Hearts on Her Knees

I love patching things.  Lately, I've been patching more than I've been photographing.  I have hopes to do a giant round-up post of all the patching.

In the meantime, here's Genevieve with her patched jeans.  I have sequestered old jeans legs and other denim scraps in a bag in my workroom so that I can patch denim with denim.  Here I used scraps of railroad-striped denim to make heart patches on the knees.  On the inside are flannel rectangles - you can see them outlined with the topstitching.

And Genevieve is holding a Calico Critter.  She and Ben pored over a Toys R 'Us Christmas circular and begged and begged to buy these things.  I think children thrive best on homemade, open-ended toys, so I said no.  They continued to beg, which I took as a sign that Calico Critters were not a passing interest.

So I told them that they could save their money from grandparents and extra chores and only buy the little figures, not their houses or furniture.  So they did.

And now they are constantly devising houses out of wood and cardboard.  And pestering their father to help them.

Ben's friend, tonight, while eating popcorn:  "What's a Calico Critter?"
Ben:  "a piece of crap."

That is a true story.  I'm afraid Ben was quoting his mother.

I need to marshal my thoughts for a post about the children and money because it's starting to get rather complicated in that area.

Fixing Up Sleep Clothes

My husband looked over at the t-shirt I was wearing at breakfast one morning and laughed. Yes, it was his old t-shirt with a streak of yellow paint (house trim) on it. I filched it out of his stack because I thought he wouldn't notice, and I am scrambling between summer and winter pajamas these days with several layers.  He told me I could have it.  And I suddenly needed to cover up that paint.

So I took some tiny scraps and sewed them right on the shirt - no interfacing, no finished edges.  I also covered up the Hanes logo because it didn't look dreamy enough.  I used 2 blue and white flannel clouds, one on the inside, one on the outside.

Related, the elastic was shot on a pair of my pajama pants.  Sometimes I just sew new elastic on top (like this mend), but this time, I had a better idea:  I cut off the elastic and attached a new waistband entirely, using fabric from a yellowed, vintage pillowcase.  The drawstring has a section of elastic in the back - so much more comfortable than a total drawstring and so much better looking than a total elastic waistband.

To play with fabric like this was so fun and easy - I encourage you to go patch up your pajamas!  Apparently, my sleepy look is shabby chic.  Who knew?

Mother's Day: A Poem About Patches

Yesterday I patched my flannel sheets.
They are at least 7 years old, about Genevieve's age.
Ecru linen patches on white flannel.
I could buy new sheets.
But no.

Patches mean life,
real life was lived here and this thing was used hard.
This thing was not thrown out, but rather patched up for more hard work.

Ben took his shoes off in the middle of the day,
and there was his toe peeping out of his blue sock.
"Put your socks on my sewing table tonight, Ben."
And he did.
And I will find some bright thread left from another project
and I will fill in the hole.
He will wear the darned socks again.
I will wash them, and hang them on the line.
The darn will settle into the sock,
a sign of grace
extended to a weak spot.

We live here.
We work and play.
You can buy ripped jeans and shabby chic stuff at the mall,
cool, but they do not mean real life.
Better we should see our own holes,
our patches,
the beautiful mending,
the love.

An Infinitesimal Patch

I was sewing along on an oven towel when I realized there was a snip in my vintage plaid fabric.  I was loathe to throw out the topper, so I patched it.  With a teeny tiny little patch. I think it's charming!  The towel is in the shop, along with some other new things.

The plaid was used in this scarf.

The mustard fabric from the patch is also on the back of these curtains, and and I used the copper thread from this skirt.

I have been complaining to Rebecca recently that some of my scraps will not die, that I must be sure I like a fabric a lot before I buy it, because it will be in my scrap bin for years!  Maybe I should initiate a scrap exchange with other people who sew patchwork. . .

Embroidery Floss Storage

All my embroidery floss, needles, and darning egg were jumbled in a tin.  Ridiculous.  Rebecca's family all keeps theirs in flannel rolls, so I made one for myself.  You can see I don't have a large collection and I don't really have embroidery projects, just mending and darning jags.

I added a pocket for the darning egg and a packet of needles.  The inside of the roll is flannel and the outside is from this dress. The dress was the wrong color for me and the wrong fit for me and a few friends, but I loved the quirky fabric, so I kept it for its fabric and nice metal zipper.

 

How do you store your embroidery floss?

A Spate of Patching

Recently, three patches that please me:

1.  Here is the Pendleton wool blanket that guards the back of a sofa. It is dearly loved, but old and frail which is why it was rent when Ben tried to pick it up while standing on it. I used a piece of wool from Rebecca and handstitched it on.  I am having a little crush on red stitching on dark backgrounds right now. 

