Dress-A-Day #1: Pillowcase Daisies

Last month I went on a little sewing spree. It was long overdue. I forgot how much I loved it. I missed those nights when I'd stay up until the wee hours with fabric flying and bobbins tangling around my ankles as I moved from machine to machine. Did you know that if you read the manuals to your sewing machines you can learn how to use them better? It's amazing. Consequently, I've been trying our new techniques and making new patterns and I'm loving the results. I've also been ruthlessly using fabric and embellishments I've been holding on to for years. What good are they doing just sitting on shelves and in drawers? I need to send them back out into the world to dance around.

So I started by making some new sundresses for McKenna. She gets all the prototypes of my new line of kokoleos (coming soon). Thankfully, she loves everything I make for her (my cooking is another story). She even asks me when I'm in my studio, "You gonna make me something?" How can I resist? I didn't make her anything for 6 months, so last month I made her 6 new outfits.

The first one I made was a pillowcase dress. I've seen them before and always wanted to make one so I figured out my own way to do it. Afterward, I made 4 more (coming soon). Now I'm on a mission to find more pillowcases.

Here's our photoshoot for that dress. It got a little messy, but that's okay because it's hers.


We had another photo shoot the next day where she modeled the rest of them. I'm going to try to show you a new one every day. Maybe I'll even make one more to make it an even 7.

Laundry and lesson plans.

Well hi there. It echoes in here here... here... here.

Long time, no blog. It seems I clammed up there for a while. So much so that I forgot I had a blog that I used to write on pretty often. I used to show pictures of my kids and the places we went and the things I made. Then I just stopped. My apologies to those who were following me. Find me on Facebook, mention patchwork world and I'll friend you (that's where I'm spending all the time I used to spend blogging). Tonight, I remembered that I have a blog and thought I should come back and write something. Maybe I'll even get back into it, who knows. We'll see.

I don't know how to recap the past few months. Erik's been living the freelance animator lifestyle, occasionally being flown out to places like Savannah, St. Louis, San Francisco and Seattle for interviews or contract work. Oh yeah, and he lived in Phoenix for a month. That was hard. Now he's home again working in Hollywood for the next few weeks, but after that, who knows? Such is the freelancer's lifestyle. Lord knows the major studios aren't hiring. Instead, they're laying off people by the thousands and outsourcing out the wazoo.

In the meantime, I've been teaching and taking care of the kids. McKenna successfully survived a lame preschool that showed Tom and Jerry videos all day. She loves her new preschool and they love her. It's a shame she's going to have to leave it soon (more on that later.)

It's been a rough year for Sage though. The synopsis: He started a new school, started having daily anxiety attacks, got asked to leave, started a new school in our neighborhood (with 1800 kids in grades k-5) , met with several doctors, was found to have a hearing impairment, started on a homeopathy regimen that seems to be helping, and right now, thankfully, is doing well. Suffice it to say, after dealing with that, plus homework and laundry and dinner and lesson plans, there hasn't been much time for sewing in my studio, much less blogging about it.

Until now. I just got laid off.

Damn, my life is just one sob story after another, isn't it? Now you know why I haven't been blogging.

The principal said it was nothing personal, just budget cuts. Still, it sucks. I feel like I emotionally invested the past 7 months into that place and those kids and now *poof* just like that I'm gone. It's a horrible feeling to hear that you're not needed anymore. This is the first job I ever lost.

In the meantime, I lost myself, or that part of me that used to make stuff and go places and talk about it. I lost it in the laundry and the lesson plans. Right now, I have no plans, so it will be interesting to see what happens next.

Craftmas Bizarre, December 6th!

I'm only doing one craft show this holiday season, and it's the best one around...

Wassel and waffles! Music and videos! Entertainment! Surprises! One-of-a-kind handmade awesomeness!

Print out this invite and write "kokoleo" in the corner and you can get in FREE. See you there!

@ the FAKE Gallery

4319 Melrose Avenue

(Melrose/Heliotrope)

LA CA 90029

(free parking!)

All things Fall

No time for excuses about how I've dropped the blogging ball... it's Fall! You know what that means.

Pumpkins!

Cider! Leaves! Pumpkin Ale! Hayrides! Corn Mazes! Scarecrows! Train rides through fields of sunflowers!

Costumes!

(me as Ballooon Boy and Erik as Joe Wilson)

(McKenna as corn, a costume I made for Sage 5 Halloweens ago)

and Candy!

