Bird and Little Bird

And, Done.

 

Remember this? Well, you'll be glad to know that something did eventually come of it. Actually, the basic structure of this smock was finished a couple of months ago, but really needed a pair of well placed pockets in order to be officially called complete.  Taking the time to finish detail work on projects is generally the thing that holds me back, and this was certainly the case here.  It took me three months to find the fifteen necessary minutes to be able to do the sewing needed to take the smock out the mending pile and hang it in the closet.  

 

I ended up pretty much ditching the original pattern on which the basic structure of the smock was based.  Instead, I came up with an a-line shape that worked well enough for the front (with room to add some pintucks), and then made a back that was slightly smaller but split into two pieces. It closes at the top of the back with a single wooden button.  In other words, I'm not exactly sure how I made this thing, and I'm not sure that I could duplicate it.  

Oooh... check out my messy dining room table and laundry pile in the photo background.  I don't think I meant for you to see that. 

Handmade Love, Indeed.

I like embroidery.  A whole lot.  I love how the simple act of repeating small stitches many times can make such a beautiful picture.  However, I'm not so very good at it.  Although I do have my ambitions.  My mom does a lovely job of it though, which is why I enlisted her to stitch up a couple of my favorite patterns from Nicole, also known by her blog and shop name Follow the White Bunny.  Nicole and I have done some pattern trading in the past, and have been known to tweet back and forth to each other throughout the day about any number of things, including the fact that I wear very sensible shoes.  In other words, she's not just a creative superstar, she's really nice too.  

The picture above is one of the finished patterns that my mom started when she was here visiting last summer.  She sent it to me in the fall, along with another, and both are destined to go on the wall in Mariam's room.  I haven't hung them yet, because I ran into an unbelievably long shortage of appropriately sized embroidery hoops in not one but all of my local craft stores.  Completely bizarre.  And I really do want wooden hoops and not plastic.  So right now, only one of the finished patterns is ready for hanging.  The hoop that I ordered online for the other didn't quite fit, so I'm going to try to make one more go at the local shops and hope that they've restocked.  

I figure that I've still got a bit of time to find the right sized hoop.  Mariam's birthday is at the end of next month, and my idea is to hang these pieces as part of a big bedroom redo that will be her birthday surprise.  More about that later, no doubt. 

Basic Bookmaking: Miniature Center-Stitched Book.

It's funny, lately I have actually been doing a fair amount of crafting, but have been almost wholly remiss in actually posting about said crafting here.  On my craft blog.  Right.  I think that at this point we can all sort of agree that my blog has undergone at least a handful of transformations over the course of the nearly six years (!) of it's existence.

Sewing blog to craft blog to small business blog to parenting blog.  I should make a colorful flow chart.  I think maybe now this space has simply become the internet extension of my brain.  It is whatever I want it to be on any given day, and I feel pretty grateful that people seem to be patient enough with me to continue reading along.  Even on the days where I just talk about my cat or how much I like acorns.  Oh man, and those painfully nerdy and too frequent posts about woodpeckers.  You all are seriously good to me.

Anyway, I digress.  What I mean to say is this: yes, the making stuff part of this here blog has been a bit absent.  But not because I haven't been making stuff.  I have. And these little books are among the things that I've been making, and I'm going to tell you how to make them too. 

Miniature Center-Stitched Books

 

What you will need:

paper for inside pages

cardstock or cover weight paper for cover

bookbinding thread (or upholstery weight sewing thread or something else that's strong)

bookbinding needle or other strong, slightly blunt needle (embroidery needles could work)

bone folder, craft stick or other folding tool

 

What you will do: 

 

Cut a stack of regular paper for the inside pages of the book, and a piece of cover weight paper for the cover.  The cover piece should be slightly bigger than the pieces for the pages.  Here I used pieces of paper that are 3 inches by 4 1/4 inches for the pages.  The cover piece is 3 1/4 inches by 4 1/2 inches.  

 

Using your folding tool, fold the cover in half by carefully matching up the corners of the cover stock and making a sharp crease at the fold.  Do the same for each of the pieces of paper going inside the book.  

 

Stack the folded pages inside one another, and then fit them inside the cover.  Using your folding tool again, press on the pages at the fold to really push them into a tight stack with the creases of each page tightly fitted to the one behind, and the whole stack tightly fitted into the cover.  

Even if you really smash the creases into one another, you may find that your stack of pages no longer has an even edge.  If this is true, and it bothers you, take the stack of pages out of the cover, and while still folded into one another, trim them with a papercutting knife, a sharp pair of scissors, an x-acto.  That sort of thing.   

