This Is Halloween

The boys wore their black-dragon-with-red-wing-insets and HTTYD Toothless costumes that I had made them in years previous.  With the loss of JoAnn Fabrics, it is a lot harder to browse pattern books and pick up material to make... well, just about anything these days!  Michaels claims to be filling the gap, but they're really, really not, and I refuse to set foot in Hobby Lobby for the same moral reason I will not eat at Chik-Fil-A.

So, because the costumes are hoodie style, I won't be putting pictures of the boys up.  I do not share their images online.  But what I can share are this year's jack-o-lanterns!

Jazzy went for scary!  He drew it; I carved it.

Squiddle also went for spooky vibes.  He carved his himself, though I did clear away some of the extra interior flesh to let the light shine brighter through the openings

My pumpkin ended up looking a bit skull-like, so I followed the contours for the carving and ended up with this goofy fellow.

And Wonderful Husband went for representational art.  Pikachu!

Also, this year it was absolutely downpouring all evening.  We usually get north of forty trick-or-treaters.  This year we eked out a mere thirty.  Needless to say, Wonderful Husband's Candypult did not get used.  Ah well, next year....

October Block Party

6 1/2” x 8 1/2” Spool Block

For each block, cut:

• Two 6 1/2” x 1 1/2” rectangles of brown or tan fabric
• Two 6 1/2” x 1 1/2” rectangles of white or cream background fabric
• Four 1 1/2” squares of white or cream background fabric
• Six 4 1/2” x 1 1/2” rectangles of the color of your choice

To make the block:

Place the 1 1/2” squares on the ends of the brown/tan rectangles. Sew diagonally, making sure to sew each seam in an opposite direction. You want trapezoids, not parallelograms! Trim the seams 1/4” beyond the seamline, and press. Sew the six colored rectangles together, making the “thread” on the spool. Press. Sew a white/cream rectangle to either side of the “thread”. Stitch the spool ends to either end of the block. Finished block should measure 6 1/2” x 8 1/2”.

Variation 1: To make the block simpler, instead of the six colored rectangles, use a 4 1/2” x 6 1/2” rectangle.

Variation: To make the block more complex, instead of the six colored rectangles, try string-piecing a 4 1/2” x 6 1/2” rectangle.

Steamer Trunk

So, "totes out in the garage" is not an ideal form of doll clothing storage.  This summer at Costume College I took a wonderful class by Heather Dill-Tullo about how to customize the interior of a wheeled steamer trunk to be proper costumer's luggage, and I've been on a lookout at thrift stores ever since.  I'm not paying $90 at Home Depot for a trunk!  And a month or so ago I found one, in good condition, for $15.  A half-inch dowel was about $3, and a packet of 3/4" #7 screws was $2.  Which turned into this:

I have some adhesive hooks coming so I can hang a few more things on the interior of the lid, and some luggage feet since currently the back of the trunk, due to having wheels, is not flush on the ground, but the lid is.

And I'll keep my eyes open for another trunk or two since this is by all means not all my doll clothes....

September Block Party

Last month no one turned in blocks.  This month one person turned in blocks.  I am going to give Block Party until the end of the year, but if it keeps up like this, I'm just going to drop it. :/

Meanwhile, here's the block I did for the guild for this month!  I'm very much cribbing from my old work this time, as I copied it from the block party I did for the Orange County Quilt Guild in October of 2016.

9 1/2” Framed Pumpkin

For each block, cut:

• Four 1 1/2” squares, two 1 1/2” x 3” strips, two 1 1/2” x 6 1/2” strips, and two 2” x 9 1/2” strips, all of black fabric
• One 1 1/2” square, of either green or brown fabric
• One 6 1/2” square, of orange fabric or Halloween novelty fabric

To make the block:

Using the stitch-and-flip method, sew the four black squares diagonally to the corners of the orange square, making a Snowball block. Trim excess fabric 1/4” from the seamline and press the triangles outward , making a 6 1/2” square.

Sew the 1 1/2” x 3” strips to either side of the 1 1/2” green or brown square. Attach this strip to one side of the orange-and-black octagon.

Sew one 1 1/2” x 6 1/2” black strip atop the pieced “stem” strip, and the other on the bottom of the pumpkin. Sew the remaining two strips (2” x 9 1/2”) to the sides of the pumpkin block. Press. Finished block should measure 9 1/2” square.