Swap-O-Rama-Rama... Spooky Style!

Last Saturday I took part in my 4th Swap-O-Rama-Rama, manning my ever-popular (I'm guessing super busy= popular) applique station. This season's swap had a Halloween theme, so the many of the projects we created had a spooky edge. Here's the postcard from the event:

Yeah, I should have posted those last week, before the event occurred. Sadly, my blogging has fallen by the wayside recently. I'm trying to hop back on the blog wagon though, and thought I'd start with a little recap of the swap. Here are some pics:

You can see the rest in my Flickr album. It was held at the Venice Center for Peace with Justice and the Arts in Venice, CA, our second time in this location (I blogged about the last time here.) I brought the fabric I use for my skully tees and showed people how to make appliques from it. Other popular appliques this time were flames, trees, anchors, and peace hearts. I didn't get a chance to photograph every project made at my station, but I manage to snap a few.

It wasn't as jam-packed crazy as previous swaps, so I got a chance to score a few goodies for myself this time - a pair of cords, a Banana Republic sweater, and a pink shirt (which I got a cool pixel-skull screen printed upon), plus 2 pairs of jeans for McKenna, and this awesome blank orange Gap shirt for Sage, which I immediately took to Donna and Aldo's screen station to get on of their Trick-or-Treat screen prints. I love coming home from events like this with one-of-a-kind handmade gifts for my kids.

Plus, I got to hang out a little with my craft-pal Sonya Nimri (read her blog post about the Swap here), and got a nice little notebook and birdie iron-on from Stephanie Girard's die-cut applique-making station (she wrote about the event on her blog too) . Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

I'm back in craft-action!

Whoa, it's been a while since I last blogged. I'm back to teaching full time again - middle school - language arts, social studies, and art. I'm loving it, but struggling a bit to find a balance with work/kids/housework/writing/and kokoleo. I've spent the last month focusing on the first two, and now I think I can get back to doing the last two. (That poor middle one always gets the shaft.)

Now, if I haven't lost all my readers in my hiatus, I have a favor to ask. I wrote a Tooth Monster tutorial for this really cool site called Instructables.com and entered it in their Kids Crafts contest. I'm hoping to win a sewing machine for my school. You can view the Instructable here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Tooth-Monster-Pillows/. The contest ends tomorrow (Sunday) night, but if you happen to read this before then, please vote for it. (I think you have to register to vote, but it's easy and they never spam you. It's a cool site to browse - there are tons of great tutorials.) Do it for the kids!

Here's how out of the craft-world loop I am. . . This project was featured on the Craft: blog and CraftGossip.com last month and I didn't even notice.

Too bad I didn't sign my name to it or kokoleo would have gotten some props. Oh well, it's still nice to be featured. It's enough to make me want to start making stuff again.

Happy Birthdays to My Two

Today is Sage's birthday. My little, I mean medium-sized boy is 7. That's almost 10! And 10 is close to 13! He's practically a teenager! Okay, not really, but he's certainly lost all his toddlerness.

We had his party last week. It was a "water" themed party. Activities included swimming in the pool, dancing in the sprinkler, slip and slide, squirt guns, water balloons, a shark piñata, and this cake that I made him the night before:

It's a surfer riding a wave into a graham cracker crumby shore. The 7 is actually an upside-down and slightly modified "2" candle from McKenna's cake 10 days earlier. Unfortunately she got a store-bought cake because I lamed out and we were away from home in Lake Arrowhead. She didn't mind, and I promise to go all out in the years to come. She hit the jackpot in Yo Gabba Gabba toys though - the Viking ship from her Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Theo, the walkie talkies from her Grammy and Pop Pop, and the D.J. Lance hat and glasses from us.

Being young sure is fun. Happy birthdays young'uns.

Friendship Pins!

A few weeks ago, a call went out for swag bag submissions for the L.A. premiere of Handmade Nation. Surely you've heard of Handmade Nation by now - the indie documentary by Faythe Levine all about the recent resurgence of crafting in America. If you aren't lucky enough to live in a city that's hosting a viewing, it will be available this fall through buyolympia.com. Get it! It's sure to be a craft cult classic.