 

Clip your stack together in a couple of places so that it will hold together, and use some kind of sharp object to poke holes all the way through the stack.  A bookbinding awl is great, but you can also use a nail, a needle- whatever you've got.  Since this is a relatively thin book, something small and sharp should work fine.  The spacing of the holes is up to you, but you'll want an even number and they should be done in pairs.  For this book, I did four sets of holes, with 1/4 inch space between the holes in each pair.  Each pair of holes is spaced 1/2 inch apart, with the first hole on each end being 1/4 inch from the edge.

 

Thread your needle and tie a knot in one end of the thread.  Starting on the outside cover and pushing your needle through to the inside, pull the thread through the first hole at one end of the book.  We'll think of this as the bottom from now on.  Go back out through the neighboring hole, and then repeat the process in the next hole up, going from the outside of the book in, and then out the next hole on the inside.  

Keep stitching until you have reached the top of the book, and it looks like the above picture. 

 

Repeat the same process, this time going from the top of the book back down, making stitches in between the ones that are already there so that the outside of the book looks like the picture above (the inside will look like this too).  

 

 

Tie the two ends of your thread into a tight knot to secure your stitching and trim the ends.

 

I used a bit of bookcloth tape to cover the outside of the book and hide my stitching, but it's really just an extra step and isn't necessary.  If you do want to cover your spine and don't have bookcloth or bookcloth tape, you could probably get away with a bit of lightweight fusible interfacing and a strip of fabric, provided you are very careful with the iron!  Okay, yes, I've done it before...

 

I also used a handheld corner rounding tool to round the corners of my pages and cover. Again, definitely optional, but also pretty easy to do if you feel as though it's a detail that you like.  

And that's pretty much it!  Not nearly as complicated as it seems, and really a pretty quick project.  And guess what else? 

We can add this book to our list of things to put in tiny envelopes.  It fits perfectly.

 

The template for the envelope is here:

Envelope template

Follow the White Bunny Giveaway.

If my knowledge of time zones is at all adequate, I'm thinking that there are only a few hours left to enter Nicole's blogiversary (300th post, I believe) giveaway.  You can read about the details of the giveaway on her blog, Follow the White Bunny.  Nicole and I have become blog neighbors of sorts over the last few months and have been trading emails, patterns and surprise packages.  Very fun.  Anyway, I offered to contribute a couple of patterns to her giveaway this weekend, so if you've been wanting to make a fox or a rabbit, this may be your chance.

My mom recently finished using a couple of Nicole's embroidery patterns to make wall hangings for Mariam's room.  I'll show them off as soon as I can find the right size embroidery hoops for hanging them up; the local craft stores have been out of eight-inch hoops for weeks now.  They are super cute though, so I may just give in and order some hoops online so that I can get them on the wall! 

Caffeine Induced Confidence.

This morning Dan made coffee that was strong enough to have me getting out the Japanese sewing book, tracing paper, a Sharpie and a pair of scissors.  This is saying something, actually.  I'm using a pattern from the book as a jumping off point for making myself a smock of sorts.  I have an idea in my head, but am somewhat doubtful of my ability to translate said vision into real-life article of clothing.  I had to cut short my experimental sewing this afternoon to take my Monarch butterfly knocking on doors for junk food, so I didn't get much beyond cutting my tracing paper pieces. 

I've got some forest green Echino to use for this project and it is some of the nicest stuff around.  The texture and drape are amazing for something that you want to have both a bit of shape and a bit of swing.  A smock can be a little stiff and that's a good thing, if you ask me.  Unfortunately, really nice fabric always makes me feel like I should go to the trouble to sew a muslin first, especially when I'm working without a proper pattern.  This feeling creates big time inner conflict between my more sensible self and the part of me that wants instant gratification and to just get to sewing the real thing already.   Argh!  You will be updated, of course. 

The Right Kind of Sewing.

Lately I've been doing a good deal of stitching and next to none of it has resulted in finished projects.  It's the kind of dysfunctional creative cycle that can drive a girl crazy pretty quickly and I decided this week that what I really needed was to set aside experimental sewing for a bit and tackle some reliably successful and satisfying projects instead.  So, I present yet another version of Simplicity 3835.

I do realize that there is something slightly ridiculous about the fact that I have made this shirt again and again while simultaneously stockpiling numerous other very good sewing patterns that I never use.  Then again, I also own the exact same pair of corduroy pants in four different colors and wear the same pair of boots every day.  I like what I like, I guess.  I had some concerns about the possibly overwhelming nature of the polka dot pattern on this fabric, especially considering that it does kind of hurt to look at it, but then Dan said "What polka dots?  I didn't even notice them."  I'm pretty sure that he was either lying or just not even looking to begin with, but whatever.  I'm going with it. 

