crafters for Obama FLAIR!

A couple people mentioned they might like to have Crafters for Obama gear. Your wish is my command.

I set up a Cafepress shop where you can get t-shirts and buttons. 20% of the selling price of each item will go directly to support the Obama campaign (I am not taking any profit, though of course Cafepress does) You can also get t-shirts, bumper stickers, buttons and all kinds of official goodies from the Obama Store. A lot of their stuff has been backordered in the past couple weeks, but they do seem to be getting more inventory in. I now have one Crafters for Obama t-shirt and one official Obama '08 t-shirt. Both are excellent conversation-starters. ;)

Thanks for all the nice comments about the gray dress. The tights + boots suggestion is excellent. Wearing it over skinny jeans, ditto. Definitely sounds doable. xo.

gray from the runway

Thumbs up on the Project Runway patterns. This one is pattern 3507 and is actually a junior pattern (though the sizing goes all the way up to Junior size 25/26 so those of us who like to dress like teenagers but no longer actually qualify as such are in luck).

This is actually a practice dress. I bought the pattern for Twin, as well as a cheery tropical cotton print for the dress. Twin thought it would be wise to practice with a less special fabric to make sure we like the cut of the dress. So wise is Twin. I picked this lovely gray and I really like the minimalist feel. We both think that the sleeves are a little poofy. Twin's dress might have the alternate sleeve in the pattern...the debate is still out on that.



Let's see, tips for anyone who makes this pattern:

• Measure and mark your pintucks carefully or else they won't line up at the sleeve seams. Mine don't. But then, you can't really tell, so maybe it's not a big deal unless you are really a perfectionist. It kind of bothers me.
• Baste down the flaps on your pressed seams when you make the casing for the elastic. I always forget this step and the stupid safety pin gets stuck at the seam every single time. There is much less cursing involved if you baste down the edges.

That's about all I can think of. It's a pretty straightforward pattern. People ask me sometimes if I actually wear the clothes I make. Umm...not very often. Most of them are sightly wonky or don't fit quite right or are kind of fugly when they are actually on my body. For instance, this one is a bit short. I realize this is the fashion. And anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a very hip person. Unfortunately I also have an irrational fear of people seeing my bum. Or really anything above my knees.

So I'm not sure how much wear I will get out of this dress. It may hang in my closet alongside some of the other clothes I have made but never wear. But I distinctly feel that there is going to be a breakthrough very soon when my homemade clothes will suddenly start being just right. Right fit, right patterns, right fabrics. All converging to make clothes that are just right and uniquely me.

Well, maybe some of them will be, anyway. And until then, I'll just enjoy the making and sewing, which is really what it's all about for me anyway.

join me

Indulge my rambling off-topic for a few minutes, as I talk about politics [gasp!].

In a family of political junkies, I have always been the one to sit mute at the dining room table when political arguments are being waged around me. To my mind, politics was murky and mucky, a mean nasty ugly mess that I steered well clear of.

Cynical, disenchanted, lazy. I have been all of these things, to the discredit both of me and the political environment of the era that I grew up in. I honestly have never believed that the issues that I care about would be properly addressed in the political arena, and I found the antagonism and finger-pointing of political debate abhorrent.

But this year I have great reason to hope. And while I think both of the remaining Democratic candidates would be strong leaders and I, as a woman, would love to have a Madam President, I believe that Barack Obama offers the kind of leadership that we need now. A leadership that will inspire us to look past our differences and work together to build the kind of America we want to be.

His clear, honest voice calls for unity:

We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don't think like us or look like us or come from where we do. The welfare queen is taking our tax money. The immigrant is taking our jobs. The believer condemns the non-believer as immoral, and the non-believer chides the believer as intolerant.

...So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scape-goating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others - all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face - war and poverty; injustice and inequality. We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.
[from the Jan 20 speech in Atlanta, GA]

Particularly appealing to me has been his call to service:

Today, it's easy for us to get caught thinking that there are two different stories at work in our lives. There is the story of our day to day cares and responsibilities. And there is the story of what's happening in the wider world - a story viewed through headlines and websites, a destiny to be shaped by forces beyond our control.

I am here today to ask you to reject this notion, and to invite you to take hold of the future of your country. Because your own story and the American story are not separate - they are shared. And they will both be enriched if we stand up together, and answer a new call to service to meet the challenges of our new century.

