Beaded Forest

Godet skirt

It may not look like it from my blog, but I've been busy!  I've been working on the Downward Dog pattern, and it should be done very soon.  I'm very excited about it, and I'll be certain to blog about it when it's ready!  In the meantime, I've done a number of sewing projects and the like.  This skirt is one of them:

 

It's from a great lightweight wool blend from Paron Fabrics, which I got on a recent fabric-scouting trip to NYC with my friend Barb.  The fabric has a different shade of color on each side, and that's how I got the idea for this skirt.  I used the basic skirt pattern I've drafted for myself, changed it up a bit and added four godets.  When I was done, it looked like it needed something more.  So I used the selvedge edge of the fabric to made the "stripes" down the skirt, between the godets.  Voila!

Asher letters

Here's my Christmas gift for Asher, who's three years old:

 

I think he'll have fun playing with the letters and figuring out how to put them together into his name.  It was a fun little project for a Sunday!

Skirt with kimono fabric

I'm so happy with this skirt!  A long time ago I made a basic A-line skirt pattern using Sew What! Skirts, and I've used it as the basis for quite a few skirts since then.  Several months ago I took a class with Denyse Schmidt, and really enjoyed her "improv" style of putting together fabrics.  I also bought a pack of vintage kimono scraps from her, and just got around to using them for the first time.  So...here's what I ended up with:

 

That's the front, and ever so similar but slightly different, the back:

 

The colors aren't very accurate in these pictures...the main skirt fabric is a very dark brown/black wool crepe from Gorgeous Fabrics, and the kimono scraps are an assortment of blacks, browns, navy blues, and reds.  Here's a couple of pictures of the fabrics in process:

 

 

I'm looking forward to wearing it!

Marcy Tilton vest

Just finished (well, almost finished) Vogue 8599, Marcy Tilton's vest pattern.  I really like it, and pretty soon I'll post a review over on PatternReview.com, but thought I'd post here too to show I'm actually doing something!

I made a muslin, which seemed to fit pretty well, but once I put some of the final touches on the real deal (out of a great Japanese fabric I got from Marcy Tilton's website) and tried it on, there were some major problems.  The worse was that the underarm area was hanging out super-loose and looked awful!  Like so:

 

So I started doing alterations.  Snugged up that underarm, but still had a bit of a gap at the breast area, so I made darts heading out toward the arm hole.  Not the most beautiful design-wise, but it took care of the problem.  And I guess Marcy expects women to have more of a rounded back than I do, so I had to take some fabric out of the upper back to avoid a hump of fabric there.  But after all that, it looks great...except for one of the darts I made, which is doing something weird.  I'm still working on that, but otherwise all done and I'm happy!  Here it is:

And the back, which shows a more accurate representation of the main fabric color (it's a very, very dark brown):

 

The collar is a velveteen, and the back detail and arm facings are a poly satin, both from Fabric.com.  They're all a lighter color than I expected when I ordered it, but I think it looks kinda neat.  

Onto the next project!  (oh, after I fix that dart...)

Our new family addition...

Meet Hazel! 

She's our brand-new, 8-week-old Spinone Italiano puppy.  She's a sweetie, but of course into everything.  A real handful! 

Harry has been great as a big brother.  At first he was a little skeptical, but he's getting the hang of it.  And he plays so sweetly with her!  Take a look at them playing outside and inside.  Aren't they great?

So...she's my creative project for the time being!

More Harry!

Now that the play is over (it went really well, by the way!), I can get back to my crafty stuff!  I'm looking through my sewing patterns, just ordered some fabric, and trying to figure out my next project.  I also have a necklace underway which needs completion, so I've got plenty to do! 

In the meantime, a couple of pics of Harry...a fairly dignified one:

...and not so dignified (but I love it!):

Play!

OK, once again I haven't posted in forever.  But here's my excuse: I've been rehearsing for the play I'm going to be in!  I'm very excited...I spent my whole youth doing theater, but have only had sporadic opportunities since then.  And this one just fell in my lap, and I'm thrilled!

I'm having lots of fun rehearsing, and I've even sewn some clothes for costumes!  So I've been keeping busy.  My friend Rebecca generously spent some time with me to take my headshot, and I'm so happy with how it turned out!

 

And I have to include a picture of Harry.  Here he is in the living room, enjoying the sun.

Well, back to practicing lines!

Happy New Year, and my birthday!!!

