Dispatch From LA

Where I Get Out My Sewn Paper Crack Pipe And Take A Big Hit

So I went HERE and saw one of my favorite crafty gangster's sewn valentines and then I found HIM and basically I got all excited and decided I needed some to do some of this:

and then I did this:

and this:

which led to this:

and in between all that I went to my visual journal and did this:

and this:

Vacation induced narcotic bliss.  It's good.  You want some.  You want some NOW.

Oh and if you plunk down 330 pennies you could check out THIS.     Because  there's some pretty cool stuff inside including boats made out of milk cartons that you could make with the little punks in your life.  Plus lots of blog layout ideas.  Online magazines are so full of those.

An Elf

A big serving of cold and grey in the City of Angels today.   Too much sunshine causes my smooth thoughts to become jagged.  Rain is in the forecast for next week!  It's 56 degrees outside!  Not enough cool weather to smooth out my thoughts yet.  Bear with me.  An elf sent me some Christmas fabric.  So I made a toaster cover!

 

Look at me!  Look at me NOW!  Stop sewing paper together and making toaster covers and pet me.  Or I will do something bad.

 

But first let me go lay down.  On top of your projects.

I think.  I think I sent every last one of you pre-registered boys and girls your registration link.  I started some last night and finished the rest this morning.  Um... I think I got all of you.  But maybe I didn't.  If a few of you slipped by I apologize.  Zip me out an email and I'll take care of you.   Enclose the original message you sent when you pre-registered, that will help cut down on any search and rescue I might have to do.

Regular registration has begun for REMAINS OF THE DAY .  If you pre-registered use the link I sent you, don't use the BUY  NOW button.   Don't forget to put your name in the hat over HERE .  Not on this post.  On the REMAINS OF THE DAY post.  If you already dropped in your name last week you're set!  I'm drawing each Tuesday in December from the same pool of names.  Make sense?

Off to toss another log in the fire and curl up with a hot toddy and a book!

Where I Build A Travel Journal For My Sister

I do what I can with what I have.  Take one red folder found next to an Italian dumpster, a bag of fabric scraps, a 40 year old piece of cord trim, a stack of security envelopes, some paper scraps, and a couple of spools of red thread.  Put the pedal to the metal and VROOM VROOM.

I'm not snipping a single thread.

It won't fall apart if I do or anything.  This journal is built to withstand swatting a pickpocket over the head, being flung from a speeding bus, or stampeded by  bulls.  Not my sister, I mean real bulls.

A prime example of guerrilla sewing.  Gone wild.

Messy Spraying & Guerrilla Sewing

The red folder is back!  This time in my sister's travel journal.  I diligently applied my guerrilla sewing tactics and cobbled together a sturdy book into which smooth vacation thoughts can be written.    You darling people that have decided to take the leap into STITCHED & STENCILED...know this: I am NO seamstress.  Which is why THIS is my machine.

If, for example, I had to sew up a brand new polyster pant suit.  Nope.  Wouldn't happen.  Somewhere deep in the sewing brain there are thoughts on how to do this.  Flowcharts, diagrams, that sort of thing.  But over the years they've been replaced.  You know.  With  guerrilla methods.

More messy spraying into the leftover-paint-experimental-calendar- stencily book.
Drinking iced tea.  Immersing myself deeply in rigorous leisure.  I haven't had a summer off in years.

Some days I'm more pleased with my efforts than others.   But I just keep going.

Inside The Kooky Covers

The Postcard Empire has crumbled.  Alas, it was bound to happen.  Mostly because I only like to make stuff until I don't want to make it anymore.  Longevity is not one of my character traits.  Unless we're talking about rice pudding or tres leches cake.  And we're not.  Are we?

Something else got stuck in my craw.  A little paperback journal made out of scraps.  Envelope scraps, wallpaper, security envelopes, pages from a DIY plumbing magazine from the 60's, heavyweight book pages from books that have been gutted, photos.  You know.... STUFF.

I stacked it all up into a nice neat pile.  Arranged the pages how I wanted them.  Folded the whole stack in half.  Sewed it down the middle.

The unfolded size is a little bigger than 9 x 11.  I didn't try to make it all even or the same size.

Didn't trim the security envelopes or repair any rips.

Let it be its shabby self.

