Home Learning Weed 12 - Bees, World Book, Lip Balm, Seeds

Science - Bees

Watching documentary, discussing, asking questions, planning, collaborating

So, we're going to get an actual queen bee. A real queen bee. How do we get the queen bees? The queen bee is always inside the hive. You have to wear protective gloves.

Will she tell us what to do to get the extra honey without killing any of them? That's the fun part about bees: when you're trying to get honey, bees don't actually let you get the honey. They sting you. Remember Mom? They don't let you.

Geography, Writing, Communication - World Book Project

With Becky, at VLC - mind mapping, giving opinions and information, researching, using maps, writing, editing, addressing envelope, mailing letter, waiting

Let's put it in. Oh - it lost its stickiness. How's it taste? Not very good... not really tasty. Where's the stamps? Will we buy them today? I want something to get that taste out of my mouth - I'm going to get something out of my lunch kit. Where's my lunch kit? Found it! Something not disgusting, and something yummy!

Science - Turning to the Light

Following directions, predicting, observing, comparing

Look at that! It looks like pepperoni! Let's see if it smells like pepperoni! No, it doesn't... what do we need to do? Oh, put the seeds on! You open it because I don't want to spill them. They look so small. Do they smell like anything? No... tastes like mustard, though. They smell really weird and taste really weird... they smell like vanilla, Mom! See what I mean?

Your HAND smells like vanilla.

Fair enough!

You actually have to let them have time to grow.

Science, Cooking, Health - Home Made Lip Balms

With Tammy - reading and following directions, measuring, heating, pouring, waiting, testing

We can do hair DIY's and feet pedicure and then ... I don't know... DIY conditioner and make shampoo and do hair styles! Ha ha ha!

Reading: Critter Club - Amy and the Missing Puppy

Oral reading - 1-3 chapters/day - slightly more challenging than Junie B. Jones

There's a picture on every page! Look!

Sewing, Recycling - Zero Waste Denim Purse

Materials: jean pocket factory samples, discarded feather trim, upholstery piping scraps
Sorting, planning, imagining, threading a machine

I can make a purse and I can keep it when I'm a grownup and I can use it for my kids! This will be my teenager bag. Because this will be way fancier for a kid to use.

I'll be a fancy teenager. Do you think I'll wear belly shirts?

Other Home Learning Posts

Home Learning, Day 1, Grade 4 - Smoothie, Recycling Rigid or Soft Plastic, Transfer Station, Compost

Home Learning - Week 2 Chai, Fruit Fly Trap, Garden Kiosk, Albinism

Home Learning - Week 3 Apple Taste Test, Gymnastics, Back Brace, Subtraction

Home Learning - Week 4 Subject/Predicate, Squash, Mint/Calendula Face Mask

Home Learning - Week 5 Slugs, Radish, Mushrooms

Home Learning - Week 6 Thanksgiving, Earthquake Kit, Soaring Eagle

Home Learning - Week 7 BC, +/- 1, Braces, Bees, Rain Water

Home Learning - Week 8 Pizza, Alberta, Halloween

Home Learning - Week 9 Dogs, Earrings, Adding White

Home Learning - Week 10 Christmas List, Cupcake Face Mask, Green Poodle

Home Learning - Week 11 Mango Lassi, Saskatchewan, 10 Partners, Cat

Home Learning - Week 12 Bees, World Book, Lip Balm, Seeds

Home Learning - Week 13  Memory, Sewing, Back Brace Adjustment

Home Learning - Week 14 Snow,  Salad, SPCA, Manitoba, Bison

Home Learning - Week 15 Christmas, Manure, Evil Sister

Home Learning - Week 16 Gerbil, Slime, Hummingbirds, Cocoa

Home Learning - Week 17 Ontario, Apple Taste Test, Denim Purse

Home Learning - Week 18 Thank You Notes, Math Without Help, Term Two Reflection

Home Learning - Weeks 19+20 Nerd Outfit, Quebec, Birthday

Home Learning - Week 21 Emotions, Ordering Numbers, Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Soaring Eagles #4

Home Learning - Week 22 Valentine's Day, Science World, New Brunswick

Home Learning - Week 23 Worried, Adding Tens, Nova Scotia, Science World #2, DIY Lip Gloss Soap

Home Learning - Week 24 Real-Life Math, Nap, Lonely, Wolfdogs, Spring, Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

Home Learning - Week 25 Schedules, Yukon, Pysanky, Bank Machine, Regrouping, Loved, Term 3 Reflections, Soaring Eagles #5

Home Learning - Week 26 Rotten Food, Embarrassed, Newfoundland and Labrador, Can Opener, Skating, Teacher Screecher, Rain Water, Slugs, Word Search

