La plume de ma tante

“La plume de ma tante” (my aunt’s pen) is what most people remember from their early French lessons. Is that like “run, Spot, run”? Maybe.

I began learning French when I was in 6th grade, back in the Middle Ages. In the first week, my clever teacher taught us a small “play”, in which I was to go into a forest, searching for flowers to bring to my mother. I still remember how excited I was, walking home, picking some wildflowers, and giving them to my mother with a flourish and a French phrase!

Now this little life tidbit will come into play later in this post, so tuck it away in your memory, and read on!

If you’ve been reading about the sad state of my winter wardrobe, you’ll know that I’ve been working on updating my sweater collection. I found an old black hooded sweatshirt, and thought, hmmmmmmm. Blank canvas!

I found a vintage black floral pillowcase, some black floral yardage in my stash, and some butterfly yardage. I did some collage work on the front and back of the sweatshirt, covering the various stains that magically appear on sweatshirts. It seemed ok, but it wasn’t speaking to me…

Until one morning, when my turn on the French stage popped into my head! Aha!

I finished collaging with more of a plan, including pulling off the bottom ribbing, replacing it with the striped fabric.

Pour moi, the piece de resistance is the lettering I added, which has made this one of my more satisfying and personal re-models:

Je voudrais bien aller dans le foret pour chercher des jolie fleurs (I would like to go to the forest to look for some pretty flowers)

C’est mignon, n’est-ce pas?!!

Oogly Onion Monsters

I have been busy making Oogly Onion Monsters for my cousin’s children:

This is Binny

This is Gib

This is Dutch

They seem to have personalities in place already! I am having a blast making them, and I’m going to make them with my boys and 2 of their friends tomorrow, so I’ll post the goings on and a mini tutorial then.

Holiday Crafts

My oldest son participates in his school Holiday Bazaar, which means I have to think up some appropriate craft to make and he sells it for 50cents. Last year, I spent $25 on craft supplies, and he made $8.

I doubt he will rock the business world anytime soon.

This year, I decided that I, er, I mean HE was going to make a craft using supplies from my prodigious supply warehouse (the fam calls it a studio, but it could be opened to the public, all major credit cards accepted).

I tried making some prototype stuffed monster dolls, which are so darned cute. Since the school says no item can retail over $5, I thought smaller might be more cost-efficient. I’m pretty sure he won’t get rich on this Bazaar, but I don’t want to be out too much cash!

These are my prototypes– I love them!! But…

The small size means that they were a bit challenging, even for me. And, since I am a professional cutter/sewer, and he’s 10, it’s back to the drawing board.

I have been diligently working on my wool felt quilt blocks, so of course, there are piles of chopped up wool sweaters everywhere in the warehouse. Darn– I mean, studio. The boys followed me into the studio last night (I try to take a different route every day, but they find me anyway.)

Anyway, the boys started playing with colors of felt, and soon had coerced me into letting them sew with my machine. My fancy, pricey machine with a needle sharp enough to pierce a finger, thus allowing us to further support the local hospital’s retirement fund. Fortunately, by the end of the evening, the machine was unharmed (the boys were fine, too.)

Here’s the result of our play time: a nice warm hat (in case the temperature dips below 80 degrees–brrrrrr!) DS1 figured out the fit and construction all by himself:

It is made entirely of cut off cuffs, with the top part made from a shrunken cowl neck ribbing. The words say “yo what now” which is apparently some kind of surfer-dude speak. I wouldn’t know, I’m old. And the ear flaps– what an insouciant touch!

And so– we are still working on ideas for the craft bazaar. I am hoping to be “working on ideas” well after the bazaar– having experience in this area, I can tell you that my role as Little Helper suddenly expands to MomYouDoIt when a group of his friends strolls by…

What now, yo?

How to make a duct tape dress form for sewing and quilting clothing

Most people go shopping the day after Thanksgiving– the retail industry refers to this day as “Black Friday”.

My new-found cousin (who joined us for Thanksgiving, introducing us to “Tofurkey” and it’s accompanying amino acid, Tofurkifan) and I made a duct tape dressform on the day after Thanksgiving– giving birth to a new holiday, “Silver Friday”.

