Me-Made November Recap

In theory, small pillows are a good starter project for most sewers, much like tote bags, coin purses and pyjama pants. I decided that a straight pillow was too easy (ha), and that I should add cord pipping to make look nicer (ha). I also decided, against most tutorials out there, to not make it an envelope pillow. This was chiefly because the pillow forms I had are super old, so the outer casing has started to give up a bit in places and I didn't want to risk the whole thing shedding through the envelope flap.

Bears!

A little back story to this pillow is needed. Many years ago I moonlighted at the Niagara Falls location of a company I was working for at the time, and down the street from them was a little diner called Dad's Diner. Once every few weeks I would treat myself to a breakfast there (I am a sucker for diner breakfasts), and enjoy a quiet morning with the local paper and a lot of tea. One week I was there, the entire diner had been decorated with many carved wooden statues, predominately animals. A bear was staring at me throughout my meal, and eventually I asked the waitress what the deal was with the new decor. She told me that a local artist and friend of the diner carved them all with a chainsaw and wanted to display them to sell them. I merely ask her the cost of the bear out of curiosity, but since the answer was $40, I left the diner with a full stomach and a heavier bag.


Fred lived in my room in Niagara for a few months before coming back to Toronto with me. His arrival in the Tdot was not met with great enthusiasm by my flatmate, who immediately asked if I planned on leaving him in the living room, especially since the living room was a "dangerous place that had axes in it." Fred moved into my room permanently, but the joke about bear imagery has lived on. With that in mind, one can imagine my first thought when this fabric came up on the cutting table.

Holy crap I did piping.

I am super pleased with how this turned out. The cord piping actually looks really nice, even though the end of it is a bit wonky thanks to me being far too close about my measurements. And there are bears all over it. I mean really.

Awe.

I was also able to photograph my November cheatsy project as well, a Sherlock replica. This little guy is meant to be a small, happy memory of a friend's now departed cat. It's part of a pseudo-quilting panel about cats that was in the clearance aisle at the store. Said friend will be coming back to the city in January, so for now this little kitty lives on top of my laundry basket.

Say hello to Sherlock.

For my next trick, I plan on making a circle skirt, for someone else, which is a bit terrifying. The upshot is that the fabric is amazeballs. I also plan on getting some Christmas on and make a wreath and some stockings that will be gifts for a few people. Let the December sew fest begin!

And we're back.

My, how things have changed.

I had been losing the will to blog and create throughout the first chunk of this year. There were spurts of creativity here and there, but I couldn't be bothered to document any of it. This was not aided by a some devastating, but not altogether surprising, news about the museum I was working at closing for good. For five and a half months we worked an insane amount to close the place down, which left me with a will to occasionally cook and sleep, but not really document that first one. As a result, the latter part of 2015, and the entirety of 2016 have been a bit lacking on the enthusiasm for blogging anything. It may be an excuse, but there it is.

I've also really lost the enthusiasm to blog of about my cooking in general. I follow a few blogs that do food, and while I love their design aesthetics and I get inspired by them to make the recipes, I can't bring myself to bother with taking photos of the food I'm making for myself. I also can't bring myself to really photograph my food at restaurants, or in public really, like food bloggers; It's still not something I'm comfortable with. That may change going forward, but I won't make any promises for it now.

Despite these things, so many good things have happened during my massive blogging hiatus. I've done some traveling, hit the one year anniversary with G back in the spring and have at least gotten another job while I look for something that is actually in the field. Said new job is in a fabric store, which is good and bad: it's a barely over minimum wage retail gig, cutting fabric, but it's mostly cutting fabric for people trying to DIY stuff, or grandmothers making ridiculously complicated and stunning quilts for ungrateful grandchildren, or retired housewives that are making receiving blankets to give to hospitals (this is a thing, apparently). There is at least a small staff discount, which has been taken advantage of once or a dozen times for things here and there. I have been very good about restraining myself and not buying fabric unless I have a specific project in mind. With two full aisles of clearance fabric, it's tough. I'm still purging stuff in general in my life, so working in a fabric store has been a challenge.

