Get Yer Abbey On!

Did you watch this show?

Despite its PBS pedigree,

Downton Abbey is the soapiest of soaps, 

a category of TV I gave up more than thirty years ago

when I realized that no one would ever be allowed to be happy

for more than a season or two.

How soapy is it?

Well in season one, this elegant, (seemingly) reserved British lady...

... killed this pillow-lipped character...

IN HER BED.

It's true!

Lady Mary, she of the demure little hats,

slept with the naughty Ambassador Pamuk and somehow 

killed 

him 

dead.

Like I said, 

SOAP CITY.

BUT!

While I may roll my eyes at the often-unbelievable shenanigans

of these Brits and their servants,

I will always come back for the FASHIONS!

Just look at these ladies!

I swoon!

And what about these wedding dresses?

I love those veils!

(And btw, I think the much-maligned Lady Edith on the right

actually looks better than her Mean Girl sister Lady Mary on the left.)

But it wasn't only the wedding finery that caught my eye;

there were also a few shots of how the village had prepared for Lady Mary's wedding:

So simple, but so pretty, right?

Bunting is evidently an English thing 

that has happily become more and more popular across the pond.

I dig it, so I decided to make some for my Etsy shop!

I did an earlier tutorial  for how to do these yourself,

but if you're interested in skipping the sewing machine

 I have both a listing for a single string and a listing for three strings in my shop.

What do you think Lady Mary?

She's excited.  I can tell.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Halloweeeeen!

The Jolly Sister celebrated her 50th birthday this past weekend!

Since she has an October birthday (as do I),
I thought a Halloween-related gift would be nice.

I saw these cool personalized pumpkins at Aaron Brothers...

... but they were pretty pricey.

And since I am the self-proclaimed Queen of Halloween...

... I knew I could figure out how to do the pumpkin myself.

Although I could have used a real pumpkin, I decided to go the Funkin route.

Btw, the Sweet Man had never heard of  "Funkins" before,

and decided that it sounded more like a disease than an artificial Halloween gourd.

Seriously, y'all, wear your flip-flops in the shower.  You don't want a case of Funkins.

I used newspaper for my template; it's floppier than regular paper,

and molds better to the pumpkin.

I cut out a smile, and fit the letters of the Jolly Sister's name into it.

Once I was happy with the smile,

 I taped it and triangle eyes and a nose to the pumpkin.

The latest batch of pumpkin carving patterns included this nifty tool...

... which made it easy to mark the lines through the paper.

Aaaaand, it wasn't until I found the Aaron Brothers photo above that I realized

I had switched up the carving area.

The ones I had seen removed the area around the letters,

I removed the letters themselves.

So if you're going to do one of these,

decide beforehand what you're removing and mark accordingly.

Anyhoo, I started cutting.  

I thought I could just used the tools from my regular pumpkin carving,

but that styrofoam was too tough. 

Instead, I settled on scoring/starting the lines with a craft knife,

and then using one of the heavier duty carving tools.

(The green carving tool came from the Pumpkin Masters "kid-friendly" carving set.)

Protip!  If you haven't carved one of these fancy pumpkins before,

make sure carve out the letters a section at a time. 

If you try to do it in one piece, you might have crucial bits crack off.

After I was done, I realized the letters didn't look "smiley" enough.

I now realize, duh, that's it's because I cut out the letters instead of the grin.

But, bygones!!

 I handled it by carving a little triangle at the corner of the smile,

to give it more definition.

Time to light 'er up!

Now, you CANNOT use a real candle in these, y'all.

I found a strobe light with the Halloween stuff at Target...

...and it fit perfectly.

Once done, I set the Funkin among its gourdy brethren...

... and was pleased with the results.

And there you go!

A fun gift for those with October birthdays,

or a cool decorating idea for a Halloween wedding,

or a neat photo prop for a family photo.

So, get carving!

I'm On A Bunting Bender!

I already showed you the Jiji bunting...

Now it's time to do a tutorial on the primitive bunting I saw at the craft fair I worked!

As you may remember, the lovely Shannon of Random Sacks of Kindness

showed me some primitive bunting she made to 

decorate her booth and her camping site when she went camping:

I loved, loved how they fluttered in the slightest breeze;

and was determined to make some of my own.

To the crafting table!

I wanted to make these as quick as possible, since they were going to be looooong.

I started with an easy width:  six inches wide, so I could just zip across

my six inch wide ruler.

To make the triangles, I also wanted easy, so I used a triangle template I already had.

This triangle template came from a set I got years ago;

it's a "triangle within a rectangle" template.

As a bonus, I found a Mother's Day card in the template envelope.

Judging from the tippy writing,
I'm guessing I got this from the kids when they were about three.

Awww!!

 (*Takes a minute to get misty about those sweet little preschoolers, then recovers

when I realize my almost twenty-one-year-old twins can both now

drive their own dang selves wherever they want.  Hurrah!*)

Most of these fabrics are either batiks, plaids, or okay-when-viewed-on-either-side,
and I only used a single, unseamed, unfinished thickness of them for the bunting.

BUT, I did have this cupcake fabric I wanted to feature

that really wasn't that cupcake-y on the back side.

So after cutting the six-inch strips, I placed two six-inch strips together,

WRONG SIDE TO WRONG SIDE, 

marked the triangles instead of cutting them...

 ... pinned along the edges of the two strips...

then sewed a quarter inch on either side of the blue lines.

Once I did that, I cut along the blue lines, so I had a two-sided cupcake pennant!

Now it was time to sew!

I nerdily used a complex method of assuring there was a sufficient randomness

to all the pennants.

Then I stacked the pennants to the left of my machine, 
zigzagged over an eighteen-inch "attaching" tail,
placed the yarn above the upper edge of the first one,
and just zigzagged right over the yarn.

You can't see it, but I put a little Sharpie dot on my clear surface,

about an inch in front of the sewing foot.

When the sewn pennant was all the way sewn, I would line up the NEXT pennant

on the dot and put the yarn on it.

It made the spaces in between the pennants pretty uniform.

To keep the yarn corralled, I put it in the box taped on the edge of my sewing table.

I found the trick to the yarn to be keeping it nice and taunt.  I pulled it straight back, firmly,

so it wouldn't go wibbly-wobbly on the top of the pennant when I was sewing it.

I used about fifty pennants, and it made a looong string!  About eleven yards!

For some of the fabrics, I couldn't find a wide enough variety,
so I did a little fabric painting before sewing.

For example, I used some gold paint on some yellow-gold batik to make this pennant

for my Harry Potter Gryffindor bunting:

You can see below I also painted some of the red fabric for this string.

That's all the same string!  Like I said, fifty pennants made a lot of bunting.

Wouldn't this Gryffindor bunting be awesome at a Harry Potter party?

THIS PIRATE BUNTING.

The idea of it being used at a Pirate Wedding makes me clutch my heart and swoon.

This silvery-green bunting was hard to photograph to do it justice,

but it would make the coolest Slytherin bunting

OR

the prettiest, sweetest garden bunting for a wedding.

(Every once in awhile I make something that I'm tempted to keep,

and I can't stop imagining this around my own back patio.)

Sometimes, a girl would just like to get her princess on.

The pinks, purples, whites and creams would be great for a real girly-girl.

And what about that cupcake bunting?

Looks pretty good, no?  It's going to be a gift.

But all the rest will be available in my Etsy shop!