I Believe It's Called a Bait-and-Switch?

  The tricky thing about Christmas with a small child is that everything about the holidays is shiny and sparkly and so, so pretty....for a few weeks you pull out all this stuff that's all new to them because their memories don't extend back 12 months to last Christmas. So of course they want to manhandle everything in sight. That means broken decorations (or not bringing them out at all, sniff).

I thought it made sense to make something my kid could get her grubby paws all over without a problem. And maybe (though who am I kidding) that would keep her eyes off the other stuff: like the vintage glass balls found at a antique market in Winnipeg or the retro bubbling faux candles on our tree, for, example. (Who knows what that liquid is inside the little glass tube. All I know is it stains hardwood floors — badly. That can be good. Anyhow...)

I remembered seeing these little fabric stacking trees from the Small Object blog and thought they'd be perfect. Toddlers love building, stacking and then doing demo. Also: a great way to use up all the scraps I'm creating sewing up doll carriers for my Etsy shop lately.

  My plan, it worked. She plays with these things for, like, minutes at a time. Seriously: minutes.

 

 I'm not going to reinvent the wheel and tell you how to make these. Just follow the link if you care: The Small Object . There's even a PDF pattern you can easily download, though tracing a couple bowls and cutting each circle in half would be just as easy.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII (Corduroy)

 

First they came for our Christmas sweaters. Next they appropriated Sally Jesse Raphael's sassy red specs. Now, corduroy. Is nothing nerdy sacred anymore?

I missed the 5th annual meeting of The Corduroy Appreciation Club last month in Manhattan, mostly because I'd never heard of this band of ironic wale-wearing hipsters but also because I didn't have anything to wear (there's a two-Corduroy-item rule, and yes, they capitalize the word "Corduroy" out of respect). I would like to join the never-ending battle against velvet. But I guess I'll have to wait until next year. From the Corduroy Club's official website:

Both the NY Times and Gothamist jumped on the warm and wintry textile bandwagon with tongue-in-cheek stories about the club's annual meeting. I can't believe this is what the cool kids are doing for fun these days.

Anyway, the skirt below is the first project I've sewn from the book "Twinkle Sews," a great collection of unique and fashionable tops, skirts and dresses — many of them quite difficult. This was not, and printing out the zillion pages of the pattern, taping them together and then cutting it out was the most laborious part. It makes drafting your own pattern easy in comparison. See front:

and back:

 

When it comes to corduroy, there's a fine line between hipster and Hasidic. I had to cut four inches off the bottom of the skirt because a) I'm short and b) when I tried it on I looked a little Orthodox for my liking.

Final Class Project for this Semester

 

Sigh. See this white button-up blouse above (captured on my cellphone)?  It's an Anne Klein number, which is surprising given the hideous elasticized elbow-length sleeves. It's also the final project for my patternmaking class at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC. We have to replicate the above blouse, but to fit our dressform using the slopers (the main building blocks of all clothing patterns) we made earlier this semester. A little disappointing considering last semester's final project looked like this:

Thanks A Lot

Here's what our (American) Thanksgiving looked like this year: arugula pecan salad, roasted pumpkin soup, stuffed squash, parsnip bread pudding, turkey...all of which are clearly better enjoyed with your top off (I don't know what it is about dinner and shirts for my kid.) We were "upstate" as they say in New York City, in Rhinebeck, a small village made famous this summer by a certain former president's daughter who got married there.

Before we ate (with our good friends whose home is the backdrop above), I said we should all go around and say what we're thankful for. Somehow,  between tricking our toddlers into eating vegetables and, you know, actually eating our own food, we didn't get to it. So here goes: I'm thankful for my family (naturally; snore), friends, cold weather (never thought I'd say that, but seriously NYC is godawful in the summer/early fall), and my new camera that can take lovely pictures of such occasions.

Etsy Shop Open!

Look. Over there. On the right in that white rectangle. Under the headline "My Etsy Store."

That's right: My newly opened Etsy shop (where you can buy doll carriers for your lovely children this holiday season) has been longer in the making than the 2nd Avenue subway line. Well not quite. I started my Etsy account three years ago, not really knowing what I should sell there, just that people kept telling me I should. It seemed like a natural fit. I like to make stuff. Sometimes people like that stuff and they ask why I don't make a bunch of whatever it is and sell them somewhere. But I just couldn't figure out what my niche should be. I'm still not really sure. But I'm hopeful I got it right. I designed the carrier and drafted my pattern (hooray for my FIT education!) this fall originally as a birthday present for Lucy's best bud. It turned out so well, I made one more for Lucy. I adapted the pattern a bit to make sewing en masse easier and forged on. Now I have a whole bunch. (Again, see that box over there on the right?)

Anyway, I don't need to post any more photos of these carriers, do I? I've done that to death already. But they are cute. And so fun for doll-loving preschoolers to play with. I really am proud of how they have turned out.

In short:shop www.Etsy.com.