Paisley Dress.

I finished something. Unbelievable!

I altered BurdaStyle's Anda pattern to make a tunic last year, and I finally made a dress, as the pattern intended. (Sort of.) I gave it a v-neck, and put the elastic on the inside. This is really the simplest pattern. It's airy and perfect for the current terrible heat, too. I used a simple quilting cotton (plus binding and elastic) from my stash, so I didn't even have to buy anything. I did make the neckline just a bit too wide, but that won't keep me from wearing it.

It's nice to finally make something again. It feels like things are getting back to normal.

Knitting = Service?

I recently took a little trip to San Francisco, where I promptly ran out of room in my suitcase. I decided to send some stuff home via UPS rather than buying a second bag to check (and paying the fee to check it), which made me feel pretty clever.

Except that I am an idiot...and wrote down my own zip code incorrectly.

So...UPS sent the box back to some facility in Palo Alto or Tatooine, or something -- rather than returning it to the return address, which was written correctly. (And was the same address as the other address, save the zip code.) Anyway, I didn't have a tracking number, so I had to call the original UPS Store where I sent the package from. I was passed from employee to employee, and was given no satisfaction. I was getting ready to get a little crazy with them until (on the fifth phone transfer, literally) I explained that it wasn't the clothes or the book that I was worried about getting back, I was worried about a half-finished knitting project that I had spent many, many hours on.

And that was all it took. The lady's entire demeanor changed. Suddenly my package was located, re-routed, and back on its way to me.

Apparently just mentioning knitting gets you the goods. Well, that and an additional $25.00 charge. But who's counting?

Now We Play Devil's Advocate.

Despite recent criticism, I do find BurdaStyle useful at times -- they just don't understand the the plus sized market. However, I recently made an Anda tunic, and I was very pleased with it...


I made only minor changes to the pattern (too few to enter the Anda contest): I shortened it to tunic length, graded the lower part, and put the casing on the inside with elastic instead of a tie. But it's very comfortable in light cotton, which is nice in the searing heat of summer. It is a bit busy, but that's my own fault -- I picked that fabric on my own, after all. It was incredibly easy to sew, and I'm thinking of making a full-length version.

So...I'm not a full-time hater. (In case you were wondering.)

Still in the Spirit of Things.

My time at Wardrobe Refashion is long past, and I didn't do a very good job of updating my progress on that front -- in fact, I never even introduced myself on the site. But I did do some refashioning, and I'm still doing some.

In fact, just last week I cut off the top of a skirt I purchased on Fatshionista and made it an elastic waist. I couldn't tell from the picture that the skirt was ankle length, for one thing, and it really didn't sit right on my waist. I have a pretty severe swayback, so most ready-made skirts hang strangely on me. I thought -- no big deal, I'll be done in a jiffy. Except, you know, it took forever...

It looks nice now, though. Not really nice enough to post a picture (you've seen one refashioned plaid skirt, you've seen them all), but nice enough to wear to work.

I've been working on another refashion, though, that's about to do me in.

I got a clearance top from Old Navy some time ago, and I wore it a few times before I decided that its puffed sleeves were just too unflattering to bear.

So I decided to Do Something About It.

Ugh, those kinds of declaration never end well, do they? We'll see.

Sometimes You Just Need a Floofy Cake.

My Mom requested lemon cake for her birthday this year -- lemon cake with pink frosting. I, being a dutiful daughter, obliged with a from-scratch cake with crazy fondant decorations. This is the result:
Definitely better than the fish cake. And yes, those are sparkly Barbie candles -- thanks for asking.

Flingable Baby Hat.

Well, my impending cousin has arrived, and everyone knows infants need hats -- and not just for warmth. They also need to fling them off, causing much consternation among their childcare providers and much joy for the babies.

With that in mind, I figure a good baby hat should be soft, durable, washable, and most of all, easily flung. I think the following hat covers all of these bases.

I adapted the Children's Cotton Hat from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I omitted the eyelets and the i-cord tie, because those were there specifically to prevent flinging. I also slightly altered the number of rounds between decreases to make the hat little less pointy.

Here's how it turned out in Ty-Dy (100% cotton from Knit One Crochet Too):


I love the way to decreases look from the top.


