

I totally missed the church Christmas production this year.  I wasn't able to be in it or really do much,  due to the craziness of the fall, (koff two weddings and three out of town trips koff) but I did intend to hang out in the dressing room with safety pins and such if anyone needed costume help.  But, nope, couldn't make it work.  It has felt WEIRD, let me tell you....

But the retest was negative Sunday evening so I have been back at work this week.  It was nice to hear an actual human voice, lol.

Now I just need to finish getting the Christmas Epistles out and sew up the stockings that are hanging over my head yet...I have two weeks...

(Postscript:  My dear MIL had apparently already had this particular variant or was protected by her booster or both as she did not contract it whilst My Sweet Babboo was holed up in the bedroom.  He did wear a mask when he came out, but they did eat together, so I can't help but think she was exposed.  So glad she is still healthy)

Making Lemonade from Lemons: A non-sewing project...

 Two years ago I looked at my Christmas lights...cheap ones from Hobby Lobby...and realized there's way too much purple in them.  It kinda made the whole house look bluish/purple...we had snow on Jan 2 (following the high of 70 degrees then storms with tornado warnings on Jan 1), so I actually have a real, Christmas-looking picture here (This is RARE in Alabama...):

So last year I went in search of some nice red, white and green lights.  I found some that were recommended by a friend...pretty, tear-drop shaped lights.  Ordered 7 strings to begin the switchover processes; can't afford to buy all the lights at once, lol.   I put them on the bushes and left the Hobby Lobby lights on the railing.

But before we took those lights down, about 3 strings of those lights on the bushes had half the string dark.  And when we did take them down, a number of the pretty bulbs HAD WATER IN THEM. And, the teardrops were glass...pretty fragile glass...and a few were broken.  A few more broke because they tapped each other as we were moving the lights around. Yes, the lights were rated for indoor/ outdoor use.  Obviously, though, they weren't up to the elements.  We spent a day plugging and unplugging lights and managed to get all but two of the strings working again but I can't put them outside and, TBH, I'm not sure they will work if we plug them in this year.

So I began another search for red/green/white LED lights for the front of the house.  I have been looking since, oh, I dunno, July or August, for said lights.  And have found nothing.    Or at least, nothing I wanted; there were some that had, like, lime-green lights....nope.

With time running out, we went to Lowe's.  Where I bought two strings of white, two strings of red, and two strings of green LED lights with the intention of just switching the dadgum lights around and make my own red/white/green light strings.

So, instead of doing the Christmas sewing that needs doing on my day off (since Veteran's Day was Saturday) today...I switched lightbulbs in half the string sets.

That was way more complicated than it should have been.  Turns out each string has five light sockets/ bulb bases that are larger than the other 95, so I had to be careful to NOT put a regular bulb into one of the larger ones; it doesn't make contact and the string won't light.  I finally wised up and started marking the off-sized sockets and the bulb bases with a sharpie marker.  I have a LED light repair kit, which includes a 'bulb puller'... a skinny little rounded fork thing to pop off the lights.  It helped quite a lot, actually, but my fingers are still sore.  I'll probably do the rest of them later this week, but now that I'm onto the peculiarities it should go faster than it did today.

I'm even thinking about buying some white lights from Hobby Lobby, to match the multicolored lights, and just switching out the purple lightbulbs; I think that will help warm up the garland.  Might even be good enough that I won't have to switch the lightstrings on the garland.

Then I can decide what to do about the holly bushes in front of the porch...lol.

A PS....I went to add the labels and realized I had typed the whole post ON THE WRONG BLOG.  

Copied all the HTML and pasted it in here, then deleted the other one...

Yup.  It's Monday...

A Quick? Favor for a Friend...

 Not linking this post to social media, lol, since part of the deal of doing favors is that NO ONE ELSE hears about it.... 

Anyway, I had a friend who had some bibbed insulated outerwear pants that were just a little too short in the torso.  She's a tiny lady, and I'm not sure what size range these pants actually are, but she gave them to me last spring asking if I could add a bit to the shoulder straps so she had a bit more wearing ease.  

