elsie marley

on my desk. wednesday.

I had grand plans for this week.  I’m staying with my family and I thought with so many hands around, my hands wouldn’t always be full of children.  But my kids went and got pink eye and ear infections, so I’ve been tending to their sickness and trying to quiet the whining all day.  Then collapsing on the couch with flickr for most of the evening. Which isn’t such a bad thing, really. After sewing one dress for me and one for my daughter, garment making is pretty much all I can think about. So I thought I’d share all these amazing clothes I found with you.  And maybe when everyone is well again I’ll go home and fire up the sewing machine.

1. front closeup, 2. linen_1.jpg, 3. striped sailor boatneck tee, 4. red ticking capri, 5. flow shirt, 6. fridas kjole/dress, 7. Vintage Fabric Girls Dress from Japanese Sewing Book, 8. front closeup, 9. klein hemdje

1. Muslin, 2. silk tank, 3. … just because i’m so proud of my sewing…, 4. new lacy top, 5. DSCN6074, 6. i made my jeans! (simplicity 3850- built by you), 7. 28may08, 8. Rok voorkant, 9. Built by Wendy dress - front view

Errol, the chicken, is packed up and ready to go to Brooklyn.  He’ll be at Fact & Fancy, a new gallery/shop started by two lovely ladies from Etsy.  Rudolpho and Werner will be there too. I’m very excited about this, but right now I’m just tired.

good night.

After a week (a week!) of nursing sick children I thought I would have a couple hours to sew on Saturday morning, but of course then I got it.  crap.  I had grand plans of conquering an actual pattern: simplicity 3835 (any advice welcome–has anyone lined this? can anyone tell me how to line this?).  There were some angry and rushed attempts at garment making in high school with very homemade results, but now I’m ready to learn for real.  These pj pants are from Amy Butler’s book “In Stitches” and were dead easy.  Like sewing drawstring bags for your legs and about that flattering–when she says wide leg, she means wiiiiide leg.  I have been meaning to make them ever since I found this fantastic sheet at a thrift store long ago. I think the idea of making pajamas from sheets came from soulemama.  And when you are wearing them it really is like you never got out of bed!  My sick self stayed in these pants all weekend long. I did manage one little project (from soulemama, the book).

another pair of pants! though much, much smaller and from a shirt.  There are many more of these planned for the summer months.  They are easy and comfy and just right for the playground.  I have grand plans for making my kids’ clothes too.  It doesn’t help seeing this and this and this.  But I don’t have a clue as to how to sew clothes (unless it resembles a drawstring bag) so mostly I’m just dreaming.

and the winner is…Christine from phila craft.  She even made up a little poem for the occasion:

Elsie Marley never whines.
Her stuffed moostachios are truly fine–
Crazy Elsie Marley.

And the 1000th comment and winner of the secret prize is Julie from letter9.  You have won the first book in the make it yourself series. yee haw!

It was nice hearing from all of you.  I’ll have to do this again sometime. Leya is hosting color week this week and I’m going to join in the fun–take a little break after 100 blathering posts.

have a good week!

p.s. winners, please email me your mailing address and I’ll send off the loot.

Here it is the 100th post.  It’s a nice tradition in this crafty blog world to have some sort of contest or giveaway on occasions like these.  And even though I’m crap at responding to comments, they really do push me to do more and better things.  This sewing book is a great example . A year ago I would have thought up this idea, but probably never got around to making it, and then proceed to mope around because I never do the things I say I will.  No more!  And it’s all because of you.  So the sewing book pictured above is yours (sans supplies) if you win.  Just leave a comment on this post–a joke, a recipe, a book recommendation, the name of your dog, whatever–and Monday I will pick a winner (by random).  If you’ve never left a comment before, go ahead and do so. Click on the comments and write your email in the space provided (no one can see it but me) and if you don’t have a website just leave that space blank.   There are more pictures of the book on my flickr site if you’d like to see.  

Because I’m almost up to 1000 comments (it’s at 984 right now) there will be a secret prize for the 1000th commenter! Good luck! And I’ll see you on Monday.

