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blue and brown yarn

This is some super soft yarn that I bought for my sister from Windsor Button in downtown crossing. I know nothing about yarn other than some skeins have to be specially wound before you can knit it (the sales lady said these are a shape that doesn't need that). And I think they come in different sizes, but I'm not so up on what those sizes are. These ones are very soft and snuggly- I figured she could make scarves for the kids out of them. If they're good scarf knitting yarn! No idea on that front either! ;-) But they feel nice and the colors are pretty.


While I was there I bought a bit of cute whale ribbon and some neat pink buttons.




I've been eating lots of good food here. Delicious pepperoni pizza, cannoli, ice cream. And some nice morning coffee:



Yesterday I bought a new sketchbook in Pearl Art, which reminded me of a story from when my sister and I were in college. She was a first year when I was a senior, and I desperately needed more mat board for one of my photography classes in November. She was going into Boston for something and I asked her to stop at Pearl to pick up some. She bought about 3 boards- huge ones, like 3 feet by 4 feet or something very large and stepped out the door to walk to the T stop. It was a REALLY blustery day and the way she tells it, she had to wrestle the mat board- which wanted to turn into a sail- up the street and into the T, and then out to Wellesley. The experience nearly killed her, almost blew her out to the Atlantic Ocean, and made her determined to major in something that didn't involve wrestling huge pieces of cardboard on a regular basis. I'm sure she got me back for it somehow. ;-)

lobster roll

lobster roll
Originally uploaded by wck

Rainy vacation!

Dan and I have looooong history in Rhode Island (he went to grad school at URI, but he picked it because we'd both been here many many times before) and we're still very attached to the state. He actually used to spend summers here with his mom.

Me, getting rained on, at the beach he used to go to as a kid.


The ocean


Sweet little cottages


Tomorrow I'm off to Boston by myself... here's what I'm planning to do:
* visit MIT (I miss it to pieces. IHTFP and all that when you're there, but then you get tossed into the adult world and realize how fantastic it really is (; )
* go to Mike's Pastry in the North End
* walk along the esplanade
* go to the MFA and the Gardener
* wish I still lived in Central Sq ;-)

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Isn't this pattern adorable? It's from the 1960s, but I think it looks pretty modern with the midriff band.


I spent pretty much the whole day making it up... this is a bit of a trial version to see if I liked how it fit, so I just used a quilting cotton. It's a bit *blue* now that it's done so I think when I make it for real I'll use at least two different colors. I feel like Grover wearing this version!


The ribbons on the top & bottom of the midriff band are some light blue velvet ribbon I had left over from outfits for Kate & Ana- I was hoping they would break up the blue a little bit.

I lined it in navy blue silk organza


I left off the neck facings & just understitched the neck seam. The armhole facings are handstitched down to the organza. I forgot how nice dresses feel when you use organza in the bodice... it just has a "weight" to it, even though it's very light and airy. One problem, though, is at the waist. I just turned up the organza at the bottom... so I think it twists around and flips out or something when I'm wearing it, and it can get very itchy. Argh! I'm going to have to figure out what's causing it, or my sister is going to be receiving a blue dress very soon. ;-)


Pattern envelope back. I like how they used to print the pattern shapes on the back with the line drawing!


Here's the hem... I first stitched 5/8" from the raw edge, and pressed it up, then stitched about an inch from the turned up edge and pressed up again, then hand stitched the part turned up. Quick and easy.



I wish the weekend was longer, as I bought some great fabrics in the garment district on Thursday & they're folded on the ironing board waiting to be sewn up. Elizabeth got a great "burnout" knit (not sure if it's really a burn out, but it's gorgeous in real life), which I was tempted by- but since I'd already bought several yards of black over at Spandex House I didn't get any. Anyway, if you read her post, I had to explain why I was buying trims with no swatches when we stopped at Pacific Trim. My mom has wonderful "color memory" and I either inherited it from her or she trained me well enough at the fabric store as a kid. ;-) I remembered that I'd written about it on my non-sewing blog a few years ago. The trim I was looking for when I wrote that post was for the little green and blue silk dresses I made for my nieces for their brother's christening. This is Ana in her dress:


And finally... I'm waiting for the grapes to ripen over at the farm. No purple ones yet.


