childbearing hipster

Leopard Wrap Dress

Remember that?

I ended up banging it out really quickly the day we left for the Midwest, so I could bring it along.

It's the second dress I've made from this pattern (vintage Simplicity 3463), which I really like. I made about a million mistakes: didn't line the pattern up quite right from bodice to skirt, the bias binding is absolutely appalling to look at up close, the facing is pretty bad too (and unfortunately, frequently visible). But the beauty of a busy print is that it's hard to tell with most of my fuckups.

That said, it's a pretty rad little dress. And I'll probably keep making it over and over again (probable next version: red flowers on a pink field). It's figure-forgiving, comfortable, has big pockets--I can't see a reason to wear jeans anymore, honestly.

A Wee Little Cowgirl Dress

I used to wear thrift store cowboy shirts a lot. It was part of my early 90's look: it was too hot in Arizona to wear flannel all year long, I had a little bit of rockabilly going on with my punk-Riot Grrrl thang, and I liked the shiny snaps. Frequently I would wear said cowboy shirts over tiny little hotpants, with laceup Victorian-style boots that had platform soles (god, I loved those boots. I would superglue the soles back on every few months). I also wore a shit-ton of black eyeliner. I wish I had pictures.

I don't have pictures, though. But I do still have some of the shirts. Even after I stopped wearing them, I hung on to a few of my favorites. I sort of thought maybe I'd alter them to fit better, more feminine, to suit the way my style has evolved. But I never got around to it. So pretty fabrics and shiny snaps have just been sitting in a bin waiting to be appreciated, until yesterday.

The result is decidedly imperfect--I didn't cut the sides very well and the seams are slightly crooked and puckery. And along the top, there's a lot of "Oh, wait, I'll do it like this" stitching that one wouldn't tolerate if one were buying such a dress. But all in all? Not bad for an experiment.

Oh, I need a birthday present for a little girl? Hang on, I'll make one.

I had every intention of taking the girls to buy a present for our friend Alice, who just turned two and had a party this afternoon. But then I got the bright idea that I could make her something--they've got rad toys at their house already. After dropping Daisy off at school I came home and dug through the pattern files and found a great, simple dress, and I was pretty sure I could whip it up between lunchtime and the party.

I kind of changed my mind on the way home from the school run and was just about to go right past home and on to Target, but then I changed my mind right back again, because I felt like I should have confidence in my abilities. Right? Right.

As simple as the dress pattern was, I was kind of pushing it. I barely even bothered to pin the pattern to the fabric (more vintage sheeting) before cutting it out, and by the time I realized it would be great to have armhole facings it was way too late for that (Don't look too closely at the armholes, okay?).

At one point I accidentally sewed two things together that should not have been sewn together at all, and nearly bagged the whole thing in favor of a mad dash to the store on the way to the party, but I forged on. I did get to learn how to make a button loop out of thread on the fly, which was pretty awesome and came out really cool. And I stole an image of some Finnish dude's tattoo and made a heat-set transfer, just to give it some edge (Alice's mama has some sweet diving swallows herself, and the sweater I knitted for Alice when she was born has a similar motif).

And we were only ten minutes late for the party! Not too shabby.

Bedtime? Hang on, let me make you some new pajamas

Okay, that's not 100% accurate: I made the polka dotted nightie while Daisy was napping and Molly was at a friend's. But the striped one was cut and sewn while the kids were in the bathtub, between dinner and storytime. Both are made from vintage bedsheets--soft, cool, and easy to care for.

I kind of hate the state of modern children's nightwear: either it's cheap and looks like it would melt if you got too close to the baseboard heater, or it's got licensed characters all over it, or both, or it's beautiful but outrageously priced. In a perfect world I'd find a couple of Lanz of Salzburg nighties every time I hit a thrift store. In the real world, the thrift stores usually have the same stuff Target has, only older and crappier. I like natural fibers. I don't need my small children to have PJ's that resemble lingerie.