I making bags like crazy over here.  All, of course, for the sale that you are sick of hearing about.  It’s this weekend and I’m actually getting a little nervous.  I’m sure all the self doubt will all go away when someone buys something–if someone buys something!  I’m used to selling pastries and breads and chocolates that I’ve made, where if you make a mistake it gets eaten anyway.  But someone will own these bags and use them, and if they fall apart their mother will be cursing me.  Or maybe they will be used and loved and come out of the washing machine in one piece.

You can see I finally made the toy bags I was talking about and though I wasn’t excited about them while I was making them, or even after I was done, but they are growing on me now.  Simple muslin drawstring bags with some applique (and stamped labels? yes? no? still can’t decide anything over here). The other bags in the picture are kiddy messenger bags.  I made one for my daughter just like it for christmas.  She got so many compliments on it, I thought they would go over well at the sale.  There are pictures of more bags over at my flickr site, if you are interested.  Have a good day.

I finished sewing a few things for the sale and I thought I’d pop in and show you. The bears are made from felted sweaters and printed cotton. I drew a simple bear then stitched, stuffed, and sewed on the features. Easy peasy. The denim and cashmere one is my favorite. I think it would be perfect for a little baby boy, but I have no idea if people will even buy these. I’m not much of a shopper (except for thrift stores and target) so I don’t really know what people buy or how much they pay for things. So how much would you pay for a bear like this ? They are a little under a foot tall (1 foot = 30 cm), machine washable, and super soft.

These are all the pillowcase dresses I’ve finished so far, but there are a few more cut and ready to go in my studio. I wasn’t going to make so many, but a showed a few to my friends and they were quite taken with them, so I whipped up some more. It doesn’t hurt that they are dead easy to make. And you can make them to fit girls from 6 months to 5 or 6 years old. For these I’m thinking 16 dollars a pop, what do you think? I haven’t sold stuff from a booth since my lemonade days, so I’m a little nervous about all of this. Tagging, pricing, talking up the things I’ve made. And this sale is the first of it’s kind so there could be a couple people there or hundreds. Nobody knows.

My whole family was struck with the flu this past weekend.  It was pretty crappy and we are finally crawling out of the dark flu hole.  Luckily there was one 40 degree day where we could open all the windows and get some fresh air, but now it’s back down to 10 where I now believe it will stay forever.  The flu was just another thing that got in between me and my mobile–february was just packed with those thing, dammit.  It’s now officially half done and as soon as I get my hands on a glue gun, I’ll finish it up and pack it off.   It’s four tiny houses: a cottage, an ice house, a barn, and a plain ol’ house.  I knew I wanted to do houses and I was first inspired by a sardine box .  I was planning to make them all out of packaging, but after an hour wandering through the grocery store I discovered there is a lot of ugly packaging.  Then I thought I could use the fusible timtex I had and the houses would have looked really nice in all natural linen, but they had no windows which was a little weird.  I could have embroidered all the details on, but I was late with the mobile already.  Then I found this amazing site and was back to thinking about paper.  So after another hour spent in the foreign territory of decorative paper, I thought I have books coming out my ears at home why don’t I just use one of them.   I found a great old Dr. Spock baby book which is perfect because my partner just had a baby (hint! hint!).  I mod podged the pages to either side of poster board, then cut out the details and folded it up.

I feel bad that I’m late on my own swap, but my creative process is particularly slow and I’m happy with how all the houses turned out.  There are more pictures on my flickr account and be sure to stop by the mobile swap group to see all the procrastinator’s mobiles (they are my people) and just the amazing variety of work that’s there.  I’m for sure going to host another mobile swap next January, so if you missed this one don’t worry.  I should probably start working on that one now just so I finish in time.

I have been absent from this little blog for a bit. We’ve had guests and will have many more in the coming weeks, so you’ll only hear from me on and off for a while. If you actually know me, well, just call instead of stalking me on the internet, silly.

There hasn’t been much time for making, but I did manage to try my hand at wet felting. I bought a big bag of lovely colored roving at a garage sale this summer and have been meaning to try it ever since. I thought it would be nice to sell a little bag of felted rocks along side my diggers. Wet felting is ridiculously easy, but wet felting on details was not so easy. A good friend told me that white wool doesn’t felt as easily (because of the bleach?) which is probably why I was swearing up a storm trying to put the tiny stripes on the rocks. But I haven’t given up. I really like the rocks especially in bright colors and I think I’m going to try to embroider some rock like details on them. Maybe even some moss!