Home Learning - Week 27 Cheer, Fish, Digit Sequences, Spelling "ea", Sad, Spring 2, Matching Pictures, Butterfly Books, Math Review, Private Questions 2

Home Learning - Week 28 I Spy; Subtraction of Numbers Larger than 19, without and with Regrouping; Spelling "ee"; Frustrated; Ancient Greece; Nunavit; Quinoa Veggie Salad; Cat Whiskers; Dog Biscuit; Butterfly Cage; Baby Alive Food DIY

Home Learning - Week 29 Kitchen Scraps, Northwest Territories, Butterflies, Fort Langley, Bike Riding, Estimation, Helpful, Banana Orange Smoothie

Home Learning - Week 30 Watermelon, Money, Tired, Butterflies, Handsome Warren, Catnip, Water Measurement, OT Assessment 2, Rounding, Contractions, Silly, Soaring Eagles 6

Home Learning - Week 31 Ella Enchanted, Butterflies 3, Money, Story of Life 1, Watermelon 2, Sweet Pea, Tomatillo, Disappointed, Visual Memory, Adding Tens, Garden Beds, Muffins, Thank You to Carol, Contractions 2, Butterfly Cage, Ken

Home Learning - Week 32 Encyclopedia Brown, 41st Ave., Money, Chrysalides, OT Assessment 3, 600 Million Years, Mishka, Related Tens, Round-Offs, QE Park, Mother's Day Card, Acting and Dancing

Home Learning - Week 33 Butterflies, Estimating Sum and Difference, Thailand, Money Book, 600 Million Years 2, Library Holds, Mara the Meerkat Fairy, Soaring Eagle 6
Home Learning - Week 34 Castles, Planting Veggies, Long and Short "a", Butterfly Release, Banana Smell, Estimating Sum and Difference, Drawing v Colouring, Horrid Henry, Poppy Seed Pasta Salad, Pond Water 2, Trike Planter, Lush Gift Card, Beekeeping
Home Learning - Week 35 Money, 600 Million Years 3, Long and Short "e", Cirque de la Symphonie, Farm Visit, Sharks, Appropriate Questions, Microscope, Pandora, Telling Time, Estimation, Cheer

Leah's Good Notion: Polyester Double-Knit at OSF this Sunday, October 16, 2016

Best-ever selection of 100% easy-care, wash-and-wear, non-breathing, abrasive-textured, double-knit polyester from the time of the Beatles. In hopeful colours and prints.

$5/m

Sunday October 16, 2016
10:00 am to 1:00 pm

Our Social Fabric
340-1275 Venables Street
Vancouver, BC

Waste Audit, 14 Days

Contents of sewing room garbage can - 14 days

Homework for Master Recycling class: a personal waste audit. Held on to all household waste for 2 weeks to see what I could see. This is the bag that came from the sewing room trash can. Clockwise, from top (before sorting): 

• Marathon of Hope sticker. September - when a young girl's thoughts turn to Terry Fox. My daughter ran for Terry.
• Two lunch bag love notes can be made from one grocery store receipt. 
• Yellow name tag from a hand-me-down backpack from the kids two doors away.
• Candy wrapper - one of two unexplained bits of trash found during my audit. Curiosity plus independence, or the beginnings of hyperphaegia? Too early to tell, but the next stage of Prader-Willi syndrome is long overdue.
• Thread snips and embroidered, used, alcohol swabs (you read that right) - the Humatrope Collar is finally finished! These are the rejects from making the labels.
• Broken twin needle - altered some clothes for a friend. 
• Granola wrappers - haven't been eating properly.
• Fish food package - my daughter finally owns a pet. Violet the beta is very well-fed.
• Light bulb from sewing room - I spend a lot of time here, late into the night. Not quite sure how to dispose of it...

Lunch bag love notes

Garment 14: Perfect Nightie

The perfect twirling nightie - in theory

Raw materials, before editing

The nightie is finished. Or so I thought. It is perfect - or so I thought. It has all the requirements set out by my daughter when we began the project, three months ago: it is made from fabric she tie-dyed last summer at day camp. It has maximum swirl and length, elasticized wrists, cheetah print fleece and something doggish.

So why won't she wear it? She likes it alright, despite the pink stitching on the dog pockets. (Why did you put pink? Grey would have been better.) That it's itchy is all she will tell me - but she won't keep it on long enough for me to figure out how to fix it!

"Boxter" dog pocket tutorial here
(Freehand embroidery, silk organza and lots of Solvy)

Are the raglan sleeves too high? Do they cut into her pits? I could sew in a gusset. Perhaps the wrist elastic is too tight - an easy fix. Maybe it's the surface design: fine, meandering soutache anchored by loose, invisible stitching. That stuff can poke like fishing line. A cotton lining might take care of it, or the soutache could be removed completely - a big, boring job, just right for bus rides.

