Post-Stabbing Shirt

When you accidentally stab yourself, you need to have a good story.  Oh, look.  I'm injured.  How'd I do it, you ask?  Well...that's a great story.  You see, there was a puppy, a crazed monkey, and a knife...

Anyway, I stabbed myself yesterday in the arm, near my elbow. Unfortunately, I don't have a great story.  Not even really a good story.  But here it is: I was washing dishes, and I was reaching around the other side of the dish rack to put a mug down when I clipped the utensil caddy.  In an attempt to catch it (while not breaking my mug), I flailed and ended up jamming my arm down hard on the tip of a very sharp paring knife, knocking the utensil caddy on the form and luckily dodging the other two sharp knives while keeping them from piercing my toes.  I called Lance in a panic, and he came home to find me in a slight state of shock, drenched in sweat from the adrenaline rush, pressing a paper towel to my bleeding arm.

After he patched me up, Lance finished the dishes while I calmed down and realized that my knife injury now limits my range of motion, meaning I pierced the muscle that controls my hand--thus inhibiting my ability to grasp things well, type, or lift things.

Today, though, I was feeling a bit better, so I decided to do a little sewing.  I cut out a pattern for a cute shirt I'd been eyeballing (and had a piece of fabric picked up for super cheap!)  Lance came through, and as he has acquired many apples, he wanted me to make him a muslin press bag for his apple press.  So I cut out and sewed that, then decided to keep up the craftiness and made this:

It's stretchy and comfy and I really like it.  I look forward to wearing it out sometime soon!  When I'm less stabbed.

First Jam of the Year

Lance picked blueberries last week.  We also picked black raspberries from a friend's yard (and got attacked by chiggers.  Ack.)  Since berries either need to be frozen or dealt with quickly and we are berry-rich, I decided to make a quick jam.  Using my favorite canning book, Well Preserved, I looked up blueberry recipes and came across both a blueberry chutney (which I'll make later) and the Black and Blue Jam, which I made this afternoon.

It was hot, but luckily it came together quickly on the stove.  I love using my enameled cast iron dutch oven as a jam pot:

After cooking the jam for 20 minutes or so, I put it into jars.  It made three 8-oz jars and one 12-oz (or maybe 16?) jar:

It was very good on a cracker:

And now it's time for me to get ready for the 80's pubcrawl in honor of CB's going away to grad school!  I actually made my top for it, which I'm very excited about.  I'll post more pictures of my outfit tomorrow--it involves a 20-year old crimping iron and an outfit that may double for a robot costume at a later date.  A sneak peek:

Oh yeah, recipe.

Black & Blue Jam

(adapted from Well Perserved by Mary Anne Dragan)

• 3 cups black raspberries (original calls for blackberries)
• 3 cups blueberries
• 4 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp lemon juice (about 2 lemons's worth)
• zest from one lemon

Put the berries and sugar in your jam pot.  Using a potato masher, crush the berries.  Let sit at least one hour. Add lemon juice and zest.

Prepare the preserving jars by sterilizing the jars, lids, and rings in a pot of boiling water.  While the water is boiling to sterilize the jars, bring the berries/sugar/lemon to a boil over medium-high heat.  Boil rapidly for 15-20 minutes, stirring often.  The mixture will get dark and thick.  (If desired, test the set by dropping a little on a plate that has been in the freezer.  If it gets thicker as it cools and hold its set, then it's ready!)

Remove from the heat, stir, and skim off the foam (if necessarily).  Pour the jam into the sterile jars, leaving a 1/4-in head space.  Wipe rims clean and seal according to manufacturer's directions. Process the jars in a boiling water bath (your sterilization pot is perfect and already hot!) for 10 minutes.  Remove from bath and let cool.  Lids should seal as the jars cool

A Wedding Outfit

There's a parable in the Bible about wedding clothes: I don't quite remember how it goes*, but one of the main ideas is that you don't show up to weddings in old, nasty clothes--you go to a wedding wearing appropriate wedding garments.

I have always felt that one should show up at weddings in a Very Nice Outfit, especially when it's two of my good friends getting married and even more when I've been asked to be involved by making and standing by the guest book, as well as invited to the family/wedding party-only events.  So, I decided to make my Very Nice Outfit on my own.

A couple of months ago, I had purchased a beautiful orange and white silk twill because, well, it was beautiful and silky.  I had vague notions of a dress.  After searching through my patterns, I found a fun strapless dress, so I decided to tackle it, even though I was less than confident in my sewing skills.