So screw you, Children's Nightwear Industrial Complex, I'm making my own.

You say pincushions, I say centerpiece

I don't really buy tomatoes out of season. I use a lot of canned tomatoes, and I buy cherry or grape tomatoes because as far as my palate is concerned, they taste the same all year round. But offseason tomatoes in general taste terrible to me. The other day my spring fever was so strong that I made a tomato/corn/avocado salad to share with friends and the tomatoes I bought were beautiful and round and red and when I cut them open to seed them, the seeds and pulp just stayed there until I dug it all out with a spoon (good ripe summer tomatoes, you cut them open and they just gush). And they tasted like styrofoam. Yuck.

I'm salivating for real tomatoes, and they're months away. I was looking for something else entirely and I found these instructions to make tomato pincushions, and headed straight to the scrap basket. Each tomato only took a few minutes to make, and the sewing ability required is strictly grade school. They look great on the table in a silver-plated fruit basket I found for fifty cents at a garage sale this weekend. I can almost taste them.

This year we're probably going to grow some tomatoes, although the bulk of the tomatoes we buy will still come from local vendors at the farmer's market. That garage sale on Saturday also yielded a barely-used food dehydrator, and I'd like to try my hand at making my own sun-dried tomatoes from start to finish, packing them in oil and seasoning them with my own herbs. I don't even like sun-dried tomatoes, I just want to try it.

Introducing the New Molly

That's what she always says when she's about to show off a new look, and this is a very new look for her: first the haircut, which is the result of her self-trimming. Her efforts were just subtle enough that you couldn't really tell quite what was wrong, and just obvious enough that her hair looked like a bird's nest. Off to the Supercuts for a bob, which she loves.

The New Molly is wearing jeans. Jeans! Trousers! It's a miracle! Peer pressure got to her finally: she came home one day and said "Vanessa says I always wear dresses". "Well, you do," I said. She seemed to think it wasn't a simple observation though, and now she wears pants once in a while. Unfortunately since I forced myself to stop buying pants for little girls who weren't ever going to wear them, all but two pairs are way too short for little Miss Longlegs here. I never thought I'd be making a mental note to buy more pants.

She is wearing this pair of jeans with my project from yesterday. I have hit a knitting wall, hard, and had to take advantage of a sudden urge to sew something. The result: a sweater that I shrunk in the wash a while back has been altered to become a tunic, with little sparkly crochet ruffles at the wrists, and a few vintage buttons scattered around.

No pattern was needed for this, just some measuring: I simply chopped the sleeves off to the right length, and then trimmed the sleeves a touch to make them narrower. I cut the body of the sweater into a slight a-line, turned it inside out, pinned it, and serged the raw edges. That part took about fifteen minutes. There was a tiny bit of puckering because of the stretchiness of the fabric and of how I was too excited to take the time to make the puckering not happen. Lesson learned.

I punched through the raw edge of the sleeves with a small crochet hook to make a row of single crochet with a fancy luxury yarn from my stash that had a touch of red in it, then switched to a bigger hook and made three double crochet stitches in each single crochet to create the ruffles. I dug out a few buttons that picked up the colors in the yarn, and handsewed them onto the tunic using pink Sulky Holoshimmer thread, a cool detail that mirrors the pinkish glitter in the yarn.

Tim Gunn would say it's a little bit happy-hands-at-home, which is pretty much right on the mark: I made it happily, at home, by hand.

OMG, WANT!

How much would my girls love it if they had some bloomers? I think I'm going to have to co-opt this idea.

Baby Kimono top/dress

I was skimming an old issue of Martha Stewart Baby at a friend's house a few weeks back and found this adorable pattern for a very simple kimono-style top that can also be lengthened to make a dress.

It's so easy and clean-lined that you could really have a good time with color and pattern. I'm thinking it would be a great blank canvas for some of the embroidery patterns I've bought from Sublime Stitching, particularly the Sushi Bar and China Town designs.

I'm going to need to hit the fabric store pretty soon, I think.