So, today I hauled home about 70lb of old kids’ bikes for some of the neighbor kids. Granted 70lb in Roadmasters = two of them. That kind of load makes the ol’ BOB trailer awfully wobbly. I was SO glad to end that ride. Bleh. Joel and I will be going over the bikes to make them ride as well as they ever will, then turning them over to the little boys down the street so that they can get their ya-yas out. Between this family of three children there was one little 16″ girls’ bike and a 26″ women’s bike, and the oldest boy, who is all of maybe 7 or 8 was trying to ride that ladies bike and crashing all over hell and creation. There’s a 20″ on the back of the BOB that will be perfectly adequate for his adventures right now.
I’ve also made a bunch of new clothes recently. Here’s an 8-panel skirt which will soon have a co-ordinating jacket of a similar minty green to the tee-shirt shown above.
Another new skirt in copper-colored taffeta with little orange twinkles of glitter on it. The glitter will wear/wash off, but the wonderful iridescence of this fabric will remain. I bought it for the copper/brown/black/orange shimmer rather than the orange glitter anyway. Also, this skirt hangs evenly all the way around when I wear it, but my dummy is a little crooked and so one hip is lower, so the skirt hangs a little weird on the dummy. The blouse is an old one I made from a 1950s pattern, but I don’t think I ever photographed it. The collar and facing on the blouse is cut from the same fabric as this new skirt.
Frilliest blouse in the tri-state region. God, this was a lot of hemming. I literally went through an entire spool of thread in making just this ONE blouse. Good grief!
I call this my Minnie Mouse Flapper dress. It is actually a 1966 Simplicity pattern that I intend to use as part of a suit-dress this fall. It will ultimately be a brown-orange-copper-and-cream plaid with fabric buttons (scrap from the copper skirt). This dress, plus a boxy little Jackie Kennedy type jacket. When I do the plaid dress, I will make it with short sleeves. Also, I’ll be slashing the front neckline of this pattern and making the bodice front a little narrower through the chest. On me, the collar kind of bags and the armholes are too far out on my shoulders.
Pets:
Smallcat keeps Ruby where she can see her.
Ruby’s gaining a little respect for Smallcat because Smallcat won’t take any guff off of a puppy. Ruby spooked Griz this morning and he’s still holding a grudge. If he wouldn’t be such a lilyliver and would give her one good bop to the snoot, she’d leave him alone. In the meantime, I’m doing heavy supervising when they are together so that she won’t pester him.
I’ve been meaning to take some pictures that show how darn pretty Grizzo is. I got some good ones of Smallcat a couple of weeks ago, but Griz is a challenge to photograph because he usually comes right up an totally rams his nose into my camera. I have way too many pictures of blurry cat forehead.
Griswald on sentinel duty. He’s making sure Ruby doesn’t sneak up on him.
Griz, holding down my new chair. Joel found it behind a dumpster and I claimed it in the name of Sewing Room. Griswald allows me to use about 1/4 of the seat whenever I want to. It goes really well with my late-1950s sewing machine & table and is more comfortable than the old kitchen chair I’d been using.
A little more about the dog:
Her appetite has come back with a vengeance, and her energy levels are up. We mixed up a fairly benign mess of boiled ground beef, cottage cheese, and boiled eggs, and that was the gateway. Now that her stomach is settled, she is also happy to eat Innova Puppy kibble, and as much catfood as she can purloin (not much…I’m apt at keeping pets from eating unauthorized chow). I’ve become the Catbox Nazi, sternly admonishing “no poop for you!” when I see her start to put her head in the litterbox. I know that coprophagia is largely harmless, but it’s also fucking disgusting and I won’t have it going in my house. So there!
She’s coming out of her shell a lot more and I am getting more of an idea of who she is. She’s wickid smart; she recognizes her name and pretty consistently comes when called, and for a novice, she walks on a leash fairly politely. She doesn’t pull, though she wants to switch sides continually (a habit I intend to break by keeping something that smells tasty in my right hand pocket and occasionally doling out a bit to keep her where I want her.) We worked on “sit” tonight for just a little bit. Don’t want to overwhelm or bore her.
In short…you probably might not want to ask about the dog unless you’re prepared to hear me go on. Heh.
Nice sewing!
By the way…your cat Griswald looks like my cat, Nuttey. There is only one picture of her on my blog right now…..must do something about that!
Lovely clothes and love coppery taffeta ….love the animal photos and the one of the cat upside down is fantastic.
I especially love the first skirt! Did you use a pattern? My next fav is the red polka dot dress. You do nice work.
I am absolutely COVETING that yellow blouse!
Fabulous and gorgeous!
Thank you all for the kind words.
Jozet, if you want one, the pattern is New Look #6599. It’s pretty straightforward, it’s just a lot of messing around with getting hems and gathers to be perfectly even.
Judy, yes, it is Simplicity 5351, option D, slightly modified to make it tea-length rather than ankle length, because super-long skirts get in my way.
CABH, I’d love to see your Nuttey. The link you left to your site didn’t work, though. If you get a chance to re-send that, I’d love the check it out.
Magik Quilter, I was over to your site…wow, you do some very cool work. Thanks for showing it to the world!
Hi again
I tried to click on my link and it took me to my site that I am trying to work on… in the meantime you can find me here at wordpress:
http://createandbehappy(dot)wordpress(dot)com