Living in L.A., I've had numerous opportunities to contribute to celebrity swag bags and have always declined. 50 toddler sundresses in exchange for "great celebrity exposure for kokoleo"? No thanks. I'd rather be obscure. But 200 contributions for the craft community? Sure! Here's what I made:


Friendship pins! Remember those? It was an early 80s fad. We swapped them with our friends and wore them attached to our shoelaces. It was a sweet and simple crafty gesture and I want it to make a comeback. I spent two nights putting beads on safety pins, then attaching them to my business cards.

Two per card, labeled, "Friendship Pins!"
"One for you. One for a friend."

100 sets in all, sent out into the city.

Now I need to get them out across the country, so the first 3 people to leave a comment will get a set. I'll email you soon and send some your way. To quote (kinda) an 80s sitcom theme song... You will see a little gift will be from me and the card attached will say, Thank you for being a friend.

Celebrating the Popular Arts

Let's see, what else have we done this summer? I said I'd talk about Comic-Con, but I really don't have much to say. I wasn't in a very good mood the day we went there, as evidenced in this self portrait I took on the escalator.

I'm just not all that into comic books and sci-fi stuff. There I said it. While there were some nice indie artists on the outskirts, it was mostly very commercial - major motion pictures I don't want to see and cartoon characters you see everywhere, plus dinky useless giveaways that later littered the sidewalks. Ugh. But that's just my perspective. There were thousands of other people thinking completely differently. My one ray of sunshine was getting my picture taken with Brobee from Yo Gabba Gabba:

(Sage was off with Erik and McKenna was in the convention center daycare. I don't want you to think I pushed my kids out of the way to get to Brobee.)

The signs around the Gas lamp District in San Diego said, "Comic-Con: Celebrating the Popular Arts." I think I prefer the underground arts - the undiscovered one-of-a-kinds being made all over the world not for the purpose of getting Popular, but because someone just wanted to make something new. I guess you could say all those characters and movie scripts started out that way, but then they went and got manufactured for the masses. That changes everything.

Luckily we spent most of our San Diego trip exploring the city:


And visiting the museums at Balboa Park. My favorite was the Mingei International Museum and the exhibit they had entitled “Masters of Mid-Century California Modernism”:

composed of work by or influenced by Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman of ERA Industries which operated in the 1950s-1980s. They and their handmade artisans (weavers, tile makers, silkscreeners) produced mod home decor for the masses and their style has had a major yet quiet influence on a lot of design and decor that's followed (IKEA, etc.). I found an article on them in American Craft Magazine online. They were a creative couple making the popular art of their day. If I ever become popluar, I wanna do it that way.

Juicebox Popsicles

We all know that excessive juice box use is wasteful, but sometimes they come in handy. Like in lunchboxes or purses or hiking backpacks or cars. Sometimes though, they lose their straws and then you have to drink out of the hole, which is awkward. So, what do you do when your juice boxes/pouches have lost their straws and you also coincidentally happen to be out of popsicles? Make juicebox popsicles! Just cut a hole in the top, insert some chopsticks, and stick them in the freezer.

After they're rock solid, cut off the outside and Viola! Gigantic juice pops.

Hello August

Ahhh, August... the month of my kids' birthdays, the last month of summer, the month before I start my new job, the month a play I wrote will be performed a 2,653 miles away.

What? I haven't mentioned those last few things? I'm sure I will soon enough. When I go back and read through my blog entries I notice there's a lot I don't mention. You'd think, by reading my blog that life is fine and dandy in La-La land, that I spend my days exploring L.A., crafting away, and watching my children dance in glee around me. I tend to leave all the other parts out. Like how hard it is to live out here right now. Erik hasn't been able to find full-time work, our friends are getting laid off, our state is bankrupt, our house is worth half of what we paid for it and it's in a neighborhood I don't love . Those are bummer topics. So I try to focus on the good stuff.

Like when we visited my parents in jail.

Just kidding! This was at the Autry National Center of the American West. We went there when my parents were visiting and my dad got to see all his cowboy heroes. It's a nice museum, even if country music and cowboys aren't your thing, it's still interesting. They have stuff for kids:

and stuff for people who are into wacky fabric and handicrafts:

And life-size pictures of people who died before we were born:

Pardon the crappy cell phone pictures. Our camera was broken for a month, yet another reason I haven't blogged. Let's see, what else have we done? We've swum. After 3 weeks Sage got a new waterproof cast, so the summer is not lost.

And I've been sewing up a storm, but I can't show any of it yet. Next blog post I'll show some of our San Diego/ Comic-Con trip we took a couple weekends ago. I've got some catching up to do!