A Blah Dress for a Blah week for a Blaaaahg entry!

I don't know why I feel BLAH, but that seems to be the theme of this week.  Just driftin' along.  Strange, because I've actually been busy with fun things:  Addie's birthday dinner, seeing Dessa perform at Nectar, riding my new bicycle all over town (YAY!!!)

Anyway, at my house (The Pod) we have a giant bag of crap on the front porch, which is fun to occasionally dig through, hunting for treasure.  It's good grist for the Maddie-mill.  I used a crap-heap shirt and an old bedsheet to make a distinctly school-marmy dress, and then tried to make it a little younger by adorning it with a belt I had begun to make.... oh, two years ago?  It takes me a long time to finish projects.

So, first I took the shirt from the crap heap and cut it to waist length and then sewed some darts.  The photo is post-crop, pre-dart.

 then I got "in the zone" and stopped taking photos, and ultimately wound up with this dress:

I pinned pleats for the jersey bedsheet skirt, and attached it to the top painstakingly, pleat by pleat, all the while thinking "This is going to be a huge bag when I put it on.  It was, so I finished that elastic hipster belt, and used it to magically make a waist in a shapeless, blah dress.

And here's the belt, which I like best of all, so it gets disproportionate face time:

Oooh yeah, baby!



I think I'll eventually sew some elastic strips into the giant skirt, to make it a little more scrunchy and interesting.  If it turns out well, maybe I'll post an update.  Hell, if it turns out horrendously ugly, maybe I'll post an update!

Here are some pictures of things in my room:

The great Boob in the sky

Home away from home

Scarf for Mama

This is a work in progress (since before xmas)

But it's soooo cool I wanted to show all y'all:

It's a scarf that is also... a maze!  There is a knitting technique called "mosaic knitting" which I picked up from a library book called 250 Creative Knitting Stitches.  The book taught me the basics of the technique, and then, I found this amazing website which generates maze patterns for whatever dimensions you set!  Thanks, Unikatissima!

I can't resist recommending these books, which I think are available at Uwajimaya: "Happy Knitting" and "Nordic Knitting."

Anyway, I decided on some dimensions that I deemed scarfy, and set to work.  If you guys want an explanation of mosaic knitting, I'd be happy to write up an instructional entry on it.  It is the easiest way of multicolor knitting, I think.  It's quite clever; you never have to carry more than one active color at a time!

Anyway, pictures!

This is what I've been up to lately:

Every cat gets a different breakfast!

Buster

Rosabelle

Mittens

Shiloh

Art projects coming soon, I promise!

Wombyn Power!

Did you know that a common, disposable sanitary pad lives in a landfill for over 1,000,000,000 years?!??!  ("Cite your sources!' chides Nina)

Well, I heard somewhere that the majority of stuff discovered by future archaeologists will be our old disposable diapers and pads.  Who knows?  In any case, I think cotton pads are probably just better in all sorts of ways (ecological, comfortological, financialogical,) and I've been meaning to make them for a long time.  After taking it for a test-drive, I've decided I'm never going to buy pads again!

Follow these instructions if you want to make a good "light days" pad.

Cut out 2 rectangles of flannel, 10" x 4" and 1 rectangle of cotton quilt batting, same dimensions

I used a flannel shirt for my project, so I scavenged the cuff for use as the pad's wings.  (Pre-made button and button hole!)  To prepare them for sewing, DON'T place them like the above picture.  I did, and I had to rip it apart and re-sew.  The order you should put them in is illustrated below, only, unfortunately, in pad-shaped pieces instead of easier-to-sew rectangular pieces.  I'm including this picture because it would be a good way to arrange them for ease of sewing, but only if you make sure to put everything down in the right order, like so:

Layer 1: (bottom) cotton batting

Layer 2: flannel, right-side-up

Layer 3: wings (doesn't matter if they face up or down)

Layer 4: flannel (right-side-down)

Sew a big peanut shape over all layers, making sure the wings don't shift around too much.  I narrowed to about 2" in the center.  Before turning it right-side-out, cut notches in the curves so it doesn't get too bunchy.  Turn it right-side out by carefully pinching up only the top layer of flannel.  You have to make sure you turn it so that the two layers of flannel become the outsides.  This takes a little finagling, but I believe in you!

I chose to sew a little inner-peanut, but it's probably not necessary.

Here I am, with Nina.  She's watching me blog in my bed!

The pit of destruction and creation (but not organization)

After a month of neglect and abuse, my room looked like this:

This might bring back difficult memories for Stacey...

So I decided (as usual) rather than just clean up like a normal person, I would make something: a new, wonderful invention that would make cleaning up a snap, and forever solve the problem of my messy room!

Here I am, inventing.

Gratuitous close-up

I seem to have come upon a revolutionary idea-- it's like a blanket that wraps around your belongings without actually having to manually wrap the sides up around the contents!  It's as if the sides climb up the pile of stuff, eager to enclose it!

A few finishing touches, and...

I've invented... a bass drum?

A Pokemon part?

None of the above: a bag!  And a really gaudy one at that.  Oh well, at least SOME stuff got put away today.

A bag is born!

I finished making this dinosaur tote bag today!

I found the fabric with these dinosaurs on it at Goodwill, so made a bag using the brontosaurus as an applique patch.  Look at its stupid face!  I love it!!!

Another awesome thing is the strap: I sewed so many parallel lines on it to lend it some rigidity-- and a green highlight stripe on the inside!

Available for sale on ETSY!!!

Also, today I found these cute silkscreened dishtowels,

...but what I want to know is: How do people get to the point where they can sell stuff like that for that price?!?!?  It's reasonable to ask that much for your efforts if you're trying to make a living as an artist, but unless you have some sort of reputation in the art world, no one is going to pay $20 for your adorable dishtowel.  I would totally make dishtowels if I could get $20 a pop for them!