Here's the grape arbor- my grandfather built it when my mom was a kid. The stray screens leaning against the fence in the back are waiting to be deployed to patch fence holes. The bunnies have been going crazy in the gardens this summer.

another round of the PJ factory

Warm and cozy pair


The pants are flannel and the button front top is a doubleknit.


Summer pair. Tshirt is from the March BWOF although I used a knit, then modified the neckline to use picot edge elastic instead of a placket and an elastic casing.






And another refashion dress- the skirt was from an old Simplicity dress I tried making for myself a few years ago and never finished.

berries

Short post, because I'm exhausted. I was out in the hot sun most of the day picking raspberries at the farm... we have hundreds and hundreds of them. I always pick them in sleeveless tops because between I can't stand getting long sleeves caught in the thorns. Unfortunately, then that means that my arms get all scratched up- you get to pick one or the other. The berries are so worth it though! I came home with a bunch beets, spearmint for tea, more rhubarb and some squash as well. Yum!

My sister asked for a couple new pairs of PJs for Kate. First pair, from cotton interlock print from JoAnns.





And here she is with Tom

Hazelnut cake recipe

Apparently I was a bit sneaky with the hazelnut cake recipe. ;-) It's the same yogurt cake that I always make, from Orangette. If you read to the bottom of the recipe, you'll see the recommendation to swap in a half cup of almond flour. For the hazelnut cake, you just use hazelnut flour there. It's super simple to make and a really flexible recipe.

I've gotten sucked in by all the underpinnings sewing going on in blogland and I spent pretty much the whole afternoon today wrangling Simplicty 5549 (from 1982!) into fitting me, and having a back band. I had to draft my own back pattern piece since it wanted you to use just elastic for the band. And then the A-cup pattern pieces were- surprise- huge, so I had to take it in quite a bit. But here we are- it fits! It's made out of some silk and stretch lace.



Here's the pattern envelope. I want to make the full slip sometime.



I also picked up Jalie 2568 recently and made a floral PJ top for myself and a purple and white one for my sister. It's a really simple pattern, so it takes all of about 30 minutes to make.





And finally, Declan in his furry PJs the other night. I tried getting a picture of him with his eyes closed, but he opened them every time I picked up the camera.

two midweek BWOFs!!

You know something crazy is happening when I'm sewing in midweek. In this instance, "something" == a transformer explosion in downtown Newark that knocked out the power to our building on Tuesday. There was a huge fire as well. This was the view from our office before the oodles of firetrucks raced in:



This was somewhat inconvenient as I'd had BeeBee's BWOF pants pattern sitting in an envelope on my desk all last week and I was determined to make it to the post office that day. Well... Newarks' post office is directly behind the building spewing black smoke there. You can guess how that went- I ended up bringing it home and stopping off at the post office in my town instead!

So since we left the office early I didn't have my usual late commute home and I sewed myself up a skirt from BWOF 12-2007-118. I'd stumbled over this pattern making a copy of the pants instructions for BeeBee and thought it looked kind of cute. I did a slapdash job on it- no lining, just a ribbon waistband, and I think a few of the buttonholes are in wonky. Thankfully I chose a busy print and black buttons... no one is particularly going to notice my wonky buttons. ;-)



And... last night, I made up a pair of shorts for Kate, from BWOF 05-2009-137. She's wearing them in the photo above, here's a closeup. The fabric is a stretch ripstop remnant that I got for $1.50 at JoAnns. I left off the front fly and just made the whole waistband an elastic waist. And I used the selvedge as the leg hem. Midweek sewing is always slapdash for me. The ribbon trim is from Pacific Trim in NYC.







