Teaching the Girls to Sew! (Fun Dolls Eyelash Bunny)

Don't worry readers, I didn't give my just-turned-three-year-old a needle and a pair of sharp shears. But I did let her use toddler-appropriate kiddie scissors, and I was really impressed with how carefully she cut out her pattern pieces!

Let me step back for a moment.

Twenty-three years ago my brother (then seven) and I (10 at the time) got a really fantastic Christmas present from our sewaholic mom -— doll-making kits. We spent a couple of days sitting around the kitchen table carefully dying our doll fabric with tea, cutting out our pattern pieces, embroidering the faces, sewing on hair, and stitching the seams by hand (see photo at top). It was awesome, and I loved every minute!

My mom still has "Annie," one of the finished dolls at her house.

Anyway, when my niece T came to stay with us for a week recently, she asked if I could help her fix a split seam on her travel pillow. Instead of sewing it for her, I handed her a needle and thread and showed her how to use them... and was impressed at how quickly she figured it out and sewed a sturdy little seam on her pillow.

T was so excited by her success, I decided to give her a more fun project. I gave her a little Japanese doll sewing book and she picked a moderately challenging doll pattern. Little Z couldn't be left out, so I promised to let her make the same pattern.

The pattern: "Eyelash Bunny" from the book Aranzi Aronzo Fun Dolls (Let's Make Cute Stuff). It's a fantastic book full of cute, modern-looking little dolls with excellent comic-book-style instructions. The eyelash bunny in the book is sad, but T decided to make her happy and add button eyes:

Fabric & notions: I let the girls choose fabrics from the stash.

• T made her bunny body out of a stretchy white fleece from an old blanket, and the dress from a lovely floral cotton I had picked up a few years ago in Portland at the Bolt modern fabric shop.
• Z chose some yellow cotton flannel left over from diapers my mom made her a few years ago, the same floral for the body, and some red felt for eyes.
  

The process:

• T's bunny (aka "Mini-Me"): T had never sewn before, but took to it very quickly. She cut out all her own pattern pieces and fabric, did all of the stuffing and most of the sewing. She had a few moments of impatience with the hand-embroidery parts...
  

  ...but absolutely LOVED "driving" the sewing machine and very quickly learned to back-stitch, pivot and the like:

• Z's bunny (aka "Foo-Foo"): Z obviously couldn't do as much as her big cousin, but she made quite a try. She cut out a few of the paper pattern pieces, cut out the felt eyes and nose and glued them on, and drew a second face (that I embroidered for her):
  

  Her Nana Gail helped her cut out most of the fabric pieces, T stuffed the doll and I sewed it together.

I've taught some adults to knit before but this was so much more fun—the girls were so very excited and enthusiastic and proud of their creations! (And I found it so much easier to be really really patient and helpful with them... I think sometimes when I've taught adults I get frustrated if they don't pick things up quickly.)

I promised T that next time she visited she could sew a ruffly (and sparkly) skirt! I think she's really caught the sewing bug...

Have you ever taught anyone to sew? What was your experience?

P.S. I finally got around to setting up a Facebook page for Polka Dot Overload... will try and cross-post everything there if you prefer to follow me that way!

Sew Grateful Guest Reflection: "Surrounded by Sewing"

Above: A lovely doll my mother made when she was learning to sew in the early 1960s. "She’s lost her face and is a little sad-looking but notice the fancy hairstyle and the gathers on the sleeves and bodice. She used to have a petticoat and pantaloons but they are gone now."

How much are you loving Sew Grateful week? A big thank you to all my long-time and new readers who entered my first giveaway--it's so much fun to read your plans for what you might do with your winning vintage pattern!

Tomorrow I'll be sharing the story of how my beloved grandmother Melba taught me how to sew in a bittersweet week bookended by a road trip to a Mississippi funeral and a scary ambulance ride to a small Georgia hospital. And this weekend I hope to share my finished Sew Grateful sewing project.

In the meantime, here is a guest post from my amazing mom Beryl Reid about how HER grandmother taught HER how to sew. (Along the lines of this family tradition, I think my mom will have to teach little Z how to sew!)

"I grew up surrounded by women who sewed. My grandmother Drue was my first sewing teacher. I was living with her in Corinth, Mississippi in the summer of 1960 (I was about eight years old). There was, of course, a sewing room in the house, with an amazing pedal driven sewing machine.

"Me (in school photo) the year I learned to sew... in Corinth, Mississippi."

I had been sewing “by hand” for a long time, for as long as my memory goes back. I had just finished making a doll that wasn’t really for playing with... it was a Civil War era doll that reflected my obsession with history. I wanted to make a really detailed and authentic period costume for the doll.

"This is a photo of us kids, sitting on one of the rag rugs my grandmother made at the house in Corinth. I'm on the far left."

My grandmother decided I should learn to use the sewing machine for the doll’s costume. She sat with me for days, making sure I knew how to thread the machine and run it. Her method of teaching was gentle, but “hands off”. She let me make all my own mistakes and knew that getting me started was all that was needed. There was no “hovering” or nagging or recriminations... at all!