If the itchiness could just be pinpointed, this project could be checked off my list and I could get on to the other two biggies: Blossom's corset, and the Humatrope collar. Then start the next thing - a presentation for the BCPWS conference in October: My Holland: Projects Inspired by My Children's Special Needs. (Iffy about the title...)

Sigh. Silly me to think I was finished.

********************

Two days later - tonight she is wearing the nightie for the first time. Fingers crossed, I wait, wondering if the source of the itchiness will be revealed. She yells down the stairs: Mom! It is absolutely comfy!

Joy! It would seem time heals all itches, too. Corset, here I come!

Garment 11: Opportunity

http://www.zoetrope.me/afterword/iammia-seamlessness-pilgrimage

First off, I will disclose that I had no part in the design or making of this lovely, so-light-it-could-almost-float-away raglan-sleeved top. That credit is all due to a talented friend, Zoe Welch: "slow fashion" creator, writer, photographer, movie-maker - amongst other gifts - and first-rate source of encouragement, whom I met through OSF.

It doesn't belong to me, either, though it's adorable and I think I could totally rock it. It is owned by another friend and fellow OSF board member, Kat Siddle, who bought it from Zoe one night when we were picking up a donation of fabric from her home.

So why are you looking at pictures of it, you're wondering? Enter Kat's teal winter coat. It's a really cute coat, with a really badly-behaved zipper. One evening Kat's beautiful Zoe top became so completely stuck in the zipper of her coat, that after a 2-hour struggle, she had to have her fiance finally cut her out of it. Aw man. Was it ruined forever? Hmm. That might require a little side-ways thinking. That's where I came in.

I love a good side-ways think, especially when it involves giving purpose to useless, potentially ruined stuff. The hole itself was nicely placed, and nicely shaped - kind of heart-like, I thought. I happened to have, sitting on my sewing table, the left-overs from a recently finished piece - scraps from a twice-abandoned cashmere sweater, pink and deliciously soft, which I had originally lifted from Zoe's Sally Ann donations bag. What's not to love about cashmere? Or pink. It seemed a fitting material for a heart-shaped patch.

The running stitches were done with yarns from those hopeful little packets that hang on better-quality new clothes and may contain one or more of the following: a spare button that will almost certainly never know a buttonhole, a neatly-coiled length of yarn with even less hope of ever darning a hole, a symbolic sprinkling of loose beads or sequins. In rare cases - and a sure sign of the purchaser's elevated taste level - one might find two metal or plastic collar stays: remedy for the even less likely event of that uncommon, though annoying, affliction: Unequal Collar Point Orientation.

I've been saving the packets since I can remember, and most "estate" donations at OSF contain an assortment of them. I expect most of us hang on to them out of obligation, at least until their original garment has passed from our lives, when we are finally released from the responsibility of keeping them around. But by then, they've found a semi-permanent - though never entirely satisfactory - home in the junk drawer, or, more likely, the button box, mixed in with a thimble or two, a couple of dome fasteners, a corroded penny, and a few random nuts or screws, quietly living out their tasteful, but pointless existence. It was very, very satisfying to put some of them to use.

I usually bring along with me a bag of hand sewing (or un-sewing, more often than not!) whenever I have to ride the bus, wait for the doctor, sit through the kids' extra-curricular activities, or spend more than 20 minutes in a passenger seat. Two neuroplasticity sessions later, and voila! Survey says, definitely not ruined!

Considering the higher quality of garments that generally merit spare parts hang tags, I suspect the yarns used for the stitching are likely mostly real wool. I'm hoping the patch might felt up a little with washing, in a jaunty smocking-esque sort of way. We shall see.

Enquiries at enoughstuffblog@gmail.com

Photography by Jeff Minuk www.lostinkits.com

Garment 9: Fancy

This fabulous skirt is made of a pillow I happened to come across for free* on Boxing Day, 2014, at the Prophouse, a now defunct restaurant on Venables, near Commercial. The keys had to be turned in at 6, and everything was being given away. At noon the place was still swimming in partly-broken pole lamps, mostly-broken chairs, dirty dishes, a whole roomful of records, and, inexplicably, piles of clothing from the late '60s/early '70s, including several pairs of polyester trousers with the hems hacked off too short. There were lidless cookie tins and boxes filled randomly with odd stuff: pins, casino paraphernalia, pennies, junk and more junk, dirty, crammed together, jumbled-up bits of old and not-old stuff, interesting and not. Also, several bolts of fabric, a few pairs of god-awful harvest gold '70s curtains, broken glass, prescription bottles... and treasure hunters. It was a lot to take in.

*You didn't imagine I'd pay for one, right?

