Sprung

My Mom is extremely into beautifying her bedroom—seriously, it’s like beautiful stuff got together for a convention in that room. So naturally, she has a spring/summer bedding set and a fall/winter bedding set. One thing, however, was never found for her spring/summer bedding set: a throw. She told me it was my task to create one for her. This was over a year ago before her 2011 birthday. Her 2012 birthday just passed, and I finally am able to properly present her with a worthy gift.

A main reason I haven’t posted in so long is that the process of thinking about what in the world to do for this took longer than the actual sewing process. When first tasked, I told her I would get her present to her soon, but truthfully, at that point, all I had in mind was an olive green background, pink diagonal stripes, and a lace border (all colors that matched her bedding). Months went by and I could not for the life of me think of what to put in it. I sewed a caterpillar to the rectangle. But crap, it’s on an incline—what in the world is it climbing up? Another few months went by because I really didn’t want to make a tree stump. Seriously, it took me months to come up with a hill? Ya, it did, but I did, and when I did, the bee and the butterfly took shape from floral patterns, and the flowers bloomed from solid fabrics. Spring is nature’s opportunity for life to take shape and relationships between living things to intensify. I wanted to represent that interconnectedness in the throw, so that the beauty of my Mom’s spring bedding could also pay tribute to the beauty of spring itself.

Not only is spring so aesthetically magnificent, it’s also scientifically spectacular (though the two are the opposite of mutually exclusive if you ask me). My last night of sewing Sprung followed my first day facilitating a professional learning program targeted towards informal science educators for the education staff of City Zoos. During the program, my lovely friend Kate referred to an example of an “observable characteristic of learning”, in which a pre-K class visiting the zoo was singing a song that she had taught them weeks before at their school. Kate came over to my house that night to work on her own sewing project, and her beautiful teaching moment came alive in my own home craft project after she left. A few months ago, I watched Kate teach an insects class to a first grade class. In the class, she sings a song about insect body parts. I was thinking about her song as I was putting on my finishing touches, humming it to myself, when I realized, “Whoa! I can give my insects compound eyes!” So I used some beads from a necklace that had broken a while back that happened to look a whole lot like compound eyes. Then I tore up my bee’s original wing to try and make it more technically accurate and added antennae to my flowery insect figures.

With a little bit of science, a good bit of time, and a lotta bit of love, my mom’s spring bedding throw finally Sprung to complete life.

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Made of:

- Movie Set Fabric

- Scrap Fabric

- Craigslist Free Fabric

- A couple of old dresses

- Broken necklace beads

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Favorite Detail:

Science!

Slightly Slanted, Still Still Life

I have had quite the hiatus from smooofing, I know, but with good reason, which kind of ties into this Slightly Slanted, Still Still Life. Over this past summer I suffered a relatively severe injury from a tragic dancing accident (that’s what I call it for dramatic effect—also, it was tragic and I was dancing and it was an accident, so it works). It put me on the couch for a few months of recovery time. During this time, I was also conveniently (or not so conveniently, depending on your perspective), completely unemployed. So basically, there wasn’t too much leaving the house. Naturally, I went a little crazy with my sewing (and my Veronica Mars), and this was probably the finest result of these strange few months of my life.

Of course I didn’t originally intend for it to be slightly slanted, but there is something a quite charming about the slantiness. It’s still still, just a little tilty, which gives it personality. 

Once I finished this Slightly Slanted Still Still Life, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. My house is already quite occupied by some sewn art things, so I can’t hang it up here. It’s been in my fabric pile for quite some time, and I think this means I need to try to sell it. This is partially why I have been on hiatus from posting more, because posting on here is the first step to putting in effort to having someone else own something I’ve made (that wasn’t a gift for a close friend or family member). The other reason why I’ve been on hiatus is that I went from completely unemployed, never leaving the house to way too employed, rarely home.

Slightly Slanted, Still Still Life needs to be the impetus for me to balance the spare time I do have and be productive with it. I spend so much of my time giving myself to other activities that I have sort of abandoned sewing a little bit. This is in stark contrast to my summer that was spent entirely sewing with myself for myself. I need to start giving a little bit of myself back to myself so that I can have a Slightly Slanted, Still Still life of my own. So this is the first step, boys and girls.

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Made of:

-Some old sheets

-Scraps from T-shirt alterations

-Scraps from Great Grandma Wilson dress alterations

-Movie set fabric

-Scrap fabric

-Craigslist free fabric

-Buttons

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Favorite Detail:

It’s pretty hard to pick on this one. I’m pretty into the window, because it could kind of stand alone if it wanted to. The lone flower on the table is also really special—it took me a really long time to decide what to put there, because it needed something, I just couldn’t determine what that something was, and then Doug (who was my roommate at the time of my craziness) made the lone flower suggestion, and I liked it, so I did it!

Shades

My Dad loves his shades. He loves them so much he wears them indoors. While they are prescription shades and he finds the sunlight coming through windows during the day very bright, it’s very difficult not to give him a hard time about it. My grandma is very good at it, and I try to follow in her footsteps. But of course, I love my dad and this is just one of his quirks that make him an entertaining and interesting fellow.

