Unfinished Business

But first...

It Ain't Easy Being Green
I spent Saturday at our local Arbor Day/Earth Day fair. I was helping out a friend whose craft studio had a booth for kids to decorate a canvas snack sack. Green enough, right? There was the usual mix of businesses and groups marketing their "greenness", local gardening groups and such giving stuff away like plant cuttings or seedlings, local government giving away oil pans for when you change your oil, vendors selling various wares (green and not so), fair food (no, not fair trade food, crappy fair food) and jolly jumpers powered by gasoline generators. Wha? I'm kidding right? No, sadly no. I suppose the argument could be made that in order to attract people and their children to the event, one needs such entertainment. And all these trinkets and reusable bags being given away? Made in China. So, in my humble opinion, we, in the land of many oaks, have a long way to go before we can truly call ourselves green.

Some might say I'm being too picky. It reminds me of an article I read recently (wish I could remember where...) about how the "green" movement is and always has been hampered by all the guilt-laden, end-of-the-world, people-are-so-evil rhetoric. Maybe so, but I guess I like to think of it as my religion.

On Sunday, I spent some time finishing up some long overdue projects. I had started a set of napkins for Erin and Tom but got busy and ended up giving them the first half in December (ahem). So those are done and on the way. Then, I finally got around to making some throw pillows for the girls' bed, you know that one we got way back in August of last year. The fabric was some left over Ikea curtain fabric and an Ikea duvet cover we weren't using. I still have a bunch of that groovy curtain fabric - and I'm eying it for another skirt. I'm either becoming very creatively frugal or I'm losing my mind.

Behold!

Here it is: the finished pillowcase skirt. I was too impatient to let someone take good pictures, so I set up the camera myself with the timer. We're actually back to some cool weather, too cool to wear it, but earlier in the week, I was wishing I had it finished. We had some blazing hot weather that managed to kill off all the beautiful spring green hills and turn them to brown. Took a strawberry plant, too. *sniff* I should probably be used to these random heat waves that come at nearly any time of the year, but I am not.

Coming along... going away

My skirt is almost finished and I think I might actually be able to wear it! Just needs some buttons and a hook but it'll have to wait. I decided at the last minute to take the girls up north for the rest of the week to visit some family since we're on spring break.

Don't Count Your Chickens

I finished the girls' Easter skirts in record time (record time for me anyway) and I was feeling so smug having completed the skirts with few mistakes or redos, and I decided to start another project right away. I'd been eyeing these pillowcases in our linen closet for years. Maybe I could make a quick skirt for myself in time for Easter too... (why Easter skirts? No reason, just something to do).
Such cute fabric - Chris says they were his sheets as a kid, at least that's how he remembers it. I brought them out and convinced him that since we hadn't used them in the last 14 years of living together, that we probably should use them for something else. He agreed somewhat reluctantly. I started by searching for a tutorial on pillowcase skirts and found plenty but then realized that this fabric has a direction and all the tutorials use the fabric in the vertical orientation - of course, it's supposed to be a simple skirt.

So I had to think of plan B - no problem. I cut the top off the pillow case and would use it for the waist, then I cut the pillow case open along the bottom, sewed the side, hemmed it, and attached it to the top using the same gathering method from the girls' peasant skirts, put in some elastic at the top. Finished!

Where's the picture? Well, I put it on and Chris said, "how about if you...?" and "what if you...?" and "will it stop poofing out like that?" Hahahahahahahaha. It's not his fault, because even if he hadn't said anything, I probably still wouldn't have worn it. So, I'm back to the drawing board. Coming soon, a cute skirt made out of cute fabric, or not.

Spring Project

What started out as a "free" project has blossomed into a little more than free. I was just going to use up some cotton yarn that I had in my stash and make a cute little shirt for Maia (pattern at Soulful Hues Hobbies & Random Thoughts). And if it worked out, tweak the pattern to make a bigger one for Sofia. My mistake was asking the opinion of the intended recipient of the project... which led to a new yarn purchase. Oh and then I decided to make skirts to go with the knit tops... I went to the local big box fabric store with 40% coupon in hand and left thoroughly disgusted with their selection. I ended up at the local quilting shop, which has oh so much more to offer in the way of pretty fabric. So much for free.
Don't laugh, but I had to tack on the green because I had miscalculated how much of the blue yarn I had. It looks a bit like green grass under a blue sky, so I added the flower to increase the chance that Maia might actually choose to wear it without some sort of bribery involved. She is quite selective these days about her clothing. If it's not a pink dress, it's got a snowball's chance in, well, you know.Hopefully my pattern adjustments will work out for Sofia's version. She may need a camisole underneath if the arm holes ended up too big. I'm thinking about a simple wrap around pattern for the skirt found here. Or a may do an even simpler 3-tier peasant skirt.