"This is a picture of my sister Melinda, my cousin Pam and my brother Michael... my grandmother Drue made all these clothes."

Most of the time I was left alone with the machine, my imagination and time to figure out what to do on my own. She might suggest some techniques... especially the gathering of the skirts and pantaloons. She would show me, then leave the room. Often, she would be in the next room, working on one of her own projects.

Every woman I knew in my family and extended family did some kind of home sewing or “making.” Drue had grown up in the rural South, the wife of a sharecropper—and in that culture, you often couldn’t buy something nice to wear, but you could make it yourself. She loved to make clothes, quilts and rag rugs... it was a legitimate creative pleasure for her and the women of my family. Both of her daughters (including my mother) had learned the same outlook and were both skilled at sewing, knitting and the art of “making it yourself.”

"Drue (center, between my sister Becky and grandfather Garland) sets up a quilting frame in preparation for a quilting bee."

By the time I returned to my mother and father after that summer, I knew how to sew. I had to re-learn it a bit when I started using my mother’s electric Singer, but that didn’t take too long. My mother Melba didn’t have to teach me. She added a few practical tips to my outlook on sewing, mostly of the time-saving sort:

• She scorned the use of pins... a few upside coffee cups on the pattern were enough.
• She also didn’t really believe in chalk or marking... a dart should be memorized and just done.

Speed was important to my mother. She worked full time as a book keeper when I was growing up, so sewing was done after a long day and was often because she wanted a new outfit for herself or me and my siblings—it was a practical activity. She did love to dress up (she inherited this from her mother!). They looked like models from a magazine to me and I admired them as gorgeous, stylish and capable women.

By the time I was eleven, I had progressed to making my own dresses for school. I remember one dress, it was a turquoise blue “mini” dress (remember this was the time of the “British Invasion” and skirts were inching up!) it was sleeveless and had a large double ruffle around a scoop neck, almost like a big necklace or flower lei. I can’t tell you how proud I was to wear it to school!"

——Beryl Reid (aka Mikhaela's mom)

Four (sewing) generations:Beryl, Melba (holding Mikhaela) and Drue in the early 1980s.

I'm afraid I don't have any pictures of my mom's ruffled blue mini dress, or of any of Drue's beautiful quilts (my mom thinks there might be one in her attic but she couldn't find it)... but here's a bonus photo of me as a baby in an outfit my mom sewed for me--I love the sweet purple rick rack!

So tell me, dear readers--do you have any family sewing traditions?

Meet the Boys, Pt. 2: Ronnie

Ronnie adorned with crown of unpicked serger thread

In the first part of this two-part series, you met Riley, my sniffly, foot-pedal-cord-chewing life-threatening-illness-prone runt of a cat. In this second and final part: Life With Ronnie!

This gray-and-white lapdog of a cat meowed his way into our home in November 2007, a few months after our wedding. We both work full-time and had started to worry that Riley, playful guy that he is, was lonely and bored during the day. Clearly he needed a friend!

Some friends of ours had just bought a house in Bushwick, and discovered they had three cats and a litter of kittens living in their backyard--extremely domestic cats that seemed to think they belonged inside said house. Big heavy metal fans that they are, our friends named the cats Ronnie, James and Dio and gave them food and water, but with three dogs and a cat of their own, there was no room in the house for more pets.

We initially thought we'd bring home two of the kittens--so cute and tiny!--but they wanted nothing to do with us and hid behind the lawn furniture. Ronnie, on the other hand, was aggressively friendly--within seconds he was in our laps purring and talking to us, and we just couldn't resist. He was a bit scrawny when we brought him home:

... but he beefed up in no time. It turned out he was already neutered and our vet was fairly certain of what we already suspected--Ronnie and his brother and sister were abandoned housepets, possibly left behind by the previous owners of the house when they moved away. (GRRR! For SHAME!)

And let's just say he has abandonment issues. When not being held or picked up or petted by us or played with by Riley, he just wanders around the apartment yowling forlornly (good practice for having a baby, maybe?). We can't let him in our bedroom at night for litter box access reasons, and he STILL doesn't understand--some nights he sits outside and cries until the wee hours. Within seconds of either of us (especially Masheka) sitting down, he makes a running jump for our laps. Dislodging him is nigh impossible--he has a magical technique of going limp and tripling his weight when we try to push him off.

Good thing he has Riley to keep him company. They mostly get along great, but do their fair share of wrestling and play fighting--mostly over who gets to groom who. They have a gross but hilarious fixation on licking the ear wax out of each others ears and our vet always comments on how clean their ears are. But when Riley was deathly ill last year, Ronnie just did NOT understand why his buddy didn't want to play, and we had to keep running interference so Riley could get some sleep.

Also--the dude really likes catnip. Riley could care less, but put a little bit on the floor and Ronnie starts rolling around and dancing and who knows what until he's covered in it:

And that concludes this extremely brief series that has nothing to do with sewing, and everything to do with the fact that I am a crazy cat lady.

The Vintage Singer Mystery Solved!

