So you want to be a burlesque dancer...

My friend invited me out to a burlesque show last night.  It was not really what I was expecting.  And, yet, so much more! It was every body type you could imagine, which just made me so happy.  Long slender legs to curvaceous booty! 

I was expecting a group of skinny flexible dancers in lace and feathers.  Oh there were lace and feathers, but there was also head scarves, leopard print, books and so much more.

At the end of the show they had a bit of a contest. All you had to do was shout profanities at the MC when she announced a letter that it had to start with.  Three people got to go up on stage to participate, and I was one of them. I won with... Ahem... The C-word... And XXX.  That one was the finale.  Got me a $50 gift certificate toward a tattoo. 

I found it fascinating.  And fun.  I'm seriously considering joining the troupe.  Haven't had the discussion with the hubby yet, but I could totally rock this! Plus it would go along well with my new endeavour of being a Passion Party consultant.  Dildos and burlesque! Well, this isn't exactly what I had in mind when I needed a change from dog grooming, but it's definitely different.  

New beginnings

Cheesy name for a post, I know.  But it pretty much sums it up. For those who have kept up with my blog, you were probably well aware that life as a dog groomer was coming to an end and I intended to take life in a more creative direction. Well, it's a work in progress, but it is progress!

It has been almost two months since my last blog post.  This is what happens with such a big change.  It has been nothing but chaos for two months.  I first wrote "stress" instead of "chaos", but stress is definitely not the right word.  It has actually been relatively stress-free.  Or stress-releasing, even. 

The promise of a new adventure lifted a lot of weight from my shoulders.  I could have fun with each step of the process because I didn't have to think about what came next.  Or three steps down the line. I had no idea! Not a clue what was coming.  No idea where we were going to live.  No jobs lined up.  Yeah okay, I had my moments that drive Dan a little crazy while I was up at 6am doing research on places for rent and job openings so that I had a working list if who to start calling at 9.  I think the business owner in me is still a little bit of a hard-ass that way.  

Well, we took the first apartment that accepted us and our cat and planned the move.  Left everything behind with no real plans.  I did manage to line up one job before the big move, but I still had no idea how much I would be making or how many hours.  

The job was at a little quilting shop called Serge and Sew.  Two weeks into it and I absolutely love it.  It's creative.  The girls are wonderful.  And there are so many opportunities to learn new things.  But, it definitely is not full time.  And low pay.  And it's worth it.  

I have managed to acquire a second job at a cafe.  I don't much care for the job.  It's pretty slack. The girls are great, but it really is a bit mind numbing with no potential for progress or knowledge to be obtained. I've always hated working with food.  But it's work.  If it gives me enough money to buy more fabric...  ;)

Dan has also managed to get a job at a great place.  We have settled in nicely to our new home where we can watch drug deals and hookers in the streets from our windows.  Don't get me wrong, it's a decent little apartment.  We are within walking distance to the ocean and one of my best friends' house. At least we can afford it.  

Plastic bag dress

Earth day.  (Okay so I'm a little behind on this blog.)  Each year HOPE Society is plagued with the concept of what to do to celebrate Earth Day.  Last year we took pictures of environmentally friendly products sold in stores all over town.  The year before we had an upcycling contest to try to encourage people to come up with creative ways to reuse things. This year, I wanted to make a statement.

Not sure how much of a statement we actually made.  My original thought was to make a big pyramid of the amount of disposable cups Houston goes through every year.  But of course that would mean using a lot of disposable cups. 

So I tried to come up with something that could be made of waste that's already been used.  Plastic bags seemed to be a good option.  They are typically still clean after use and it's easy to collect a lot of them in a short period of time.  Plus they are a big environmental issue.  

At first I wanted to make a big flag out of the bags.  There was an issue of where one could fly such a flag. And if it tore, there would be litter issues. So Cindy and I came up with the idea of making a plastic bag dress! I was very excited about it.  We asked her daughter to be the model and  immediately made a duct tape mannequin.  (http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/1200x/3a/88/c3/3a88c34f7568f5dfcc0e335ac389bb2e.jpg)

I worked on the dress at every opportunity over the next few days as I was running out of time to make a display for Earth Day.  But I got it done and was fairly happy with the results.  

Unfortunately, Cindy was having trouble coming up with good information on plastic bag waste to put up as part of the display with the dress.  Not that she couldn't find info.  It's just that the more she dug, the more she found that there wasn't much persuasive evidence against them.  Apparently, it take approximately 132 uses of a reusable bag to compensate for the extra pollution and energy use to make them compared to a disposable bag. You would need a pretty durable bag to get through that many shopping trips.  If you use them once a week, that's over two and a half years.  And even biodegradable paper bags are more environmentally damaging because they take so much more to produce them than disposable plastic. 

We opted to set up a previously used display consisting of the reduce, reuse, recycle concept (with emphasis on the reduce and reuse part) in an effort to reduce more waste by reusing a display rather than making a whole new one.  It wasn't really my initial vision, but it did attract attention. Kids especially thought it was cool because the dress was made for their schoolmate.  

Moving to Nanaimo

As you may or may not be aware, I am moving to Nanaimo next month.  The entire process has felt delayed for me.  I feel like if I can just pack a little bit here and there, there won't be so much to do right at the end.  But of course it's hard to pack your life up for a couple months.

DVDs, sure. Toiletries, nope.  Gotta keep those out.  Kitchen, that's gotta stay. Camping gear, guess I can pack that.  Well it's basically already packed.  Craft supplies, hell no! Those will be out until I absolutely have to pack that room up.