His birthday was on July 7, and I wanted to make him something that was cool, just like him (ha), and also a reflection of his character. Sunglasses are extremely practical accessories. Aside from being cool (ha), my dad is also the most practical person I know. Whenever I have a dilemma to which there must be some kind of logical resolution, I call him and say “I need your rationality”. (This happens a lot because my brain does not process things in a super logical fashion always). So I decided to make Shades rather simple, just accented by some pretty colors. 

I won’t give him a hard time about hanging Shades indoors. Wearing them is a different story, however…

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Made of:

- Scrap Fabric

- Craigslist Free Fabric

- Old curtain

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Favorite Detail:

- I put some wire through the top, because it had a hole since it was an old curtain. Then I wrapped the ends that came out with some plaid fabric. I like this hanging method, but it probably will rarely repeat since the tops of things I make are rarely straight.
 

Pretty Birdy

“Pretty Birdy” is kind of a silly name, but if I were to talk to it in that animal-talking-to voice, I would refer to it as “Pretty Birdy”, so it’s silly, but fitting.

The last time I visited my sunny California home, my mom was just starting to get really into birds. In fact, the day that I drove off away from the LA sunset to return to New York, I drove next to my mom as she was making her way to the Green Thumb to pick up some bird feeders. Her obsession grew (as did her collection of feeding/bathing/housing devices for the birds). Someone even built her a contraption that circled around a tree and hung bird feeders by chains so that squirrels couldn’t deprive the poor birdies.  Every day I spoke with my mom, she’d be standing by the window watching her little birdy habitat in our backyard, describing her observations of their actions (and cuteness). One of the most monumental days was when a little duck couple started coming over to hang out after they swam in the neighbors pool. She named them George and Gracie.

Mother’s Day rolled around, and so I put my needle to the medal (that makes less sense than I would like), and got rolling on Pretty Birdy, so that my mom could have some nice bird action inside of the house too. Unfortunately I am not an ornithologist, so this bird is probably scientifically unclassifiable, but the scientist within me forgives the artist on the other side for the sake of pretty-ness of Pretty Birdy.

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Made of:

-Scrap Fabric

-Movie Set Fabric

-Craigslist Free Fabric

-Pretty button eye

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Favorite Detail:

-It’s kind of accidentally lopsided (I’m finding this to be a trend with a lot of things I do lately), but I like it that way.

Sunset

The last time I visited Los Angeles, I was making my usual drive from my dad’s house to my mom’s house on the 210, a secretly beautiful freeway. It’s both the most familiar and wonderful drive to me—so pretty driving through the hills; so awesome blasting classic rock and singing along, prepared for the couple of spots in the hills where there is no radio reception; so bright as I wear my shades with the sun setting behind the hills directly in front of me. It’s just the best. And the last visit, I felt this true appreciation for my 210 commute that I had never thought about before. The picture of the sun setting behind the hills stuck in my mind, and I knew that my next project would be recreating it.

It took me a while to finally get started on it, because I anticipated a fairly large project, and once I did start I realized how many layers and stages would be involved. I experimented with overlapping the slightly see through fabrics for both the hills and the sunset itself to somehow capture the way the sun lit everything up and created such amazing colors in the sky. By the end, I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it, simply because the actual picture in my mind is so vivid, and no matter how many shiny fabrics I put on top of one another, it’s impossible to truly capture the full essence and beauty of those moments. But I did my best and learned to love it. Now it lights up the white wall of my living room in New York, where I watch the sun set behind the building across the street from me as I sit on my fire escape.

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Made of:

- Scrap Fabric

- Craigslist Free Fabric

- Movie Set Fabric (Which I just found out was from Get Him to the Greek, apparently)

- Old Sheets

- Buttons

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Favorite Detail:

- The telephone poles and road provide a nice, kind of muted contrast to the illuminated hills and sky.

Lips

As I said in the Puppy Face Pillow post below, Christmas 2009 was the Holiday of the Pillow, so I of course made a pillow for my mama.

I was getting really into the idea of making body part pillows, like eyeballs and hands and ears (what’s more cuddly than detached body parts?). Unfortunately, none of these ideas came to fruition, perhaps for the best. Except Lips. Lips was the first body part I thought to do for my mom. I didn’t really have a reason at first—I just thought they’d look cool and be colors that she liked. But then as I continued sewing and stuffing, I understood my choice. Lips seem to me to be a more comforting and loving body part. They are what make smiles pretty and words sound nice. And since my mom and I speak often and openly to one another and make each other smile, I thought that lips would not just be cool looking, but appropriate.

Stay tuned in the future for bloodshot eyeballs and severed hands!!

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Made of:

- Scrap Fabric

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Favorite Detail:

- The lips curve around like they would on a face! Totally didn’t even plan that…

Puppy Face Pillow

The summer of 2007 my Dad fell in love with an adorable Hula girl, and my stepmom found her little prince(ss), Doo-Wop (or as we call him, Doodle). They adopted them both from animal shelters. Immediately, they became an important part of the family, stealing the hearts of everyone. Doodle, as I said, is a little princess, prancing around the house, running to his mother if he is ever tormented, and burying his head in Hula for comfort. He is also adorable, hysterical, and the craziest jumper I’ve ever seen. Hula is the cool dog and puts up with his antics, and even though sometimes it looks like he’s bugging her, she maintains her cool. She also shakes her butt when she walks (hence, Hula).