I did applique a little white doily on this shirt, and after some amount of reflection, I think that I'll probably add another, smaller one.  Hand sewing that can be done under a quilt on the couch is also the Right Kind of Sewing. 

Mildly Magical Mr. Meow

After various and sundry delays, Mr. Meow has finally hit the virtual shelves in the Bird and Little Bird Etsy Shop.  I'm more than aware that I intended for custom cat dolls to be available about four months ago, but then life kept happening in the way that it likes to and now it is suddenly October. 

And yes, I do remember that there was discussion of writing a pattern for this fellow.  That is definitely still in the works, and there is probably more hope of it actually happening now than there has been in quite some time, so I'll keep you all posted. 
This particular fellow has a final destination already determined, but now that I feel like my cat-making mojo is back, I'm looking forward to stitching up a few more.  I've also got some wheels turning about a fun twist on the cat, rabbit and fox patterns which probably wouldn't take too much doing if I could just find a few spare moments.  If you have any to lend, I'll use them wisely.  Promise. 

New Season of Sewing at nido.

The new season of sewing classes begins this month at my favorite local fabric shop, nido. You can check out the new schedule here if you happen to be in the Burlington area and have the urge to do a bit of stitching.  There are some really fun offerings this time around and I'm pleased to say that I'll be teaching three of them!  I'm doing patchwork pillows, a fox and rabbit class and a workshop on the Built By Wendy top that I like so much.  Other folks are teaching classes on dresses, bags and aprons.  All good stuff.  Come learn something new or just hang out and sew!

Lazy Days, Indeed.

One of the sometimes challenging bits about raising my particular child is the fact that she pretty much refuses to wear pants.  In situations where she is under parental pressure to be sensible, or when mosquito contact is likely be very high, she might give in.  Otherwise, she is essentially all dresses and skirts, all the time.  This fact, paired with the arrival of That Time of Year, means stitching up a few new skirts in preparation for the start of school.  I saw this post from The Long Thread and got inspired to use some Echino ni-co to make up some new Lazy Days skirts.

The not-so-pink nature of this fabric was a definite gamble.  I asked Phiona if she thought that Mariam would hate it and throw a fit.  She said yes.  However, we had not counted on the mitigating factor of the bicycle print.  Bicycles are very exciting and cool at our house right now, so a bicycle skirt is all good, even if it is in blues and browns. 

I also added this bit of red and white polka-dot bias tape to the bottom, instead of a fold-over hem.  I cut the fabric a tiny bit short and didn't want to lose any length.  This turned out to be a perfect solution and the finished skirt is just the right length.  For now anyway.  Apparently children grow a lot.  I kept thinking how tiny the skirt seemed when I was making it, especially considering that my girl seems so very big to me these days.  It would have been great to show you the skirt actually on the kid, but she wasn't really having any of that.  

In other news, the winner of the wonky Mr. Rabbit-Meow is Tracy.  I'll send an email along shortly to get your information, Tracy.  And for the rest of you; do stay tuned because I suspect another animal giveaway will be coming along in the near future!

 

My Feline Nemesis.

 

This guy.  I've been working on him here and there for the last week or two, and kept having this nagging feeling that something was just a little off.  I was getting really worried about it too, because this Mr. Meow was supposed to be the final prototype for the pattern, and his not coming out "just so" was making me feel very nervous that I didn't actually have the workable pattern that I thought I did.  I was taking pictures as I went along, hoping to use them for the photo tutorial of the Mr. Meow pattern, and maybe being so focused on each individual step in the making process somehow impacted my mental clarity.  Because, you see, I had this fellow entirely finished before I realized that indeed, something is definitely off.  He has a rabbit's body.  I'm not sure exactly how I got the pattern pieces mixed up, but I did, and now I've got a seriously funny looking cat on my hands.  I find this insanely frustrating.  This particular cat was intended to be a gift for my friend Max.  He is two, and kind of spectacular, and therefore deserves an absolutely perfect cat.  Not a weird rabbit/cat hybrid creature. 

So, this Mr. Meow is in need of a new home, and quick-like.  We are no longer on speaking terms and it would be best for all of us if he moved on.  I feel a little guilty for always offering you all my reject animals, so I promise that I'll offer up a giveaway of a perfectly perfect (or at least passably perfect) Bird and Little Bird creature very soon.  In the meantime, leave a comment here if you might be willing to offer this guy some shelter and three squares.  Assuming more than one person is interested, I'll pick a name out of a hat or some such thing around Wednesday or so.  

Last time we did favorite animals, I believe.  This time I'd like to know one place you absolutely want to visit sometime in your life.  For my part, I'm semi-obsessed with the idea of visiting the Galapagos and have told Dan that taking me there someday will be payback for supporting him through medical school.  Provided we all survive medical school, that is.