Bonus difficulty level!

If you wish to challenge yourself, try piecing the 6 1/2” orange square! Use a Nine-Patch made of 2 1/2” squares, strip piece the pumpkin with 1 1/2” strips, or build “made fabric” using crumb piecing.

In Sickness and Sewing

Ugh.  All the malefolk in the family had a head cold and I caught it last, starting on Thursday.  Kind of putting a damper on Wonderful Husband's birthday on Friday.  He will be getting a rain check for cake and nice dinner later this week.  Last night I thought I actually felt human again - only to have that myth dispelled overnight.  Ah well.  Sleep is for the weak, or something.

I am still trying to get a functional braiding foot and connector set for my very basic low shank Singer sewing machine, so the second dress from the roses fabric remains on hold until that arrives.  However, I did manage to cut out the gathered variant of that dress in a different fabric and spent pretty much all of yesterday sewing it.

This was a third of a yard of quilting cotton I got at the CTA sale; there's enough left that I might be able to eke out a little handbag for Addy to carry her things in.  When sewing for dolls, the scale of the print you're using is important!  The pattern is, once again, Kindred Threads' Cape Island Dress.

The neckline of this dress is a touch wider than I like; I have to arrange it carefully on my Addy doll to keep her shoulder joints from showing.  I might try making it again and stay-stitching the neck pieces first thing, so that handling them doesn't stretch the bias any.  The pleats in the waistband make stitching it to the skirt a bit tricky, and I dislike the second row of gathering stitches in the skirt and bodice pieces being outside of the seam allowance.  I know it's period, and that often the visible gathering stitches were left in (I've seen, memorably, a First Lady's dress that still had them in), but I don't like it, and taking them out after everything was sewn was annoying.

That said, the pattern went together well, and will probably go together faster the next time I make it.  When I'm not 90% made of mucus.  And I'm very happy that I live in a US state that isn't willfully stupid about science, because I've made our family appointments to get our flu and covid shots next weekend, to help minimize future illnesses.

Folklorico

I finally finished the Fiesta dress!

In hindsight perhaps it's a bit plain and could have used a few more rows of trim?  I think it looks slightly better in person than in the photo, however.

The pattern is well-written.  My only arguments with constructing this dress were the moments when the fabric decided to pleat itself horizontally into a horizontal seam and I had to rip out a section and resew it.  Other than that (and running out of ribbon halfway through), I've absolutely no complaints.  I will probably make another version of this in the future.

I have also survived Cake Week!  Squiddle and Jazzy have birthdays three days apart, so a cake for each of them, plus a bigger cake for the family party yesterday.  All three cakes ended up looking more or less like this, except differently shaped (one square, one star, one circle):

And I went to the CTA sewing room sale where I might have spent $42 on the $2/lb fabric and $19 on notions, a couple embroidery frames, and a finished embroidery piece.... ^_^;;  Oh well.  More stuff to sew!

Since the braiding foot has finally arrived, I'd better get to it, and work more on that Cape Island dress, made out of the same fabric as the Fiesta dress.  Onward!

Swimming Upstream

Sometimes projects feel like they've unionized against you.  First I ran out of the ribbon I was using for the Fiesta dress.  Okay, I found a likely match and ordered it and moved to cutting out and sewing the Cape Island dress.  Only to discover that the vintage Singer underbraider and quilting foot that were supposed to work for applying soutache braid... for some reason don't.

So I sighed and ordered a modern braiding foot.  Or thought I did.  I hand-stitched the soutache to the short bodice seams and the sleeve hems.  Two days later realized I hadn't actually hit the "confirm order" button on the website.  So the foot won't be here for another week.

But!  The replacement ribbon for the Fiesta dress has arrived today, and it's a match, so I can continue on with that dress, and after it's finished, cut something else out of this floral (I'm hoping to get four distinct dresses out of this bit of yardage) to move on with in the meantime.

In real life news, Squiddle is twelve today!  One of the two best things I've ever made.  And for his birthday, the school district gave him (and the two other boys in his grade that live in our housing tract) a bus stop he can actually walk to!  So between that and Jazzy being literally picked up and dropped off from our house, I am practically a lady of leisure once I've got them off to school each day.  That said, the early mornings to get them to school are still doing me in.  I've had to take a nap every day so far....