a little owl cape

The nice thing about sewing on Saturdays is that I can instantly post! I literally just finished this project about 10 minutes ago, minus photography/writing time.

Anyway, as I mentioned in the last post, a friend of mine emailed me while I was on the Paris trip to ask if I'd be willing to help her out with a Halloween costume for her foster son. I've made some capes for her before, for her own boys and her nieces/nephews, and the idea was pretty cute, so it was hard to say no! The boy loves owls, and really wanted to dress up as one. This was the inspiration link she sent me. And she bought the owl mask herself, so my only responsibility was the cape.

And this is what I came up with. I made this one a little differently than the others, mostly in that it involved a half-circle rather than a rectangle. The bottom-most level of feathers is the cut edge of the cape, but all of the others were cut and sewn on. I was also able to use all stash fabrics! The boy's favorite color is green, so I was glad to find a piece of cotton that didn't have a girly-looking print on it.


And here's a view of the back, as best as Donna could model it. I'm sure her shoulders are wider than a little boy's! I left all the edges of the feathers raw, because it would have taken forever to make this otherwise, though I stitched the edges about 1/4" away from the edge to prevent too much fraying as it gets washed and worn. I figured a little fraying would actually be ok for this one, to soften the feather edges! The rows of feathers are just zigzagged on, so I did add the lining that you can see above in order to hide that. The rows got pretty crooked in some spots! I know there's this huge span of tan at the top, but honestly, I ran out of the green so I had to improvise!
One more detail my friend requested was some "handles" so he could use that to spread his wings. I made them pretty wide in order to accommodate growth, but it's just two pieces of ribbon stitched on so that the feathers above it were left free (minus the hem feathers, of course.)

I sent her some pictures in progress and she was excited about how it was turning out, so I'm hoping the boy loves it! This was more of a fabric hog than I thought, too-- I only have scraps left of the tan leaf print and the darker brown. So all in all, about 3.75 yards of fabric. I've been remiss in keeping track of the numbers on my spreadsheet lately--I still have some subtracting to do for the DragonCon projects and my TARDIS bag. So I'll have to catch up on that soon so I can at least see how I'm doing on my Stash Diet at the end of the month!

Are you doing any Halloween costumes this year? Or are you all too busy sewing your fall and winter stuff, like I need to start doing?

the slowest of sewing

I figure I'll have to do a few more in-progress posts for awhile, since I'm not speedy enough to whip out a winter coat in no time! Also, I've gotten a little sidetracked by a sewing request from a friend that I couldn't pass up. (Because it's costume-related and for a little kid--how could I say no?)

All I've managed to get done on my coat so far is to cut the outside and underline the pieces. My fabric doesn't look like a loose weave on the table, but when you hold it up to the light, it tells a different story!

If that much light gets through, it seems reasonable that winter winds could do the same! I had a large piece of silk organza left over from making this dress, because I seriously overestimated how much I would need to underline it. I also ruined the light color of it back when I made that dress, because I threw all of the fabrics in the wash together and it turned sort of an uneven, hand-dyed-looking grey. So I didn't want to use it as a press cloth, and I couldn't use it for any interfacing-type roles on lighter colored fabrics. However, I did have just enough to squeeze most of the outer pieces of this coat onto it, minus the two front pieces. (They were supposed to be interfaced anyway, and overlap when the coat is buttoned, so I was ok with making an exception there.)

The grain may be wonky on a few pieces here and there, because if you've ever worked with silk organza, you know how it shifts. At first, I tried cutting out the pieces and then basting it onto the main coat pieces, but of course things were shifting like crazy. So since the fabric itself has a bit more grabbing power than the usual things I underline, I tried a different approach: laying the pieces directly on the organza, basting them on, and then cutting them out. The other advantage to this was that I could tweak the layout to fit as many pieces of the coat on as possible, since I was working with leftovers!

The pieces are all cut out and ready to go, including the two interfaced front pieces. I'm hoping to finish my friend's project--an owl cape for her foster son to wear for Halloween/his early November birthday--before the weekend is over, so I can give it to her on Sunday. I do have a little sneak peek of that, aside from what I've been posting on Instagram here and there, because Doug got bored while I was working on this last weekend and started goofing off with my camera. I guess a good side effect of our Paris trip is he's a lot less nervous about using it now!
So many feathers. But the good thing is that I was able to completely bust a few pieces of quilt cotton from my stash!

