Sunday, September 25, 2011

Ella is the queen cat

Ella prefers soft pillows...and thinks Felix is a pest and shouldn't be in her house.

Where does Felix sleep?

Anywhere he wants.

On a box. Note the nice, soft blanket on the bed (for the cats) complete with cat toys. But no, the box is more comfortable.

DSC_0118

In the sink...with the faucet poking into his side. He was sound asleep and snoring. Oh, and he doesn't have a big white "skunk" stripe - that's light coming in from the skylight.

DSC_0121

And finally, on the fall centerpiece I just put together a few hours ago. Who knew that pumpkins and gourds made nice pillows?

DSC_0124

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Crappy fabric

My sewing time is too valuable to sew with crappy fabric...yet I do. It's just pajamas I reminded myself as I struggled to get the grain line of the thermal knit to behave so I could cut out the pattern. Yet I persevered because the vision of the pajamas out of that fabric is in my head. Because I bought a spool of matching serger thread. Because I bought matching elastic lace for the trim. Because I don't give up.

I should banish bad fabric from my stash but sometimes you just don't know it's bad until you work with it. The cost of the fabric is not a good measure either. Some of my "cheap" fabrics are just fine. I get a secret delight every time I wear the pretty, comfortable shirt I made with fabric that cost me $2.97.

But really, this fabric tested me last night. I don't even know where it came from. I thought I swatched all my fabrics but I can't find this among my cards. I came across it in one of my many bins when I was looking for pajama and nightgown fabrics. The way the fabric was jaggedly cut tells me that it was probably a bargain fabric from Fabrix in San Francisco or maybe even Jomar in Philadelphia during one of my visits to my parent's house. I'm still hopeful that despite the grain problems I'll be able to get a wearable pair of pajamas out of it. I'd show you the pattern I'm making - it's Kwik Sew 2444 - but it's out of print, and I couldn't even find any reviews for it on Patternreview.com. Hopefully this is not a sign that the pattern is bad too. A bad pattern + crappy fabric = wadder for sure!