Note: You don't have to know how to make anything fancy. Just do you know the basics well enough to at least get started?

(Please reblog for a larger sample size)

Whisper the Wolf plush! 🐺

She has a couple of accessories, the mask can be placed either on her hair or face with magnets, and the cape is also removable. She stands around 14" to the top of the head.

this is my horrible bastard son. his name is Disease because he has all of them and he is the single most badly made wonky ass object alive and my pride of my life. He took me three days to hand sew and now all my limbs, fingers, back, neck and eyes all hurt but idc because he’s my pride and joy.

Baby’s first sewing project and I really should have followed a tutorial but we ball. I forgot to do his face and stuff him with weights BEFORE sewing him together, but at least it resulted in this incredible image:

The Suit-Making Metaphor

[Written in January, 2024] The cold eventually got bad enough that the Grandma, the kids and I fled to a hotel while Matt stayed at the house with the dogs. We were fortunate to be able to that of course, and sharing a room in a nice warm hotel was not suffering by any stretch of the imagination. Even so, it was stressful. We brought ipads, paints, books and needlework to keep the kids entertained and alleviate some anxiety, but time also had to be made for school work—especially as they would be going back to class just in time for finals. We made lists of their classes, what they had to study, what we could help with and what questions would need to be put to their teachers.

Henry’s 16 now (!!) and instead of an exam, his Humanities final was a personal essay. We chatted a bit about his writing process, what he liked about what he had done so far and what was frustrating for him. Though he had a terrific topic, he’d written and rewritten his opening paragraph several times and wasn’t making any real progress.

Been there, buddy.

As we talked, I stumbled on a metaphor that I found helpful, and so I’m going to try and share with you roughly what I said to him, and perhaps some of you will find it helpful too.

I get it, I do. It’s exactly my inclination as well. But writing like this-- where you try to perfect everything as you go, effectively writing the third draft before you finish the first--it’s like trying to make a suit from the top to the bottom. You can’t make a suit like that. You can’t start with the collar and get that perfected and then move to the shoulder. You can’t topstitch the upper part of the button placket before the bottom even exists. And even if you could figure how to do it that way, your suit isn't going to fit. Because that’s just not the best way to make a suit. Finishing the thing from top to bottom is not the best way to write, either. You start by choosing your fabric—your topic. What material are you going to craft the suit from? What’s the subject of the essay? You want to write about your relationship to various monsters. That’s terrific! That’s like a nice wool; there’s heft there—memories and feelings and personal details that resonate as truths; it should make a rich and interesting suit. Now, instead of cutting out the collar immediately, let’s choose a pattern. We need a pattern to help us cut the wool into the proper shapes. The pattern is the very basic structure of your essay. How might you organize your thoughts and feelings about monsters? The order isn’t as important as the categories. For the suit jacket, we’ll need right front, left front, sleeves, collar, lining etc. For the essay, what monsters do you want to write about? King Kong, the Rancor, the Minotaur and Bernard the Bull. Perfect. Cutting the pattern pieces out is equivalent to gathering your thoughts on each monster. Write freely about each one, taking the time to remember in as much detail as possible where you first encountered each monster, how old you were, etc. Go through each of your senses to help you recall the moment. What did you see? Smell? Taste? Feel? Who was with you? How did you feel in your body? How did you feel in your heart? Include everything that jumps out at you, you can always edit it down later. In our metaphor, this step is not just cutting out the pieces but also taking the time to transfer the pattern marks. You might not need them all, but you're sure to make a finer suit if you have them all available. Once you have the pieces, the next step is to see how they fit together. Read through each monster and look for connections. Is there an order that suggests itself? Rearrange and then edit and expand to highlight those connections. The first pass of this is basting stitches—loose connections just to test the fit—once you’re happy with the shape you can go ahead and lay in seams. Here is where our parallels start to fall apart: For the suit, you’ll want to do all the finishing touches—the handstitching, buttons, pressing, etc.—and then try it on and style it. But in writing your essay, these steps are reversed—styling is crafting the last paragraph, bringing the piece to a close. Your essay doesn’t have to wrap up neatly, in fact, you don’t want it to be too matchy-matchy. Just as an outfit’s style is improved by personal idiosyncrasies, a piece of writing is enriched by the author's capacity to engage with complexity and ambiguity. With the styling done--when you really know what it is you're trying to say--now you can go back with needle and thread and do that hand-stitching: tighten the prose where you can, polish rhythms, word choice, grammar and voice. With the whole of the thing in front of you, you now have what you need to do the kind of “third draft” finishing work that was impossible to begin with.

This might be the very definition of beating a metaphor to death, but I surprised myself with it. It was as revelatory for me as it was for Henry--probably more so.

And with that, I need to get back to those now-422 emails.

Cheers,

Kelly Sue

PS New creator-owned book coming out late fall this year--first launch in a decade or so, I think? I do need to figure out this whole newsletter/blog conundrum sooner rather than later. Advice and opinions welcome.

it's me, the thing maker

Beaded embroidery whale on painted fabric in a 15”x8” oval hoop!

I received a vintage My Little Pony sewing pattern a while back and decided to take a crack at it. Mucked up the head shape and tail placement a bit but overall pretty happy with how it came out. I’m naming her Golden Garden 💛

And for transparency, I didn’t make the cutie mark, they were applicates left over from a different project.

from this concept:

I now have a very cool, very soft, and entirely hand-made 2017 Louie plush !!!!!!

Very silly tail ⬇️

He has a completely functional pull-apart jacket zipper !!!