Re-enactment
Couldn't wait long enough to take a picture before gutting

Way in the back, and up some steep stairs to a make-shift loft, I spied the hideous, bulbous, somewhat matted, hand-crocheted, acrylic pillow - brown and yellow and orange, with a big green, yarn-covered button on each side holding it together. Visions of the Brady Bunch, rumpus rooms and cheap wood panelling, it sat upon an honest-to-goodness original, filthy shag carpet, strewn with dirty t-shirts, men's shoes - size huge - and antiquated video game system parts. Hideous. I almost couldn't believe I was taking it home with me... along with 5 or 6 boxes of treasures, including an incomplete set of cafe dishes said to have come from Astorino's when it closed, and an orange, flowered, sleeve board that cleaned up very nicely. And the too-short polyester pants.

The pillow put me in mind of those crazy toilet roll holders crocheters churned out in the early '70s. They were intended for selling at church bazaars, but that seems overly optimistic. My suspicion is they were secretly fun to make.

My sister and I had dogs like this. Yep.

I have childhood memories of them associated with my paternal grandmother. If she didn't have one on her toilet, I'm sure her neighbours did. I was a little confused by them as a kid, and spent a fair bit of time transfixed in strange bathrooms. They were dolls, yet not for playing with. Some had baby faces. All were a little scary looking, and their eyelids clacked when they closed. And there's toilet paper under there! Does that seem reasonable? In my teens I recall silently scoffing at more than a few. But really, I was more than a little drawn to them. I mean, haven't you always wanted an outfit like that: a crocheted hoop skirt and matching bonnet? I sure did.

Took the pillow apart and chucked the disgusting, 40 year-old, yellowed, foam pillow form.  Couldn't get that thing out of the house fast enough. Threw the pillow cover in the washer with some Nature's Ultimate, and lo! Out came a skirt! And look! It's ripple patterned, just like this toilet girl's skirt! Dreams do come true. 

The tie that forms the waist band showed up shortly after the pillow, in a donation to OSF. It's a little worn along the edge, as though having passed many times through a snug belt-carrier. I imagine it once hung out with a pink, floor-length, quilted, nylon housecoat. It's been useless since they parted - until now. Haven't found a reason for the buttons yet, but that may come.

Put on my x-ray eyes (took off my glasses!) and trimmed away the pills, fluff and long fibres. I love this skirt! Hideous hand-crocheted afghan pillows are now on my list of things to look out for at yard sales and in "free" boxes in alleys, along with metal bread boxes, old Phentex yarn, and cashmere shawls with moth holes. We all need love.

Now, just think what kind of useful, new purpose a toilet roll doll could serve! Actually, nothing's coming to mind, but maybe one day I'll get my hands on one and see what happens...

Size S-M. For sale by appointment. Enquiries at enoughstuffblog@gmail.com
Photography by Jeff Minuk www.lostinkits.com

Garment 8: Authorship

This angel top was inspired by a 1967 Stretch & Sew pattern I've made up for myself in 3 different cheap-ola abandoned knits . There are plans for more to come.

I loved the shape and fit so much I started to wondering how much an existing design would need to be changed before it could be considered one's own. More a musing than anything, I still haven't bothered to find out for sure. This lead me to drape the angel top, based on the way the neck edge of the raglan sleeves and bodice pieces fold back to form the square neck facing. It got my brain doing contortions trying to work it out, which says more about my brain than the complexity of the pattern. Sewed it up from more abandoned, cheap-ola, t-shirt knit and even more cheap-ola rib-knit fabric, both of which came from Addie's stash, and there you have it.

The pinwheel is made from stitch samples found in a number of manila envelopes - along with an instruction disk each - that had accompanied brand-new, but now obsolete, computerised embroidery machines. Not old, and no doubt still use-able, but obsolete - like my cellphone. The volunteers at the OSF sorting bee had a good laugh when I asked if anyone might want the disks. We dumped them, and two of us took some of the stitch samples home to percolate. I especially like the pencilled-in stitch type, width and tension notes. Wonder whose job that was, and how much she was paid to do it: endlessly stitching samples to accompany shiny new machines, after the kids went to bed, no doubt. What a job.

The yellow fabric is a snippet from a very large, cheerful, stained, polyester double-knit book dust-cover. It was donated by a woman who told me it was made by her elderly grandmother, a tailor, and had been used to protect a "holy book" in a Vancouver temple. Not sure the exact type of temple... I didn't ask enough questions when the donation came in.

The Delta Airlines pin, "Good Going", was found in a cookie tin of junk discovered on a rummage through the dregs of the Prophouse restaurant when it closed for business.

