my friend Florence

Vintage patterns are interesting things.  For example, I got this 1954ish pattern at a thift store in washington state.  When I opened it, it was partly cut out for the second-design skirt, with "Florence Eagleson, 3 period" written in careful cursive on each piece.  It appears that this pattern belonged to a girl back in 1954ish who decided it would be pretty keen to make a skirt in her home economics class, period 3.She was pretty fond of doing math on her pattern.  This is not the only instance of math!I find this humrous, because this is how much I would have had to take in had I made this skirt for myself.  Okay, fine, five inches here.  But still! She even left a scrap of very-old fabric in it---I wonder if she used this purple stuff for her skirt?  It would have looked quite nice, though it is awful thin!  But maybe it's deteriorated with age/being kept in a musty thrift store.  She made this simple but adorable style.Her name was on every piece.  And more math!  I believe she was better at math than I.  Perhaps she was calculating fabric and notion costs?

I did end up making this skirt, with the fabric you see in the background here, for my mother.   

The question is---where is Florence now?

My little fairies

Semester break starts monday.  Of course, this means we have homework, but we don't have to turn anything in until school commences again.... I don't know who likes this more, the teachers or the students.  =)  Anyway I decided I did NOT want to do much homework today, so this was the result.  Fairies!  I did want some nice fairies.  They are sculpted out of super sculptey, with tons of powder and glitter.  The wings are sculptey III and liquid polymer clay.  I had sculpted most of the body of the little one a few weeks ago, but I finished her up and made her a head and wings.    Nine out of ten fairies agree: this is humiliating!  The bright blue bead is to keep her hands in the right position for baking.  My only baking crisis was that the little gold fairy, the standing one, had her head fall down, but I propped her up on the second fairy and all was well.    Before baking.  Note gum-wrapper clothing.... After!  A foot.  Note that these pictures were taken at nearly seven PM at night, thus the poor photo quality and colors.  I was going to wait to post about my fairies until I could get some pretty outdoor photos, but I suppose I will get those later when the rain/hail/wind slows up, and I get sun so their glitter and powder will sparkle. 

I plan to make wigs for them, possibly paint eyebrows (I tried, but it's late and I have no idea what colors to make the eyebrows!) make them clothes because kleenex isn't really cutting it, and of course get mor photos of the little things.  I don't have good pictures of the sitting one yet.  I think her eyes need more work, anyway....

But anyway, I now have fairies. 

Our street flooded.

don't worry, as I write this it's okay.  But really, where I live it does NOT flood like this.  Ever.THe trash cans got swept away, much to my mother's chargrin as she tried to pic up the trash.One of my pairs of boots...no, not the regular ones, but boots just the same.THe real problem is that we live in a ditch between two hills, and that's why all the water was settling in front of our house.  =DMy brother.  Assessing the situation, as always.Our feet...Brother and little sis, cunning dressed up as a griffindor.  Jk, it's a rain poncho....This car got shorted, appearently, trying to drive through a foot and a half of water...My lil brother.Me.  Note pink and white umbrella and pink hoodie.You can see here the water's starting to clear up.  Which is nice...And then it started to pour again.  Lovely.

In which my own sewing continues to eat away my closet space...

I've made another skirt this morning.  Horray for weekends from school, or, as we learned in spanish friday, "Fin de semana."  Anyway.  It's made out of a lovely silk I had a yard of.... I know, silk for modern, but it was a VERY modern silk!  What in the 18th century has raised stitching lines???  Sorry for the bad quality of pictures; I took them with the webcam on my computer. 

What I learned from making this skirt is that someone who's five-feet-eight-inches like me really needs more than 50 inches of fabric in her skirt.  Ah, well. 

I've also learned recently, just after making my 1940's pants, which I have yet to post pictures of, is that while I have a size five waist, I have size zero hips for junior sizing.  That's a big difference =)  Well, it's hereditary!  My mum is exactly the same way!  We're shaped like logs, lol!  Except for fitting patterns, I really quite don't mind. 

But in the last two days I've made most of a blouse (didn't work...!), a pair of wide-legged 1940's style pants (well, a wearable mockup kinda thing... If I find the whim to wear them, I can) and then this skirt.  Not too shabby I don't think!

Also, I'm thinking about going out for cross-country next school year.  Except for the school doesn't have a girls' cross-country team.  So I suppose I'll just run with the boys....