And here is our dessert tonight... hazelnut cake with creme fraiche. Yum!

happy birthday kate

happy birthday kate
Originally uploaded by wck

My niece is turning 6, so here's her birthday cake. It's the same cake I made for my birthday (made with yogurt so it's sooo easy!) with strawberry jam between the layers.

She loves to look in my falling-apart Baking at Home cookbook by the Culinary Institute of America. It has a cake frosted with buttercream with perfect little puffs of frosting around the edges. A few months ago she requested that exact cake for her birthday. I'm not much of a cake decorator, so I told her I'd try. Well, 4 hours later, here we go!

I've also been busy taking apart an old silk dress that my mom had from the 1980s. I want use the top (sans poufy 80s sleeves) as a dress bodice, although I haven't quite figured out what to do for the skirt. It's sitting on my dressform while I think about it some more.



I also went to the Isabel Toledo exhibit at the FIT Museum this morning- it was sooo wonderful! I brought my notebook and pencils and sketched a bunch of details. One thing that I really loved was a seam she used on a few jersey dresses- the pieces didn't quite meet at the seam, and she ran a very fine mesh through the space between the pieces that were being joined. (Is that called a strap seam? I feel like it is.) I couldn't believe how smooth and perfect the pieces all were even with that seam curving all over. Wow.

If you get a chance to go see the exhibit, it's well worth the visit. (And it's free, which is awesome.) I got there about 10:45 AM, and was sitting in the lobby when... Bill Cunningham walked by! Oh my goodness. I almost wanted to run up and tell him that he was one of my favorite photographers EVER, but he was talking to someone. I love him to pieces, can't believe I've actually seen him in person now! He had on the blue smock he always wears to work, and was carrying his camera... I wonder if he got special permission to photograph the exhibit?

lavender fabrics

Carolyn had a few posts about the vera wang lavender collection fabrics in the last few days, and I wanted to add some photos and notes of the ones I bought. I was really happy that she'd pointed out the sale on these, as the prices were great. I really like the pieces that I got. Lets start with my favorite here, a black and white wool blend boucle. I bought a yard to make a pencil skirt, but the fabric is really wide so I might make something more than just a pencil skirt. We'll see. It's got a very nice hand to it. I opened all these with my mom and she said "that's a great skirt material" as soon as I'd pulled it out. So I'll line it with silk or some ambiance and make a skirt for fall.


Lavender and white poly and rayon brocade- I wasn't sure what to do with this when I ordered it, but I liked the print. My mom really liked it when I opened the box, and she's much more willing to wear prints than I am, so I offered to make her something from it. It has a stiff hand for how thin it is and is a bit shiny, so we discussed a skirt but she doesn't like large scale prints for skirts. So it will be a cropped jacket- I'll find a BWOF pattern for one (there have been a bunch recently that are really cute).


Black Cotton/Poly faille - really, really, really like this! I recently bought a khaki colored faille jacket from J Crew and I've been wearing it almost nonstop for the past month. The weave is so tight that it's almost waterproof... nice in all the rain we've been getting. So I'll make a similar black jacket from this. This one was hard to photograph so that you can see the stiff drape- it's really black, but I had to play around in photoshop.

Silk/wool twill -another one I love. It has a very light hand and drapes very easily. I'll probably make a skirt from this for fall.

Stretch wool flannel - I was thinking of making pants from this, but it's a bit heavy for that. So now I think I might make a fitted dress or a coat. The face is really soft!

Charcol wool jersey - I was hoping this would be light enough to make a wrap dress for winter, but it's a very beefy wool jersey. Not a bad thing, just not going to work well for a wrap dress. So I think I'll make a zip front hoodie from it, using the jalie hoodie pattern. That will leave me with some extra, so I might make a skirt or something as well.