I figured I would just add length to the adjustable strap so it would have more room but I wasn't in a hurry...after all, we were heading into summer, this is Alabama...in my midwest-raised brain, these were pants to be worn on a snow day.  I told her I would do them the next time I had black thread in the machine.

Which was, of course, the MOTG lace dress.  Got past the wedding, didn't sew anything because I had a mess to clean up.

The day before I left to go to Florida, she texted me wanting to know if her pants were done yet.  It was going to be a bit chilly (read: lower 50's - upper 40's) for the fall festival outing at the local corn maze and she wanted to wear them.

Never occurred to me that someone would want to wear snow pants with the temps above freezing.   The midwest is still strong in me at times, even after 40+ years in the South...

Well, I clearly couldn't do them before we left, so I told her it would be the first thing I did when we got back.

Looked at them Sunday night...literally the day we got home...and realized it wasn't going to be as easy as I thought.  The adjustable straps were sewn in a loop around the buckle, like a bra strap.  I couldn't do the modification the way I thought.  I couldn't recreate that loop if I took it apart; no way my sewing machine could get in that tight spot to sew the end down.

What to do what to do what to do...

Wednesday it hit me...what if I lengthened the other side?  Where the buckle comes up from the front?

Took a look and that was just a simple loop. So I got some black grosgrain ribbon on the way home from work Thursday, and yesterday it took me all of about 20 minutes to add 4" to the front of those straps.

She had told me she didn't care what it looked like; but I don't think this looks too bad....

Next up:  Christmas stocking for the three people who were added to the family this year...gonna hafta get creative for those, too...

A bit of whimsy...

 So, the last couple of weeks....

My Sweet Babboo is, as I have mentioned before, part of a historical group that recreates 18th century frontiersmen...it's an extension of the boys' ministry at our church.

And, a couple of weeks ago, this organization had its every-other-year Territorial Rendezvous...a 3-day frontiersman- era campout for all the guys in the Southeast Region.

And it just so happened that this event was at a facility that was about 15 minutes south of where our youngest daughter , AKA The Flute Player, now lives in Florida.

So you know I tagged along, and got dropped off at said daughter's for the weekend whilst hubby shot black powder rifles, bow and arrows, threw tomahawks, etc. in the woods.

After the campout, he picked me up...we took the kids out to dinner (her brother The Actor is now on staff at the same church, so he and his new wife are in the same area, which is convenient; we can see them all at the same place), then we drove up to Holiday Inn's Orange Lake Resort and checked in for the week.  Timeshare points being put to use.

Now, this resort literally backs up to Animal Kingdom at Disney World.   So we spent that week Doing Disney.

And, as it just also so happened, My Sweet Babboo's birthday happened to be Tuesday whilst he was there.  And he wanted to do Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party.  So the kids came up and joined us and we were there from about 5 to midnight.

Now, this is a costumed thing.  And we did it in 2019 when we did the very first family Disney trip.  I managed to put together an Edna Mode costume, whacking up what had been intended as a wearable muslin for a Burda magazine dress,  but didn't get any good pictures then.  But, hey, it's been 4 years, and it's a good costume, and it's just hanging in the closet...so I wore it again.  And this time, I made sure my sweetie took a picture.  He took two, actually, but one was dark and the other was over exposed.  So...going with the dark one.

A couple of days later, I did a meet-and-greet with Edna Mode herself, lol, so you can see if I was close on my costume...

I will likely forever be looking for opportunities to pull that out and wear it, lol.  It's just too fun.

But...whoa, y'all. We were gone nearly two weeks, and jumped into a really busy week when we got home and...my laundry pile is as tall as I am, lol.  I'm gonna have to excavate that mountain before I do any significant sewing again...

A Quick Reminisce on sewing a Lace Dress...

 Late last Thursday night, as I was nearing the finish line, I commented something to My Sweet Babboo about the craziness it has been sewing three out of the four Mother Of The...dresses.  The Rayon Maxi dress had zero drama,  but the other three...oy, there was drama.  With the first one...it was just my own bone-headedness, which included things like twisting the dress before I sewed in the invisible zipper.  Then there was the Aunt Lena Quasimodo dress I made for the Flute Player's wedding...but I am blaming those problems on the fabric.