Creepy '70s ad

I know the design is mine now, because it makes me think of Charlie's Angels, Farrah Fawcett's feathered hair, Love's Baby Soft perfume. To be worn with your best bra, unless you plan on keeping your hands in your lap all evening.

Size S-M. For sale by appointment. 
Enquiries at enoughstuffblog@gmail.com

Photography by Jeff Minuk www.lostinkits.com

Garment 6: Time Traveller, 1965

This cheerful sweater started off as a donation to OSF of a long-ago abandoned sewing project - a barely-begun, pre-Lycra stretchy cardigan. My first reaction upon pulling it out of the green garbage/donation bag was to put it directly in the Free Box: youthfully yellow, yet oddly frumpy; droopy rib-knit fabric; darts in a knit??! Rust stains from a pin stuck in it over the course of decades. A little musty, in a bag that had gone the way old plastic bags can go. There didn't seem any hope.

But something about its hopelessness encouraged me to live with it a bit first, to see if it would suggest a way to make it useful and wanted. Within a day or two it started a conversation with a bright, rich pink, deliciously soft, damaged, cashmere cardigan I had plucked from a friend's bag of cast-offs destined for the Sally Ann. They've been together ever since.

The donation came from an elderly lady who can no longer sew, and whose son is systematically taking control of her fabric hoarding. When she is lucid she tells him which fabric can go; when she's not she accuses him of stealing. He shows up at OSF sales bearing bags or boxes of his mother's stash, and a sad, but satisfied smile. It's the usual personal donation: two or three yards each of many types of fabric, just enough for one outfit, plus a few bags of scraps. The last box usually contains the notions, patterns, maybe tools: pinking sheers, or a chalk-filled hem marker, half-empty bobbins with five different colours of thread on each, a tin heavy with buttons, dome fasteners and useful bits removed from garments long gone. I often develop a fondness toward the original owner of the personal donations. We would recognize each other if only we had met.

I've been enjoying sorting this donation more than most. As ever, each fabric has something to say about the person who saved it, but this time it's a person living and sewing in the '60s, the decade that never ceases to inspire me, and into the 70s, when polyester double-knit really got crazy. Finding the usefulness and beauty in butt-ugly polyester double-knit is a special interest of mine.

Only the scraps, Ma'am

I haven't claimed any of the lengths of fabric for my own. They're all too nice, and too useful. But I did score big-time on a large variety of small, irregularly-shaped scraps, which any but the most stalwart Waste-Not would declare to be totally useless. Rapture! Several types of hideous, slack-suit-weight polyester double-knit, candy or psychedelic-coloured. One or two snippets of bark cloth. Red, white and blue Mary Tyler Moore-esque extra-stretchy double-knit: droopy-when-wet, underarm-abrading textured polyester swimsuit, anyone? Barely a natural fibre to be seen. I left the projects she didn't start, and took the remains of the projects she finished, and some she gave up on. A tasty challenge.

They just wanted to be together

The main pieces of the cardigan were already cut, neatly marked with inconspicuous blue dots at all the important places, and sewn with a straight stitch at the side seams and shoulder - there was even perfectly matched seam tape to stop the shoulder from stretching. This lady could sew! But that's as far as she went; the project was abandoned, everything folded neatly and placed in a clear plastic bag, with one or two pins for good measure. My guess is it was abandoned for lack of a serger. After all, a person who bothers to tape shoulders won't be satisfied trying to sew stretch fabric on a straight stitch machine. But why save it all these 40-some years? Was she optimistically awaiting the day she might own a serger? Did she stubbornly refuse to admit defeat? Did she forget she even had it -- every single time she came across it? Intriguing.

A clue to its age: it has bust darts, suggesting it was cut from a non-stretch pattern, likely bought prior to 1967, when Stretch & Sew patterns first became available. The colour speaks to the era of psychedelia, but the style is modest, more Please Please Me than Sgt. Pepper; I wonder how old she was at the time. I wonder where it was kept all that time, and I wonder if she groaned every time she came across it, like I would. Or maybe it didn't bother her at all...

The side seams and shoulders were re-cut to be less matronly-y, and the edges finished with the ribbing, cuffs and button placket from the pink sweater. The pink is attached to the yellow with simple back stitches picked by hand. It looks like a running stitch on the front, but is actually a little stretchy. I used a spool of pink ribbony floss that has been sitting in my embroidery box since taking a VSB night class in couture beading with Blossom Jenab, about 15 years ago. I've been wanting to use that floss ever since, and working with it has been smooothly satisfying.

I'm happy with the result, and I like to think the lady who so carefully began it would be pleased to know her project is finally finished.

Useful sewing tip

Most people do as little hand sewing as possible, thinking it is not fun, or it's hard. I can't help with the fun part (though I do enjoy it, myself, in moderation), but there is a simple fact that, if understood, makes it so much easier.

