belle epoque

I’ve been hearing about a lot of neat stuff happening here in/around San Francisco that I wanted to share with my fellow Bay Area crafters.

First of all, did you know that Stitches West is coming up this weekend? Yep– from Friday to Sunday at The Santa Clara Convention Center. Urban Fauna Studio will be there! If you live around here and like yarn and fiber, Santa Clara is the place to be this weekend.

And secondly: not sure where I’ve been, but it turns out that CCA offers fantastic extended education courses. When HMB is in school (I know, it is a few years away but you gotta plan ahead), I would love to take a bunch of their classes. There are so many artsy, crafty things I’d love to learn and CCA is one of those places I always fantasized about going– I went to a few shows there when a good friend was in the MFA program and I liked pretending I was one of the students. Anyway, they have a few courses coming up that might be of interest specifically for crafters:
Glass on Metal: Basic Enameling March 14 &15 from 9:30am-4:30pm.

Selling & Marketing Your Crafts workshop, on Saturday April 4th, from 10am-4om. I’ve dabbled, as some of you may remember, in selling my crafty wares and I really had no idea what I was doing. I wish I’d attended something like this first!

Sorry for the text-heavy post! I’ll be back with some pictures soon…

First of all, THANK YOU for all of your kind comments about the tape measure dress! I’m still working on getting back to each of you individually, but my head was bigger than usual and my cheeks pinker than usual for days. Clearly garment sewing is where it’s at for me, and I’ll be trying to get more of it in from now on!

The reason I’ve been quiet (again) is that I was spending all my extra time getting ready for a big day– HMB’s first birthday! It is crazy to me that it has been a year since she looked like this, but it has. We had a big tea party with all of her baby friends. There were cupcakes

Homemade, of course, and I even broke out the amazing stainless-steel pastry bag thingy I got as a wedding gift to pipe the pink buttercream icing on in little puffs(that was fun! I need to ice more stuff). And for table decorations/party favors, I made the Tea Party Girls

Clearly inspired by Alicia’s clothespin dolls– they actually come off of their little stands to be finger puppets. If you’d be interested, I can post up a tutorial and pattern for their little bodies– let me know! They were super fun to make, and all of the babies seemed to enjoy grabbing them off of their moms’ fingers and chewing on their heads (I used non-toxic paint, of course!).

And this post wouldn’t be complete without a picture of the birthday girl herself, in her party dress!

I hope to be back soon, as I have a bunch of fun stuff to tell you about, including some of the amazing handmade and crafty birthday gifts lucky Miss S got that I just have to blab about!

I love the blog A Dress a Day, so much so that when Erin posted about this fabric, and said that someone should make a shirt dress out of it, I said, “Yes ma’am!”


and an action shot, so you can see the neat chevrons the pattern makes on the sides
I got my fabric on sale from The Fat Quarter Shop, but they don’t have it anymore (actually, looks like almost no one has it anymore– what the heck with discontinuing super-cool fabric?). I think of all the things I’ve made post-baby, I am happiest/most excited about this (sad, it has taken a year!). Instead of going my usual cut-corners and craft quick route, I took it slow- traced all of the pattern markings carefully, basted pieces together before stitching, and hand-stitched where the pattern indicated. My bernina’s automatic buttonholer was also a HUGE help. It took up the majority of two whole babysitter days to make and was totally worth it. I think I could probably make more clothes if I did the cutting, marking and ironing when HMB sleeps, and then the stitching when she is busy with the babysitter! I have to go through my patterns and fabric for another likely candidate.

Anyway, I used McCall’s 5378 with some modifications for fit and pattern weirdness (those odd slouchy pushed-up sleeves had to go). I used some cream satin-covered buttons I had lying around. I’ll be writing up a review on Pattern Review right after I hit publish on this baby, if you’re interested in making a dress using this pattern yourself! Despite some issues, I really liked it and I’d like to have one in a soft, fine-wale corderoy too…

Hello Blog! I’ve missed you. I have so much to tell you about our vacation and all this other stuff, but really, the biggest happy news is that CPSIA has been revised! You can read more over on Jess Brown’s blog (where I found out the big news), but the main thing is that crafters and small handmakers are protected from having to test and certify their products. Of course they have to make sure they conform to current lead and bad-plastic standards, but I’m sure that’s something the good ones already do!

In celebration, I’ll show you some *more* handmade toys that have been happening chez belleepoque. The are not for HMB, though her birthday is coming up this month (what?! one already?!) so I had better get on that too.

I made these using the pattern over at The Purl Bee, for a little boy we know who just turned one. They have jingle bells in the middle so they make a nice noise. It was fun digging in my scrap box and remembering everything I made with these fabrics before they became scraps! Clearly I have a thing for blue and orange.

These are some teensy Waldorf dolls made for some new babies in our circle. I made them properly with shaped inner heads under the jersey, using instructions from Marycristin Sealy’s book Making Waldorf Dolls. Boy is it hard to get the head shapes right! I have even more appreciation for the lovely waldorf dolls I see out there. I’d like them to have rounder, less-alien-looking heads, but at least they are soft and squashy so hopefully the babies who get them won’t mind.

I have felt so inspired to finally make something for myself, but it seems like these little kid projects with hand sewing are just more manageable. But I have some fabric and a pattern especially to make myself a shirt dress, so once the fabric is washed I’ll spend naptimes and bedtimes on it!