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My favorite essential crafting tools

This could be a very long list but I'm going to try to limit it to an arbitrary number, say 10. I do a lot of different kinds of crafts so that makes it hard but I'm trying to think of the things I use a lot and would not want to do without. Then maybe I'll talk a bit about each one at some other point.

1. My Mac of course. Being a graphic designer, almost everything I do gets touched by the computer at some point.
2. My sewing machine. I do a lot of sewing and mending, I think this is a must-have for every household.
3. My serger. Hmmmm. Yes, I could do without it but it's fast becoming my right hand for sewing projects.
4. My good Japanese fabric scissors.
5. My lightbox. I think my parents got it for me when I had just started the advertising design program. This year I got another lightbox that is round! and it spins! It won't replace my traditional rectangular box but it probably deserves its own post.
6. An X-acto knife and a metal ruler. I'm going to lump these together because they almost always get used together. Can I squeeze the self-healing cutting mat in here too?
7. My Japanese sewing awls (meuchi) This probably warrants its own post as well to explain why.
8. roll of 18" wide white paper. Someone gave this to me when I was in college and I have been using it ever since, mostly for drafting patterns but not just for sewing.
9. Flathead pins. If you sew anything these are really the best. Get the finer size with the heat resistant heads.
10. Beacon's craft glue. I hesitate to single this out but I discovered it last year and now I use it for everything. It bonds in a similar way and almost as fast as hot glue but without the heat, yet you can also apply it thin and get a repositionable bond like spray adhesive, without the mess.

Well, I can already think of a few more things, like Frances, my dressmaker's form, made by my husband. You can read about her here.

Word of the Day: Smarshmallow

smarshmallow (according to the girl)

1. those little white things Nana puts in your hot chocolate
2. white mushrooms

Snow fort a.k.a. Cinderella's tower

And now I am going to consider myself officially caught up to real blog time as these pictures were taken yesterday! Another storm this week brought 6 inches of powder topped with a good 3/4 inches of hardened ice. After the earlier success with the igloo, the girl and I decided to build bigger. We chose one of the 6 foot tall snow banks at the street end of the driveway as a good place to build a tower. The kids had trudged a path along the top of the ridge to the top of this bank already. The girl and I broke up the ice into "bricks" and carried them up to the building site. I did a little prep with the shovel and then we started laying the bricks in a semi-circle. The bottom portion I "mortared" with snow but you can see the "bricks" are simply laid on top of each other nearer the top. We practiced our princess waving to the neighbors and the boy enjoyed playing in the fort as well. They kids decided to play at being Pazu and Sheeta, characters from one of our favorite movies, must-see Castle in the Sky from Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki. (We have the Disney two disc set which includes the original Japanese version on the second DVD.)

Crow tee shirt (sometime in January 2009)

I'm not exactly sure when I made this because I didn't take the picture right away. The boy couldn't wait to get into it. He's been needing some long sleeve tee shirts so I've just been trying to make them from fabric or our old tee shirts that we haven't been wearing rather than buy, especially since he is so thin that the store bought ones tend to look too wide to get the sleeves long enough. My husband donated a grey tee shirt to the cause and I recut and serged it up one night, intending to leave it plain. The boy however wanted to know what animal I was going to put on it. Since we had been watching the crows outside the window earlier he hit upon that. I looked for some pictures of crows on the internet and he chose one in flight. I printed out several and then quickly composited them on my lightbox to get the features I wanted from each, the wings from one, the open beak of another, the grasping feet of a third. I then simply cut a paper stencil and dabbed on fabric dye and heat set it with the iron. I lobbied for a small critter on the run at the bottom of the shirt but the boy preferred to have the word "crow" so that's what I did. The boy was reluctant to help with the actual shirt but did do a second stencil of the crow onto a scrap piece of fabric that will hopefully appear on a later garment for the girl. All done in time to catch the bus to PM kindergarten. I'm afraid they are getting a little too used to this!

Giraffe dress! (1/17/09)

The girl has been mad about giraffes lately so I had to get this unusual Alexander Henry giraffe print when I saw it at the local fabric shop. There's nothing cute about it, until you put it on the girl! I used the same A-line shift pattern but changed the shoulder seam to accommodate ribbons instead and added pockets to the side seams. I also made it a little bigger, maybe a little too much but then again she should be able to wear it in the summer without a shirt under. I had intended to use wide grosgrain ribbon for the shoulder ties but what I couldn't find a good color match so I ended up making the ties from the lining fabric. For some reason I cut them on the bias. I really cannot tell you why. Now they are easy to tie and drape beatifully but they also do not hold a knot well no matter how hard I pull. So . . . I may have to sew the bows shut. The mock-neck shirt I made up on the serger from a rayon ponté knit bought for another project that never got used. I'm getting better at this serger thing! I also made matching wide bottom pants. The girl was not inclined to wear the pants the day I took the picture but she has since. It's scary how mod she looks in the brown top and pants and her brown suede boots. I think she wore this dress about four times the first week.

Mama made pajamas! (1/17/09)

I ordered this great Michael Miller snowboard flannel before Christmas but it didn't arrive until after Christmas. Still we have lots of flannel PJ weather to go up here in Maine so I sewed some pajama pants up for the boy. Do you think he likes them?? The girl is wearing a yummy soft cotton velour dress from Dharma Trading that I tie dyed about two years ago! Too short to wear without pants now except to bed. Dark yellow and tangerine I think, turned out to be a great color combo for her.