My dad is also retired.  Just about every other day, my inbox has a new message with a subject line, for example today’s “Hard being us!” or one from last week, “Too busy for you right now. Call my agent”, and a picture of the dogs, mostly lying down in some position somewhere together in the house (most of the time in the comfy chair, sometimes on the porch or the floor or the couch). Sometimes my dad even dresses them in costumes.

Christmas 2009 seemed to be the Holiday of the Pillow, so naturally, I made a puppy face to hang out at my dad’s house, complete with bone. The dogs don’t really need to use it as a pillow, though, since they have each other for that, but that doesn’t mean my dad can’t put it into his dog picture emails as a prop.

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Made of:

- Scrap Fabric

- Craigslist Free Fabric

- Old Sheets

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Favorite Detail:

- Bone sold separately

Under The Sea

Halloween: a time for kids to trick or treat, girls to dress sexy, and parties to not meet your expectations  either because they are too crowded or your expectations are too high to begin with. Either way, every Halloween, I feel the pressure. I can’t go out on Halloween if I don’t have a costume, and I can’t have a costume unless it’s original, creative, and awesome. But I never want to stay at home because that means I gave up and couldn’t think of anything, which is almost as bad as going to Ricky’s and buying a nurse or Xena costume in a plastic bag.

Halloween 2009 I decided to be Under the Sea, inspired by my flowy, furry, fuzzy blue fabric from Floss Felangeles (sorry—unnecessary and possibly incomprehensible stretch for the sake of alliteration).

I decided a vest was the best way to go without clothing patterns, so I made it and sewed on various sea creatures over the course of a couple of days before Halloween. I put it on top of a long, turquoise skirt that I wore as a dress, teal fishnets, and navy blue shoes. I threw on a blue sparkly headband that I attached a handmade stuffed starfish to and voila, I was “Under The Sea” for Halloween.

Of course that night, the party was fun but didn’t quite meet those inevitably high expectations we have for Halloween. But by the end of the night, my vest was covered in so much fake blood I was like an under the sea massacre, keeping my Halloween spirits alive and ready for this year.

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Made of:

- Movie set fabric

- Old sheets

- Scrap Fabric

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Favorite Detail:

- Even though the big fish is eating all of the little fish, it is still pretty cute, but I guess that’s the food chain for ya.

The Shoe

I have always made an association between shoes and the family I babysit for. We all seem to share an appreciation for shoes in the aesthetic sense. The girls have also both now surpassed me in shoe size, and sometimes we trade to see if we can fit into each others shoes.

Christmas of 2009 came around, and of course the first thing I thought to make them was a shoe. I started making this one, just putting some cool fabrics together that I thought looked good (the color scheme is actually similar to a pair of Nike’s the girls wear). After i was finished, I went over to their house and realized I had made a mistake—the color scheme of this shoe was all wrong for their living room. So I kept this shoe at my house and made them one that matched their living room better, with some maroon, orange, olive, and lace.

After I presented them with the new shoe as their Christmas gift, they gave me my gift: a giftcard to design my own sneakers online. Kind of a less dramatically ironic Gift of the Magi.

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Made of:

- Movie set fabric

- Old Sheets

- Scrap Fabric

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Favorite detail:

-It’s slightly bigger than the average large shoe, giving it some clown-shoe flare

Allow me to introduce my Fred. He entered my life in the summer of 2009 after I found a broken mirror in with the trash from my building. The wooden frame of the cursed broken glass was still in perfectly good condition, and I figured that I could somehow put it to use one day.

It took me a while to determine what exactly to put in the frame, but it turned out the answer was in front of me all along. As I looked into the empty mirror I realized what was missing—a face.

My wallet phase (the beginning of my post-college sewing adventures, in which I sewed various wallets out of free materials I found on craigslist) was coming to a close, and I had just gotten a shipment of ridiculous fabrics left over from a Las Vegas hotel room movie set. In the box was a tiny patch of weird hair stuff attached to some type of camouflage fabric. And thus Fred’s hair and stylin’ stache were born.

Since I was planning on making a portrait out of an assortment of fantastic fabrics, I immediately decided to leave realism behind—I was never very good at being realistic anyway.  (If his outfit existed in real life, however, it would be super cute and I would probably fall madly in love with the man who wore it, and we could go on a dangerous and intellectually challenging adventure looking for a talisman that once belonged to a magical king in Morocco. The blue face and pink ears, on the other hand ,might be a dealbreaker)

In its past life, this frame contained a reflection of the reality of whoever owned it (and now may or may not have 7 years of bad luck). Now, it’s just got Fred.

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Made of:

- Scrap fabric

- Left over movie set fabric

- Buttons

- Wooden mirror frame found in trash

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Favorite detail:

- Fred’s flower mouth because he has good breath