And a little peek at me in my sewing room. It had been awhile since I had a nice chunk of weekend time to sew, so I was a happy girl!

The feathers didn't go quite as far when I pinned them on for real after edge-finishing, so I cut out what I hope is the last of those last night. The only work I have today is teaching a couple of lessons, so I'm hoping to get those edges done so I can finish up the sewing ASAP!

Friday Favorites, Episode 34

It's baaaaaaaaack! 2009 may only be about a week old, but already finding some good ideas cropping up.

1. First on the list is a post from SewStylish about "dressing for her DNA". No, it has nothing to do with how tall you are, or hair color, or anything like that--more of a speculation of what she would wear if her wardrobe reflected her family background. So I wonder what would happen if my predominantly Anglo-Celtic mother's side (which I admittedly take after far more in my looks) took on my dad's Germanic, Pennsylvania Dutch side? (I think the Celts would win, given my fondness for things that look like they could come from a Renaissance Faire or a fantasy movie!) So I may give this a try at some point soon.

2. I've noticed a tendency in my sewing over the last year and a half or so-- I've been slowing down. Not so much that I'm not sewing as that I'm putting a lot of time into things to try and get them really finished-looking and well-fitting. And I'm mostly ok with that, but sometimes I just want a fast project. So I liked this quick, one-seam skirt at CraftStylish.com. (Bonus-- I need all the patterndrafting practice I can get, if I ever want to successfully make one!)

3. I'm not a coffee person at all, really--I'm thoroughly addicted to tea. (I blame that aforementioned predominant Anglo-Celtic side.) But I still liked this coffee cup cozy from Whip Up. (Us tea-drinkers probably actually need it more, as all we're usually given at the coffeeshops is a cup of boiling water with a tea bag dunked into it!) But it's cute, would be easy to just toss into your bag, and projects that use up scraps are always good.

4. Got two things from Dollar Store Crafts this week. The first would be a great project to do with kids--how to make a knitting loom from stuff like popsicle sticks and toilet paper rolls. The second is a planter made from a bread pan--the person who made it used succulents like aloe plants, but since it's made from a kitchen item anyway, I bet it would also make a really cute windowsill herb garden!

5. Last up for today-- not a tutorial, but I love this idea at Oh Happy Day. She made her husband a "Leisure Book", to give him one place to keep track of things like movies he wants to watch, bands to listen to, things like that. I'm definitely stealing this idea-- I'm constantly losing my lists of that sort of stuff. Especially my bands and my books. And I have the dayplanner from the last couple of years that would be perfect to recycle into this-- it has the binder rings, and the tab dividers. It's just falling apart in my purse, but recovering it and keeping it near my compy would work great! (Found this one via OnePrettyThing.com.)

And now, I must go do some cleaning so I can work on my pajamas some more. Hoping to finish the machine work on the top before Cassie comes over for the Stargate Atlantis finale *sniff*/Chuck marathon/crafty evening. So that way I'll have some handwork to do--that and some more embroidery, maybe. Of course, I'm more in the mood to deconstruct than sew...

Shirts, Soup and Students

I just wanted to give a shoutout to my flute students-- as I was reminded today, they're such a wonderfully creative group of kids! And not just with music...
This isn't actually from today-- it was part of a Christmas gift that one of my long-time students gave me this past year. I'm not sure if she or her mom did this one, because they're both kind of crafty, but I love this thing. It's basically just a little cardstock sleeve for a pack of post-its, held closed by a little teeny piece of velcro. I love the play on words with the music stamp, of course. And I'm trying to protect it in my bag as much as possible, because I seriously want to keep using this thing once the post-its are gone!


This is what made me think to blog about them-- I teach once a week after school at a private school in the area, and they've been on spring break for the last two weeks. One of my girls went to Flordia over her break, and she came in today and announced she had a present for me. So I opened it up to find this-- a handmade necklace of a seashell on braided embroidery floss. She immediately said I didn't have to keep it as a necklace if I just wanted the shell, but as I told her, I love seashell necklaces so this is perfect. (Tried it on and it's a good length, too, so I'm definitely keeping this as is!)