Silk and Rayon blend - has a hand almost like a duchesse satin. Very stiff drape. Not sure what to make out of it... probably it will end up being a fitted dress or something. We'll see- the color is really pretty so I'll figure something out!

So anyway... these are mostly fall fabrics so I might not sew anything with them until September or later. They'll be sitting on the bookshelf waiting for cooler weather sewing to start!

Knit ruffles!

This is the Jalie tshirt pattern I always use, in size 6. The pants are a "vintage" (aka inherited from my aunt) Butterick pattern in size 5. Just your basic elastic waist kids pull on pants.



And this is the "I just had a chocolate cupcake with mocha frosting with real espresso in it!!!!!" look.


Here's another one. There's a reason why I don't have my own kids (Kate is my niece, I get to return her to her mommy at the end of each weekend). I don't know better than to feed kids cupcakes with coffee and oodles of sugar in them. I've been teaching Kate to bake, just like my grandma taught me, and I'm wondering now how she dealt with all the inevitable sugar fits.



I think the house survived post-chocolate-cupcakes, but it was a close call. Anyway, the shirt fabric is this neat stuff with ruffles sort of knit into it. I bought it because of a thread on Artisans Square. Someone linked to Marcy Tilton's site with that fabric, and I found the botanical print linen there also, and... well... they turned up on my doorstep. I'm planning on making myself a skirt from the linen, and a tank top from the knit fabric. My sister has an order in for a camisole from it, so good thing I have almost 3 yards! The fabric is really awesome- the ruffles are the same type of thread as the underlayer, just knit a little denser.

After Kate had calmed down, I made up another pintuck skirt from Stitch Magazine. You might recall that last month I tried making myself this in denim, and came up with a skirt that was too tight. This is 3% lycra denim, and it fits much better!



Here's a better view of the pintuck detail


I used a pintuck foot and a denim twin needle with topstitching thread from Guttermann. The pintuck lines were transferred from the pattern with chalk paper and a tracing wheel- it actually went pretty quickly, and then making the skirt up went much better this time. I put an invisible side zipper in, and ye olde grosgrain ribbon waistband. I like fast. ;-)

PJs and a new chair cover

What to do when it's pouring outside? How about pulling out your trusty seam ripper and taking apart an Ikea chair cover? I have an 8 year old Poang Ikea armchair that had a plain ivory cover that had gotten a kind of grungy from all the spilled coffee and 8 years of use. I thought this home dec leaf print was kind of cute, so I took the old one apart and re did it with the print. I finished it, but it was a good reminder why I prefer to sew clothes and not home dec projects.

First unzipped it and took out the foam cushions, then ripped off the old binding around the outer edges. Next I ripped out the stitching where the back met the seat at the bend of the cushion. That separated the front of the cushion cover from the back. The front is a piece of fabric quilted to a layer of batting, which I wanted to re-use so I soaked the front cover in some oxyclean and washed it gently. While that was going on, I took apart the back which was in three pieces, joined by zippers. I kept the middle most tiny rectangle and used the other two pieces as pattern pieces to cut the new back. Then I stitched the zippers into the new cover. When the front was dry, I cut a new front using the old one as a pattern piece, and quilted the new fabric right over the old fabric. Then I basted the front and back together and put on a new binding, and voila- new chair cover! Putting the binding on was actually a beast. It was really stiff and kind of hard to maneuver... it's not perfect, but no one is going to be carefully inspecting the binding on it, so it will do.



Then I was feeling a bit jealous of my sister's comfy new flannel PJs so I made myself a pair -also from Farmer's Market flannel. This is the vintage cherries print. Sooooo soft!



BeeBee, your copy of the pattern is an envelope ready to go up to the mailbox! I actually thought some more about how to better organize my BWOF traced off patterns, since I end up with multiple traced copies of the good patterns when I lose the original tracing... I'm really resisting getting a filing cabinet but I might have to break down and go with that.

One last important item. cutest corgi puppies ever on cute overload this morning. Awwwwwwww.