I love to create wearable art, especially Wild Onion Jackets or even altered sweatshirts! I was given a dressform by a friend who moved away. It was a wonderful gift, but it wasn’t really my shape. After learning about this method to re-create your own body shape using old tee-shirts and duct tape (link) I decided that this was the perfect way to introduce this new-found relative to the craziness that is my family. (Please, if you meet relatives via the internet, be sure to vet them carefully before meeting them in person, or you too could be sucked into a bizarre situation like dressmaking dummies! Fortunately for me, Michelle didn’t vet my family!!)

So, without further ado, here is a tutorial on how to make a duct tape dress form, complete with the day’s photos!

First step, choose an old tee shirt that kind of fits. You will be cutting it up, so don’t choose a shirt you love! We cut up the back so that we could then re-tape the shirt to make it tight. You want to avoid excess fabric which creates wrinkles, which creates added inches on the finished dress form.

We re-taped the shirt to fit my figure a bit more snugly.

We (and I really mean Michelle– I just stood there, absorbing the humiliation!) criss-crossed my breasts with tape…oh, look! a Playtex living bra!

Continue wrapping your breast area using diagonal strips of tape. Make sure you don’t squish yourself!

Here you see the finished first layer– wrapped vertically from neck to micro mini. (***IMPORTANT NOTE!!! Do not– NOT– think that it’s a good idea to wear a pair of leggings for your bottom layer! It is NOT a good idea– how the heck do you think you’re going to get yourself out of this outfit at the end???!!! Please know that here I am serving as a horrible warning, not a good example! Wrap a plastic bag or another piece of old tee shirt in a skirt form. Muuuuuch better idea.)

We initially thought we’d make a short-sleeved dressform, so we (again, with the “we”. Michelle did all the work, and I just stood there.) If you think you’ll make a short-sleeved dressform, cut up your sleeve and re-tape it to snug up against your arm. We ended up cutting off the sleeve for the final dressform, but who knew?

I’m pointing to the beginnings of the horizontal wrapping layer. You need to pull the waist tight– don’t add pounds to your figure, unless it’s with chocolate. Chocolate is much more fun than duct tape. You can see how much excess we got with that first vertical layer– see the gathers at my waist? Cinch it in, Miss Scarlett!

Hooray– we’re almost finished! See how much, um, curvier I am compared to the dressform? At that point, I felt like I was in a full length girdle. Thank goodness we don’t wear corsets anymore– this is not comfortable!

Okey dokey. Now we’re done with the duct tape…and it’s time to cut me out. This is where we had that sinking feeling….how do we cut me out of the PANTS??? No one’s been near me down south with a sharp instrument since I had my c-sections. How well do I know Michelle? Is she trust-worthy? Shoot– I didn’t vet her, either. Deep breath, close eyes, CUT!!

TA DA!! Here we are– Susan and Suzette. We re-taped the duct tape dress form over the original dress form, adding stuffing as needed to pad the duct tape form. We are currently exhausted from all our hard work, but when we recover, we (meaning I– poor Michelle will have escaped by then) will take measurements. By the way, how do you gain 3 pounds from one little Thanksgiving meal??? Oh, I digress.

I had never seen a duct tape dress form put on top of an existing dress form, so I thought it might prove helpful to post a how-to for those of you with an existing dress form which didn’t fit your personal body stats! If you don’t have a dress form, there are other ways to “stuff” the duct tape form: expanding insulation foam, craft batting/stuffing/foam bits, etc. You will also need something to use as a center post stand: I wonder if you could salvage an old table lamp? Try it and let me know!

I can’t wait to use the new dress form to help me out when I make my altered wearable art, or better yet, my Wild Onion Jackets. I think it will prove invaluable to learn where NOT to place certain appliques, how best to accentuate my better figure attributes, etc.  The dress form will come in handy when I make all the new Wild Onion Jackets to show during the classes I will be teaching at Quilting with Machines!

So, statistics: about 3 rolls of duct tape, one old tee shirt, one pair leggings (but you’ll be wiser than that), one unsuspecting relative, one digital camera, one afternoon, one bottle of wine. Two good senses of humor. One blog.

Addendum: I went out to measure me/my dressform. The dressform is about 1 to 1.5″ bigger than I am– I will try to re-wrap her, cinching her in a bit. Either that, or I need to start eating more to gain the extra inch on my body so we match…

My crazy mom!

Did I get my weird sense of humor from my mother? It seems so– look at the funny gift I received from her:

Does this make me want to do more dishes? What do you think!!

PS– Mommy– thank you for the gloves. Now where’s the housekeeper to go with them????!!