Career Counseling

  Sometimes my job is super tedious like 90% of the time. Like the airline pilot joke says, it’s hours of boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror. During those hours of boredom I try to imagine what my Perfect Job would be.  The job that uses my considerable natural talents and pays Big Bucks so that I can have plenty of free time,  Greek Yogurt and fancy Cat Food for the kittens. Plus extra left over from that to use to buy patterns that I might never make but need, just in case.

And Extra Money, which is a concept I explain to my children is like Unicorns or the wendigo.

Remember when your High School Career Counselor told you to list your favorite hobbies and classes and they handed out this sheet where you filled in the little bubbles with a number two pencil and then got back a printout that told you that you were divinely chosen to be a dental hygienist or a plumber or a nurse?
Mine said (not making this up, I even saved the paper somewhere) that I was best suited for Military Intelligence. OK... now that you’ve had a good laugh and are making that lame old joke about how that’s an oxymoron, just think about this. What if my high school counselor was right?
I ponder this while waiting for software upgrades to upload.
Do you suppose the Intelligence Community looking for these skills?

1. Baking bread – I guess I could hide secret messages in it. Or feed other, hungry spies.
2. Fixing failed mayonnaise – this skill came in handy just yesterday, when my daughter called saying that her mayonnaise was a giant puddle of eggy oil and I gave her the magic solution and it totally worked and mayo’d but then she had the horrible problem of two cups of fresh mayonnaise to use up after eating her BLT, which I also deftly solved with an awesome Mayonnaise Chocolate Cake recipe, baby, which uses 2/3 cup of mayonnaise. Plus also Crab Cakes, Chicken salad in Heirloom tomatoes and Garlic Cheese Bread. Leave it to a child of the seventies to know her way out of a mayonnaise glut.
3. Sewing: I could make awesome disguises. I once made my son a Darth Maul costume so awesome that he won our neighborhood Halloween contest. Plus, Star Wars! Knowing the star Wars canon has to be good for spying. “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” I could totally say that with a straight face.
4. Painting. See disguises, above.
5. Trivia.  A person who reads all the time necessarily knows lots of previously useless information
6. Never been beaten at Chinese checkers. An unbroken streak lasting 30 plus years.
7. being able to fold those elastic bottom sheets has to be good for something.
8. Never forgetting passwords
9. Know every bridge on the George Washington parkway, thus enabling me to leave bundles of spy stuff hidden where no one but us spies will find it.
10. Tracing Burda Patterns. Anyone who has done this knows that no Cold War expert could do better at solving these Undecipherable Puzzles

Mr. Hunting Creek offers that I am really good at predicting how mysteries will end, either in book or movie form, and also remembering the plots of old movies.
Do you sit and Fantasize about other, more Glamorous lines of work? What’s your Fantasy Job?

Satin and Lace for a Princess

Lace and Satin Dress For Throwback Thursday

 I made this pretty dress for Ms. Hunting Creek's First Communion. She picked out the pattern, which has the V shaped princess-approved bodice, a full swishy skirt and little lace wing sleeves. The bodice is lace, underlined with the satin. Have you ever sewn with polyester satin? It is so slippery and slide-y and uncooperative! I had to resort to hand basting the satin to the lace for the bodice to underline it, because it just would not stay put. Once the bodice was done, then I had to hand baste the gathered skirt to the bodice and make the gathers even. I should have also underlined the skirt because I can see my hand hem in the picture,but I was working with a deadline here. Also, no one would notice but me, so the motto here was get the dress to the church on time. I had to send my husband away with his mom and the kids so I could focus on completing the hem. My mother in law (not a sewist) was driving me crazy by hovering and saying, "you'll never get this done in time! Why didn't you start earlier?Why didn't you buy a dress?"  If only she knew just how many times I had finished something just before curtain time, so to speak.

Of course, I did get it done in time - an hour to spare! almost cheating! Ms. Hunting Creek loved it so much she wore it several more times: Halloween, a school play, and of course, for Princess Dress up.

Scary Patterns: Poncho Edition

Hooded Double Poncho for two(!!!)
With picnic kit pattern included (of course, because who doesn't go on a romantic picnic in their cool, double poncho?)
This might be the scariest pattern yet; most men I know would disapparate immediately if faced with the prospect of wearing this in public.
However, it would make a great Halloween ensemble.
If that's totally your thing, find it here. 