First travel of the year was to Boston for a hockey games, because #priorities. Meeting George Stromboulopoulos in the airport lounge on the was a bonus.

Second one was to Jamaica for a friend's wedding. All inclusive resorts have their advantages, but stellar food across the board was not one of them for this place. It was nice and warm and not Toronto in early January, so I can't complain too much.

This will be the cottage photo and double for the anniversary with G. Neither of us are big selfie people, and the amount of pictures of the two of us together can be counted on one hand.

A friend and I ran away to Reykjavik and Paris for two weeks after the museum closed. Iceland in general is pretty amazing.

I mean really.

Paris is always stunning, and we got to see way more death this time around, which was fun. We hit two major cemeteries and the catacombs. 

Because, that's why.

In an effort to actually do more creative things in my life, and fully take advantage of the (not that great) employee discount, I've decided I'm going to make something every month for the next year. I have a backlog of sewing projects and craft ideas that have been taunting me since we found out the museum was closing, but I never had any mental or physical energy to make them throughout the summer. Now that I have some time, and want to distract myself from the fact I'm working a not entirely great retail job that has nothing to do with my field, I want to start making and creating again. Might as well blog about it to force myself to make more. Maybe. We'll see how that works. Also, like I mentioned earlier, there have been little bits of creativity here and there. I've made a few pieces of clothing (one of which I wore to my interview at the fabric store), a friend's halloween costume and even gave Fluffy a slight makeover for this year's Halloween festivities. None of these have been photographed well enough for the blog, but I feel like I can do some me-made posts in the future to show the backlog.

Doing some sewing.

Getting my 70s string art on for some home decor.

I feel like I have cheated slightly with November; I have made something small already, and I have a second, decent sized sewing project that I want to *actually be my November project. Perhaps this is my early project-timeline enthusiasm, and if so we shall take advantage of it. I'm hoping that in the upcoming week on a day off I can get a jump on said project. I do have a sneak peak of it for the time being though. Some days the clearance section can offer the greatest things that will further your Canadian mid-century modern cottage decor dreams. Or, you know, bear fabric.

The little project will likely make a guest appearance in that post. The process photos look like shit, and I'm waiting to get some better lighting to at least have some nice finished product shots. With any luck, there will be at least one photo of a slightly funky looking sewing kitteh.

I also have a list of projects for December, two of which are achievable and a third that may get changed a bit depending on the enthusiasm. The first will be a new wreath, specifically going off of this tutorial I found from Craft and Tell. I have a giant pile of blue and silver tinsel that I had been stashing for an attempt at making a retro-looking tinsel tree, which I've since decided is never going to happen, so this seems like the perfect project to do instead. I picked up a few extra bits and pieces at a recent Michael's Christmas decor sale (which was a mistake in going too, but I digress), and I'm excited to see how it turns out.

I also finally redid my blog header! It's cute and I like it. Let it be the start of something new.

Online Making Inspiration

Avoiding the side-eye from my blog shortcut on my toolbar has been a priority lately. Even now I'm thinking "I could tackle that pile of receipts on my desk" or "I really should go through that pile of recipes." Weeks ago G was watching something on my computer and asked "What's Swimming Chickens?" I omitted some truth and just said "a blog." I was mildly ashamed of how little I'd done on it in ages that I didn't want him to read it just yet. Despite that, the enthusiasm continues to wane.

What has been poking me a bit into doing something, and why I fall into youtube holes at 2am, has been following a buttload of bloggers and vloggers. I've been known to binge on their previous content at times, ruining my sleep schedule for days because YOLO. After some hunting, I did find the other post I had done about other bloggers I follow, way back in 2011 (a banner year of 40 posts), and discovered that I do still follow some of them. One's disappeared while 2 others have lessened their postings (still better than me, so can't complain), but many, many more have been added to the list since then. The following is a super short list of the regulars.

