Dress Muslins

I've made 3 muslins (no, not Muslims, autocorrect) from Stylish Dress Book. None of them have worked out quite right yet but I'm going to try making a dress -length Tunic O with some cotton voile I ordered from Fabric.com.  

Part of the problem with ordering on-line is that there's no sense of scale.  It turns out the flowers on the fabric are 8 inches across. That's just too big for me, but at least making another dress from it will let me know how voile's hand works with the pattern. 

If it still doesn't work, I'm going to move onto another pattern.  Maybe the Claire Cami tank dress from Sew Serendipity.

In doing an image search on the dress, I came across the Patty the Snug Bug blog.  She's made several of these dresses and looks really cute in them, so that's a good sign.  

I Made a Dress! and what I'm watching on TV

This is the Crepe pattern from Colette.  It's a wrap dress that wraps in the back, so no zippers.  I used some white quilting cotton that had on hand and then used scarlet RIT dye.

Then the first time I wore it, it tore at the underarm.  Not the seam, the actual fabric. Also, the bodice doesn't fit so well. I don't know that I'll wear it much or make it again.  If I do, next time I'll use a patterned fabric so any wonkiness and wrinkles will be camouflaged. 

Still, I'm encouraged to keep sewing.  I've ordered 2 Japanese sewing books (translated into English)

 

And in other topics, I'm really enjoying the show Continuum on Syfy.  I think it's the best science fiction show on US TV right now.  Here's a review in the New York Times that explains why.

I'm really digging Scandal.  Each episode is packed with twists and it's over the top. Here's an article about what makes it so watchable.  On the one hand, it's so soapy and over the top. On the other hand, US politics is so full of back office dealing and so gonzo nuts that the stuff on Scandal is believable.

And last but not least, The Walking Dead returns tonight!

Blanket or sweater?

This is all my bulky weight wool yarn.  It's a mix of Manos del Uraguay, Lamb's Pride Bulky, Lion Brand, and 2 balls of Misty Alpaca.

I want to make a sweater, but I don't think I have enough of any one color for it.

Because the wool's not the softest stuff (oh Malabrigo, how you've spoiled me), I may make a Mitered Crosses blanket out of it. Maybe use the reds as the backgrounds for the crosses?  Or I should mix it all up and make the background some neutral color instead.  I'll have to play around with it.

However, I need to finish Husband's bulky weight wool blanket first.  I am on the last of the 9 colored strips, then there's the all black strips that join the colored strips....

But the end is in sight!

Crash Course!

Thanks to The Mary Sue blog, I learned about Crash Course!  a series on YouTube that teaches about world history, literature, and science.

ETA: today, they started a course about US history

I watched the video about Emily Dickinson as highlighted at The Mary Sue, then Chinese History, and now I'm starting at the beginning of the World History course.  Each video includes animation and the on-camera narrator is John Green.  I've read his book Will Grayson, Will Grayson which I recommend.  It's about teen boys and their travails about love, identity, and sexual oriention.  There are 2 boys named Will Grayson in neighboring towns.  One is straight, one is gay, and both are connected by another boy named Tiny.  Who is not tiny, of course.

Anyway. Each video is about 10 minutes, which is about how long it takes my baby to drink a 4 oz bottle.

Once Upon a Time, Grimm, Lost Girl and October Daye

What do these things have in common?  They're TV shows and a book series about monsters, the supernatural and fairies.  Or the Fae, as they call it in Lost Girl.  October Daye is a half-human, half-fairy private detective who works for both humans and fairies.

I started reading the October (Toby) Daye books because of this post by the author, Seanan McGuire, called Things I will not do to my characters. Ever. Basically, she swears that she will never subject her female characters to sexual assault. How revolutionary is that?

I've been buying her books and downloading them onto my e-reader, one right after the other, pretty much every 3 or 4 days.  Plenty of bad enough things (being turned into a fish, losing family, being beaten, being shot, losing their home and protector, dying, etc.) happen to Toby and other characters in the course of their investigations that sexual assault is not necessary to increase the drama and tension.

What prompted this post was me trying to think about Once Upon a Time. The set up is interesting, strong female characters abound, the central quests are dramatic.  Heck, Jane Espenson from the Whedon coterie (not sure if that's the right term) works on it! However, something prevents me from being as into it as I would like.

