The old blog has been pretty quiet this week. And it might have to stay that way a bit longer. I'm spending every minute of my day painting our house. The outside! It's raining today, so I'm here with you, but tomorrow it's back to covering myself and the house in paint.

I think it might have been raining when I made this May Day crown too. It definitely was a very chilly May Day, which was too bad because my friend had a fantastic party with a may pole and everything. The day before the party my kids helped me cut out some petals out of felt, then in the evening I sewed them all up into flowers. I put some on a crown for my son and made my daughter and myself these flower crowns. They were super excited to wear them and the crowns have found a permanent place in the dress up box. I was pretty happy with how they turned out too. I didn't really use any patterns, but I did look at this, this, and this photo for inspiration. With some scraps and a stitch here and there, you can pretty much make any flower. Sounds like a good rainy day project...

By now I'm sure most of you have heard about the protest going on in Madison, WI.  So this month, in lieu of our regular wine and chocolate and stitching and bitching craft night, we tromped down to the capitol and crafted for change.

I'm going to refrain myself from political speeches here--though by the signs it's quite obvious what my politics are--but I will share some pictures, because it was amazing. The capitol was full of spirited drumming, moving speeches, the kindness of friends and strangers, and so many awesome hand lettered signs.

The sign behind her says:

what we think
what we know
what we believe
is of little
consequence
compared to
WHAT WE DO

I don't know anything about spinning, but I know that this is one super cool spinning machine.

hey look! it's me.

Almost every party we've been to recently has had a pinata, so of course my daughter asked (and asked and asked) to have one at her birthday party. But those pinatas are impenetrable! After about 10 rounds of the kids taking turns whacking the thing (and after one burly dad tries, and fails) someone has to get the scissors or and ax or some sharp object and pry the damn thing open, by which time the kids have lost their minds waiting for the candy. So I thought I'd make my own, which took a lot more time than I bargained for, but a lot less tissue paper than I imagined. And after everyone got three turns, one kid smacked it to pieces.

With all the leftover tissue paper I made some martha poofs for above the picnic table. I forgot how easy these are and how pretty. My daughter gasped when I she saw them!

Inside, we hung rainbows and clouds from the ceiling. We were going to make raindrops too, but somehow forgot. Both projects were very simple and clever and the kids helped with both. The rainbows are made by cutting paper into progressively shorter strips and then stapling them together at the ends. I found the directions for the paper rainbows via the crafty crow.

The clouds are so awesome I can't get over it. They are made by winding a piece of wire into a corkscrew shape and then twisting into a floof of polyfil. Ingenious. You can find the directions to make your own clouds on ohdeeoh.  These will definitely stick around for a while, maybe even become the long overdue mobile above the baby's bed.

Enough for now, I'll be back tomorrow with rainbow food and rainbow favors!

rainbow birthday party: part two

I need some help. I dyed this piece of fabric to make a curtain for our bathroom window, but my husband vetoed it. It wasn't the fabric that he didn't like, he didn't want a curtain at all.  We did put up frosted plastic (or whatever you call it) for privacy, but I am paranoid that my neighbors can see me. So now I have probably a little over a yard of this ombre-ish fabric and don't know what to make. Do you have any good ideas? Or patterns that would work?

I picked up this fabric from the sale bin (5 bucks!) yesterday because I really like the pattern, but I'm not super crazy for the colors. I thought maybe I could bleach it or overdye it or both. Do you think that would work? What color dye would look good over it? It's just so weirdly christmasy. What do you think?

Before easter we went to a fantastic birthday party for a 2 year old. A two year old who loves hot dogs and balloons more than anything, so of course the party had lots of balloons and hot dogs. awesome!  I had plans to make this shirt weeks before the party, but of course I ended up doing it the night before.  I was inspired by this picture I found on flickr:

I just used freezer paper and paint and it was done. I tried to make the bun a little less 2 dimensional, but I'm no artist so it only kind of worked. It's good to know that freezer paper prints don't have to just be blocks of color--you can art it up all you want.

