Because 2 days is never enough.

I’ve written about my Grandmother, Maxine Broad, on this blog before, and in the years since I wrote about her, she passed away, just shy of her 92nd birthday.

I’ve often thought of how much she knew, family stories and recipes and sewing tricks.  She was a exceedingly practical person and it makes me sad to think that over 90 years of that knowledge is no longer here.  And while this is just a part of life that we all have to accept, the care package my mom sent me this week bridged that gap a little bit.

Grandma was a passionate sewer.  Even though it was a necessity, it was also a pleasure to her. The last time I saw her, she told me that the neighbors were always wondering why her light was on all into the night (as she burned the midnight oil at her machine).   The package my mom sent was a treasure trove of old patterns for children’s clothes, quilt squares she sewed but never made into a quilt, quilt patterns and appliques, and lots of notes and drawings in her handwriting.   Some of these date back to the 1930’s.

Having these things makes me feel like a piece of her is still with me and like maybe I’m carrying on some of her passions in my own life.

I fell in love with the line of Echino oilcloth that Purl had on offer and bought up a bunch without much of a plan. I knew I wanted to make a bag and  the more I thought about this shirt, the more I realized I could apply the basic pattern to make a cute handbag. I did a little math and cut out some geometric shapes for a pattern and whipped up this little beauty.

It’s lined and has a pocket and really is the perfect size for an everyday bag.  The pockets aren’t really sized right, so it has become a bit of a dumping ground, but otherwise I love everything about it.

I even made one for Mindy as a Christmas gift, but I forgot to take a photo.

It might, therefore, appear that this is an all around happy story, but unfortunately, there is catch.  I found the oil cloth  a little tricky to sew with. Karl helped me by rigging a piece of tape under the presser foot for some traction on the slippy material, but I still needed to go buy some heavy duty thread.  It may well have been the thread, but now my sewing machine is off.  It feels impossible to take it to get a tune up here in New York.  I’ll do it eventually, but for now, I have just reverted to knitting for a while.

I’m always on the search for new baby gifts to make (no choice, the babies just keep turning up), so when I came across Oliver + S patterns, I was excited. I thought for a while about which pattern to choose and eventually decided on the tea party play suit.  Unisex, adorable and suitable for 0-2 years olds.

I had the playsuit pattern around for a while when I stumbled upon the Cogsmo fabric line, by Cosmo Cricket I found the perfect match for my nerdiest parent friends.

Jake is a computer programmer and a new dad, and I was certain that the turquoise circuit board fabric would be perfect for him, er, uh, Easley.  A little known fact about Mindy is her long term love of robots, so, the robot pattern  just screamed her, I mean, Felix’s name.

I love making baby clothes for grownups.

No really. I would rather be sewing.

Lately, I’m on such a bender that it’s all I can think about. It may seem like I’m holding meaningful professional and personal conversations; but I’m not. I’m actually thinking about what I’m going to sew next. It’s a sickness.

And super cute and super simple patterns I’ve come across here are only feeding the flames:

Round One: The Spring Top.

This is a great pattern, easy and cute. However, the first one was not that flattering on me, so I gave it to my sister, Kate (the lovely model below).  I altered the pattern and made a much more flattering one for myself.

Round Two: The Baby Dress

Another nice, easy pattern, adjusted for larger children. I cannot take how cute these are. I mean, really. Cara was so adorable in hers I wanted to eat her up. And I cannot wait to see Sophie sport hers.

Round Three: The Mendocino Dress

Made two of these, but the second one, made of the most lovely echino double gauze is my favorite.

Round Four: Baby hat

Anyway, you might have been under the impression that I was writing a blog post. But I wasn’t. I was thinking about what I’m going to sew next.

One of the reasons we decided to have a short engagment (four months) was because I was pretty sure that if I left myself a year or more to plan a wedding, I would go into crafting overdrive and knit everyone outfits to wear or something ridiculous like that.

At the same time, we knew we wanted a wedding that was simple, handmade, and local. Except for my shoes and Karl’s suit, everything in our wedding was either made by us, our friends, or at least people we met. It was a pretty cool way to bring the whole thing together.  All the little touches made our wedding really special and intimate to us.

Here are some highlights of the projects we made ourselves (and by ourselves I mean by me, really, sorry Karl):

Clutches

I saw this awesome tutorial for fabric flowers and decided to make clutches for me and for my maid of honor, Jody.

Ring Pillow:

My father gave me an amazing treasure: lace from my great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother’s wedding dresses. I was overwhelmed by how lucky we are to have these kinds of heirlooms in our family and really wanted to find a way to incorporate them into our wedding. My great-great-grandmother’s wedding dress was black and the lace we had was very tassley. I could not figure out how to use it; however, my great grandmother’s lace was beautiful and I was inspired to make it into a ring pillow.  It was so cool to see out handmade rings tied on to the pillow during the ceremony.