Then contrast OUAT with Grimm. Again, I like the set up (I like police procedures), the central quest is dramatic. However, there are very, very few female characters and many episodes will go by before 2 of the female characters will interact, let alone meet the Bechdel Test. And yet, I find myself enjoying Grimm more. Perhaps it's the police procedural thing. Or the Monster of the Week format.

It brings to mind Revenge vs. Scandal, 2 nighttime soaps I'm watching.  I like Scandal more because it's got the Client of the Week, plus it's got a political setting, which I like. Revenge used to have the Takedown of the Week, but since it's moved away from that, it's not as interesting for me anymore. Both have overarching conspiracies, but I'm enjoying Scandal's more.  Maybe, again, I enjoy politics more than business scheming, or whatever the Initiative on Revenge is doing.

The Lizzie Bennett Diaries

I just discovered this webseries (http://lizziebennetdiaries.tumblr.com/). It updates Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" to current day USA.  Lizzie is now a grad student in communications and the story is presented as her video blog.  Jane works in fashion, Lydia is an underage partier.  There is no Kitty and Mary.  Bingley is now Bing Lee, a rich medical student.  Charlotte Lucas is Charlotte Lu a videographer, and Mr. Collins is trying to break into the video business with the backing of a venture capitalist.  

I've only gotten up to episode 30, where Jane and Lizzie are staying with Bing and Caroline Lee and Darcy while the Bennett house is being remodeled for sale.  So far, I've only seen on camera Lizzie, Charlotte, Jane, Lydia, Caroline, Bing, and Collins (at VidCon). 

It's a clever, charming and entertaining series.  I'm an Austen fan, though not as much as my sister, and it's fun picking out the references to the book, to the BBC miniseries with Collin Firth, and even to "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."

Each episode is about 5 minutes long, which makes it easy to watch an episode or two whenever I have time. 

Ah, time.  What a concept. On the one hand, I have to keep an eye on the baby at all times, since she's crawling now and getting into plants, grabbing at stuff, putting who-knows-what in  her mouth.  On the other hand, she can also play with her toys by herself, so I don't have to entertain/teach/interact with her all the time.  For example, right now, she's sitting on the floor next to me...and a lot of potted plants. 

I'm going to try to blog more often.  Maybe try the 15 minute lightening blogging that Mason-Dixon Knitting is doing. We'll see how that goes.

Quilts of 2012

 I've been busy. Above are the quilts I made in 2012, all folded in half length-wise.

Blue and Pink Diamonds covers the top of our queen-size bed.  That's the 5-year quilt which took about 10 years to do, off and on.  As mentioned before, I fussy-cut and sewed the entire thing by hand.

The small Half-Square Triangles quilt at the top, underneath the Baby, was fussy-cut but everything else was done by machine.  Yes, that's when I bought my sewing machine.  I don't know why I waited so long to do so.

The blues in the Blue and Yellow quilt are from a jelly roll of blue Kaffe Fassett fabrics from Intown Quilters. The yellows are white muslin that I cut and dyed different shades of yellow with Rit dye.

The reds and white quilt are based on the City Tracks pattern by Cherri House.  The white is muslin, the reds are from a jelly roll of batiks from Intown Quilters.

The Yellow, Orange, and White quilt is the first one made entirely from stash.  It includes more batiks from the batik jelly roll, yellows left over from the Blue and Pink Diamonds and the Blue and Yellow quilts, and fat quarters that was all or mostly orange, yellow or white.

Below are more stash quilts, for 2013.

Red, Black and White One-Patch.  The little slips of paper bobby-pinned on are the measurements of each piece of fabric so I calculate how many 4.5 inch patches I can get from each piece.

Based on my calculation, there are 120 black patches, 74 white patches, and 142 reds, for a total of 336 patches.  Not sure how I'm going to go about designing the quilt.  I could go ahead and cut out all the patches and then lay them out, but I also want to save some of the black for the binding... 

And here are possible pieces for a Purples and Greys quilt.  I may take out the busy print in the top left.    Not sure what pattern to make with this.  They're all fat quarters except for the 2.5 inch strips, again from the batik jelly roll.

As I was laying this out, the difference between the warm and cool greys became really apparent, if not in this picture.