Stuck 2 sides of a different envelope, this one padded that a cd came in earlier this week.  Okay anyway...stuck those 2 padded pieces inside the cover envelope.  You know, to make it cushy.

Sewed the ends of the cover envelope shut sandwiching the padded pieces inside.

Sewed a piece of heavy trim on the outside to tie the whole thing together in a loose sort of way.

I'm filling it with little photos of daily life and writing.   The writing I would normally do in my writing journal.  It's all going in here.  Inside the kooky covers of my old ramshackle book.  A new container to hold everything over the next week.

Next up:  I curse my way through the changing of my broken machine needle.  And I load up more postcards in the album in the sidebar.  

Filling The Blue Urn With Fire

I've dragged it out long enough.  It's officially official.  Visual Journal #9 is having a wrap party.   I always save the cover page for last and this morning that was finished.  This means my mind must turn itself in the direction of Visual Journal #10.    

In the meantime I continue to sit out back and fill up the pages of my writing journal.  When I'm not busy taking a  small bite of poetry I found in the novel I'm reading, that is...

Oh tenderly the haughty day

Fills his blue urn with fire

or studying kalanchoe thyrsiflora above and  crassula arborescens below.   Which I do every morning and evening.

It goes without saying that the days spent in the classroom leave me tired.   But not too tired for a tivoed stack of House Hunters or Everyday Food or So You Think You Can Dance or Cash Cab, which lately I tune into more than the computer.  I think television is FABULOUS with a capital F.  Yesiree I do.

A new shade I sewed up with my stack of new Jennifer Paganelli fabric.  It's fairly easy to make a blind like this without a pattern.  Pillowcases to follow.  Is it wrong to want the inside of Moss Cottage to resemble a candy store?   That's a rhetorical question.

A Sunday museum class has me zipping all over LA lately.  I begin 2 more professional development classes next week.  And the senior member of the cat posse, Buck is being switched to a raw cat food diet.  A grinder will be purchased and cat food production will begin in earnest if I can't find a cheaper source.  If any of you have done this I'd love to hear about it.

Joy Bus

I enjoyed the weekend watching the bright world spin outside my windows while I sat at the sewing machine listening to the humming whir of the little motor pushing the fabric under the needle. It is soothing that sound.   The patterns going on in the bed linens less so.  

And besides I needed things. A new curtain for the kitchen. Hard-to-find cases for the body pillow. New potholders, the old ones are falling apart. The blue fabric in the potholders is from a well-worn shirt. The rest are vintage tablecloth scraps leftover from an apron I made a while back.

Simple things for a guerilla sewer like myself who can't follow the easiest directions and likes to make up the rules as I go. 

And now the picture I didn't take of the JOY BUS speeding past me on Sunday. Its blue and white side panels freshly washed and gleaming in the morning light. In my rear view mirror I watch it approach. J-O-Y B-U-S spelled out in boxy red letters above its windshield. From the looks of things a bus full of clowns hitting the road in a tricked out former school bus- one of the big rounded kind with a domed roof and cartoon fenders. Then it speeds by and I see the faces of grinning kids, not clowns, up against the glass. So excited! I can feel it as they careen past on their way to someplace BIG.

Where I Sew And Use Foul Language

Will you get a load of my sister's travel journal! Is it a bundle of fabulousness or what? Huh? OR WHAT? Mine should be ready to roll in a couple of days. Hopefully American Airlines will be up and rolling by then too. In between hand wringing and pole vaulting off my porch I decided that my sewing machine needed a cover.

Things started out well enough...as well as these things go without a pattern. I was feeling confident and clever as I began, but soon my mood soured. The entire project metamorphised into an ill-conceived fiasco. My original 2-dishcloth method which involved no hemming or pinning had seemed so simple. How could it be So Wrong?! I looked around for someone to blame. No one, it seems, was around. (insert string of bad words here)

It became apparent that my rogue sewing methods had sewn me up into a tight spot. WHAT ABOUT THE CORNERS? Whose idea was this?! I sat on the couch and stared at the corners for a solid hour willing them to sew themselves shut.

THEY DID NOT.

I persevered. While the inside of my sewing machine cover is a disaster bit untidy, the outside is, well, it's FINE. I'm pleased. All's well that ends well. Or some such nonsense.

Next up: No pattern skin-tight party pants made from one of Mama Moss' old leather jackets.