It's a nasty, icy day here in Stony Point (ice storms and freezing rain), and I can't get out of the driveway and our road in order to get to work.  So, poor me, I'm stuck at home instead!  A perfect day to sip my Chai tea and write a post about my birthday, which just happens to fall on New Year's Day.

This year was a biggie...40!  So I threw myself a party.  With beyond-the-call-of-duty housecleaning assistance from David, and two solid days of baking, I ended up with a clean house and quite a spread of goodies!  The party was a real success.  Here's some of what I cooked up:

Some little cinnamon-nutmeg cookies from a half-batch of dough I'd saved and frozen from Christmas, and petit fours from Martha Stewart's recipe, which were a nightmare to make!  Everything went well until the glazing, when lavender glaze ended up all over me, all over the kitchen, and all over a few other rooms as well (long story!).  But not so much on the petit fours themselves.  It took a few coatings, and the whole process was such a pain that I didn't coat the whole batch.  That, and with many casualties along the way, what you see here was about as many salvageable petit fours as I had.  But...everyone loved them!  They were a huge hit!  There must be a better way to do the glazing.  Onto other goodies:

In the foreground is an apple pie using a filling recipe from the King Arthur Flour site (it uses their Boiled Cider...well worth it!), and the Cook's Illustrated pie crust recipe that uses vodka...I believe you have to pay for membership on their website to get to the recipe there, but it can be found many other places on the web.  It really works!  The crust was easy to make, and came out tender and flaky.  In the back is my chocolate trifle, and unfortunately I have no idea where the recipe came from...I printed it from a website and not sure which one.  It's called "Chocolate Lover's Trifle", if you're looking to track it down.  I made a few changes, but basically it has pieces of chocolate cake smothered in raspberry jam and brushed with Amaretto, layered with custard (which never set, and I had to mix it with whipped cream), raspberries, almonds and chocolate shavings.  Really yummy, and another big hit!

But the piece de resistance had to be my decorated cake.  Here it is:

I spent weeks learning how to do the gum paste so I could make the flowers, and it took me a long time to come up with a color scheme, and there were all sorts of snafus along the way, but I was very happy with the results!  The cake is covered in fondant, which was a new experience for me too (went pretty well, actually), and everything on it is completely edible.  Inside is a delicious hazelnut cake made from a recipe in the book Whimsical Bakehouse (which I highly recommend!), with a Nutella buttercream filling.  Yum!  Cutting into it was a little tough for me after all the work I put into it, but it tasted so good that it was worth it!  And at the end of the party, I was left with:

Kinda sad, but well worth all the effort!

Birthday!

Now that Christmas is over, I'm busy prepping for my birthday party.  I'll be 40 on New Year's Day, so this is a biggie!  I've got grand plans for all the goodies I plan to cook and bake...probably more than I'll actually be able to accomplish, but who knows!  I've got Tuesday and Wednesday off before the big event on Thursday, so I do have some available time to get things done...and can't forget the cleaning, oh god!  David's already being a big help in that department, although the combination of dog and mud are a major opposing force.  It's warmed up and all the snow is melting into a big soggy mess, and Harry is constantly romping in and out.  Here he is last week after the snow had just fallen:

Back to my baking plans!  I took on the big project of making a cake decorated with gum paste flowers.  I've been working on them for a few weeks now, and here's what I've got:

The cake will be covered in chocolate fondant, which is a lot darker than the background here, so they'll look a little different.  It's hard to take a picture of them, because the colors shift, and the luster dust I've used to give them a little sparkle reacts strangely with the camera.  But you get the idea.  It'll be a two-tiered cake, so now I have to figure out how to arrange them. 

I have a conundrum: how to attach those little vines to the cake.  The fondant will be basically dry, so if I want the ivy vines to climb up the cake, I have to figure out a way to get them to stick.  The flowers are easy...a little royal icing piped behind them will "glue" them on well and won't be seen.  But the icing would stick out the sides of the vines.  If I don't figure this out, they'll have to stay on the flat surfaces of the cake.

Anyway, back to cleaning...the really fun part of prepping for a party!

I'm back!

Finally, I'm getting back to posting!  There's no particular reason that I haven't been updating my blog...I've been doing projects I could post about...but for some reason I haven't pulled out the camera.  I finally did, so here's one of my latest projects: Christmas gifts for Alyssa and Matt, my friend Barb's kids.