A few people have emailed me to ask what the hell is freezer paper anyway. And because I'm lazy and waaay behind on replying to email (sorry) I will just tell you all here: it's like butcher paper, where one side is paper and the other is plasticy. The plasticy side can be ironed onto fabric and then peeled off making it perfect for a ton of projects. I even use it to make patterns so I can just iron the patterns on and skip pinning. The kind I have is made by Reynolds and it's right next to the tin foil in my grocery store.  There is a whole group on flickr devoted to freezer paper stencils and there are some pretty awesome ones there.

The reverse applique swing skirt from Alabama Stitch Book by Natalie Chanin has been on my to do list for so long now, so long that she has written and published a new book in the mean time. I thought I might be able to make this skirt in time for easter, but it is far from finished. I'm not quite sure if it will work anyway. I went to Joann's to get the cotton jersey called for and of course they don't carry cotton jersey.  Poopy Joann's, almost without fail they will be out of or not stock exactly what I what I go there for.   So instead of cotton jersey I got two different fabrics: the blue is a knit interlock and the purple is a rayon jersey. I don't know if the blue is stretchy enough. I thought maybe the super stretch rayon jersey would make up for it, but then the fabric paint I got at poopy Michaels is hard and scratchy and it might keep the fabric from stretching even more.  Michaels used to carry the nice jacard fabric paint, but they stopped and switched to the cheapy kind. I need to plan ahead so I won't have to go to these damn stores.

So we'll see if it works. I might have to make it all again, but it's actually been kind of fun so far. And I love me some freezer paper stencils. Printing this pattern over and over really makes me want to print my own fabric (for what, meg? more projects, really you need more projects?).  It wouldn't actually be that hard now that I've discovered the lazy man's way to use stencils.

and now for the lazy man's freezer paper tip:

When I was making this skirt I didn't want to cut 20 or 30 leaf stencils, so I cut 3 and used them over and over again.  I couldn't wait for the stencils to dry between uses (time is precious! the baby is napping!) so I put another piece of freezer paper over the stencil, plasticy side down, and ironed over both. Then I gently peeled the top freezer paper off and voila! the stencil was ready to use again. The paint was still wet on the stencil, but as long as there are not glops of it, it won't come of or bleed onto your fabric. The stencil might come loose a little in places when you peel off the top sheet, but this is the lazy man's way after all, if you want perfect, well then do it your way miss perfect.

This is a crazy easy project. Just iron down some freezer paper on a shirt and slap some yellow paint on it. It's a super springy shirt that I copied straight out of this japanese craft book. I don't own the book, but it looks like it has some awesome patterns in it. As with most japanese craft books the shapes are so simple and the fabric choices so spot on you want to make everything in it, but then dammit it's just not as easy to follow directions in japanese as they say it is--even if there are lots of pictures. I'm working on a japanese pattern right now and it's slow going. It's yellow too actually. We need some yellow here in the grey midwest, but if this 50 degree weather will stay I won't complain about the grey.

and here he is showing off his matching yellow star undies.

I use bleach. I know I shouldn't, but it just gets things so damn white. I do clean just about everything else with baking soda or vinegar, because they clean just about everything else. But when you have been potty training a certain little boy for over a year (there's something that's not so much fun to celebrate) bleach it is. Also, I'm a little sloppy and tend to splash the damn bleach on my shirt, only of course when I am wearing one that is A.) new or B.) my favorite. So after seeing all of Amy's fabulous bleach pen projects in her new book, I thought I'd rescue a couple of my shirts.

Here is the before picture of the first shirt I did. It looks a little weird because I ironed some freezer paper on the inside before I remembered to take the before shot. I know is just a cheapy target shirt (that describes 80% of my wardrobe) but it fit me well. So of course I had to splash bleach on it.

