Merry Christmas!

One of Mom's favorite Christmas decorations:  Santa kissing Mrs Claus

Hello Darlings!  Hope Santa brought you everything you wanted!

My Christmas cactus bloomed at the appropriate time this year.  Well done, cactus.  Great job!

Be well!

Cookie Break for Winter Solstice

Here, have a cookie.

Is everyone enjoying the winter solstice?

Today I baked about 200 cookies.   I'm keeping about 50 for myself (heh heh) and giving the rest away as tokens of appreciation.

It's kind of wild that mixing all of this...


Creates this...


I really am appreciative that I will be on vacation the week between Christmas and New Years, for the first time since 1998.  That is very exciting.

And yet, I wish I was off this week too.  2 weeks in a row, at the holidays.  Hmmmm....Well, you know what they say, "When you give a mouse a cookie..."

Ba-dump ump.


I haven't been in the sewing room for any weekend in December....until tonight when I started a tank for the gym.  I also rediscovered a cardigan that I sewed in March and never blogged.  I might it tmw night.   I need to plan the Christmas menu as well.




Lacy overlay for the gym tank.

I don't know why I'm pretending like I don't have to go to work tmw.  I do!
Be well!!

Comic Relief: Underwear!

Happiness is....stripey underwear that makes me smile!

Thanks for your comments on my last post about the Maria Denmark Lotta Lady Bag!  It is one of my most favorite bags ever.   At work I need to carry my laptop back and forth to another building with my notebook and it is perfect for that.

Here's a pair of UW I stitched up back in September, but never blogged.

The fabric is from PR Weekend Chicago, in some dive-like fabric store.
The elastic is from Pacific Trimming in NYC.

I use ATP's "Make Your Own Undies" tutorial whenever I make undies.  I don't enclose my elastic like she did, but rather zig-zag on my picot edge elastic RS to RS then flip it over and zig zag again from the RS.  If anyone wants pix of what I mean, let me know!

One of my friends calls this "comic relief" sewing, in between my larger projects.   It takes me about 90 minutes from cut to finish.

So, even though this was supposed to be comic relief, it had its own drama.

I had started this pair on a weekend, then got to the point where there was 20 minutes left and was too tired to finish it off.

Came home after work one night that week and thought I'd feel accomplished and finish it....

Then this happened!!!  This has NEVER happened to be before to this extent.  Somehow the fabric/elastic got sucked down into the throat plate and I had to unscrew the plate and physically remove the fabric/elastic out.


When I removed the bobbin casing I got to see all the lint inside.  Great opp to clean it out!

And this is what it looked like, stuck in the throat plate

It actually tore my elastic!!!  But I didn't have enough to cut the new piece of continuous elastic, so I had to make do with what I had.  So now one of the leg holes has two joins in it instead of one.

I put it away for a few days and then went back to it again and finished it off.

But without a bow, the UW looks a bit....naked.
 
So I made my own bow, having no white bows in my bow stash.  I know from experience that making my own bow and cutting ribbon like this makes the raw edges fray after washing.  I googled to see if there was a way for me to finish the edges, but didn't like any of the suggestions....

So I used Fray Check on the edges of the cut ribbon.  The Fray Check does sort of stain the ribbon, so I cut the tails slightly longer than I wanted, dabbed on the fray check, let it dry the requisite 15 minutes, then used my rotary cutter to cut the new edge so that just the very edge of the ribbon had the fray check on it...which is hardly visible.  

I have washed and dried this UW several times now and can report that the ribbon is only fraying on the top edge...next time I might leave more of a buffer and/or make sure that the fray check really covers the whole cut edge...maybe I didn't go far enough?  Or just buy some white bows.  My local Joann's doesn't have any of the size/style I was thinking of, and Pacific Trimming didn't have any either (they had other colors but no white bows!)  I might have to buy them online then.

Here's a little holiday cheer, the Christmas Tree in Palmer Square in Princeton.  I spent last Saturday at work, and went into town to grab some dinner afterward.  Seeing the tree is always a nice treat and a great way to wrap up a productive day!

So, are you tempted to make your own undies???  Or have you already?

Be well!