The dress had boning, which was scary at first, but turned out to be fairly straightforward.  And I had to rip pieces out of the bodice a couple of times because I sewed them in the wrong way.  There was a moment of panic when I thought the bodice might be too snug on my waist.  But then it all came together and looked pretty good.

It's not perfect: a lacked a zipper foot, so the zipper is less than well placed.  I messed up a few other things, but overall, the dress was fun, and it was mine.  And the shrug I knit to go with it was quick to make, fun, and went really well with the dress, especially given that it was a little chilly at times during the wedding.

I think that this will not be my final attempt at homemade dresses.  I definitely learned a lot from making it, and I look forward to trying my hand out on some other items soon.

*I could look it up, but I am lazy this morning.

Too Cool For School

In Act III of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, the first song has three groupies singing about Captain Hammer's dry cleaning bill, "Four sweater vests!"

I do not possess four sweater vests.  I like sweater vests, however.  So I made myself one (Ravelry link).

 (Oh yeah, and I cut all my hair off.)

 This is the Back-to-School U-Neck Vest (Ravelry link) from the book Fitted Knits.  This book has so many cute projects, and the speed and ease with which I completed this project means I may pick out a few more to do from the book.  In fact, I finished it in three weeks, and I feel like I could have finished it in a few days if I had focused on it.  It's knit with Cascade Lana D'Oro, a soft alpaca-wool blend that I love.

Though I'm not in school (yet! Though I am accepted at UA...) anymore, this vest is perfect for work.  It's soft and comfortable, and I want three more in different colors, so that someone can sing about my four sweater vests, if I ever gain any groupies.

Bag Lady

I made a bag:


It's the French Market Bag, and it was my first felted project. Also my first use of the Kitchener Stitch, which was surprisingly fun.

I started this bag a few years ago, and when I decided to start working on projects that were languishing in my project bags, I picked this one back up. It's a fairly easy pattern, and I finished it quickly, once I focused on it. I'm pretty pleased with it.

Felting was quick and easy: throw thing to be felted into the washing machine with some towels, hot water, and soap. Let agitate until desired level of felt. Dry. Tada! Felted object.

I use this for my lunch sack currently because wool is awesome and this keeps my food pretty cold if I decide to leave it out. It's also handy for toting things generally.

Stay tuned for another FO: a sweater vest!

Ruffle Slayer

The ruffles, oh the ruffles! I like a ruffle here and there, but I cannot abide an over abundance of them. And this top that I picked up a couple of years ago was overrun with ruffles:

Now, I found this shirt in a thrift store a while back and tried it on and liked it in spite of the ruffles. It had some great style points, like the buttons to one side and the color. But if I was going to make this shirt part of my wardrobe, those ruffles would have to die.

I got out my handy seam ripper and took out the faux-Shakespearean neck ruffle and the two ruffles that ran from the front to the back, while leaving the comparatively tasteful ruffles around the sleeves. When I pinned it back together, I stopped--it needed more work, but I was too afraid to just jump in and cut into the fabric. What if I messed it up?

After the inspiration of reading New Dress A Day and my weekend thrift adventure, I felt bold enough to tackle this shirt again. So I busted it out of the project bag and finally sewed the seams back up.

What had been stopping me from completely finishing was that I wanted to change the neckline. Once the ruffles were gone, the neck was boring and plain and didn't really fit with the style of the de-ruffled top. So I took a deep breath and cut into the fabric. Then I seamed it up. Then I tried it back on--and I really like how it turned out.

Not a perfect fix, but it helped me see that I have nothing to lose by trying something. I like the asymmetrical neckline with the buttons to one side, and I like that I turned a ruffled monstrosity into a sassy, interesting top. That's what I get for taking a chance!

*Edited to add: I have to think my fellow thrift adventuress, AW, for spurring me to haul this out of the bucket. I think she said something along the lines of "Just finish the darned thing." And that's what good friends are for.

Old Things Made New

My parents bought a lot of my clothes at thrift stores when I was a kid. Now, I didn't mind that so much (when I found things I liked), but some of the things my mom would buy for me were hideous or just not very trendy. I can vividly recall a pair of pants straight from the early eighties with a floral pattern in blues and greens and pinks. It looked like someone vomited a bouquet, and I refused to wear it, causing my mom to swear she'd never buy me clothes ever again.

When I started making my own money, I stopped going to thrift stores as much, preferring new clothes that were in style and new.

Fast forward a few years, and now I love finding things secondhand. For one thing, they're so cheap! And I can often find good quality clothing for a mere fraction of the price. While I would willingly purchase secondhand clothes if they fit, I never really thought about buying something with the goal of making it into something else.

