Edwina Scissorhands

So did you know that Sept was national sewing month? I had no idea, but if Fiskars says it is so, who am I to disagree? I was in NY over Labor Day visiting my sister & her family, and we stole away for a quick visit to Mood, the same one from Project Runway, like I had to tell you! I'm mad about that show, so actually going to the store was a real kick! And, while I was there, I actually saw a fellow Houstonian(!) & past winner(!!), Chloe Dao shopping there!!! But much to my chagrin, I was too shy to say hi. I digress, anyway, the expedition was to buy fabrics for my nieces' halloween costumes -- super heroines. We were aiming for shiny silver fabrics and after an exhaustive search, bought some silver lame, b/c we didn't want to leave empty handed. It had the shine factor, but the weight wasn't quite what we envisioned. Then, as fate would have it, there was a shop across the street specializing in what can best be described as swimwear fabric with crazy shine all over the place, and the vision was back on track. We had made the capes out of a shiny polyester and the silver was for a cute skirt and accessories to go w/ the leotards. Flash forward back to their apt and I met the coolest oldest electric sewing machine that still works!! It only sews a straight stitch, and we estimated it must have been made in the 1950's or earlier. It runs like a dream, and weighs about a metric ton naturally, so there was no way I could smuggle it out in my suitcase back home. ;)

meet the flockers

Let's see, dear reader, as I am somewhat sure I only have one :) if I can recount the crafts of the past month... I should start w/ the bonanza from August which was getting re-aquainted with the world of silk screening, which I love! A few years ago when I tried it for the first time, I stuck with more crude and time consuming method of cutting out stencils from plastic. This time, I went to the big leagues, photoemulsion, which is not for the faint of heart. I read about it all over the net and what you hear is true, it takes a lot of trial and error. Lots of errors on my part until I finally got it to work. It's all in the timing of exposing your design to the light, and I was overdoing it by underestimating the power of the SUN!

So once that was down, I 'burned' my design which was to screen a tote bag for my book club buddies. With lots of help from my awesome crafting buddies, we had a good little assembly line going, and voila!