And here is the after. Yes, I am trying too hard to look cool, but it's not easy to take a picture of yourself without trying a little. I read the directions for this project after I actually did the project (smart), so I didn't realize that Amy uses a smaller tip over the bleach pen to get a thinner line. That would make your design look a little crisper, I think, and better overall, because really I'm not fooling anyone: it looks like I drew on this shirt with bleach. But it is a slight improvement over the before and I can leave the house in it without feeling like a total slob.

This is the second shirt I did. I know it's hard to see the spots, but they were smack dab in the middle and very hard to disguise.  I wanted to do a color wheel shirt, much like this one modeled by the lovely Martha (I could not find another photo of it on the internets anywhere). I'm pretty crazy for the color wheel right now (like this print I love). I feel like it's a grown up version of the rainbow, which is very big in our house at the moment. I was never one for rainbows, but they are growing on me.  Anyway, the shirt. I wanted the circle to be wonky and off center and partly off the shirt, but the bleach spot dictated where it would go and it ended up just a tiny bit off, which makes it look more like a mistake. Really there are tons more mistakes, but I don't care, I love it.

I borrowed this stuff from a friend of mine that turns all acrylic paint into fabric paint when you mix it in. It's made by Golden and called GAC 900 fabric  medium. It works pretty well as far as I can tell. You just mix it 1:1 with the paint and you're good to go. I think I should have used a little less paint and more of the fabric medium stuff because the shirt is a little stiff in parts, but it's been through the wash a few times already and looks great. Though with all that bleach on it (the pinky color was made with a bleach pen) I'm sure I'll wear a hole in it quickly, but i don't mind really, I'd like a reason to make another shirt like this.

On Friday all my kids' friends came over for a valentines making party--yes all! have you ever had a party where every person you invited could come and then think holy crap! everyone is coming?  At the last minute a few kids couldn't make it, so it wasn't quite as chaotic as I thought it would be, but we are still picking glitter out of our hair (four days later).  The kids are still pretty young, so there weren't any projects proper, it was a how many different things can you glue to one card sort of deal. My son's inner glitter lover came out and he used up most of what we had.  Actually after the party was over my kids worked on their valentines almost until dinner time. They would get up from the table every once and a while and help themselves to the leftovers at the buffet. It was a rare day in motherhood where I was aloud to sit back, cuddle with the baby, and crochet as I please.

I got kinda themey with the food. It was supposed to be all heart shaped and red, but ended up rather brown and carby.  I made tomato focaccia from my bakery days and it was pretty good, at least the two dogs who finished it off thought so. These financiers were a total bust: they didn't taste very good--and financiers are usually super delicious--and the heart effect was fussy as hell and didn't work in the end.  Everything else was pretty run of the mill: heart shaped pb&js, red vegetables, trail mix. Martha's raisin heart pockets were my favorite and I squirreled a few away to have with tea later.  I know valentines day is all about chocolateness, but these were nice and wintery, not too sweet and perfect with tea. I used golden raisins in the filling, but I think dried apricots with a little cardamom would be even better.  So go set up a little buffet for your kiddo's lunch and open the glitter and savor some quiet time, or make some valentines yourself.  Next year we might skip the christmas cards all together and just send out valentines.

1. gingham dress, 2. stripey dining room, 3. hat, 4. warren, 5. adele, 6. leaf crown, 7. one quilt: march, 8. summer girl, 9. corduroy coat, 10. earrings, 11. pointy hat, 12. patch on

We welcomed the new year with a big pot of fondue, the everyone promptly got the flu (not from the fondue). So I sort of missed  the first few days of this new year. I'm happy it's here though, flu and all. Last year was a little rough (me and pregnancy don't really like each other much) still a few things got made and some good ones at that. I put my favorites up there--that baby being the best thing I made by far. I hope to rework this little blog in the new year and maybe even get going on some patterns I've been meaning to work on. We'll see. This little baby just learned to roll over and crawling comes quickly to my boys, so I'm guessing all sewing time will soon be gone.  I have ambitions though, three days in to 2010 and my list is already long.

Happy New Year to you and yours!