ZigZag Quilt

A couple years ago I had a subscription to some quilting magazines. A year's worth was enough to provide me with quite a bit of inspiration.  This was an ad in one for some fabric:

I liked the zigzag pattern and decided to make myself a quilt out of it.  I chose black and white and red as the theme and got a bunch of different fabrics and cut out lots of triangles (it's a smaller quilt because I'm not that fond of cutting triangles. I arranged an order of the different fabrics and started sewing strips:

 Once I had completed the strips of the two fabrics I sewed those all together to make the zigzags:

Until I had them all sewn together:

Obviously then I trimmed the edges. Then it was just quilting. I quilted along the seams:

This is the final quilt:

This is the backing fabric:

Ta da!

Mice

CATS has closed.

While I am somewhat relieved that it is done, I am also going to miss it a lot. It was over four months of working very closely with a great group of people and what we put together was amazing.  It was a lot of work and I didn’t have much time for anything else – I didn’t blog much as you may have noticed (I also didn’t see much of my family) – but I learned a lot, lost some weight, got back into shape, improved my singing, learned how to do face painting, and performed in CATS (holy crap!). 

The show sold out its entire 3-weekend run (they even added 2 shows to the last weekend – ouch) and unfortunately we were not given an extension. I don’t know why, it seemed entirely viable, and overall a really good idea – we’ve never sold out a whole run of a show. Ever. Like in the entire 80+ year history of the Iao Theater (ok, Deep Throat might have, I really don’t know). I’m kind of still recovering, but hopefully soon I’ll get back to crafting. Here are some things I’ve got to do/blog about:

Renovations
Clean/organize sewing room
Quilt for Annie
Quilt for me
Chicago (the musical – hopefully, I’m waiting to hear if I’m costuming it)

I’m sure there’s more that I’m forgetting, and probably more I’ll come up with out of the blue.

Something that I can talk about now is a project I did closing weekend of the show when I wasn’t at the theater. As gifts for the cast/crew I decided to make mini versions of George, the remote control mouse I made for Kitty Playtime. They aren’t really mini version since George is the extra large version. I used the same pattern, just in the original size. At first I was just planning to use the same colors as George, but then got ambitious and decided to make them more individualized.  Each cat had a main color and accent colors as part of their costume, so I used those for the body/ears/tail.  On a lot of them I also added stripes since most of the cats’ unitards had airbrushing on them. 

 

I ended up making over 30 mice and fortunately had help from my mom, my sister, and a friend.  This isn’t all of them, but it’s the entire cast (minus me) and the pit singers. I gave the crew black mice (theater tech crews wear blacks on stage so they are less noticeable), and the stage manager got the original George since she was the one controlling him every night. 

The director got a sparkly pin stripe mouse with glasses (he made the glasses out of a bobby pin, I sewed them on) and the musical director got a red satin mouse.

Overall everyone was pretty excited about their mice and everyone has promised to take their mice with them on trips and take pictures with them (a la me and Pete). I myself got this:

It’s a cocktail olive. In CATS theirs a play within a play that the cats put on about Growltiger, a pirate, who is betrayed by a woman and made to walk the plank by the Siamese. I played Genghis, the leader of the Siamese. I got a phallic hat and sword that was painted green so that it looked like a cocktail sword (the proportions were all over the place in this show). While I was making George I decided that I should also make a cocktail olive to go on my cocktail sword.  I don’t know if anyone watching the show noticed (I took it off the sword as part of my choreography) but it was there nonetheless.

The olive was made from a fabric Easter egg pattern.  I left a slit open on two sides and inserted a tube to keep the stuffing in (you can't really see the slits, but they kinda make the olive look a little inappropriate) and filled the top in with red felt to make the pimento.

R/C Mouse

So, if you didn't know yet we are doing CATS at the theater. I'm in it as Carbuckety (they call me Bucket). It's normally a man's role, but I'm awesome enough to play a male role feminine. I'm also Assistant Choreographer so I've been up to my eyeballs in dancing kitties for the last month or so - hence the lack of crafting and blogging.  But I can't escape my crafty-ass nature for too long, so this is a project from CATS.