Rayon crepe is bad enough when it's cut meticulously on grain.  Cutting it cross grain, which I had to do because of the orientation of the print, just was hopeless.

And that brings us to the black lace dress...

My first problem was probably that I picked the wrong pattern.  I picked a really fitted sheath dress...

Here's the pattern, which I actually purchased because I was smitten with the jacket:

The reviews I had read of this dress looked to have very nicely fitted shoulders/ upper chest.  Bingo.  I'd just leave those vertical darts out and maybe add a bit of width and I should be good to go, right?

Nope.  LOOK at the curves in that dress.  

I. Am. Not. Curvy. Like. That.

I had to straighten out the hip curves considerably after sewing up the first muslin and seeing the poufs I had. The second muslin was better but I probably would've gotten along MUCH better if I had just started with a less shapely pattern.

And, to be honest, I probably should have just made a black sandwashed silk dress and used the lace for a duster coat.  Although I probably would have needed more lace fabric; I had bare inches of scraps left over after all was pieced up and done. 

But...back to  my lament to My Sweet Babboo about the drama.  He just looked at me and said, "Why?"

And that pulled me up short.  Why DID I do that to myself?  Well...I hated to drop what would likely have been $250 bucks on the MOTG dresses I was eyeballing.  (I got that lace at a significant sale price) And those RTW dresses were 100% polyester.  My dress was poly lace over sandwashed silk, lined by rayon bemberg.  Much nicer than just being wrapped in plastic.

And it fit.  I think that was the biggest thing.  The dress fit ME.  

And for some strange reason, I just wanted to tackle a lace dress.

You know,  I learned a lot.  I'd never really tried this type of construction before.  The Flute Player saw the dress just before it was finished...and gasped.  'How long did that take you???' 

'A lot longer than I expected,' I replied.  Then she spotted a scrap of the fabric and looked at it closely.  'OH!  The fabric has the little dangly leafs.  I thought you sewed all those on!'

Well, no wonder she was shocked, lol.

I have come to the conclusion that there must be a lot more engineering in the couture world; I think they must either engineer the patterns so that the seam lines hit the fabric just so or engineer the fabric so that it accommodates the pattern.  Each of the little leaf motifs is sort of framed by scroll work and  I ended up with several small void places...where I had to trim out the motif to sew a seam but there wasn't enough room to replace a motif in the now much smaller framed area after sewing the seam.  Granted, it's not obvious with the black background but if you look closely you can spot them.  And I just don't see any way to avoid that...unless the math was done before hand. But that would be way over my head, lol. 

If you look close, you can see that I'm sewing down a motif that I had to trim away from the only conventional seam on the whole lace overlay.  I just trimmed one side off, sewed the seam, and then tacked the loose side down.  It overlaps the scroll work a bit but from a distance...on the black background...it doesn't show. 

But here's a repeat of a picture from an earlier post.  The void spots jump out with the white background; there isn't room to attach a motif without overlapping another motif, which is lumpy.  Fortunately they are not nearly so obvious with the matte black silk.

 One of the things I learned... I am NOT a couture-level seamstress.

I *did* finish and it *did* look just fine and either no one noticed the void spots or they were polite enough to not mention them, lol.   And, should a suitable occasion arise, I will happily wear it again. Assuming, of course, that it still fits at that point, lol.

Unfortunately, aside from the windblown picture I posted Saturday night...I don't have any pictures yet. 

But now...I have a HUGE mess in my sewing room.  It is staggering how many little motifs are EVERYWHERE.  On the cutting table.  On my sewing machine table.  On the ironing board.  All OVER the floor...I can't believe I cut that many off.

And I did manage to throw a bunch of them in a little box as I was trimming, so ...crazy.

I have a dress to hem for a friend's daughter before I pull the black thread out of the machines.  Gonna pin that up on Wednesday and sew it whilst My Sweet Babboo is off primitive camping this weekend. 

So...I'll do that, and I'll clean up all the little leafy scraps.  Gotta come up with something creative to do with those...somewhere down the line...