And when you thought the me-mades couldn't get much worse, there was February. And March, and April, and .... yeah.

As one might gather from the "me-made January" recap squeaking in just before March, February didn't go any better. In fact, I did absolutely nothing by way of creating. No sewing, no crafting, and the cooking became a little on the utilitarian/necessity-bred side of things.

Just before I started working two jobs again, I was chatting with my parents about the upcoming situation. My Mom, ever the supportive one*, said "so you're going to do something you swore you would never do again after the last time then, eh?" She was quite right, and arguably this time is even harder since I actually have another person in my life that I really, really want to spend time with. I made it even worse by working three jobs at once for about a month while I was quitting one of them. There have been several nights after work where I could have done some sewing, but they were rare nights when G and I both had time to see each other, so sewing fell to the wayside. On days where I was doing the late shift, I would inevitably sleep in and and then do adulty stuff like groceries and laundry in the remaining time. What this boils down to is that I'm a procrastinator that doesn't manage my time entirely well.

Ironically, the only real sewing I have done since that dress, which is still sitting on the fooseball table, was on a Sunday when I was really sick, and while I was recovering from surgery in August. Photos of both of those projects are too come, at some point.

In theory I'm in a position to post more often since I have free time, but who knows.


*My Mom is ridiculously supportive, just realistic.

So me-made January...

I was doing so well. First run enthusiasm I guess, but January definitely slowed down the making department around here. I feel like I thought I needed a break from everything in December, and as a result the pull of youtube and the internet called me in the evenings after work rather than the sewing machine. Alright, I think that's all the excuses.

I did get a *little bit of sewing done. I had seen many a tutorial for a gathered skirt, and this tutorial for a circle skirt dress by Annika Victoria had been bugging me for a while to be made, I just needed the right fabric. As is the way lately, this gorgeous, fall scene cotton fabric happened to wander past the cutting table back in November. It was also in clearance, and half off, so several yards came home with me with this project in mind. I started to make a gathered skirt and that's where it started to go funky.

First off, I stupidly did not put pockets in it like I should have, because pockets are awesome. I also decided that now was the perfect time to try self-drafting, even though I probably should have realized that my massive rack wasn't going to play nice with Annika's tutorial (this is not a slight to her, her dart instructions were actually super helpful with this one, I just need 18 of them). I also got ahead of myself and started doing top stitching before actually finishing all the adjustments that are needed for the top, because that was a good idea. Now, I have an unfinished skirt, a mostly sewn top that still needs several adjustments, and three pieces of waistband fabric to sew together. I'm at a crossroads now since I'm uninspired to finish the top to be presentable/actually get it fit nicely, but want to do more than just a skirt that I didn't put pockets in. It doesn't help that I'm stubborn and don't like to give up on things too easily when I've payed for them, cheap or not.

I will admit that I'm really pleased with the top stitching, and my actually smart idea to use an old, very thin t-shirt as lining fabric for the top of the dress (woot woot stash raiding!). The pile of pieces has been sitting on the dining room table for a week or two now, so perhaps February will be its month.

Totally unrelated and hopefully on a more positive note, this awesome, purple, stretch lace was in the remnant bin at the store, and became mine for a whopping $1.50. Lace underwear making time! I have actually made a pair of underwear before, which I may work out a way of creatively photographing for the next post, using the self drafted tutorial from Annika Victoria and an old t-shirt that no longer fit. I was really pleased with my final result, but my God are they funky looking. I need to work on sewing with elastic!

Onwards.

Me-made December Recap

December was quite the successful making month! Three sewing projects and a crafting project all got done before Christmas, despite working in retail near Christmas.

The first sewing project was making a skirt for someone I have never met and was provided measurements for by someone else. Not scary at all. Canadian vintage blogger Jessica from Chronically Vintage has been on my reading radar for years, and I have always marvelled at her continuous enthusiasm for researching, writing, wearing all things vintage. She is also the host and organizer of the annual Vintage Secret Santa (VSS) that is now global! This past October, she and her husband lost their home, most of their possessions and a pet to a terrible fire. Understandably, she's taking a break from blogging and has put the VSS on hold. Or so she thought.

Her husband Tony contacted everyone on the VSS list and asked if they would be willing to be Jessica's Secret Santa to help her regain a portion of her immense loss. "Vintage is who she is" he said in the email, and after all the inspiration and reading material she has provided me over the years, I wondered what I could contribute to this wonderful idea. Ages ago, Jessica wrote a post about finally getting her "Unicorn of Vintage," a Canadian themed novelty skirt which a friend of hers made for her. About a week after I received the email, I saw this fabric come up on the cutting at work and immediately knew that this was the right stuff for what I needed. "Greetings from Canada" is an amazing all over print of postcards from cities across the country, including a city not too far from where Jessica's at!

This project has taught me a few things, chiefly patience. For many of my own projects I have a few "that's good enough" moments and I'm fine with them. Knowing that this skirt was going to someone else, I really slowed down and took my time to ensure that this one was made properly. There was still the traditional project-finishing activity of hiding the crimes, but generally speaking this skirt has turned out better then others I've made, it's a lot cleaner. It is also just nerve wracking making something for someone I haven't met and that can't try on the skirt before I finish it to make sure it fits! Here's hoping Tony had his measurements right!

A friend of Jessica's, Barbara Anne, was the other great helper of this project and she started a facebook group for all the participants of this scheme. Late on Christmas Eve, I was perusing the great book of face before heading off to sleep, and I almost pushed G out of bed when I rolled over and grabbed him, frantically showing him my phone and the picture that had popped up.

Photograph taken by Barbara Anne.