In CATS, the end of intermission is "Kitty Playtime." Some of the cats come out and play with the audience, or some kitty toys onstage.  One of the toys is a wind-up mouse.

Last year when we did The Wizard of Oz ballet I made Toto (he was a big version of Pete the Sheep). There was a Toto that Dorothy carried in her basket, and a Toto that was built over a Remote control car so it could run across the stage at one point.  So taking my knowledge of softie making, and softie making with R/C cars I volunteered to make the wind-up mouse.

The first step was finding the car.  When I made Toto we had an R/C motocross guy that one of the boys in the show had, and it proved to be odd to work with.  I went to Walmart to find a car and got a lifted truck for about $10. I figured the lifted-ness of the truck would make it easy to hide. However, the $10 truck proved to be worth the cheap price. It didn't work. It'd go forward a couple inches and stop. Grrr.

So I went to Amazon to find something better and found this:

 

It's a Morphibian and it's recommended ages are 5-9 so I figured it would be nice and easy to use. I picked because it's meant to run in water and on different types of surfaces.  While obviously I don't intend to put it in the water, the stage is going to have an odd texture because of the dancing and sliding in the show.  Also, the colors aren't too bright so if some of it shows it won't be a problem.

Also, when I got it and read the instructions, it turns out that the top comes off to access the batteries.  Since there's an extra cover I can just leave the top off and it will make a nicer base for the mouse.

My softie pattern making skills aren't too fabulous so after failing at making a pattern I decided to scour the internet for something.  I found a pattern for a real cat toy and decided to enlarge it. A lot.

So here's the mouse body. It's about 4-5 times bigger than the pattern:

Next I added felt ears, button eyes and pipe-cleaner whiskers.

 

Isn't he a cutie? I will love him and squeeze him and call him George.

The tail is also made from pipe-cleaners, but I wrapped them around the little tube that's supposed to support the antenna for the car.  That way the antenna will be out of the way and not just shoved under the mouse.

Antenna tube and tail (doesn't he look kinda like a toaster from the back?)

Antenna tube and tail with antenna inserted

To attach him to the car I've sewed on an elastic band along his tummy.  He needs to be easily removable so that the batteries can be replaced.

And here he is, George the R/C Mouse:

Yay Kitty Playtime!!  Watch out George, we're coming for you.

Puppy Dog Stockings

When I was growing up my sister Annie and I had very similar stockings for Christmas.  They were knitted and mine had reindeer on them and her's had snowmen.  For some reason my parents could never remember this and every year, a couple presents in, we would have to switch stockings because they had filled the wrong ones.  The stockings being knitted also cause problems because the presents would always get tangled up in the threads.  And most importantly, the stockings never seemed to be big enough for our present haul.

So, a few years ago, Annie and I made stockings for my whole family.  We used stockings that my grandmother had made for her and my grandfather as a template. It cleared up all kinds of confusion and we've all enjoyed them ever since.

A year or two after my cousin saw them while visiting from Washington and asked if I might make her some for her family with a Hawaiian Print theme.  Last year there was a fire in her house right before she had her second child and they were making do living elsewhere while their house was repaired.  To send her some Hawaiian Christmas cheer I finally made the stockings she had asked for.

 

This year they took custody of her husband's nephew and to make him feel included she asked if I would make him one too.  While making his socking my mom asked for a stocking for her dog Ruby (she asked specifically for one where the name could be changed - depressing I know, but my mom is not one to waste things).  Here's Ruby's stocking:

 

When making it, I made the pattern freehand, and when I sewed the whole thing together I realized that the stocking was a little to narrow. I couldn't fit my hand into it.  So, when I decided to make some for a friends dogs I made the stocking wider and shorter.

