County Fair: half done

Today was the day for fair entries to be delivered. I had hoped to finish 4 items, but am settling for just 2. I always know that my sewing for the fair is aspirational: I *hope* to have xyz completed by then. I am often motivated by external deadlines. (It is one of my tricks for dealing with ADD procrastination: find a way to impose a firm deadline.)

Queen-sized quilt, ready to go

But this year I just wasn't feeling it. Couldn't make myself work on the "wedding dress redux" items. And, when it came down to the wire, I left a lot of the finishing details unfinished on my tote bag--I just didn't care to put forth the effort. Given my perfectionist tendencies, this may not be such a bad thing: allowing the "good enough" to slip in and save me from the obsessively perfect.

I'll upload photos of the bag soon. It turned out to be pretty clever, if I do say so myself.

Robe + slippers: a great idea?

Picture a child's bathrobe: pink, soft, fluffy faux fur trim on the sleeves and collar.  Now pair that with some pink slippers

...and you have my latest idea.  What if the slippers were like pockets?  What would that look like?  Is it possible to sew a pair of slippers onto other fabric?  Would the finished product be just an embellished robe, or something else?

A woman with ADD and a new idea: a dangerous combination.  I am reading "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" by Stieg Larsson, and came across a passage that I think applies to my creative process.

The main character, Lisbeth Salander, has a photographic memory, a quirky flair for computer hacking, and a penchant for doing recreational mathematics at an elevated level:
"She had spent several weeks in the Caribbean last winter working herself into a frenzy over Fermat's Last Theorem.  When she came back to Sweden... she had kept on playing with the equations... [But now]  she did not have the least interest in it.   Fermat's theorem no longer fascinated her.  That was ominous.  That was just the way she usually functioned.  She would be fascinated by a problem, but as soon as she had solved it, she lost interest.  That was how she felt about Fermat.  He was no longer a demon riding on her shoulder, demanding her attention and vexing her intellect.  It was an ordinary formula, some squiggles on a piece of paper, and she felt no desire at all to engage with it."

So often, when I get a creative idea, I spend so much mental energy figuring out how to make it work.  I dream about it at night.  I buy the materials to implement my idea-- but I often run out of steam long before the idea is put into finished form.

Robe and slippers?  Stay tuned...

Latest sleeve completion

Done with the coral silk sleeves.  Looks good. 

More sleeve news

I don't know what it is about sleeves this summer: they're everywhere in my mending/restyling pile.  After much frustration with the progress on my County Fair entries (which must get done this week: aack!) I went back to the mending pile and put a new sleeve on an old blouse.

Blouse is a lovely textured coral silk.  Sleeves were the same fabric, basic short sleeve.  But the blouse had sat in the back of my closet for years, hardly ever worn because raising my arms caused gross bust gaposis.  Should have taken a "before" picture, but I removed the sleeves months ago; I had actually worn the blouse once under a jacket with no sleeve at all.

Anyway, the removed sleeves served as a pattern basis.  I slashed the pattern 3 times and added 2" of ease at the lower edge.  Bought a matching stretchy lacy fabric to use for new sleeves.  Tried it on, and decided the new sleeve looked "unfinished".  So, instead of hemming it, I am adding a bias strip from fabric in the original sleeve (I made it bias so that the bottom edge would stretch a bit along with the lace; remembered to sew it on with a zigzag stitch for this purpose.) 

The picture above is "in-progress".  I wasn't at my ironing board to finish it.  Will post "done" picture soon.

Duvet Cover finished!

Son's duvet cover is truly finished.  Buttonholes, sewn-on buttons, and all.

And really, it was not such a big deal to stitch the buttonholes.  No, they don't look perfect.  Wouldn't pass muster at the County Fair.  But I'm not trying to win a blue ribbon here, just cover my Son's bedding.

Gotta get over the need to make things *perfect*.  It really gets in the way of getting things done.

A New Habit

"Habits are first cobwebs, then cables." - Swedish proverb

I have retrained myself into some good habits lately (well, in the past three years or so), and am working on one of my New Year's resolutions: floss your teeth.  Yes, I know I should already be a flosser.  Many people I know floss their teeth.  My dentist has repeatedly exhorted me to floss.  And I know that I'm not getting any younger: wouldn't flossing help my teeth and gums stay healthy longer, and thus keep me out of the denture brigade?

So, what have I learned about starting new habits that will help me here?