Apparently I made some funny noises while I showed him this, I was too busy reading the comments on the photo. Apparently Jessica was very excited to receive this skirt, and as she added later, she "loves it to the moon and back." I still look at this photo every once in a a while and smile over the fact that I made that skirt. I also still hope and pray that it fits, and that my construction holds out to make this a viable garment for her. There's enough fabric left for me to make another skirt, so I may just make one for myself in the new year.


I had to finish off the skirt pretty quickly to get it in the mail, and once I was done I did want to take a break from the sewing briefly. I also wanted to do another wreath for my front door, so getting covered in tinsel and glitter seemed like a great idea.

Yeeeeeeears ago I saw a tutorial from Meg Allen Cole on Threadbanger to make a retro-inspired tinsel tree. I adore how tinsel trees look and I started saving up Dollarama tinsel in colours I like to eventually make one. This resulted in two bags of the stuff living under my bed for years, collecting dust. I realized that I like real Christmas trees too much, and I don't want to store a tinsel tree somewhere in the intervening months between Christmases. Recently I discovered a tutorial to make a mid-century modern inspired tinsel wreath on Craft and Tell, and thought this was the perfect thing to do with the tinsel hiding under my bed!

After making the mistake of going to Michael's during a Christmas decor sale, I got a decent sized styrofoam wreath form, some bottle brush pine trees and a pile of fake deer antlers. I had very grand ambitions of using the antlers, but it just didn't work, the minimalism of a few trees kept calling me. Half an hour and some hot glue later, I had a beautiful new wreath for my door.

My second sewing project was to bang out some Christmas presents for G's brother and sister-in-law that was more than a bottle of wine. They're easy to buy for, but kind of boring in that regard. I also have been wanting my own stocking for ages, and when I saw this red winter-themed fabric at the store, it pretty much had to come home with me.

I'm glad I did mine first, since I definitely messed up the construction the first time. I also forgot to add the little hanger to make it a more useful stocking that can actually be displayed on something. I am undecided as to whether I am fully happy with the fabric pairing for mine as well. I still adore the red, but I'm wondering if I should have gone with a green for the lining. At the store I decided that would be too obvious, but there are a whole bunch of nice, greenery looking green fabric that I really liked too. I may redo it along the way, but for now, this one works.

The red fabric I used on my stocking had a matching grey fabric which was the perfect thing for G's brother and sister-in-law's place, they love their grey. I also found this gorgeous red pattern to be a nice, modern pop against the sort of country-ish pattern of the grey. It was directional, which meant I had to take care when cutting it out to ensure it went the right way in the finished product. These two went together pretty quickly and smoothly, and the appliques I got really look great on them. I decided to celebrate the finished product by sending a picture to G.... and as soon as I hit send, I noticed something in the photo that made me double take.

Despite my care when cutting the fabric, I wasn't paying attention at one point and cut out one of the panels upside-down. I clearly didn't notice, at all, and not only sewed it into the stocking, I decided that THAT side would be the front and put the freaking applique on it. Ironed it on and everything, so it's not coming off. G has assured me that his brother won't care, and may not even notice, but I'm not entirely happy that I did it in the first place. It will still hold a bottle of wine, so it'll work.


My last sewing project seems to now be a Christmas tradition, a Christmas skirt. A good friend of mine always has a large family-friendmas on Christmas Eve, and it is always themed in some way. This year's theme was classic Americana/Norman Rockwell Christmas, with an overtone of ugly Christmas sweater. I have been told in the past that the ugly Christmas sweater I currently own is "actually quite nice-looking," so I knew I needed something better for this year. I wasn't entirely keen about buying another sweater, but keeping in theme for this post, this Christmas tree skirt panel fabric came up on the cutting board and I decided that it was the answer to my problems.

I got two panels of the tree skirt, as well as some of the matching repeat pattern fabric to fill in some gaps that would make themselves apparent later. I also picked up some buttons, bows and ric rac to make the thing even worse. I even found a pack of miniature Christmas light bulbs that had to be purchased and have an electrical cord painstakingly embroidered in.

As I was using two half circles to make this skirt, it would end up being super short on the sides had I not accommodated for a 40" waist that had to go in. Thankfully, the repeat pattern version of the design gave me some extra real estate to work with, and a waistband. I was able to cover up the connections between the pieces, and add further ugliness, by adding ric rac on top of them.

The tree skirt panel had some free space on it owing to the circular nature of the tree skirt, and the designers decided to add a matching three-wise-men-themed stocking to fill up the space. Since I refuse to have garments that don't have pockets, the stockings were the perfect thing to add to the skirt for some practicality.

My measurements went wonky a few times while making this skirt, and for a while I thought I needed to add a panel to the back of the skirt to get it to fit. As soon as I did that and was ready to put in the zipper, I barely needed half of the panel that I put in. I also apparently couldn't sew straight when I put said zipper in.

This skirt gave me a surprising amount of grief during the construction process; There were a plethora of not-good noises coming from my machine for this one. Ronnie was constantly breaking threads and getting the bobbin thread tangled up. I have since discovered that I should have been cleaning out Ronnie's bobbin mechanism a lot more often than I have been (which as of now has been once), so hopefully going forward there will be less issues. I was happy to discover at the time that a good deal of the problems got solved by changing out the needle for a new, not bent one. I think I might have immediately ruined the new needle a bit by sewing through metallic ric rac, because I will never learn. Such is life.


I have grand ambitions of January being a good month for making stuff, seeing as the enthusiasm to make stuff inside will be higher since it's cold and awful outside. I've pulled out some fabric I got back November to try and make a gathered skirt, and I also just got some fabulous duck-themed fabric to hopefully make another pillow with. I have grand ambitions of doing a muslin for a dress, but we'll see how things go. With any luck, 2017 will be have some handmade components in it!

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.