Cats and Sewing

So it seems that cats and sewing often go together. At least from the pictures of all the sewing "helper" cats that I see on various blogs. And my question for all you people is.....how do you do it?

My kitties are banned from the sewing room because I imagine all sorts of craft dangers for them (ribbons and threads and pins, oh my!). Which makes for difficult times because when I am in there they sit outside the door and cry and stick their little arms under the door and generally make me feel like a schmoo for depriving them of Mommy (apparently Daddy is a poor substitute, particularly for our orange cat).

So for those who allow kitties and crafts to exist in the same space, do your kitties get into craft trouble? Am I being overprotective of my little fur-lets? Do I underestimate their intelligence by thinking they will immediately nomnomnom every dangerous item as soon as they are allowed access?

Just wondering....

I love me a Twirly Skirt.

Saturday Night Dance Outfit Action Pics
-Jalie 2794, sweetheart top, one of my favorites. black with red trim
-Jalie 2681, twirly skirt, awesome for dancing. red with black trim

Dance Weekend

October 16-19 was Jammin on the James, an all weekend swing dancing event in Richmond. I had ambitious plans for making new clothes for all the dances....but those plans had to be dramatically scaled back because I ran out of time (as usual!). I ended up wearing the following:

Friday Night Dance
-Jalie 2806, flame fabric from Gorgeous Fabrics (Jalie 2910 was the original plan, but it was a HUGE unrecoverable disaster, much to my great disappointment. This was my first Jalie failure and I am so very sad about it.)
-purchased pants

Friday Late Night Dance
-embroidered shirts (pics to come)
-purchased pants

Saturday Night Dance
-Jalie 2794, sweetheart top, one of my favorites. black with red trim
-Jalie 2681, twirly skirt, awesome for dancing. red with black trim

Saturday Late Night Dance
-embroidered shirts (pics to come)
-purchased pants

I was too busy dancing to take pictures, but I am going to try to dig some up in the next few weeks. Below is a picture of my Friday Night outfit, in action.



Workshops all day, dances all night. I help The Husband run the late night dances, which means we stay to the bitter end (usually around 4 - 5 am). Exhausting, but completely fun.

Now I am working on the Decades of Style button dress and a matching hat to wear for Halloween, a pair of vintage pants for a local dancer, and a number of costumes for a friend of mine to wear in a drag queen pageant this weekend (which I am attending). SHEW!

One Year Ago Today

Fall 2009 Quilt Festival

I am so excited to participate in Park City Girl's Fall 2009 Quilt Festival. I remember when she had the first one back in spring, I had just started quilting and I got so much inspiration from all the quilts posted. And now the quilting obsession has far surpassed my garment sewing, much to my chagrin.

But for my entry, I am going to post again about the Wedding Present quilt.

Front


Back


I made this quilt as a wedding present for a friend of mine and The Husbands. It was the biggest quilt I had made at this point and I was a little intimidated. I had the bride make a choice from 3-4 fabric collections which she liked best, without telling her what I was making. She choose the Joel Dewberry Deer Valley collection, which I thought she would love (and I know is a favorite of many out there), but honestly it doesn't rock my world. So I wanted to make sure and use ALL the scraps because I knew they would languish in my scrap barrel forever unused if I didn't.

So the back is very pieced with lots of the scraps left over from the quilt. I also added this embroidered panel to the center back as a sort of gift tag.


The quilting was a little scary as it was much bigger than I had ever tried to do free motion on my machine. But I took it slow and took lots and lots of breaks and only had to unpick boo-boos a couple times. :-)

But after all of this piecing, I STILL had scraps. So I made a tote bag as gift wrapping.


After I made it, it tended to gape open unattractively, so I made a few little birdie ornaments and pinned them in to weight it closed.


After all this, I had a lovely quilt with wrapping, and zero scraps left over. And the bride loved it. Yay, Happy Ending!

Updates

Well, as far as the sewing plan for my upcoming dance weekend...all I have done is a twirly skirt. YIKES! I have moved the fabrics and patterns for all the pieces around my sewing room multiple times, but never actually cut or sew. Time to get hopping.

In the meantime, I made this Halloween quilt as a present for my nephew. He LOVES Halloween.


And I made this kitty bed for a friend with a new kitten. With a matching fishy toy

Vintage Pants

So a while back I was jabbing about a pair of men's vintage pants that I was making for a local dancer, but I never showed any pictures of them. That is because I didn't take any. DOH!

