Dress-A-Day #4: Cherry-topped Cupcakes

My previous attempts at attaching skirts to shirts were not up to kokoleo standards, but I got it right this time, and then I made a bunch more (coming soon).

There's only one dress like this one though, and it's McKenna's because that's all the cupcake fabric I had. The embroidered cupcake on the top is from a Sublime Stitching pattern I stitched when I took an embroidery workshop taught by Jenny Hart at Reform School. I blogged about it here last summer.

You know those old Reese's Cup commercials where someone with chocolate stumbles into someone with peanut butter and they realize it was meant to be? That's kind of what it was like last month when I found that cupcake I embroidered... I instantly thought of this new cupcake fabric I got... and then all the cherries reminded me of this tiny pom pom trim I have... and that's the same color of this shirt I saved for just the right project... and before I knew it I was at the part where I sew in the label. That's the best part.

She found these underneath the Japanese plum tree in our yard. She said, "Look! These look like these!" They really do.

She loves this swing. But she hates going slow. She wants to go "Fast!" and "High!" and "Higher!" and "Way up into the sky!" It gets tiring pushing her sometimes. The next 3 pictures are for the grandparents who live on the other side of the country.


If you scroll up and down over and over, it's kind of like you're in our yard pushing her.

Dress-A-Day #3: Patchwork Easter Sundress

I forgot to show the first sundress I made for McKenna last month. While shopping for an Easter dress, I remembered that I can make dresses for little girls - I should make one for my own daughter. So I did. Here she is with her brother Easter morn before church:

Yeah, I said it, church. After 15 years away from it, I finally found one I like - St. Mike's Episcopal in Studio City. We've been going there for over a year now and the kids actually look forward to it every week. It helps that there's a group of fun boys Sage's age and a few girls McKenna's age and an awesome playground and good food at coffee hour. Beyond that, it's nice to be a part of a community that does good things for the community. I'm so happy I found it. It renewed my faith (literally) in organized religion.

But I digress. Back to the dress. My mom had visited the week before and bought me this vintage spiderweb pattern quilt top at a quilt show we attended. I went back and forth between having her make it into a quilt (she's good at that) or making it into sundresses and other things. It was a little difficult (emotionally, morally) cutting into someone else's hand-stitched handiwork, but damn if it doesn't make for an adorable dress that looks way more difficult to make than it really was.
My mom made that quilt.

It's hard to see in those pictures, but I embroidered a heart in the middle hexagon. It's open at the bottom though, so it's also an M, for McKenna.

These shots are from our photo shoot afternoon last week. It's been worn and washed twice since Easter.

I strive to make my sundresses sturdy.

Dress-A-Day #2: Blue Smocked Sundress

I have an uncanny ability to remember where I got almost every fabric, notion, and embellishment in my studio. When I pull something out, I'm instantly transported to the time and place I first picked it up and thought, I should get this. . . some day I'll make something with it. I love those days when I finally do. I need to do it more often. Lord knows I have enough stuff.

I found 2 yards of this elastic smocked blue fabric at an estate sale and instantly saw sundresses. I may have instantly seen them, but it took me a year to make them.

The elastic straps are from another estate sale a few years ago. I remember standing in this (dead) lady's closet full of 1970s and 80s casual wear and finding a box of multicolored elastic belts that shared an interchangeable buckle. As a belt, it was dorky, I would never wear it. I almost set it down but then I thought, how often do I see brightly colored decorative elastic? They're perfect for sundress straps.

I don't remember where I got the striped fabric I used for the pockets, but I've used it for lots of letters in my banners and pillows.

On second thought, I think I got it at JoAnn Fabrics. No wonder I don't remember it. I prefer shopping in people's houses over that place.

Luckily, McKenna likes these photo shoots. I just follow her around and let her do her thing. Sage always hated modeling my kokoleo clothes. He did recently ask for a new pair of pajama pants though, because he's almost grown out of the ones I made him years ago.

I made this slightly smaller one, but I gave it to our plumber.

For his daughter, I mean. My friend Kathy had been over and seen the dress in my studio and wanted to buy it. I asked if her husband, a plumber, would accept it, along with a t-shirt for her boys, in exchange for extracting an entire sippy cup from our garbage disposal. He was able to do in a matter of minutes what we had been sweating over for two days. Yay! Long live the barter system.

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.