1 - Tie the new habit to something you already do well (and do regularly).  I'm good at lots of things; I bet you are, too.  I'm even good at some of the repetitive, maintenance-y things in life: laundry, for example.  I am the Laundry Fairy in my household.  If I wanted to start a new habit (or just get better at something I don't do as frequently as I should, like watering my houseplants), I could somehow tie it in with doing the laundry.  Leave a reminder note in the laundry room, or leave the watering can on the washing machine.  Then, right after I started a new load of laundry, I would go water those plants.

I still use this method to keep my car free of trash: whenever I fill the tank with gas, I drop off a handful of garbage in the gas station bins.

 And, of course, since I already brush my teeth daily, the floss habit needs to be tied to that.  Duh.


2 - Have the right equipment at hand.  I cannot overemphasize this idea, as "the right equipment" turned out to be the key to finally becoming a sometime-flosser.  I tried waxed floss, unwaxed floss, mint-y fresh floss, ribbon floss, ugh, ugh, ugh...
 
The key equipment for my flossing thing is a Reach Access flosser.  My Daughter uses individual floss picks, which I initially dismissed as being environmentally unfriendly.  But it got me thinking...

The right equipment makes any job easier.  And easier jobs tend to get done.  If you are trying to jump-start a habit, do whatever it takes to make the "easier" part happen:


 * the proper shoes for walking
 * the proper bra (or other clothing) for working out
 * sharp knives for chopping those fresh veggies
 * a vitamin pill that you will want to take daily (try the Gummy ones!)
 * file folders and labels for getting that paperwork under control
 * a trash can in every room
 * a well-lit crafting area, so you can see what you are doing

3 - Do less, but do it more frequently.  I learned this one from FlyLady (Baby steps!)  When I first started plucking my eyebrows (not so very long ago), I plucked a few hairs every day until I had finally achieved the desired shape.  Then, to maintain, I plucked 8 hairs daily.  Now mind you, some days it didn't look like there were even 8 hairs there to pluck (how many eyebrow hairs grow in overnight anyway?)  But I was busy establishing a habit: I found 8 little feathery blond hairs and plucked them.  Every day.

This concept applies in more areas of your life than you would initially think.  Take cleaning the house.  I am currently decluttering, in one-hour bursts.  When I don't have a whole hour (like today), I set a timer for 15 minutes.  Maybe I will have another 15-minute chunk of time later today, and maybe not, but I didn't let the fact that today was very busy deter me from my decluttering habit.  I can also dust, or vacuum, or tidy up, in smaller chunks.  Every little bit that I do is more than would have gotten done otherwise.

Back to the dental hygiene: I started out by flossing only 1/4 of my mouth at a time.  Worked my way up to the whole mouth eventually, but it awhile to establish the idea of "flossing".

 

4 - Reward yourself.  You deserve it.  It's hard to begin a new habit, and maybe it will take a few tries before something clicks.  Look at those things you do well, and use them as motivation.

Prairie Point pondering

So, I had this misunderstanding of prairie points recently.  Which is all fine, since I like my interpretation better.  And it led me to come up with a clever idea for what to do with them: buttonholes!

Prairie points are triangles of fabric that are used as adornment--often in quilts.  I guess they mostly are used along the edge, as shown in this tutorial.  And they frequently overlap, which is facilitated by the fold/opening being on the side.  (In fact, if you want them to overlap consistently, and are willing to use the same fabric throughout--although I am often stubbornly scrappy--there are tutorials available on making continuous prairie points.)

I, however, have used the center-fold method of making prairie points, and have used them to define a line between two fabrics, or to create a border where none existed.

Prairie points on my first-ever quilt.

You can see that the above points were placed with the edge where the folds meet showing (facing outward).

Prairie points used about 4" above the hem of a square dance skirt, to create a border.  These were anchored with a black ribbon over the raw edge.  The points were not identically sized, and definitely didn't overlap.  These are also the center-fold method seen above, but placed so the folds meet on the reverse side, showing only a sleek triangle of material (satin, in this case).

 Okay, so here's where the inspiration struck: I have been dragging my feet on Son's duvet cover, dreading the required buttonholes to finish it.  My buttonholes always look so shoddy!  If only there were a way to camouflage them.  (I have been known to make a welt buttonhole--no easy task--in order to avoid the hated zigzag buttonhole.)  Aha!  What if, instead of the buttonhole being out in the open where everyone can see its awkward ugliness, the stitching is hidden behind the place where the folds meet in the prairie point?  Genius!  (If it works, that is.)

Now that I have the idea, I've got to get going and try it out.  Stay tuned, dear readers...