But here they are in action. The couple that starts dancing second at around 1:45 is Bobby White and Carla Heiney (she is wearing a red dress). I made Bobby's pants. :-)



They placed second in the competition. I am not saying my pants had anything to do with that. But I am not saying they didn't either.... Ok, they didn't. Dammit. If I could make magic pants like that I would totally make them for MYSELF!

Bobby is an absolute sweetheart of a guy and a dancer, and I am taking a few private lessons from him in exchange for the sewing. I swear half of the D.C. swing dancing scene (and beyond) owes or has given me lessons in exchange for sewing (for any dancers out there familiar with The Jam Cellar, ask me sometime why I "own" it. Ha!). Nina...Jeff...Frida...Bobby...Meg....the list continues.

Bobby (and his gal Kate, who came over to me while I was dancing last week and stage whispered, Those pants are AWESOME!) must have liked them, because he asked me to make two other pairs, exactly like the ones I made. Being the crankypants about fit that I am though, I see a few problems with the pants in the video, so Pair Number Two will be even better (I hope).

ETA: The dance they are doing is called Balboa and it is kinda a form of swing dancing. I do Balboa and I also do Lindy Hop.

It is also worth noting that the above clip is the finals from a Jack and Jill contest--Jack and Jill competition is where you are randomly assigned rotating partners and have no idea who you will end up dancing with, although most J & Js are broken down by level so you are dancing with someone at approximately the same skill level. So Carla is from California and Bobby is a local here in DC, so while they know each other (the dance world is like that, particularly the upper levels), it isn't like they dance regularly. Everything you see in that clip is lead/follow, no choreography. J & J competitions are much closer to regular social dancing than some of the other competitions.

Fabric Search, HELP!

I am doing another alphabet book with a name with "y". Y stands for yarn, but I can't seem to find any "yarn" themed fabric. Or rather I found this one:


http://www.jandofabrics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=sew00029


but ACK!!! OUT OF STOCK!

If you know of another source for this fabric or know of any other "yarn" themed fabric, please let me know!!

Right now I am, in desperation, thinking of just going with sheep fabric with the very tentative connection to yarn. And that sucks.

EDITED TO ADD:

HOLD THE PRESSES!!!! I just found the most magnificent thing EVER! A Fabric database. Yes, that is right. I typed in "yarn" and had half a dozen results. EMERGENCY AVERTED!

SHEW!!!

The fabric search database, which I would totally marry: http://www.quiltshops.com/

Something for Me

October brings one of my favorite dance events of the year, Jammin on the James. It is a weekend of workshops and all night dancing in Richmond that happens every October--last year The Husband and I ended our honeymoon there! I like it because since it is Richmond, it tends to be more laid back and less rock-star filled than D.C. events, but since it is so close to D.C., they get rockstar caliber teachers and just enough rockstar drop-ins to make it fun, not intimidating. I am good friends with the folks that organize it, I am friends with two of the four teachers and have a passing acquaintance with the other two, I know a good portion of the dancers that generally show up; just all the stuff that makes a dance good for me.

I am trying to recapture my dance mojo, and I thought one way to do it was to create a fun new dance wardrobe for Jammin, despite the fact that I am generally not sewing clothes for myself until I lose weight. This is the plan for the dances; for the workshops I am just planning to wear yoga pants and some of the 10000000000000 dance event tshirts that I have.

Friday Night
-red twirly skirt, Jalie 2681
-black knit top with red accents, Jalie 2910.
-red grannie undies (in case of extreme skirt twirlage), Jalie 2568.

Friday Late Night
-pants, Hot Patterns Karate Pants (OOP)
-embroidered/appliqued tees, designs TBD

Saturday night
-1930s style button dress, purple and black fabric from stash,Decades of Style 3007 .
-some kind of groovy hair doodad, TBD

Saturday Late Night
-pants,Hot Patterns 1084 Dragon Beauty Cargo Pants
-embroidered/appliqued tees, designs TBD

Sunday Afternoon Dance
-Ha! Like I will have the time for more! But if I do, maybe another twirly skirt or something.

I will post status updates as I get things done. This is going to be fun!

What I Wrapped, Part 2

Sassy and Sweet embroidered onesies



Toddler Backpack. Modeled by a horse because that is the closest thing I have to a toddler in my house (the cats don't make very good models...)



Teeny Tiny Baby Shoes


And a Quilt!!