...We need your service, right now, in this moment - our moment - in history. I'm not going to tell you what your role should be; that's for you to discover. But I am going to ask you to play your part; ask you to stand up; ask you to put your foot firmly into the current of history. I am askingyou to change history's course. And if I have the fortune to be your President, decades from now - when the memory of this or that policy has faded, and when the words that we will speak in the next few years are long forgotten - I hope you remember this as a moment when your own story and the American story came together, and history bent once more in the direction of justice.
[from the Dec 5 speech in Mt. Vernon, IA. I encourage you to read the entire speech to learn about his specific plans for increasing the number of Americans involved in service.]

It's about more than policy changes. It's about a sea change in attitude among the American people. He's asking us to step up, pitch in, and work together to transform our country. He has inspired me to think about how I can engage more in my community, how I can serve others, and what role I will play in the future of my country. I am proud to be inspired by him. Imagine what kind of change we might see if he were given the chance to inspire the whole country as President?

I invite you to join me in supporting Barack Obama. This crafting community is an extraordinary group of thoughtful, hard-working, strong women. I think his message will resonate with you as it has with me.

If you live in a state that is voting on Tuesday, I implore you to get out and vote. Volunteer on the ground to get others out too. And no matter where you live in the country, you can easily take action through Obama's website. I am planning on volunteering by phonebanking from my home this weekend, and I hope you'll join me.

You can also easily and quickly donate to a fundraising campaign I have set up. My campaign, Crafters for Obama, has a goal of $2000. Help me meet this goal. In this month alone, Obama's campaign has received contributions from more than 249,000 people, 90% of whom have contributed less than $100. Help us keep the momentum of this grassroots movement.

And when you're ready to support Barack, won't you add the "Crafters for Obama" button to your blog to show your support? It's in the top right column, and I invite you to display it proudly on your blog.

I have great reason to hope. Instead of a politics of murk and muck, I see a path, however winding and long it might be, that can lead us toward renewal and hope. I want our country to be on that path.

I'd love to hear your opinions too, even if you don't agree with me.

mother blogs: quilted oven mitts

Hello! I'm still here. In the chill of winter I've actually been doing a lot of crafting, so I'll be trying to post about some of it over the next few days. There's a quilt in progress, and a new embroidery project, and some also clothes-sewing. (Have you seen the new Simplicity line of Project Runway patterns? I find this very exciting. I've already made a dress. More on that soon.)

I asked my mom to do a little guest-blogging because she made us the most incredible oven mitts ever for Christmas. (that sounds a little funny. best. oven. mitts. EVER. But it's true. Trust me.) So without further ado, here's the super-talented marmee:



I decided on a trip to visit the girls in July that I’d try to make Christmas gifts this year, and at the same time try to learn to machine quilt.

I’d bought Harriet Hargrave’s Heirloom Machine Quilting and had read it, but I’d never dropped the feed dog on my machine or done anything with a darning foot before.

So I thought I would try stitching around the designs on fabric first to see if I could learn in baby steps. Tracing was always a big save for me in art projects – I can copy almost anything!

Julie gave me some charming retro kitchen fabric that she’d been saving in her stash, and we picked out a gold cotton for binding. [The cool retro print was purchased from Superbuzzy. Looks like they're out of the blue, but still have it in light brown.]

The first issue was what batting to use. Julie said she’d seen a reference to insulated batting on some of the blogs she reads, so I dived into Google and came up with Insulbright. I used two thicknesses of cotton quilt batting (I bought a crib bat) and then one layer of Insulbright, and used a cotton duck that matched the background for the reverse. It was quite a sandwich.



I started sewing on the motifs at the center, working out toward the edges. As my book had suggested, I tried using my fingertips on both sides of the fabric to guide the fabric under the needle to “trace” the design with the sewing machine. At first I went through a ton of thread and made tiny, tiny stitches, but as I continued I was able to push the material faster and gain more confidence that I wasn’t going to fail to follow the pattern.

I also cheated (I am old enough to be entitled to cheat, I’ll have you know) because I used a Daylight lamp with a 5-inch diopter magnifying lens, which I shoved right in front of the needle. It made it a lot easier to see what I was doing.

It took a lot of time, but I find any kind of repetitive work like this soothing. We turned up the Big Band/Swing on the house stereo system, and I sat there and quilted. Is it because it’s sort of meditative? I don’t know – but I get a lot of thinking done when I do stuff like this.

Plus I really liked the way it turned out.

Then it was time to do gifts for everybody else in the family.