Seating Cards

I was really hoping to bring cool textiles into the wedding, but was pretty sure I didn’t have time to sew anything elaborate.  It occurred to me that I could use fabric to make little goodie bags telling people where to sit. I have a number of friends who are very loyal consumers of their favorite types of candy and so I tried my best to match people up with their favorite candies.  A trip to Economy Candy was really helpful for this, making it easy to find even the most obscure types of candy (if you’ve never been here, this place is a treasure! go!).   I have big plans for the fabric, which I collected after the party. Stay tuned, maybe I’ll report on it some day, in a million years, when I have time to get to it.

I’ll update with our programs and favors soon.

Since I finished Felix’s quilt last fall, I’ve perfected my binding technique and switched to machine quilting to produce two cute quilts for two very cute babies. I had a fun time traveling to Boston and Portland to hand deliver them.
First up, Vivian’s quilt:

This was a mostly stash based quilt. I’ve had the yellow bird fabric for a really long time, and aside from a few ipod cases, I really haven’t bee sure what to do with it. I was struggling with how to bring it all together and had laid it out on my turquoise table to think about it. The table color make the whole thing pop. Delivered the whole thing to the Herricks in Boston before Vivian was even born (very impressed with myself!).
Second, Isabella’s quilt:

Isabella was the first baby in a while that I knew was going to be a girl, and while I wasn’t really trying to get all pink and girly, it just sort of happened. I was really excited about using the pink and orange sea horse fabric from Heather Ross’ Mendocino line and a lot of the other stuff came from my stash.  Also, please note, ugly carpet in photo is decidedly not mine. Finished the quilt in a Hilton in Portland, just in time to deliver it to the Moran Chigos residence for Izzy.

In scanning through the last couple entries here, it looks like maybe I have entered this dark, childless place, just making craft after craft for other people’s babies.

But rest assured, that’s not really the case. Instead, I’ve delighted in all these baby items for one big reason: They are SO much smaller than grown up stuff. Consequently, so much faster and cheaper to make than something for adults. And, as an added bonus, the sort of bloblike cuteness of a baby means you don’t have to go crazy worrying about making things fit. It’s just so much easier to lavish attention on little ones.

These little baby slippers are a case in point. Sort of. They were not exactly quicker, since it took me a long time to make up a pattern that actually worked. I spied an adorable pair of slippers in baby Sophie’s room. I went on a mission to figure out how to make them myself. The first pair would have been tight on a small doll, and then second one was a bit like Cinderella’s slipper when Felix agreed to be my foot model last weekend.  These haven’t been tested on an actual baby foot or anything, but man are they cute. I just want to eat them.  And, they were the perfect use for  scraps, including the remnants from a hemmed pair of Karl’s pants, part of a sweater Karl shrunk, and pieces left over from old sewing projects.

At the rate of babies turning up this year, it’s pretty lucky I’ve hatched upon a quick gift, since I can’t keep up with quilts!

Jess, Kate and I had a fun-filled adventure at the Renegade Craft Fair in Williamsburg not too long ago. We strolled the crafty aisles and ogled the goods after consuming brown rice crispy treats (with cranberries, almonds and flax) from the beloved Treats Truck.

There were definitely some recurring themes, the most prominent being mustaches. That’s right – mustache jewelry, mustaches on t-shirts and notecards, etc. And it also seems safe to say that squirrels are the new owls.

Needless to say, all three of us walked away with some great purchases. One of mine was a felt patch featuring a cute marsupial with it’s offspring. It seemed especially appropriate for me to use it as a way to customize my Ergo baby carrier (which will be my way of making myself into a marsupial).

Note from Jess:

Check out some photos here.

The photos feature the mustache meme and other common indie-crafter motifs like perched birds, ironic t-shirts, and fonty cards.
Speaking of birds on wires, Mindy and I were particularly taken with these and each bought a necklace.

(I temporarily lost my little pouch with the business cards I picked up, so I’ll try to figure out who makes all this stuff and post it when I get the chance)

I’m catching up.

Potholders are so April and May to me, but I just wanted to make it know that I did actually sort out the thumb issue. I cranked out a number of adorable and fully functional little mitts and distributed them to friends for wedding, thank you and housewarming gifts.

I have so many fabric scraps and extra quilt batting, that I really should go into turbo mitt-making, but I’ve moved on to bigger, if not better things.

This is a photo from a flight to San Francisco, where I used my time to sew down the bias binding on the mitt collection.

You know you’ve reached maximum craft-dorkdom when, upon getting stuck home on Friday night, you think to yourself, “cool, now I can make that potholder I’ve been thinking about!”

Yes, friends, this is how I spent my evening. And, yes, it was glorious.

I used some leftover quilt batting (from that quilt I still haven’t finished) and some fabric I had lying around from various other projects to craft a really fantastic potholder. If I do say so myself.

The only bad news is that in drawing my own pattern, I didn’t leave enough room for a seam allowance and, consequently, the thumb area is a bit constricting. It kind of cramps that opposable thumb style that humans rock so smoothly. Well, Karl and I have been practicing and I think we can still accomplish all our basic pot-holding needs required. And I’ll just correct the pattern next time around.