2.  A hole in a nice linen tea towel.  I'm afraid the linen is getting so worn that the satin stitch around the patch may separate it into another hole, but in the meantime, I like the little hit of color.

It's terribly cold and windy, a good day to hang out whites!

3.  A mysterious hole in the bedroom laundry hamper got a French-blue patch. 

Incidentally, I'm so pleased with my latest laundry hamper organization:  I hang the pre-wash spray right there on the hamper so we can squirt stubborn stains when we are thinking, "oh, this shirt got ketchup on it, I need to put it in the wash" rather than when I am sorting frenetically in the laundry room and can't be bothered to look closely at each item for stains.  I also tied a little mesh bag onto the hamper, too, and put handwash items in there so they don't get swept up in the (as I said) frenetic sort-and-dump into the machine.

And here's a bonus: I decorated my plain black mittens with patches as I watched the last episode of Downton Abbey. It's scraps of felted wool and that red handstitching. The result is a little more ragamuffin-y than my usual style, but until another inspiration hits me, I'm keeping them.

Pretty Happy Funny Real

Here's a slice of our life, organized in Leila and Rosie's categories for their Thursday roundup (pretty happy funny real).

 

These burpcloths are pretty.  I made them for a new baby sweetie girl and delivered them along with a meal.  To the right is some plaid (left from this shirt) that I used to make Ben a bowtie for my grandma's funeral.  I do love those bowties: so easy to whip up and instant cuteness for Ben.

 

 

My mending pile is happy to me.  Usually the fixes are fast and it's so satisfying to get the items back in circulation.  Here I have a flowered shoe bag whose seam I made too shallow so it frayed loose.  A pair of oxblood tights that I wore so much they lost their tightness at the top, so I put some elastic in there to help.  A blue sweater with a small hole on a seam that I handstitched closed.  Poof!  Back on the job!

Last Thursday was a funny day.  Ben was requested to dress as a favorite book character for school, and Genevieve was requested to dress crazy in support of anti-bullying school spirit.  Yes, on the same day.  Trying to coordinate this, plus get me out the door for my job was not funny.

Ben was Bananas Gorilla from Richard Scarry.  His daddy helped him make four watches in addition to the two he already had, so he could wear three on each arm like Bananas Gorilla.  Ben dressed in similar clothes to Bananas Gorilla and carried a bunch of bananas.

 

We had to explain the concept of "clash day" to Genevieve, which is kind of hilarious because she already wears the top-of-the-pile shirt with her red plaid skirt to madcap effect.  Sometimes I make her change before I take her out in public.  She totally owned this school spirit day!

 

 

 

Here is a real Lego creation from the Genevieve.  Those people are standing in line at an ATM.  Which niggles at me, because my husband and I rarely use ATMs and I can't imagine where she sees people standing in line for one.  But there you have it:  a 7-year-old's social observation.

 

 

Happy Thursday to you!

 

A Zipper Solution

Suddenly, 3 zippers at our house are snipped between the teeth, so the zipper slider flies right off the track when it gets to that spot.  Not good.  We think it may be from the bunny nibbling at the zippers when the children are snuggling her!

The one zipper is mostly decorative on Genevieve's top, another zipper is on Genevieve's hood so now she will wear a hat the rest of winter, but the other zipper is on Ben's only sweatshirt.  So I fixed it. 

I trimmed off the rest of the plastic teeth above the snip and bound the raw edge in bias tape.  I stitched extra hard to make a zipper stop, but if the zipper pull is being dragged up hard, it can still fly off.  Oh well.

 

 

 It's more functional now, and the kids have been warned to keep the bunny's teeth away from their zippers.  I'm not keen to replace coat zippers again!

Mend It Better: Book Review

You asked me to tell you what I thought when I was done reading Mend It Better by Kristin Roach. 

Here are the ideas from the book I want to remember:
1.  turning holes in a sweater into flowers by beading around them.
2.  covering up stains on children's shirts with appliques and decorative stitching.
3.  fix holes in socks with crochet instead of darning - the directions for starting crochet on any piece of fabric look very good.  I have a friend who raves about the usefulness of crochet for this reason.  I want to get serious about learning to crochet soon.
4.  patching holes in coat linings instead of relining the coat, especially using blanket stitch to decorate the edges. This can be a hobo look that is not really my thing, though.

The book covers all aspects of mending and does pull in contributions from other people.  However, there are three intriguing garments photographed with no attribution or explanation.  That annoyed me.  I post the photos here.  Aren't the clothes neat?  I want to know more about them!