For my sister and sister-in-law, I used Moda quilting fabrics – I love the prints and the feel of the fabric. My sis has an elegant Provencal kitchen, so I used this brown paisley print with a smaller companion print on the back, and a third print for the binding. I also made a set for my sister-in-law, using some complementing Moda prints in blue.

Now to make some mitts and potholders for me! I’m my toughest client, that’s for sure, and I’ve been looking for something in blue and natural that will go with the Silestone countertops I got last Christmas. I think Julie found me the right fabric, though – this new Williamsburg quilt fabric she saw at PurlSoho’s website. I’ve never been big on birds, but I think I can center my design to focus on the flowers, not the birds. If my local quilt shop ever gets the blue back in stock, that is.

In the meantime, the girls gave me a wonderful gift: a machine quilting class, with them, in February. Something to look forward to, for sure!

From Julie: The mitts really are amazing. They are perfect in my tiny kitchen. And they are just so perfectly detailed. Now you know where my perfectionism comes from...it runs a bit rampant in our family!



Mama, you forgot to mention the great dishtowels you made to match! Yes, that's right. I have matching homemade dishtowel oven-door hangy things. Mom bought a single handtowel, cut it in half, and attached tops and tabs to them. Love.

Thanks mama for blogging!! xo

brother blogs

Lest Julie and Twin retain their monopoly on thoughtful handmade gifts, their brother decided to build his girlfriend a jewelry box for Christmas, and Julie was kind enough to ask him to guest-blog about it.

The main box is made of cherry and measures 16” wide by 10” deep and about 4 1/2” high. The inside is lined with 1/4”-thick curly maple (a really cool wood with a distinctive figure that’s often used in musical instruments, particularly guitars) that I stained golden yellow to complement the dark red cherry. In the bottom of the box, the lining serves as a shelf for two removable trays, which sit just above (or “proud of” in woodworking-speak) the seam between box and lid. The lid is a simple raised panel with an unassuming 5/16” brass pull.

The design is largely based on an article from Fine Woodworking, available here with a subscription. I omitted several details, most noticeably the 1/8” hand-cut dovetails with mitered corners, which struck me as needlessly over-engineered and impossible for a woodworking mortal to build. (I admit the latter consideration was more important.)

I added a few details of my own: in addition to selecting different lumber, I used side rail hinges that screw into the sides of the box and have stays to keep the lid from opening past 95 degrees. They were a pain to install, but they’re much more mechanically stable than the itty-bitty box hinges with positive stops the FW author screwed precariously into the rear edge of his box. It’s simple physics: a box whose lid is attached with a stopped hinge behaves like a lever, so a light push on the top of the open lid produces a much larger force on the hinged joint. The hinges I used will withstand a lot more force before the screws fail or--worse yet--the wood into which they’re secured splinters out.

I also designed dividers for the trays and put fabric-covered foam inserts in the bottom of each compartment, a detail that makes the box a lot more useful and nicer to look at.


First, the divided trays: after laying out a sensible arrangement on graph paper, I cut the dividers to length from one-inch wide cherry that I planed to the same thickness as the kerf (i.e., blade width) of my tablesaw (about 1/8”). That way, the horizontal dividers could be interlocked with the vertical ones using notched half-lap joints cut on the tablesaw, which makes them more sturdy and easier to keep square during assembly. (An overview of the basic technique is available here. But one note of caution: the joints should fit tightly, and 1/8” stock is very easy to split if you’re not careful putting the pieces together.)

I prefinished the components before final assembly and then secured them into the trays with simple yellow glue. This process wasn’t as difficult as it looks, although it did require careful setup and accurate cutting.


Once the divided trays were built, I set about finding a way to line them with fabric. The technique described below is a variation of the one presented here. I settled on faux suede in a shade of green that looked nice with the wood. (I wanted something with a nap, but real suede is purported to tarnish silver and I didn’t think it would be as easy to work with.)

So that each compartment would have a cushioned surface, I cut padded inserts out of a product called Darice Foamies, which are 2mm thick foam pads with paper backing, available at Michael’s for around $0.80 per 8 1/2” x 11” sheet.

I cut the foam pads just slightly smaller than the compartments, leaving a gap of about 1/32” on all four sides so they’d fit snugly after being covered with fabric.

After the foam inserts were cut to size, I retained the services of a sewing / fabric consultant known on this blog as Marmee for instruction on how to create a pattern for cutting the fabric. (The two trays are divided into 28 compartments, but there are only four unique shapes, so making a pattern for each shape saves time).