All sewing is all about the grain. Thread has grain. When hand-sewing, the direction the thread is sewn should be the same as it came off the spool. Some folks recommend immediately knotting the thread at the cut end, even before threading the needle, just to be sure to get the direction right. Ignoring the grain results in thread that will knot easily, making hand sewing seem much harder than it needs to be. And not fun.

If you want to use a double strand, do not simply put one strand on the needle and knot the two ends of it together. The difference in the grains will make the threads fight with each other, and it will be a tangly bugger to sew with. Instead, cut two strands, lay them together in the same direction, thread them both through the same needle (tricky, but can be done), knot them together at the end, and sew away.

Speaking of hand sewing, I have read many places that the only proper way to do it is to wax the thread beforehand. I asked Blossom about this, since I've never seen her wax her thread, and she replied that thread these days is strong enough without waxing. Followed by that little "tsk" she sometimes does. So there it is. Couture sewing might be considered by some to be synonymous with doing everything the hard way, but not harder than necessary. I suspect those articles are written by folk who don't wax their thread, either, even if they do sew with the grain.

Size S, but not very small. For sale by appointment. Enquiries at enoughstuffblog@gmail.com

Photography by Jeff Minuk www.lostinkits.com

Garment 2: Logan Lake, 1973

Skirt Front, Upholstery Samples

On the hill over-looking our house, c. 1970. That's me in pink

Fuzzy Felts- hours of fun

This skirt makes me think of crock pots, kitchen wallpaper, Fuzzy Felts, a little copper mining town in the interior of British Columbia...

My sister had Fuzzy Felts, and I babysat for a family that did not have a huge Elvis Presley record collection, but did have a crock pot and two boxes of Fuzzy Felts, which kept me occupied until the mom and dad got back from whatever it was they did in a town that, at the time, had no secondary school, restaurants, or doctor.

The only store sold day-old bread, canned goods, paper products, the kind of soap you need when carving a fake soapstone sculpture in grade 5, cinnamon or mint flavoured toothpicks, and two sizes of chocolate bars - 5 cents or 10 cents. Also, candles and other birthday party paraphernalia, including the Beatles cake-top tableau that adorned the angel-food money-cake with marshmallow icing made by my mother for my eighth sleepover birthday party. Pam Kaus and I wore matching shorty pyjamas purchased at the Fields in Merritt - the nearest town with dentists. The very birthday I received Donny Osmond Superstar, the double album I really, really wanted. But only one of the records. And not the good one.

Donny Osmond Superstar. Sigh

It was 1973; I was in grade 3 - best year of my life - the year I broke my arm, sliding with my sister on the hill behind our house while my parents were away at a curling bonspiel.

When we arrived back at the Keurver's, pulling the toboggan in shock and pain behind me, they took me first to Kelly Courtney's dad - the Lornex first aid attendant. My arm splinted, he sent us on to Kamloops, to the hospital, an hour away. Nothing so exciting had ever happened to me, nor would for many years.

As did every girl in my class, I had a crush on Donny Osmond. Pam and I - dressed in matching leotards, snap-crotch bodysuits, and plush-lined, zippered, Naugahyde winter boots - made up creative dances to "Pretty Blue Eyes" and "Puppy Love" in her parents' wood-panelled rumpus-room. I drew him pictures to hang on the wall of his bedroom - the side view of a girl in prayer, done in yellow marker... I had heard he was religious. I wondered about his bed - rumoured to be suspended from the ceiling! - and his drawer-full of purple socks. 

Birthday cake decoration. Ringo's drum is broken. Where's Paul?

I hadn't heard of the Beatles, yet - had no inkling there could be anything bigger than Elvis. I wanted this particular cake decoration because there was no Elvis one to be had.

Rediscovered when I was forty-something in a yellowed, plastic produce bag at my parents', along with every half-burnt candle from every childhood birthday cake my mother ever made for us, and all the fancy ballerinas that usually held our candles, I shrieked when I pulled it out of the box.

Paul is - ironically -missing.

Beautiful cyclops fire-dancing ballerinas - most elegant birthday candle holders

Souvenir from Lornex company picnic

Mother's Day gift, from Sears, now hangs in my kitchen

This skirt reminds me of our house: peering through the kitchen window, orange and brown diamond-patterned curtains, the boom of the blasting in the open pit mine, a 20-minute drive away; wet-look, vinyl swivel chairs - also orange -  the smiling daisy wall plaque that now hangs in my kitchen. 

My sister and I chose it at the Kamloops Sears during a routine trip to buy the necessities not available in our village: freshly baked bread, Kentucky Fried chicken, birthday presents.