Just For Fun

Just for fun, I thought I'd make these little houses for Christmas place settings. Aren't they the cutest?
They only need tiny bits of fabric and trim some Timtex and glue.. Most sewists I know have lots of little scraps that would work. Add cute buttons, sequins, glitter, paint...and they're done. They would be a fun project to do with kids, too.
(Of course I say that so blithely, now that my kids are adults and won't hog all of the prettiest glitter, or spill beads all over the kitchen, or fight over who gets to use the pinking shears..Some people find that making stuff with their kids is like entering a special circle of hell. To them I say, well, maybe you'll be better off making these alone. But really, MY kids liked doing stuff with me. They happily slopped glitter all over everything. I still have the stockings we decorated, and they still have a ton of glitter on them.)
These  little houses would also be fun for a Halloween Party in spooky colors, or Thanksgiving in Fall Fabrics, or birthdays...or - whenever you need an adorable little house.Want to make some too? Find them here.

Thirty Years and counting...

We took a blog break to celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary.(Yes, Mrs. Hunting Creek was a child bride.)

My favorite part of Sunday is reading the wedding announcements in the New York Times. Sometimes people have cute meeting stories, like they were introduced by their dads, or met at a Halloween party, or sat next to each other on a flight with severe turbulance. We met at freshman orientation at U.C. Irvine, at a toga party.
The boys were having their faces painted with lightning bolts a la David Bowie. I was doing faces, and I did his face with a particularly fine bolt. He commented, "One day, we'll tell our grandkids that this is how we met." I laughed and signed my name on his shoulder with the eyebrow pencil so he'd remember my name.
(It worked for me, but your results may differ.)

I feel a quilt coming on...

There's a new baby on the way in my daughter's boyfriend's family. My daughter has asked me to make a simple baby quilt. (She does not sew...yet. Give her time. She is already tracing Burda patterns.) I've made many a baby quilt in my day; they are the crack cocaine of quilting. You make one, it's small, you finish quickly and you think, "I can so handle this quilting stuff! Piece of cake! Next project King Size bed quilt!", which of course, takes seven years to finish if ever. Almost every sewista I know has unfinished bed quilt pieces hidden away somewhere that they inherited from their grandmother/aunt/mom. There might be more unfinished quilts in the world than finished ones.


I only have three unfinished quilts in various stages of unfinishedness. No wait - four. Two need only the binding, and one needs the final quilting. The last is in quilt top only phase. I am at peace with this situation; UFOs no longer haunt my sleepless nights. I have limited sewing time, and it's the law of the jungle in here.



So starting a new quilt might seem like folly, right? If you were OCD, you'd say - NO - STOP! finish those other quilts first! But then there would be no baby quilts ever, if we finished all of our other work first.
So this weekend, Ms. Hunting Creek will bring me the fabrics she has selected. It seems to be a requirement when persons other than myself desire baby quilts that they are pink and blue and Winnie the Pooh. I have given up on suggesting that science shows that babies prefer bright colors and high contrast. No one listens.

The top quilt shown is a wall hanging called Batik Cabin, made and quilted by me when I was in my batik period (like Picasso's Blue Period, but not as remunerative). It is finished. I took it out recently from storage and it has fold marks, so I will dampen it and hang them out. Also pressing helps too.
The second one down is Some Blue Thing, a raw applique bullseye quilt, that needs final squaring and then binding. I think I'll do a raw edge binding too. I like the frayed edges. The last is a Halloween quilt, Witchy Woman, done just to be silly. The black spider web fabric glows in the dark! This one just needs the binding finished. These are shown draped over the couch; when they are hung up officially, they look much nicer of course. But I knew you wouldn't mind.
Are you interested in my lazy, slacker quick and dirty, speedy baby quilt construction methods? Stay tuned, I'll ask Ms. Hunting Creek to be photojournalist.

p.s. don't forget to sign up as a follower and comment if you want to be in the drawing for the Amy Butler Velma bag pattern, seen yesterday.
Happy sewing!

Are you happy now?

(Sorry, couldn't resist using the title of my favorite Richard Shindell song in a post about creative happiness.)

