Limbs and head flopped out to sleep. Looking d-e-d.Filed under: Gifted it, Love it, Made it, Sewed it | Tags: Christmas, Gaffney's, net, pink, skirt, tulle, tutorial, tutu, twirly
While picking out fabric for her Christmas dress, the twirliest girl I know wanted a tutu, and how do you say no to that?
So together we bought 4 yards of hot pink net. She wanted the thing to stick straight out, prompting a lady at Gaffney’s I’ve feared since high school to give me the business about making it Stick. Straight. Out.
So I started with a funny free tutorial (sorry, it was free in October) about making filled tutus, which my SIL says are all the rage in South Jersey where they live. It made you fold the folded net or tulle once more, for four layers of stuff. A lady friend I work with came over and made one too, in a peachy shimmery tulle for her niece.
Mine was good… but not pokey enough. The skirt definitely drooped. So I doubled the fold again, making the 72″ wide net into eight layers of 9 inch net. and jammed heart-shaped sequins in one of the folded layers.
Perfect.
Which of course made me think, what if you made the top layer fabric so it looks like a skirt w built-in crinoline? Like a zebra skirt with purple or red underneath? How would that math work out? Stay tuned to find out.
Filed under: Fixed it, Gifted it, How to do it, Made it, Sewed it | Tags: gather, gathered, how to, skirt, tier, tiered, tutorial, twirl
The bodice is done, the button and loop attached, now the top of the Rooster’s skirt needs to be 25″, which is the circumference of the bodice’s edge. I’m going for as many tiers as I can stand to gather. So at least four and maybe even five. Yep, in the end it was five.
Using the old 3 Peas tutorial (c/o Kuky), my top loop of fabric needs to be 39″ total, gathered to fit the 25″ bodice. Since my fabric’s 60 wide, I’m using one 39″ wide strip. Each subsequent tier is made from strips that are 1.5 times the width of the tier above it. Kuky tells you how to do the math and cut out all the pieces.
But then it occurred to me, two tiers in, that instead of cutting all these chunks, since I’m using the same fabric all the way down, I could make a long strip 5.25 inches deep of my 59″ wide fabric. I could join the 59″ lengths then measure and cut 1.5 times each round.
Now so can you.
1. Start at the bodice, or your child’s waist (plus 2-3) and multiply out 1.5 for each tier.
2. Divide a measurement between the waist and knee by as many layers as you’d like, and then add 3″ to the top one for a waistband.)
So I need 39 x 1.5 or 58.5″ for the second tier.
88″ for the third.
132″ for the fourth.
198″ whopping inches for the fifth. That’s a lot of gathering.
3. Sew the strips together and then into loops. Finish the seam allowances as you will. I did Hong King finishes on the seams binding the strips together, now that I’m a giant fan.
4. Start assembling from the top down. If you’re attaching the skirt to a bodice, do it now. If it’s a freestanding skirt, fold over 1.5 inches for the top, and stitch, leaving a small hole about 2 inches wide to fish through elastic or a ribbon drawstring.
5. Take the next biggest loop and prepare it for gathering. I like to drop in a couple of straight stitches at the end of the loop, raise the presser foot, and pull the threads long back to the start. Now set the machine to a wide, long zig zag, and stitch the zigzags over the pulled threads.
6. Divide each loop into quarters, marking each fourth with a pin. Match up the pins and gather the bigger loop to fit. Pin in place, then stitch. Work your way to the bottom.
7. BUT before you attach the bottom loop, hem it. I used a length of satin ribbon as a hem binding on the bottom tier BEFORE gathering it. Dang, that took forever, both the hem and the last gather.
It is in fact the twirliest skirt.
But I don’t know how to finish the gathered seams inside the unlined skirt.
Help!
Filed under: Gifted it, Made it, Uncategorized | Tags: baby, blanket, crochet, green, present, yarn
Ok, they’re not clever. But I think they’re sweet. And I still have some of the teeny blankets my mom-mom made for me and for my baby dolls. Plus the crochet makes less noise than the sewing machine late at night when one of us feels like a movie.
Happy blankie, baby!
I have been itching for a compost pile for quite some time. Like a couple of years. I grow all kinds of crap year-round.
And I hate waste, shy from throwing *anything* away and also despise stinky garbage taking up the whole alley. Landfills are sad enough without junking ‘em up. Also, buying dirt is stupid. You know.
When you share a yard, though, it’s hard to make your neighbors deal with a pile of rotting food and leaves no matter how much they’re into gardening (which they are). Tried a quiet depressed corner of the new yard, but a soggy cantaloupe was my own final straw. Leaving organic decay out in the open is Just Not Done. Plus, it was drawing over rats from the impromptu frat house on our other side.
So I finally got around to making this urban composter courtesy of You Grow Girl. Mister was pitching a fit about the scraps languishing and growing fuzz on the kitchen counter, even in this cutely countertop composter we got for our wedding.
Sadly all I needed to do was get my hands on a tub, an opaque tub with a lid on it.
Thanks, Menard’s, for a $3.33 sale last week on a blue plastic tub with lid. Believe it or not, the thing’s made in the U.S.A. Dug out the drill, and within about 10 minutes, I was in business.
With two reporters in the house, there’s newspaper galore lying around. And we cook a ton, so there’s lots of scraps, too.
All my plant clippings, all the junk that falls off the trees in the neighborhood, all the coffee grounds that otherwise just end up in the stinky alley garbage, and all the scraps from beautiful summer produce will now make my growing richer.
I feel so much better about getting rid of things when I know they’ll be useful and not wasted.
Filed under: Love it, Made it, Printed it, Read it | Tags: invitation, news, print
We made invitations to look like news.
Used these seal and send invites bought from LCI paper. They fold up nicely into a small packet that’s self contained.
And has a detachable postcard at the bottom that works suitably for a reply card (my mother won that debate).
It was the closest we could pull off to these AMAZING invitations I found at Tugboat Printshop on Flickr. We’re writers, not printers, so we had to cheat a little bit. Also, no envelopes and no extra paper waste (think: those awful little tissue paper inserts).
Ecru paper looks old since we’re both newspaper reporters getting married in an old Philadelphia newspaper building. Used some story text from Bruno Mancari’s murder trial where we met, to add some gray texture to the front.
And the story chosen recounts the outburst in open court of a witness’ wife who shrieks before the judge and jury that her husband (who now has taken the fifth amendment and reneged on his deal with the state) still! has! a! deal!
Lesson learned: Stand by your husband, even when he’s accused of burying a hammer in some poor slob’s brain. ESPECIALLY when he’s accused of such.
The Liberty Bell has remained a strong image throughout the few things we’ve had printed, as have the pointing fingers that appear on the front page of the real-life Public Ledger. The Liberty Bell was to be the main event on thank you cards, too, but my Mister protested about his Chicago roots. More to come about those cards soon.
Will just say for now that screwing up the plan often leads to a better plan. And securing a reputation for being a little off-kilter is a worthwhile enterprise that may spare later headaches.