Dad would let us loose with two dollars in an incense-scented shop that sold novelty printed toilet paper, Herbal Essences shampoo and witty plastic statuary. A carefully selected, slightly squishy, white, plastic figurine of a baby in diapers - "Life is one damp thing after the other" - sat atop our TV, between school pictures: me and my sister in wood-printed, cardboard frames. When she hated me, mine would face the wall.

My sister, napping, green shag rug

There was a wood-burning fireplace and wall-to-wall shag carpet in shades of medium green, which required regular raking - a 1973 zen garden embedded with crumbs, cat hair, dead skin, Grape Nuts cereal, the odd Barbie shoe and Orange Tang crystals.

Dry Tang from the package, orange fingers, the Flintstones - cuddled up with Shayne Morgan in the big chair after school. Freckles and a big smile.

This skirt makes me think of all that.

The first of my own designs I ever showed Blossom, she proclaimed the Logan Lake skirt to be "perfect" and I have no cause to doubt her. It's cut from her own instructions for transforming the perfect basic block into the perfect A-line skirt pattern - one of the first variations she teaches in her flat pattern drafting classes. So no wonder.

Skirt Back, defective reflective piping, bias waistband, hem and zipper facing

When wallpaper was wallpaper, hung c. 1975

I believe the fabric to be linen, c.1970, sister to the wallpaper in our Kamloops kitchen, where we lived next. It was 1977; the eve of New Wave. I cried silently the first time I saw it.

The linen, from a fabric sample card, came from the estate donation of Addie, a prolific creative force who lovingly rescued - judging from the attached tickets - every stray piece of fabric she ever encountered. Samples, seconds, bolt ends, yardage: six minivans-full of fabrics and notions plus a mannequin and extensive supplies for all her other hobbies: fabric dying, painting on fabric or glass, glass painting, knitting - by hand or machine - pottery. She was a gardener, too. In the months it took for us to sort, we felt we got to know her.

Hook and eye; raw edges of fold-over waistband will not fray

Since there was so little of the fabric, the bias waistband, hem and fly facing are pieced together from small scraps left from cutting the back panel of mis-matched green linen. There was just enough fabric.

The metal zipper, hook and eye came from my stash, removed from a worn-out, discarded garment by an ancestor of mine a generation or more ago - possibly my mom's mom. The reflective piping is defective, and came from a local sportswear manufacturer who must remain nameless. It will crack and flake off a little with each cleaning.

Like my memories of the mining town that inspired it, I anticipate this skirt will soften and improve with age.

All that's left

Purchase enquiries at enoughstuffblog@gmail.com

Good Photography by Jeff Minuk www.lostinkits.com

OSF 2: Good Notion #4

Phew!  A lot is on the go at OSF. In an effort to clear out inventory in anticipation of our upcoming move, last Wednesday we had a sorting bee. (Thank you to the many supporters who came out to heave and hoist bolts of fabric!) Fabric bolts can now be found all grouped according to price and each price marked with a different coloured band:

• $10 bolts sport black twill tape
• $20 bolts are wrapped with blue ribbing
• $40 bolts wear black knit collars (!!!!)
• and the large $60 bolts are identified by their bands of waistband facing.  

Go to town!  (Please!  We need your support now more than ever!)

Waistband facing: $60/bolt

Blue ribbing: $20/bolt

Knit collars: $40/bolt

We've also unearthed most of the stash that's been hiding at the back of the store since we moved in. Yes!  It's the moment I know many of our devotees have been waiting for! Believe me, there was never any strategy involved in holding it back; we just never got around to sorting it!

Seriously, it's a big - but if you're sewweird like me, satisfying - job to sort through the many donations we receive.  In fact, even with the frequent assistance of Carol, Erika and a few faithful others, I can barely keep it all from smothering us, let alone actually get on top if it! So I ask for your help: 

• if you crave the thrill of emptying mystery boxes full of who-knows-what sort of delicious - or occasionally, disgusting - fabrics and who-knows-what sort of notions lovingly saved by someone who just knew "someone will use this" 
• if you sleep better after rolling cuts of fabric into tidy little bundles and then grouping it by colour, and arranging it in boxes so it can be easily located
• send me an email and I'll put you on my list of special people to call when I'm feeling suffocated oursocialfabric@gmail.com

'Cause even organizing fabric can lose its appeal when it's done on demand, under pressure of time, and we're faced with an unanticipated 9 boxes of polyester hotel upholstery fabric that needs to be sorted, 90% of which will end up in the free box!

BUT! even those 9 daunting boxes contain some goodies: professionally made draperies; sheets and bolts of black-out fabric; lengths of cotton sheeting - not enough for a queen size bed, but big enough for a crib sheet, white button-down shirt, or pin-tucked sundress with release pleats forming the skirt, tiny buttons on the left shoulder and three rows of horizontal tucks at the hem, or perhaps a piece of hand-crochet cotton inset lace that was found in a box of Grandma's sewing room contents donated by her family.