Nancy K wrote a post earlier this week asking if we were happy with our sewing, and if not, (or if Yes) why?
I'm happy now, but I haven't always been happy. When I was in college I was of course young and fit the patterns right out of the envelope with very minor tweaking. I liked to sew and made most of my clothes.
Then later on, when my kids were small I did not have much time to sew at all, so my projects were small and easy to achieve. I wasn't happy at all. I had almost zero time for myself and hardly any time to make anything. And I learned an important lesson then: don't bite off more than you can chew. Or, as my mom would have said, "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"
So I scaled back. I made simple stuff, just for fun. I remember making simple wrap skirts, cute clothes for my daughter and her first communion dress. But after that I mostly made Halloween costumes and holiday decorations for a few years until the kids were old enough to no longer needed high intensity supervision (they no longer desired to eat glass or play with knives), AND I finally had a sewing room! Only then did I have a safe place to leave my things out, and make a creative mess. I admit it; I work messy. I have pattern pieces and fabric and scraps everywhere when I am in my creative frenzy and I don't clean up until I'm done. Then when that project is done I survey the wreckage and clean up. After I had my sewing space and room and time to experiment I was MUCH happier. I was able to work on more complex projects that stretched my skills. I had a few missteps, but being a former teacher, I know that mistakes are part of the learning process. I think most of my mistakes in garment sewing at first have been in not really understanding what would look good on me and why. This is difficult for many people to learn. What I like and what looks best are not always the same thing.
(I confess that I sometimes have the fabric selecting skills of a five year old, and that my inner five year old has to be restrained at all times. She wants Princess Fabric. If she is let loose all of my fabric would have sequins, or be shiny or gold lame or otherwise be appropriate only for circus wear. The practical grown up me needs a khaki jeans skirt. The five year old me wants a laminated linen one with metallic accents. You see the problem.)
Fortunately, any woman with a grown daughter and son has a built in "Fashion Death Panel". They are very strict. I once was admiring a black and white paisley knit with 3D sparkle dots.(Sparkle Dots! Yes! Shiny! says my inner 5 year old) One Death Panelist came over and said, "Are you going to wear that pole dancing? If not, you don't need it." (see how mean they are?)
Of course after a few failures I am better at picking my projects. (She says, while knocking wood), I think I do best when I try on a similar item of RTW and see if it looks good on me before I make something similar.

My rules for successful garment sewing follow (your mileage may vary)

1.Make a muslin. It matters.
2.When you make a successful garment, make more of that same pattern and change it up each time. No one will know it is the same pattern.
Plus you learn new skills every time you make a change.
3. Read all about the skills required to make your garment before you start. Read the directions. Make sure you understand them. Read sewing books to amass more skills.
4. Practice new skills on scrap fabric before you cut the crazygood stuff
5. Sometimes things don't come out the way you want them to. This isn't a failure, it's a 'design opportunity'. As Tim Gunn says, "make it work."
5. Sometimes if you set a problem aside, you'll think of a solution later.
6. Be nice to yourself. This is supposed to be fun!





Also when I am stuck in a garment sewing rut, I mix it up and make a shirt for Mr. Hunting Creek, or a baby quilt or something super easy to build up my self esteem. Then, afterwards when my kids aren't looking, I sew something shiny.

Halloween Comes Early

There are few words that would express my horror at being gifted with these dolls. Would they move in the dark? Would they sneak up with meat cleavers? Oh the cruel irony! Even Chuckie would be afraid of these.

Scary Patterns VIII: Cruisin' For Foxes

A common refrain among sewists both male and female is that the pattern companies don't make any good men's patterns any more. Case in point: this groovylicious leisure suit from 1975, just begging to be made in that patchwork denim print polyester doubleknit for optimum fox-cruisin' capabilities.
To better impress the ladies, please add a Tom Selleck moustache and Mr. Brady perm.
If your Halloween plans involve dressing up as Magnum PI, find it here. Send us a picture for our wall of shame.

What WON'T you Recycle?

Wow, we have lots of different responses to the whole "refashioning" issue. Some people are totally for it, saying "anything that gets people back into needle arts is a GOOD THING" and others say it reminds them of the bad old days, "unfortunate memories is of my grandmother fashioning clothes from flour sacks".