 

 

The price on the back of the book is $18.95.  I'm sticking with my Sewing Stitch and Textile Bible for individual stitches, my Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing for techniques, and the library for whizzy new books.

A New Stack of Library Books

There is a librarian who watches out for me because she knows I like to make things.  I am so warmed by her kindness and interest.  She will catch a book going through the system and put it aside for me.  When I went to the library to pick up some other books I had reserved (The Homemade Pantry, Vintage Cakes), there was a surprise from her rubber-banded to the others:  a mending book.  My heart jumped.  Mending!  Codified!  Explained! Photographed!

 

I didn't get to have a Sunday afternoon on the couch with the books because I was at the last Christmas gathering with my dad's side of the family.  I truly didn't mind.  They are lovely, polite people who know how to make conversation, so it's truly enjoyable to spend the day with them catching up.

 

So these books will be my bus reading this week and next. Have you read any of them?

Another Patch on the Sleep Shorts

I caught my shorts again on the same cabinet pull.  But it was fun to find another scrap of the sherbet pillowcase and put on another patch.  It's not just crafting and decorating for pretty's sake, it's functional. 

the underside of the patches

In other news, we have shut all the windows and put in 2 window air conditioners.  The heat was just too much - when it comes down to it, family life comes before environmental concerns.  I justified the air conditioners for the stretches of 90-degree days that do not cool off at night (81 this morning at 5:30 am), not for the whole summer.  We have the air conditioners set at 83 degrees.  Rebecca said maybe the new normal is huddling inside in the scorching summer and emerging for outside activity in the mild winter.  My energy and mood are improving already.

Why, Yes, I Darn My Dishcloths

I used to banish them to the rags when they got holes, but I wondered why I bother darning socks then?

I need dishcloths more than I need rags.

I speculate that our dishcloths get holes in them because we wash sharp things carelessly and accidentally cut the yarn.  It's dorky, but I get happy about choosing the yarn colors to darn the holes.  Colors make me so happy.

To radically change the subject, what is NOT making me happy is trying to figure out schooling for our children next year.  We are planning to put Ben in preschool (where? where? where?).  Genevieve will be in first grade (where? where? oh, nevermind).  I told my husband that I had patience enough to discuss it for 15 minutes last night.  I had done some preliminary checking and note-taking, just so you know I'm holding up my end of the parental decision.

Mastering the Separating Zipper and Then (Finally) Refashioning My Sweater

Ben's coat zipper died.  Last year (I cringe) I threw away a coat with a broken zipper. 

This year, I found a good tutorial online and went for it.  This was after I kept eyeing that dang zipper and thinking, in my naive way, that it didn't look that hard.  Guess what?!  It's NOT HARD - in fact, I would say putting in a separating zipper is easier than a regular zipper!  It's much more intuitive, for one thing.  There's also much less chance of sewing on the zipper teeth accidentally and breaking a needle.

So I fixed Ben's coat.  Then I took a deep breath and cut up my lambswool crewneck sweater.  I've been all talk about this project for close to 2 years now (scaredy-cat).

The sweater is a lovely material and color, but I hate to commit to crewnecks because what if I get too hot?  Then I have to wiggle out of it, and by this point in winter, I'm getting tired of putting on all those clothes and I want easy layers.

I cut off the sleeves and slit the sweater up the middle.  I expect I'll use the cutoff sleeves as filler for hotpads.  I finished the newly-raw edges with bias binding.  I treated the sweater as if it was made of woven fabric; this was not successful with the armholes, which sagged out quite a bit.

So I made darts under the the armholes, to pinch in the excess.

Then I put in a bright green separating zipper.  I am so pleased with how this turned out!  Especially with my hefty Gap  men's flannel shirt from the thrift store.

Ben's Owls

I just thought the utilitarian denim knee patches needed a little whimsy, so I appliqued the flannel scraps of owls on top.  Ben says they're playing peek-a-boo.  I'm so glad I got a picture when he put his shoes on by himself, bless him.

Mr. Thrift and the Seam Ripper

Genevieve's school uniforms aren't supposed to have any logos on them.  And my friend Maria told me her clever method of buying incorrectly monogrammed backpacks for cheap, and then picking out the monogram.  I got this little polo for a few bucks at the thrift store.

My husband nicely offered to take a go at the seam ripper.  Well.  Polo has no intention of removing its branding claws from that shirt.  We got so far, and then I appliqued a white heart over the mess and the hole. 

A little puckery, but at least we can still use the shirt.