Last week, a friend sent me a link to the New Dress A Day blog. The author's goal is to create a new outfit out of cheaply ($1 or so) thrifted clothing. Some of the outfits are a little out there for my own style, but I loved her ideas. She is creative and often completely transforms an ugly article into something adorable.

After reading through her backlog of posts, I promptly planned a Great Thrift Excursion with a friend and hit up many of our area thrift stores. I found lots of adorable things (that wouldn't need work) and several pieces that would need a little work, and a few that would need a LOT of work before they would be wearable.

One item was a cute corduroy blazer. While it fit perfectly in length and fit, the sleeves were too short.

The jacket is a petite. Apparently I have a petite upper body except for my long arms. This jacket is no good without a littl help, so that's exactly what I decided to do.

I wear a lot of 3/4 sleeve sweaters, shirts, and little jackets (because of the long arm problem, even "regular" lengths are often a little short on my arms), so I simply lopped off the jacket sleeves to an appropriate 3/4 length, hemmed it up, and tada! new jacket.

It's great what a little creativity and $2 can get you. I also fixed a couple of belts to wear over outfits, but that's pretty boring (I punched new holes or cut off some of the length so they fit me better).

I look forward to showing you some more of my transformations--I certainly have enough projects to keep me busy for a while!

Making a Bed

For Christmas, my dear friend AW bought me One-Yard Wonders, a sewing book with over 100 projects that only require one yard of fabric. I'd been eye-balling the book since she showed me her copy a few weeks before Christmas, but luckily I decided to hold off until I had, you know, more money. Which worked out in my favor--thanks AW!

Anyway, the first project that caught my eye was the "Better than a Box Pet Bed," which looked nice and snuggly. Cats are notorious for shunning beds that are purchased/made especially for them, but my cats LOVE fleeces (or "fuzzy blankets" as they are known in the M/M household). How could they possibly resist a cushy bed made entirely of soft, warm fleece?

Hobby Lobby had a sale on fleece fabric; I had Hobby Lobby Christmas giftcards, and thus the fates aligned for me to make this:

As you can see, the cat does not shun it. She in fact loves it. And since I have two cats, I shall make another one to lay in random places around the house. This way the cats have warm comfortable places to lay when we're not home and they can't snuggle under the covers with us, which is how they've been coping thus far with the cold weather and our reluctance to turn on the heat above 68.

As soon as Rory vacated the bed, Neko jumped right in, so I'm sure the beds will be popular with both kitties.

And, I'm already working on one of my resolutions! Small sewing projects like these will help me hone my skills so that I can then move on to more advanced items, like dresses. Such as this one. And let's not forget this one. So pretty, and they so need to be in my closet.

It Begins

The holiday season approaches, which means my mad dash to make lots of handmade things also grows near. Last night, my pal AW hosted a craft night, and I worked on knitting washclothes and making the cutest ornament ever. Here, let me show them to you:
The half-eaten gingerbread man! Deliciously morbid, and morbidly cute!

Now, the not so exciting washcloths (to be paired with nice soaps for a good gift):


Really, though, the whole post was to show you the cuteness of my gingerbread man. I'm going to make like 17 more of them--so very cute!

Snow, Melted Snow, and Handmade Things

When I looked out my window yesterday, this is what I saw:















Today, almost exactly 24 hours laster, here's what the I see:


I'm so sad--this is a pitiful way for snow to behave. I love snow so much, and for it to finally snow and stick, it didn't stay long enough for me to do any of things I like to do with snow, like go on night snow-walks, play in the snow, throw snowballs, get out of work, look at bird tracks, etc.

Arkansas Winter-1, Jenn-0.

Something entertaining: Last night, I made 6 placemats because I was feeling creative, and I wanted some to use on the table. I had been thinking about it for weeks, so finally I did, and here are the results:

Aren't they adorable? I made them with some fabric I bought with the intention of making a crazy dress. I then realized, however, that it was a little too thin for a whole dress. I'll probably make some manner of lined skirt out of it, however. Or maybe a cute little halter-top...

Anyway, placemats. These are backed with denim, so they are sturdy, and if I want plain blue, I can just flip them over. I love doing the top stitching too; I think it adds a really nice detail.

I have the dining room table by my window, since I figure that it's nice to look out the window. Also, it provides a better room layout. It's usually just Lance and me eating at it, so we really only need access to two places. If I need an extra seat or two, we can just pull the table away from the window.

I made four red placemats, but I decided to make a couple with this neat vintage-style fabric. So I had two made out of this. They were fast, fun, and really easy to make--it was fun sewing six of them in one night!

I think my next step is to make some napkins to match the red placemats...