So what won't you recycle? People have strong feelings about this. It surprised me, but I suppose it shouldn't have. It is a very personal issue. We had a lively discussion at the dinner table last night. My daughter was against refashioning pillowcases, but said she had happily turned sheets into curtains for her apartment when she was in college. They were already hemmed!
Mr. Hunting Creek helpfully suggested making nighties out of used dryer sheets. I don't know about that idea. He reminded us that Scarlett O'Hara successfully made a gown out of her mother's draperies; an early example of successful refashioning.
Crazy quilts and scrap quilts were our grandmothers' methods for dealing with small pieces of fabric, old clothes and scraps.
As mentioned below, I won't refashion a pillowcase. I was strongly against cutting up old embroidered things - why? It really bothered me. The ones I inherited from my grandmother remind me of her. I can't cut them up; and they are too fragile now to even use as pillowcases. I still have them, too fragile to use(we used them for over 20 years) but I keep them with sweet smelling soap in the linen closet. They scent the other pillowcases and I think of my grandmother whenever I put the laundry away.
I would not re-use old underwear or pajamas. Old t shirts make great cleaning rags. Old sheets I use as dustclothes once their sheet days are done. When towels get raggedy they get assigned to car wash and dog bath duty. Old cloth diapers are famous for streak free window washing.
Old clothes get donated to the Salvation Army. I very seldom cut them up and turn them into anything else because I think someone else might enjoy them in one piece. I have a bunch of old suits that I never wear any more (I work at home now); a friend suggested Dress for Success or a battered women's shelter as a good home for these.
I have recovered pillows and I recovered my dining room chairs.
I have bought clothes from the second hand store for their buttons, and used the fabric from a old prom dress for Christmas angel dresses when I was in high school.
And like any mom, I have made Halloween costumes out of materials on hand. Not just to save money, but to make something unique. The kids still talk about the time we made a Darth Maul costume out of black lining fabric and an old turtleneck and some makeup. And won the Best costume prize!

So where do you draw the line? What WON'T you recycle?

I'll get you, my pretty...

...and your little dog, too.
Seriously, Vogue people...it's for Halloween, right?
Ok, now we are all done kidding around. What's with the hideous Mrs. Roper Dress?


This is unattractive on so many levels...where to begin? That print! Those colors! I haven't see a wrist corsage since the Dark Ages when I was in college. That must mean that they mean for Miss Scarlett and the 60's den drapes to attend some festive occasion. Perhaps meeting Elvis in the Jungle Room?
And to think I was worried that my puffy sleeves might be over the top.
Trick or treat!

October Baking

Yikes! You've been asked to bring something to the office potluck or Thanksgiving Party. What to bring that's different yet familiar? I adapted this recipe from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Cookbook (which has lots of good stuff in it)

Halloween Pumpkin Cake

Preheat your oven to 350 before you start so it has time to get hot. Grease and flour a 9 x 13 inch pan, or two 9" cake pans or 1 tube cake or bundt cake pan

1 3/4 cups packed brown sugar ( I like dark brown, but use what you have)
1 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
1 can 15ounces pumpkin puree

Mix all the wet ingredients together in a large bowl,they will look very goopy. This is normal. In another bowl blend together

2 1/2 cups flour (or do what I do and use 1 cip white whole wheat and 1 1/2 cups reg flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg ( I grate mine fresh)
1/4 teaspoon allspice
( or you could add all of these spices up and use pumpkin pie spice, if you have some handy)
Whisk all of the dry ingredients together then blend in the wet ingredients
Pour into the prepared pan or pans. Bake about 30-35 mins for layers, 35-40 for the sheet and 45-55 minutes for the tube. Of course you check ten minutes before it is supposed to be done. Just to be sure.
I glazed mine with cinnamon buttercream glaze, which I invented that very minute.
I mixed about 1 cup and a half of powdered sugar with a 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, 2 teaspoons of melted butter and enough milk or cream to make it glazey. I spread this over the top so it would drip attracively down the sides. There have been no complaints

Since I can't go out...

Since I can't go out in the heat (MS sufferers can't take the heat; if it weren't true it would be an excellent excuse to crank up the air, but it is in fact, true) I might as well post some new patterns. I've put up 12 new McCalls and Butterick Vintage patterns with more to follow. Halloween decorations, costumes, classic dresses, tops, Home dec and more. Just go to what's new on the website and enjoy.