Ride 'em Cowgirl!

I'm filing this one under Live and Learn.

K's Spring Concert was last night and she needed an Outfit.

The Rules were: The top had to be white. The bottom had to be Dark Blue or Black (and could have red accents) but Not Jeans. (K also wanted something she could wear for the Fourth of July.) The Kindergarten and Pre-K were to wear Cowboy Hats if they could obtain such.

I looked first at K's wardrobe and found a pair of dark blue stretch pants and an old white t-shirt. No good. I looked at Target and found a soft white smocked blouse. Good. A short black skort. No good. Tight black lacy leggings. No good. K does have a cowboy hat with red trim. Good.

I checked my fabric stash. Many Fourth-of-July novelty prints but nothing suitable. Feeling fairly certain that the local fabric stores would turn up with nothing, I took a ride out to Jo Ann Fabrics. Looked at linen, denim, silk charmeuse, flannel, homespun, gingham, calico, muslin, organic cotton -- back to the linen, which was soft and in a lovely blue, bought 3/4 of a yard of it along with some bandanna print ribbon, an actual bandanna and some black non-roll elastic, and headed home.

I washed, dried and ironed the linen. Started the Lazy Days skirt pattern and worked slowly and carefully. Noticed that the linen was not 45" wide as called for in the pattern, but 60" wide, but didn't worry about it too much -- figured that the skirt would just be fuller. Oh, how wrong I was! When I threaded the elastic through the waistband, I saw that the extra fabric caused there to be less gathering, not more. So I cut the elastic smaller and sewed it back together. And in my haste I cut it too small. So I cut the elastic apart. And in my haste to remove it, I pulled the elastic all the way into the waistband, rendering it extremely difficult to retrieve.

At this point I began to have serious doubts about whether a 5-year-old would even consider a linen skirt to be acceptable Fouth-of-July or Cowgirl attire. I rooted through my stash again and and found some blue starry quilting cotton, not really of clothing quality by my standards but it would do for a cowgirl costume. I began working on the Lazy Days skirt again, slowly and carefully. All the way to edge-stitching the bandanna ribbon to the hem of the skirt.

Satisfied, I began to iron the finished product. And the ribbon began to fray and pull away from the skirt! Oh no! Nasty cheap craft store ribbon! I couldn't cut the ribbon hem off of the skirt and try again with different trim, because the skirt was already as short as I was willing to make it. I looked through my notions bin (a total disaster area!) for some narrow red trim to sew over the edges of the cheap ribbon. I found some rick-rack and some grosgrain ribbon that would work. Not stopping to think, I pinned the rick-rack on, ran it through the machine, and did the same with the grosgrain. The end result was both sloppy and silly-looking. The trims didn't quite match in color, and why hadn't I thought to use the grosgrain twice, which would have given a more polished look? I was really disappointed. But time was running out. It would have to do.

Unless -- I took my loop turner and pushed it through the waistband of the linen skirt, hoping to catch the elastic with its hook. Instead I poked a hole through the fabric. Done! I ironed the starry skirt and hung it up on a hook to wait for K.

The verdict? "It's weird, Mama."

Could be worse!

Down by the riverside

Yesterday was by far the best, most beautiful day of the year. D and I took a walk downtown to check out the moving sale at Olde City Quilts -- they will be relocating just a few yards closer to the river, so I did not have to feel sad to see them go; instead I joyfully gathered quilting fabric remnants into my arms until I could hold no more, and headed out with a sack of fun and interesting additions to my stash that I otherwise would not have been able to afford.

We had lunch at Legends, a local gourmet pizza place that specializes in fancy pies named for celebrities. Neither of us was feeling adventurous, so we just had ordinary individual pita pizzas, but one day I'd like to go back and try the Don Ho -- pineapple, apple smoked bacon, mandarin orange (I could skip that part) and fontina cheese. Yum!

From there I decided to push my luck with D and beg to stop in the new (to me -- it's been there a year and a half, I found out when I asked the owner!) sewing/fabric store on the corner "for just a quick run-through." It's a good thing he had his Android phone with him to play with because I was in there for at least forty-five minutes, touching fabric and touching it again and pulling bolts out and juxtaposing them and squealing at the pretty notions and the sample projects. I was grateful to be the only one in the store, so I could fall all over myself without getting embarrassed.

The store is called Just Make It ... Sew and is truly an enchanting place for a textile-crafter to wander through ! The rooms are bright and airy with a wonderful selection of elegant and touchable fabrics gorgeously arranged, and the owner -- whose name I neglected to ask in my excitement -- gave me just the right amount of space. I clucked and fussed over her Amy Butler Midwest Modern prints, trying to match one or two with some lovely bright soft linens that were on sale. I did find two combinations that I liked, and bought fabric to make hooded towels, along with some thread for my big secret quilting project. I will definitely go back there to shop and I am excited that the store offers sewing lessons too!

(In celebration of the weather and the fabric and the end of Spring Break, we stopped at Umm's Ice Cream Parlor for the first time this season. Huzzah! is all that need be said about that, I think. We ate our ice cream as we walked home by the Delaware River. I ask you, could it possibly get better than that?)

When we got home I did some fulling of a couple of pieces of wool suiting I bought a while back that I thought I might turn into blankets. The final texture and amount of shrinkage surprised me. I need to keep practicing until this process becomes really familiar to me, at which point I'm sure something else will have come up which fascinates me more.

Here is the first hooded towel that I made. I under-bought the cotton fabric and had to make the whole thing smaller than I normally would have, but that's okay because this project is meant for a newborn-to-6-month-old and they have such little bitty heads that would get lost in a giant hoodie anyway. Since the baby is due in July I thought it would be nice to have a cooling towel/blanket, and this one fits the bill nicely -- both the linen and cotton layers are smooth and moisture wicking, and they both lack the nappiness of the flannel and terrycloth that I normally use, which keep a child warm but also retain moisture. This will be a quick-drying towel or a light-layer blanket.

What about Studio Saturday, you ask? Believe it or not, I accomplished my goals! I had a nasty bout with insomnia last night anyway, so around 4am I took apart the desk (don't ask what I had to do to find a flat head screwdriver. Why would you use all the flat head screwdrivers and then scatter them all over the house so no one else can find one when they need it? I'm asking you, D!) and moved it into K's room (she was with Grandma & Grandpa,) then put it back together and emptied my closet. D measured for shelves in the late afternoon. Mission accomplished! Woot!