Dan figures we can just wait until we get there to find a place.  I'm definitely not that optimistic.  I've been looking.  Not crazy-hunting mind you.  But I've browsed kijiji. And I've contacted a few people.  One guy was ready to give me a call in a few hours to talk about it and then suddenly just stopped replying to my emails altogether! *le sigh*

Socializing has probably been the biggest time consumer lately.  We want to be able to see everyone at least one more time before we go. And vice versa.  My weekends are all already planned before we go.  Girls night out, dinners, geocaching getaway, visitors from out of town, board game nights.  I'm booked up.  

Plus I've been helping Dan out with his online gaming community podcasts.  Not that I mind.  I'm actually really enjoying it. But you don't just get extra time in a week to do these things.  It has to squeeze something else out.  I've been having a hard time getting any crafting in.  Rental research has replaced my computer time for uploading items onto Etsy or checking my emails.

So, alas, crafting time has become minimal.  And I imagine it will stay that way until we are settled in the new place in Nanaimo.

Check out my latest treasury of items from Vancouver Island, I've got the blues... and pinks,on Etsy

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T-Shirt Quilt

I posted on Facebook asking for quilt ideas.  A friend of mine asked if I could make a quilt out of all of her old t-shirts.  She had just gathered them to take them to the thrift store, but thought that this would be a much better idea.  She wouldn't have to get rid of all her favourite shirts!

I accepted the challenge, as I know that t-shirt fabric is not the most fun material to work with.  But it would be an adventure.  My favourite part is always the designing.  So I sketched out a plan.

With only 10 shirts to work with, I had to come up with a pattern to make it bigger than a baby blanket.  PINTEREST! I found so many beautiful t-shirt quilts.  Here are some of the ones I really liked:

I think you can see which one I took my inspiration from the most.  I did not, however, choose to use other material for the accents and borders.  I wanted to use as much of the t-shirts as possible so there was as little waste as possible.  

And so it began! The most difficult part of this project was also the most forgiving.  The thing about jersey fabric (as t-shirts are most often made of) is that they have a lot of stretch, a lot of drape to them.  The most taxing thing I found was that they rolled up on the edges.  It wasn't always easy to square up the fabric. Since it stretches, it gets skewed easily.  I mainly just tried to lay it flat with no wrinkles in a way that it was relaxed with no tension on it.

The fact that it stretched also meant that if I was a tad off in managing to get it square, it would still work.  If I found that over a length of two edges to be sewn together, they were off by about a quarter inch.  The shorter one could just be stretched ever so slightly to end up matching in the whole grand scheme of the quilt.

(The back)

I had a lot of fun with this project, although I feel like it has rather taken over getting anything else done with Flouster.  I've been falling behind on blogs. I haven't made anything else since I started this except for helping a friend make a Velma costume for her little girl's skating recital.  (Which she did fabulous at! I got to go and watch.)  I haven't even posted all the items that I already have up on the Etsy website.  I have, despite all this, been getting more hits on my Etsy page, though I highly credit adding custom engraved dog tags to my store for that... ...oddly enough.

I digress, after 133 pieces and approximately 55 hours of work, the t-shirt quilt is now finished.  It is a good snuggle-up-on-the-couch size at 56"x64" and is loved by my friend, whom I made it for.

Check out my latest treasury, T-shirts say a lot about you,on Etsy

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Achoo!

Every once in a while, I like to review my waste.  Nobody's perfect.  I certainly put out a can for the garbage truck on occasion. Granted it's only every month and a half or two. But I still like to see if I can reduce it even more.

As you can see, my garbage cans are filled mostly with facial tissues.  Might not seem like such a huge deal.  Tissue is just paper, right? That's recyclable and biodegradable. True.  But like paper cups, eventually they add up to a lot even though a single one is not so bad. Also, when you buy tissues, they come in a box with a plastic opening. And if you buy a bunch of them, the pack is wrapped in plastic.  So every time you throw away a tissue, you throw away a little bit of plastic used to get it to you.  (I actually just use toilet paper, but the same principle applies with plastic packaging and toilet paper rolls.)

Well, it's a fairly obvious answer. Hankies! Hankies have been phased out in the name of convenience and germophobia! I am no germophobe. And as it is plainly a large contribution to my household waste, I am ready to make the switch!

I decided to make some.  I have no idea where you could buy hankies anyway.  I had a tiny bit of starry flannel so I made a couple out of that, but took advantage of the many receiving blankets I had on hand (for some reason?). With my allergies, a couple wasn't going to cut it.  

I cut out many 10x10 squares, rounded the corners, used a zig zag stitch around the edge to prevent unraveling and voila! Hankies! I keep a stack in my towel closet and grab a couple to get me through the day. Bye bye wads of tissue waste!

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Coaster Tutorial

I think this was one of the first things I ever learned to sew.  So simple! They make cute gifts. Or you can keep a few different sets around for different occasions. Thought I'd share the how to.

1: Pick out two fabrics you like and think would look good together.

2: Cut out 3 squares of fabric A and two of fabric B. Size depends on how big you'd like the coaster. I cut 4.5" (11.5cm) squares for a 4" (10cm) coaster.  Just add half an inch to the size you'd like for the seams. 

3: Fold two of the fabric A squares and both fabric B squares from one corner to the opposite for a right triangle and iron.

4: Arrange as in photo above. With the still square fabric A face up, then the four triangles layered over one another like a pinwheel. Pin in place.

5: Sew around the edges.

6: Cut the corners on a 45° angle. This is so you don't get a big lump of fabric in the finished piece. Be careful not to cut the thread!

7: Turn inside out through the space in the centre of the triangles.

8: I used a crochet hook to poke the corners out.

9: Iron flat and voila! Cute fabric coaster.

Repeat for a set and tie with ribbon to give as a gift. 

Try different colour combos.  A good variation is to fold the fabric into rectangles instead of triangles.

Happy sewing!

Check out my latest treasury, USE A COASTER!,on Etsy
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