I got the pattern from FreePatterns.com (it's called a Teen Wall Organizer), and it's a little hard to see how they work from the pictures...you hang them on the wall (on a rod or whatnot), and they have pockets, three on the top row, two on the bottom, to organize little goodies.  You put a heavy-duty stabilizer in there, so they stay stiff and can hold up to use.  I just love the fabrics...it was so fun to work with them! 

Well, that's it for the moment...but I'll be back!

Skirts

Just got back from a visit to see my dad in Dallas, complete with a trip to the State Fair of Texas (more on that later!), but I didn't have a chance to post on a skirt I made before I left.  It's Vogue 8499, by Marcy Tilton, who does some really innovative designs (check out her website if you're not familiar with her stuff!).  I made it up one time before, but this time used a fun material which doesn't show up at all in the pictures.  It's something of a jacquard, impressed with a floral design.  Here it is:

Unfortunately, due to the black, it's very difficult to tell much about it (I lightened up the picture in the editor as much as I could to create some contrast!).  It's an unusual design, with a sort of bubble hem and huuuge pockets on the sides.  The only problem is that it stands out a little bit because of the heavy-ish material, but in a way that's kinda fun, and hey, it sorta balances out my hips!

So, I came back from Dallas ready to start sewing again, and immediately dove into another project.  This one was the Lotus Skirt, from the Sewing Workshop.  What a wild pattern!  You start out with one main, enormous, strangely shaped skirt piece, and it gradually transforms itself (along with a couple of yoke pieces) into a lovely, unusual skirt.  This was really meant to be just a (potentially wearable) muslin, or else I wouldn't have made two black skirts in a row...but it turned out nice, so it's joining my wardrobe!  But given the black, it's again difficult to photograph.  This rendition uses a linen blend, so it has some drape, but I can imagine it looking fabulous in super-drapey fabrics.  (It's not really as shiny as it looks in the pics...I think that's a result of the adjusting I did in the photo editor to try to lighten up the picture)

And the back:

What's funny is that I made it mirror-imaged!  I intentionally used fabric that was the same on both sides, because the inside shows in this design...and then I used the wrong side.  So the draped section, which is supposed to fall on the left side of one's body, falls to my right.  It didn't matter one bit in making up the pattern, and I didn't realize my error until pretty far along the way...and I certainly wasn't gonna change it then!

The skirt looks nice on me...I was little worried about that drapey thing emphasizing my "problem areas" too much, but fortunately it poofs in places I don't, and it all manages to work out.  It's a little on the dressy side.  I'm not sure if it's too "funky/special occasion" to wear to work or not.  Maybe depends on what I wear it with...I'll have to play around.  I like it too much to save it for way-once-in-a-while wear!

Harry...the Luck Dragon?

Yesterday I took Harry for a car ride to the bank.  The teller at the drive-thru said he looked like the creature from "Neverending Story", which I never saw.  I later talked to a friend, who said the teller must have been referring to the Luck Dragon. What do you think?  First, a few recent pics of Harry (all looking a little serious, I must add...there was food around):

 

Now, Falkor, the Luck Dragon:

 

Any resemblance?

Latest jewelry projects

It's been raining on and off today, and I encountered this little guy while I was taking pictures:

He seems to be enjoying the weather.

I've been working a lot in my studio!  Some of my latest creations:

Earrings with sterling silver, glass, pearls, Swarovski crystal;

An adjustable necklace of faceted amethyst, hessonite garnet, sterling silver, and Thai Hill Tribe silver;

Another adjustable necklace, this one of rainbow moonstone, glass, sterling silver, Swarovski crystals, and carved quartz;

This one is faceted sapphire, with gold vermeil Thai Hill Tribe beads and finishings.  It was a commission, and so much fun to work with materials I don't normally have the chance to play around with!  I hope the recipient is happy with it!

The Upper Square (the rest of the Co-op)

In case you missed my last post , I'm giving a little tour of the Co-op in which I live.  On to the Upper Square.  After a little walk up the hill,

and around the bend,

you begin to see some of the houses to your right,

one in front,

and one to the left (2 pics of that one).

If you head up the staircase (from two pictures ago), on your way you see this:

View from the top of the stairs back down:

And finally, some of the houses of the main Upper Square area:

Last, a little rock staircase leading up to another home. 

There's so much more to the Co-op than these homes...there are some studios and outbuildings I haven't pointed out, but then there's the creek running through it, a small waterfall, the many acres of woodland backing up to the State Park, and so much natural beauty every season of the year.  More pictures to come, I'm sure of it!