This coming Wednesday, August 6, 5-9 PM we will meet again for a sorting bee.  Having finished the less inspiring bolts, we're going to begin now on the cut pieces, which almost invariably come in the form of bags and boxes of personal donations, and often come with stories.  When was this bought, and why?  What was the plan? Why didn't it happen?  Or was it just plain ol' fabric lust?  We all can relate to that.

Sometimes we receive small bags filled with everything needed for a specific project: fabric, pattern, thread, zipper, buttons, trim. Occassionally there will be fitting or design notes. I love trying to piece together the back story from the clues in the bag, and I can become quite attached to the resulting garment.  Taking up the Sewing Baton from an unknown kindred spirit gives me a sense of connection to the Flow of the Earth, (a flow I believe OSF itself is propelled by, and the same one the Beatles rode).  (Don't get me started).  I love wearing the stories, adding my own chapter and being part of the flow.

The bags containing the never-started projects usually come from the store where the materials were purchased.  More often than not these same fabric stores no longer exist.  They are the same kind of place I used to haunt as a high school student when I first seriously became gripped by the need to sew: a tiny, non-descript, suburban fabric store in the strip mall near my home. Just 10 or 12 racks of poly/cotton prints, some broadcloth and a few other useful fabrics. I would stop in on my way home from school for a treat: just touching and meditating on fabric.  I would stand and stare through it and cast my mind sideways and make judgements, vaguely planning a never-ending series of garments I might or might not attempt.  A rack of thread, a rotating stand of buttons, a few sizes and colours of zippers.  The impossibility of matching the zipper colour perfectly to the garment marked it forever as "home made".  Not cool at all, but I loved it.

More often than not I bought nothing. The ladies behind the counter were always the same ones.  I never spoke to them - I guess out of a sense of perceived sewing skill inferiority (I was still ripping out every other seam I sewed, and I was too eager to get a project started to take the time to pre-shrink). I would silently study the goods, weighing in my mind and hand the properties of the fabrics, debating inwardly the merits of one type of closure over another, the utility of the notions, the purpose of some roll of mystery stuff.  Then I would leave. They rarely acknowledged either my arrival or my departure. At the time I didn't question why they never spoke to me. Surely they knew I was gripped.

Sewing was so fringey a pastime, so other-than-cool, and very solitary. I had many questions, and not a lot of information handily available. Most of the answers came from my own experiments sewing from patterns I bought with my babysitting money: hours and hours and Friday nights and all day Saturday and Sunday if there was no game on (the sewing machine interfered with the TV reception and pissed off my dad.  He never complained or made me stop, but I knew it really bugged him.  But sometimes I just couldn't refrain myself.  I HAD to sew!) Sitting at the dining room table until I could no longer stay awake enough to avoid irreparable mistakes.  Vaguely worried that I might never find a boyfriend if I spent every night at the sewing machine. But I really didn't care.

By day the TV was almost always on, one of the three adults in the home was almost always smoking, and every activity had to stop if my younger sister needed to have a 25 minute silent telephone argument with her boyfriend.  She would lie on the orange and brown wall-to-wall carpet a few meters away from me, glaring, tethered to the telephone by its short-range curly cord, giving him the silent treatment while he ignored her back, on the other end.

But long after everyone went to bed: stitch stitch stitch, rip, rip, whrr whrr, shoosh shoosh, crinch crinch the scissors sliding along the carpet, the fabric spread clear across the living room, in front of the cream, brown and orange floral couch with matching arm covers.  Sore knees from crawling across the carpet to lay out and cut the pattern. Critch critch the scissors, the static and crinkle of the pattern.

Aw man, I loved it.  Sewing was one big bowl of sliced strawberries.  Now, volunteering for OSF is the real whipped cream on top.  Sewing can be a very isolating and lonely pursuit, but through OSF I get to touch and meditate on as much fabric as I can stand, right along with people who understand.  I couldn't be any more fortunate!

Half our wooden rack is now $10/bolt

So, in conclusion:

• OSF needs to move so we need to clear everything out 
• nearly all our bolts of fabric are now out on the floor and cost $10, $20, $40 or $60 each
• we have 90% of the contents of 9 boxes worth of free fabric to poke through
• we have plenty of curtain sheers and black-out fabric
• we have a number of sets of decent-looking, lined draperies
• if you want to help out at this Wednesday's sorting bee, August 6 from 5-9, please RSVP
• if you want to be on a list for sorting, please email me at oursocialfabric@gmail.com

See you at the next sale on August 9,

Leah