Also completely functional: the pockets 😼

And here is also a closeup on the little phone

He is made up almost entirely of fleece, all hand-sewn. His shirt and some of his eyes are felt (also the scar on his foot). He's stuffed with polyfill . He's weighed down with lentils 😭 His pattern is made custom by me :) I'm not sure exactly how long he took, but I'd guess some amount of months. Maybe 2, but maybe only a few weeks of collective actual work days

He does also have a dog toy type squeaker in him

Photos of the pants! The top (which I also made, tutorial coming soon) kinda clashes but oh well I am living in neon colors and loving life!

I don't like how they fit so today I spent 2 hours grading the pattern up 5 inches. They don't look horrible but I wanted something looser and more flowy. I'm going to cut out the pieces for a turquoise pair and then call it a day because I didn't sleep well last night and I took a shower today and already stood for 2 hours straight so I need to pace myself.

I told myself I wasn't going to embroider any more pants cuz these ones took forever but I've decided to embroider black stars around the hems cuz stars go really fast and then I'll take some of the black cotton/linen blend I bought earlier this month and make a crop top and embroider turquoise stars on it so I have a coordinating outfit! I plan on using any leftover materials to make some coordinating crop tops using this tutorial so that I can mix and match my brightly colored tops and pants!

I'm working hard to get a bunch of projects finished so I can excuse buying this linen

To make another pair of pants and crop top set! I'm actually going to get the 7.5 oz version because my hot pink linen is 5.5 oz and it's slightly see through so I can't wear black bras or colored underwear underneath it.

OK. Going to go cut out the turquoise pieces! Wish me luck and less back pain!

I made a super cute sleeve!

I draped it and drafted the pattern and everything. I am quite proud of myself.

The bodice is also sewn together

Yeah, it looks a mess, but trust me, this is a lot of progress.

Next steps : triple check fit at shoulders, sew sleeves to lining, and then sew lining and outer bodice together (which includes more piping, but now I'm not quite so scared)

next project excitement

I am home for a week and a half and am determined to spend most of it sewing. OK it's not even quite a week and a half, i've just realized. whatever!! getting started now.

I have a huge number of projects pent-up and am suffering as I try to decide which to work on, BUT, the thing is! i have one i really want to start on, so I'm going to at least start on it, and that is the Loftus Bralette pattern, which it's sort of unfair to call a bralette-- it's not, it's fully a bra, it has a powerbar and everything, and nonstretch cups, it's seriously a bra but there's no wire. Which is why I think it might fit me. Cut for more wittering on this topic...

I printed it out and taped it up ages (a couple of weeks) ago when it first came out because I was so excited, but I've been traveling since then. So. Now I have laid out the pattern pieces, and assembled the notions I ordered and got and haven't looked at yet, and now am figuring out just what I need. I might write up more about this, let me know if it's something you're also interested in sewing or learning about or whatever!! I'm really comfortable with Cashmerette patterns by now and am confident I can make it through sewing this, though I am *not* confident I can fit myself well-- by sheer dumb luck I fit Cashmerette really well without many adjustments so I'm not great at fit adjustments, but I'm sure I'll need them for this, since bras are so specific. But we'll see!

Anyway to start with I just went through the whole pattern instruction booklet and figured out how many inches I need of how many kinds of elastic, and which fabrics I should cut which pattern pieces out of. I'm going to then label each of them with masking tape the whole time I'm working, because I watched the video sewalong and realized I'm absolutely going to lose track of what I'm doing. So here is my starting point:

[image description: a number of pattern pieces spread out across a countertop, and in the foreground is a list on a scrap paper in felt-tipped marker that inventories the pattern pieces, specifies which should be cut out of which fabric, and says how many inches of how wide an elastic are needed in my size for each of the neckline, underarm, band, and strap elastics.]

I measure into a 38J, and I plan to make my muslin out of some heavy-duty powermesh I got from Mood, and then some light pink stabilized nylon tricot I got from Porcelynne, and the notions and elastic I also got from Porcelynne. (Porcelynne's owner is the one who did the engineering on the pattern I think, and is certainly the person who appears in the sewalong video. I bought myself a super-nice kit from their selection, but I'm making the muslin first before I cut into the cute red and black lace from the kit.)

Ha I might actually just mark the muslin in felt-tip marker and not worry about the marks washing out or not, honestly. i need all the help i can get. i can do it right for the nice one. hopefully i will get this to work and i will make like a dozen. it would help me so much to have a TT bra pattern i can standardize off of-- I started the sloper course but looked at it and was like, there's no point getting a really good fit around the bust of any dress because I only have one each of any given bra and none of them are perfect and all of them make me a drastically different shape. I need something I have several of and can reliably get more of (alas, for when i get a good bra i love and go to buy more and it's discontinued, this keeps happening to me). so. This is like, the necessary next step to not only my life but also my sewing game.

I crocheted a little button-up sweater for my bear! ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ .⋆·₊♡

I used some foresty green yarns, and I was finally able to use the air dry clay leaf buttons that I made quite a while ago :-)

Red Ombre battle axe patches

Slugcat evolved

As I stitched row eighteen together I realised I did not have enough patches in the kit bag I had made up to make all of the row eighteens. Today I laid them all out on the floor to figure out what I had done. For some reason I had made up the kits from eighteen on with only four rows in each bag. Don't know why but it is all sorted now. I did wonder why I had a bag of patches left over but not any more. Now all I have to do is add the extra rows to the kit bags and keep on stitching.

made the absolute shabbiest monk getup for a renfaire last week 🧵🪡

despite fraying & janky seams, the robe held up rly well; it was windy & raining out there, but this sucker kept me cozy thru it all 🌧🔥😊🔥🌧

i didn't have time to decorate it any, but by next yr...

ohhh what plans i have ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