For the stockings I made for my family I machine embroidered the letters on individually.  Since the puppy stockings were much smaller that wouldn't work so well. So I used my favorite Heat 'n Bond to make the name iron-on and used a blanket stitch to keep the edges down:

I made a lining for each stocking so that they were a little thicker and I embroidered the names through the top and the lining.  After sewing the front and back of the stockings together (with linings) I then measured the top so I could add the cuff.  I would take the circumference and add 1/2" for seams and then cut it about 5" high and sew it to the stocking with the ends sewn together and folded in half.  The loops for hanging are made from a rectangle about 2.5" by 8". Sew together the long way then turn right side out and fold in half and sew it to the heel side of the stocking:

I also added a jingle bell for merriness and some trim along the bottom of the cuff.

Update - Nothing to tell

I'm posting to say that I've got nothing to post. After a big October of posting galore November has been decidedly non-crafty. Boo.

Of course this is mainly because I have been spending most of my free time renovating my new apartment. Yay! And getting ready for the big CATS auditions. Double yay!

Last month I closed on a short sale of a really cute 2 bedroom apartment near the theater. It's awesome and I can't wait to live in Wailuku town - too bad Marc Aurels closed. Double boo.

The 2nd bedroom will not actually be a bedroom but a crafty sewing space for creativity 'n things.  So I'll be able to nicely separate my life from my hobbies, which is hard to do with all my sewing stuff in my living room.

The place is cute, but looks like it hasn't been renovated since it was built in the 70's. So we've been doing work to make it a nicer place to live.

First step: remove the popcorn ceiling. Popcorn ceiling is hideous and even if it does serve an acoustical purpose it's not worth the ugly.  So we got rid of it. It's relatively easy to scrape off if you wet it a bit with a sprayer first. It is rather messy though

Second step: fix the ceiling drywall. Because they were gonna put on the awful popcorn they didn't finish the drywall on the ceiling, so that had to be re-mudded and sanded in places. Awful dusty.

Third step: paint. This was actually the only step that I had a lot to do with. I was bad at the scraping and my dad was smart enough not to let me do the mudding and sanding.  But the painting I did a lot of and boy did it hurt.  But it certainly made a difference. I'll post pictures soon.

Next I'll move in. Woohoo!!

Zombie Shoes

One last zombie post for the year - I promise.  This just ended up so cool, that I had to share.

Originally I was going to wear an old pair of character shoes with my Zombie dress for Thriller this year, but I realized about halfway through rehearsing that that probably wasn't gonna work. They were a little to slippery. So I went to the mall to look for some flats that might work and while there were lots of cute shoes, there were none that I could justify buying simply to destroy.

I remembered that I had a pair of generic Ked's from Payless and I decided to make them into zombie saddle shoes.

Using a couple old black fabric pens and a sharpie I turned the white keds into saddle shoes:

Unfortunately I was running out of time and didn't take pictures of the rest of the process.

Once I finished with the fabric pens (I didn't worry too much about getting good coverage because I was gonna destroy them - and my pens were running out of ink) I painted the white parts with some watered down Rit dye (kinda like water colors). I used navy blue, cocoa brown, and gray. Then I used some green spray paint to complete the effect (the spray paint also nicely darkened the black parts even though it was green paint).

I dyed the shoe laces and a pair of socks in some gray dye.  I find that when dying for zombie clothes a quick dye that isn't even (don't stir very much) works the best.  Just remember that it almost always ends up lighter when it dries.

Here's the finished product:

I really do think they made the costume.  They were also super comfy and easy to dance in.

Zombie Dress Part 3

Happy Halloween!!

My stats have sky rocketed this month because of all the people wanting to make Zombie Ballerina costumes. Hopefully next year my zombie dress posts will gain some ground too.

Tonight is our third night performing Michael Jackson's Thriller at the Historic Iao Theater. It's been a blast this year, and I finally have some pictures of my wonderful, complete Zombie dress.

I ended up spray painting it a bit with some green floral spray, and I used a batch of brown synthetic wig dye (sharpie ink fillers and rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle) that I had left over from the Wedding Singer. I thought this added a wonderful effect.

I also did some extra work on my shoes. I'll go into that in the next post.