I hope my new cousin gets a lot of good use out of this little hat -- and that he doesn't throw it so well that he loses it!

I Heart Recycling T-Shirts.

I had a terrible flu or something in January, so not only was I not posting here...I was also not making anything. Or doing anything. Literally. I was very, very busy just being sick.

Anyway, after I finally started feeling better, I realized that I was low on kitschy t-shirts. (Sadly, I "outgrew" most of my old ones.) I had purchased a clearance t-shirt from Old Navy that fit really nicely -- for 99 cents, no less -- though I didn't much care for the silver foil Halloween cat and the big "Old Navy" logo below it. You really have to overlook those things when something both fits well and costs less than a dollar, you know?


But I just don't care for brand-pimping, so I planned to cover the design and the logo with some sort of applique. I threw it in my "potential" pile (a nice pile of clothes saved for refashioning in my closet) and forgot all about it.

After my long convalescence, I needed a simple project that would still yield results. A t-shirt project fit the bill.

I dug out my 99 cent wonder and an old, ill-fitting sweatshirt. I measured the original design and cut a shape out of scrap paper just large enough to cover it. Then I cut the shape from a piece of the old sweatshirt.


I pinned the fleece shape over the foil design and began to outline it in uneven black running stitches.


And here is the completed refashion, easy and seasonally appropriate!

Snaps Suck.

Well, I finally finished something, believe it or not.
It's a bib for my soon-to-arrive cousin, made from an old shirt of Lennox's, a plaid flannel remnant, and some painstakingly embroidered goldfish...that are shaped like danios. (Oops.)

Why anyone would spend that much time on something that a kid is just going to smear food all over is anyone's guess. Personally, I blame The Crazy. Also, embroidering is fun if you just make it up as you go along, as I did here.

It's hard to see, but the seaweed has little curlicues on the end.

The topstitching looks awful, and I pounded my finger with a hammer inserting the snaps, but all in all -- I think it'll be fine to catch baby drool. Also, it has a subliminal message for the kid: The lone fish in the upper left corner, the one that has broken away from the school is my own subtle code to tell the baby that he should be as nonconformist as possible, and that he should always think for himself.

Might be a little over his head for the moment, but the thought is still valid.

Craftoberfest...So Much Fun, It Must Be Repeated.

Man, I wish I had gotten pictures of everyone's projects, but I completely forgot to do it. However, I think I can safely say that everyone had some fun last Saturday -- and some creative success.

Let's see, we had some leather cuff bracelet making, a bunch of shrinky-dinks, my voodoo doll (pictured above), and a perfectly awesome Halloween tree, complete with orange pom-poms and googly eyes!

I think I understand the knitting group phenomenon now. It's just plain fun to sit around and make stuff with other people...

We're definitely going to have to do this again next year.

Success -- and I'm Not Even Injured.

I'm not sure how to react. But this awful, hastily thrown together toile...actually fits.

Yep, it's made of plain old muslin, and it was sewn with whatever thread I already had on the machine -- probably black. This wasn't meant to be a finished garment, but I have had too many sewing failures lately to take a chance with any regular fabric.

Anyway, this is the bodice from Simplicity 4116, which is out of print but is available as a free download from Print Sew. It took a heck of a lot of recycled printer paper to print it out, but since I trace and alter most patterns, I didn't really mind that it was all wonky and taped together. I did a full bust alteration* and a sway back alteration, as well as a slight alteration to the upper hip. I had no hope that it would even come close to fitting.

But it did. Like a glove -- a glove with the proper amount of ease, even. Unbelievable! It even fit through the shoulders just like it should, and I haven't had that happen since about 1998.

Now I just have to alter the skirt to match, and figure out which nice fabric I'm going to use for the finished product...

(*I finally figured out that when people say that commercial patterns are designed for a "B cup," they don't actually mean "B cup" in the same way that bra manufacturers do. They mean two to three inches larger than your ribcage. You see, most standard bras have cups that increase with band size, regardless of what they call the cup size. I wear a 40C currently, despite the fact that my bust measurement is a full six inches larger than my ribcage -- and four inches larger than my upper bust. So I had to do the equivalent of a DD alteration, even though that is not anywhere near my commercial bra size. This is such a useful thing to know about plus size sewing that I felt I should add the explanation.)