belle epoque

I’m working on this amazing doll pattern, by Mimi Kirchner, incredibly available for free at The Purl Bee. I am stunned by the generosity of creative people with such a signature style who make patterns available at all, let alone free of charge. Mimi’s work is so beautiful and quirky, so making a doll in her style is great fun– the construction of this one is really ingenious. It is all hand-sewn and I’m working away a little at a time so this is all I’ve got so far

The little legs sort of creep me out unattached like that. But I love the way the pattern makes such a nice, realistic shape for both the arms and legs. I’m looking forward to stitching it all together and embroidering the face. I’ll keep you up to date!

It has been quiet around here! Mostly because I designated April as “Spring Cleaning Month” around the house and have been slowly following FlyLady (a warning if you haven’t heard of/been there before–sometimes the style is a bit rah rah, but the substance is really helpful!). It is surprising how much time picking up after yourself takes at the end of the day. But that said, I don’t have huge piles of stuff on the floor of my closet at the end of the week because I put my things away every day. Probably most of you learned that when you were little, but organization and putting things away have always been a huge struggle for me!

Anyhow, that’s what I’ve been doing. That, and indulging in a torrid love affair with the CSA box we started getting last week. All sorts of wild produce shows up and I look for recipes and cook things I’ve never cooked before. It is SO MUCH FUN. But also takes up post-baby-bedtime time that I might spend crafting. So far the successes have been garlicky chard, roasted cauliflower soup and steamed artichokes with green garlic dip. The HUGE failure was dandelion greens– I cooked them with bacon and carmelized onions, so you know they were bad– before having them I didn’t think anything involving bacon could be bad.

Ah! But I also finished something crafty. The Alabama Stitch Book is too gorgeous and inspiring, but I didn’t think I’d ever actually hand-sew an entire garment from it. Well, I surprised myself and made the T-shirt corset.

I’m not sure if you can tell from the picture, but this is one hot shirt. It is very comfortable and flattering, and the construction is so lovely. It was meditative and surprisingly fast to make– lots of straight stitching (I flat-felled the seams). I can take a closer-up picture of the stitching on the inside if anyone wants to see it? Anyway, I’m sold, and plan to make a fancy version of this shirt as part of a dream-outfit idea I have that may or may not come to fruition.

My next spring cleaning mission is the craft room– it is just too cluttered to get anything done in there!

Hello! Thanks for all of your nice comments about the Two-Year Blouse. I wanted to get started on another blouse pattern I had, but found that I had cut out a larger size (I bought the pattern after HMB was born and thought I’d be able to stitch it up before losing the baby weight, hah!), and discarded several pieces of my current, smaller size, so cutting it down will require more energy than I’m ready to expend. Bah! Anyway, instead I made the Yard Sale Wrap Skirt from Weekend Sewing

I highly recommend reading Erin’s excellent post about making this skirt. I ended up cutting the two front panels on the fold, then cutting two extra regular size panels to make a full circle that overlapped completely in the back. I extended the waist ties and put a buttonhole in the waistband for one of the ties to pull through rather than allowing a bunchy mess in the back from wrapping and tieing. And I did a three-thread serged hem, as hemming a circle skirt is enough to drive me insane.

Thankfully this is a gift for someone else. As much as I LOVE circle skirts, they just don’t do anything for my figure (thanks to Heather’s post, I’m willing to accept it!). A circle skirt on a dress is a different story, but especially with a wrap like this, I’d have to tuck in the shirt I wore and it would just look wrong. The friend it is for is tiny, ladylike and petite, could easily get away with wrapping this skirt over a slim wee tank with strappy straps, then trip-trapping out for a summer picnic. I sure hope that’s what she does in it!