I figured while I'm at it, I'll also share one of my favorite soup recipes. I love this because it's easy and rich and has a bunch of vegetables in a way that I don't mind eating them (I do try to eat healthy, but seriously lack a natural inclination to eat veggies!) I adapted this from a recipe in a make-ahead-and-freeze cookbook that my mom brought home for me once (I'm chronically in need of things I can just make and stick in the freezer for when I get home from teaching and I'm starving and/or have limited time to eat before teaching again.) So without further ado...

Beef Barley Vegetable Soup
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 1/2 lb beef stew meat, cut into bite-sized cubes (and I cut off as much fat as I can too)
1 bell pepper, chopped (I like the red ones, but you can do whatever color you like best)
1 c. carrots, chopped (or you could probably use the pre-chopped frozen ones)
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 bay leaf
4 beef boullion cubes (I actually use this beef boullion paste stuff in a jar instead-- sooooo much better than the powder stuff!)
1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes in juice
2/3 c. uncooked barley
1 c. frozen green beans
1 c. frozen corn

In a medium soup pot, heat oil. Brown the beef stew meat over high heat and remove with a slotted spoon. Turn heat down to medium, then saute the bell peppers and carrots in the soup pot just until tender. Return meat to soup pot. Add 5 1/2 c. water, thyme, bay leaf and beef boullion; simmer for 45 minutes to an hour. Add tomatoes (with juice), barley, green beans and corn, then simmer for another 25 minutes. Remove bay leaf.

The original recipe called for chopped onion too, but I'm not a fan of onion so I replaced that with the carrots. You could add them though, just saute them with the pepper. I also cut back on the original amount of tomatoes and had to add more water than it called for. Seriously, you could probably add whatever veggies you want. It's a very thick, hearty soup, and freezes great, and is perfect for a quick meal (once it defrosts) on a yucky, cold, wet day like this that makes me think that weather that's warm enough to allow me to wear my recent sewing projects is never going to get here!

Speaking of sewing, I started sewing on my adaptation of BurdaStyle's Azalea dress yesterday afternoon. I'm making mine as a tunic top, so I eliminated the underdress (the drapey top stuff is thick enough to not be see-through, and if I'm going to be wearing this as a summer top I don't want an extra layer that close to my skin! Not with Mid-Atlantic humidity!) and shortened it a good bit. It's been a pretty easy sew so far-- the thing that took me the longest was the zipper, and that's because I'm trying a new technique to do lapped zippers instead of a center one in the side seam. (Not definite yet, but there's a chance I might be teaching a friend's daughter how to sew with patterns-- the mom can sew, and the girl has her own machine and can make simple things like quilts and pillows, but she really wants to learn how to make clothes. So my friend said she doesn't know how to use patterns very well, and I offered to help out. If that's the case, I want to see if this type of zipper is easier than the centered ones, because I remember when I was a kid, zippers were the most frustrating thing to sew ever. Sometimes they still are. And the lapped ones look nicer anyway. Not that I'm going to let her start with zippers, mind you, but you know it's only a matter of time before she wants something that involves one.)

Anyway, I'm nearly done with the tunic already-- still have to finish the yoke (ran out of time and bobbin thread around the same time) and then hem it. And then I have to make a belt, because it looks like a serious maternity top without it. I saw one in Threads that looked interesting-- a bias-cut tied one that hugs curves very well, which might be perfect to cinch it. But I need to see how much fabric I have to deal with, because I decided that I wanted to make a shrug out of the yoke/belt fabric as well (since I'm an ice queen and get ridiculously cold in over-air conditioned spaces. Which, around here, is pretty much any building that's not my house. Plus then I can wear it sooner, because that will make it good for spring as well.) I don't have a pattern for the shrug-- my plan for now is to stick the Azalea on my dummy and drape something with kimono-like sleeves and see if I like it. And if I don't, it's off to dig through the pattern stash.

But first, off to actually sew!

Edit, 9:57 PM: Oh, this could be bad. I sewed the wrong straps together, so the armholes are in the front and back instead of the sides. And I did some major trimming/corner chopping. Oh, I hope this is fixable without redoing the entire yoke....