Here’s the basic procedure: first, cut a piece of paper to just under twice the width and about one-and-a-half times the length of a foam insert. Place the foam insert in the center of the paper and trim the corners of the pattern off at 45 degrees, leaving about 1/16” between each corner of the insert and the angled edge of the pattern. The idea is to wrap the fabric around the insert like an envelope so the foam is completely covered and the fabric doesn’t bunch up sloppily at the corners or underneath.


Once all the cutting has been done, assembly is easy: just coat the back of each insert and its fabric cover with spray adhesive, move them to a clean surface, and fold the fabric around the four edges of the foam insert. If you’ve measured and cut everything carefully, the pieces should fit snugly in their compartments and won’t need to be glued in. I didn’t make the inserts permanent because I wasn’t sure how well they’d hold up over time and I wanted them to be removable so they could be replaced easily.

From Julie: How cool is my big bro? It's really even more gorgeous in person. I've put in an order for a box of my own, though I don't know when I'll get it... ;) Although the lovely recipient of this jewelry box certainly deserves it, both for putting up with my brother and for being such a sweet person.

christmas roundup

We are getting ready to hop in the car and head to VA. Yippee! But before we head out, here's a quick roundup of some of our holiday activities. We made a new gingerbread village; it's becoming a bit of a tradition. See our village from last year. This time we wanted a whole town, with a town square. Some of our buildings were more successful than others, but we definitely had a lot of fun.





Town hall.



Shops. Grocer in the middle, barber shop on the end.



This is obviously some kind of posh shop. Dressmakers, maybe.



Townhouses opposite the shops.

Church in the corner of the square. Ice cream cone steeple was a bit tricky.



Beyond the square, there is a lake and Twin's estate. Mostly red, of course.



Minty little house.


We had a live tree this year. We also inherited some great old decorations from our great-aunt including this little angel:
and these cool glass ornaments:
I made a tree skirt for the little tree out of some crazy thrifted pillowcases. I think the whole effect is pretty cool.
And while I've been sitting here, Twin has gotten the car completely packed and now is tapping her toe. We're off!

Wishing everyone a very very very merry Christmas. Lots of peace and joy and a heck of a lot of candy, cookies, and roast beast.

wreath and advent and hello!

Sorry for the long blogging absence! I just haven't had the brain space for crafting or blogging lately. Living in a new place, with a new job and new people, I'm finding that different priorities, needs, and plans are filling my head. I don't know yet whether the blog will grind to a halt, or limp along in a sad sort of fashion until it again becomes a larger part of my life, as it used to be. But regardless of the future of my little blog, I do want to say how much I have valued these friendships, and how big a role they have played in my growth, both artistically and personally, over the last couple years. This crafty blogosphere is a really really really really special place (really really). really.

We are slowly getting in the holiday mood around here. Over Thanksgiving, my Mom, sister and I made a new wreath for our front door. We started with a $5 wreath from the craft store and then blingified it. My Mom is the master of wreath blingification, and has made some absolutely beautiful wreaths with fruit, greenery, and other natural kinds of stuff (mostly plastic of course but it looks real). We decided to go a bit less traditional with ours, using glass Christmas balls and candy cane ribbon along with the greenery.

Mom melts hot glue nuggets in an electric griddle, and then you just dip and stick. Voila, blingy. The little bird in the middle of the wreath is from the Martha Stewart Kmart tree-trimming section, as are the candy cane ribbon and folksy christmas balls. I put a pretty penny in Martha's pocket that weekend, between her awesome tree decorations at Kmart and her craft stuff at Michaels. She so has my number.

This weekend we are going to string popcorn and make tree decorations. We are also going to make a new advent calendar from the design I created last year. I don't have any green paper left so I am going to get creative with my Martha Stewart glitter. I am trying not to buy any more craft supplies because it was becoming increasingly obvious that my hobby is no longer crafting; instead it is craft supply-buying. I am a pro at it, I can tell you.

For those of you who might be interested in making one of these advent calendars, I put it together as one PDF that you can download. [DOWNLOAD HERE] It requires some patience with the scissors, but it's not too time-consuming. Print it out on a heavy cover or card stock, and use the little square that's in the corner of the template to stabilize the bottom of the pyramid. Then just attach the ribbon. (Last year I taped the ends of the ribbon inside the pyramid. You could also punch holes in the top of the pyramid) To close the pyramids, I used tape. You can also use glue, if you don't mind ruining the box when you get around to opening it.

xoxo