I mentioned yesterday that my mother and I were still puzzling over the origins of the beautiful vintage Singer that turned up in her flooded basement the other day. Mystery solved! After some thought and digging around in her own basement, my Bobie (grandmother) realized that it was indeed her first sewing machine, the one she learned to sew on in the 1950s--she even found the thread and projects she had for it, and the table she had it installed in. She apologized for not recognizing it instantly--but I told her that when you're 87, you're allowed to forget things occasionally!

So here's the story, as she recalls it! She didn't do much sewing at home, or right after she was married (in August 1944)--and soon, she had four young kids to take care of in a small apartment, not leaving her much free time! She did do some crocheting and knitting, however, like this lovely baby blanket she made for my Aunt Elissa in 1947, and which has now been passed down to me for my little girl! (Sorry for the weird cropping, but I was making a bizarre face!)

Eventually they moved to a bigger house and she decided to learn to sew dresses for her two daughters--who had particular ideas about what they wanted to wear, unlike my dad!--and clothes for herself. She thinks she got the machine from her family, and that they had had it for quite a few years before that. When she upgraded to a newer machine many years later, she gave the old Singer to my parents, and into the basement it went.

Here's a photo of Sylvia (that's her name, by the way--Sylvia Katler, born Sylvia Fishman) in the 1940s looking sharp in her Coast Guard uniform--she's on the right, and that's her sister Sarah and brother Milton. Most of her nine brothers and sisters were also in the service during WWII (Milton was too young, but served in the Korean War).

Here are some photos of her with my grandfather Leon Katler, also from the 1940s--don't they look glamorous?

And here they are in 1947 as new parents:

Here's a picture of the four kids with Leon from the 1950s, but I don't know if she sewed that dress (and I can't tell which is my dad and which is his brother, they looked a lot alike back then!):

Here's a recent photo of me and Sylvia at my baby shower, with my grandmothers-in-law Theresa and Wilhelmina!

And should you be interested, in college I put together a short collection of some family stories she told me about her life growing up in old Jewish Boston, her time in the Coast Guard, and beyond!

Meet the boys, Pt. 1: Riley!

You've (digitally) met me and Masheka, and you'll meet Cartoonist Baby soon enough. But there are two more members of our little Brooklyn family who deserve your attention!

First up, there's Riley (shown here in 2006 sneezing all over Masheka, and in 2007 participating in a book publicity photo shoot):

Riley first sniffled his way into my life in May of 2004, mere days before I met Masheka. I had just moved to my first pet-friendly Brooklyn apartment, and there was a cat-shaped hole in my life. My parents had tried to lend me one of theirs, but she retaliated for this abandonment by scratching at my legs and peeing on my bed EVERY DAY (plastic tarps were no barrier to her mad urination skills).

So Mombi returned to Massachusetts, and I paid a visit to a cat rescue group. This time I wanted to adopt a sweet, loving lap kitty without vengeful urination habits. Finally, I just asked "who is your friendliest cat?"

That would be Riley. As soon as they opened his carrier, this little orange-and-white guy leapt into my arms and began purring like a steam engine. Instant cat love! His shelter name was actually "Reilly", but I changed the spelling in tribute to the Boondocks comic strip character.

But hours after I got him home, I began to worry. He just huddled on my bed, totally uninterested in food or water. Turns out he had a major respiratory illness, the equivalent of kitty pneumonia. So my first phone conversation with Masheka (before our first date) found me sitting on the kitchen floor with Riley wrapped in a towel as I tried--and mostly failed--to administer chicken-flavored baby food via syringe.

After two weeks at the vet hooked up to an IV and feeding tube (paid for by the apologetic rescue group), Riley recovered. And for the past six years he has brought a ridiculous level of joy to our lives. He's sweet, cuddly and playful, with a loud asthma-enhanced vaccuum-cleaner purr and a penchant for streaking madly around the apartment for no apparent reason.

Still, life with Riley can be a bit of a trial. There is nothing he will not bite, chew, scratch, cough (again, the asthma), sneeze or vomit on. Despite our obsessive use of cord-protection devices, he has twice managed to completely eat through the presser-foot cable on my Viking Platinum 730, occasioning expensive emergency trips to the repair shop. I have to watch him like a hawk around yarn, thread and elastic. I'm just glad he's never electrocuted himself!

And then there is his insistence on developing terrifying life-threatening illnesses on a regular basis. A seriously infected broken tooth (likely due to his unconventional choice of food materials) nearly killed him last spring; by the time he came home from his dental surgery he was a skeletal 3.9 pounds:

He made a miraculous recovery and weighs nearly 8 pounds now... but not so long ago terrified us again by scratching a tiny scab on his neck into a giant gaping bloody wound. I had no choice but to serge him up a rib-knit T-shirt to keep his claws off it while it healed (he had destroyed the vet-provided version in minutes):

Masheka remarked that Riley looked ready to play jazz flute in this little turtleneck... but kitty was just relieved when we finally let him wiggle out of it. So: aside from medical necessity, sewing for cats = not recommended.

Next up in this extremely short series: Life With Ronnie!