The Youtubes...

HGTV Handmade

Ignoring the current pastel thing they've got going on (don't hate, I just have a natural aversion to pastels), HGTV Handmade is super fun and inspiring. These ladies are constantly doing random challenges, themed weeks and aren't afraid to show their craft fails. They each have different styles between them which makes the videos all the more enjoyable since it's something different every week. I still follow Meg's channel, Meg Allan Cole Crafts (psst, look for a Meg-inspired home decor post soon), and I've also been recently following Karen Kavett's channel, some evidence of which you can see here.

Annika Victoria

I love Annika and I'm annoyed I didn't find her earlier. This science-loving maker does AMAZING sewing and making tutorials that are not of the "you already need several projects worth of knowledge to make this thing" variety. Her instructions are super clear and answer, she's not afraid to show off the screw ups and has a wonderful instagram that makes me want to actually sign up for instagram. Thanks to her, I finally made my own circle skirt, with a ZIPPER AND HIDDEN POCKETS. Yep. I had seen circle skirt tutorials around for ages, but there was something about how she explained it that just made it so much clearer. My hem looks awful, but I can blame me for that one. I still made a skirt with POCKETS that I wore for 6+ hours on Christmas that didn't fall apart. I have made clothing. I am eternally grateful Annika, you've fueled some realistic clothing-making confidence in me :)

If you're interested in more of Annika's stuff or don't know where to start, I would recommend her Make/Thrift/Buy series for laughs and inspiration, or her Get Thready With Me series for many more of her tutorials. She also has a new series called the Style Pyle, which is a totally stealable borrowable idea to tackle the box of randoms next to my desk. Either that or it will force me to realize I should get rid of a fair bunch of the things in that box. Finally.


Ze Blogs....

Aunt Peaches

I've been following Aunt Peaches for a while now, and she's my kinda gal... *just enough snark to make things interesting. I love her writing style too, which can be exemplified in this little bit of her about blurb; "this site was founded in 2010 as a sandbox for practicing my html skills and as an excuse to make unhealthy quantities of paper flowers. So many paper flowers."

She's a fantastically and unapologetically creative woman, painting anything that isn't (or is as the case may be) nailed down. She organizes a worldwide the Valentine's handmade card swap every year, puts flamingos on everything and is currently working on a book! I love wandering through her blog and instagram, which are explosions of colour, flowers and a cat. It's great.

Atomic Redhead

One can safely assume that I'm slightly biased towards redheads anyway, but the vintage aspects and gorgeous photos were the clinchers that caused me to binge her entire backlog in one night several years ago. The blog is filled with several covet-worthy outfit posts and Janey's love of the vintage inspired kitsch travelling. It's been worth a look for the past wee while, and I hope it will be yet.

Chronically Vintage

Jessica is just fun. She has a great rotation of outfit posts, vintage ads, vintage life and resource posts that never fail to catch my attention. Even today she posted about 10 online resources for petticoats (super handy)! I had been following her blog for ages before I realized she was actually based in Canada, which just made my little patriotic heart burst with pride.


A Bit of Both? More?

Tested

Thanks to my love of Mythbusters, I discovered Tested on youtube about 3 ish years ago. I had never really listened to podcasts (or really understood the point since I'm a troglodyte) at that point, but I got hooked on the Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project pretty quickly. The topics range from movie, props, making, philosophy, mythbusting (or not now as the case may be) and a little bit of everything else. Even the horror movie podcast was fascinating, and gave me a list of movies I should avoid! I don't really follow the website that much, since at the time it was mostly techey stuff that I'm not too keen one, but the youtube channel is a lot of fun. Every now and again the podcast can inspire me enough to actually leave youtube alone for a few hours and make something. It's powerful stuff.


I am actually working on a project or two at the moment, and cooking more. In theory there will be posts in the near future here. I'm hoping that I can get some more oomph from the guys above this sentence and actually post them. The new family motto is "we can but try," so we'll see how things go.