Phoenix

Here she is in all her glory!

 I don't know...do you think that she's a bit...

 Vegas Showgirl-ish?

 Meh.  Who cares?!

 The other thing that I was thinking...I wonder if this will even get any bids at the silent auction.  I worry that the plethora of vegetarians and vegans in Santa Cruz will protest the use of feathers.  

 Maybe I should just keep it.  Do you think?  Nah...it's for a fundraiser and what would I do with a bird bra but parade around the house in it.

 Well, I'll send it in...but before I do, I should try to remove all those plastic glue strings left by the cooled hot glue...you can see a globule in the photo above.  Nuts.

Look at those fire-y boobs!  Ha-cha-cha!

Anatomy of the Wings and Tail

While the bra looked pretty good with just rhinestones and feathers on the cups, I wanted to make it seem a little different from the blue bra I made a few years ago.  I decided to add wings and a tail to the Phoenix Bra.  

I cut out some wing shapes out of thick sew-in interfacing and hot glued a bit together to form loops for the straps.  Luckily, this bra has removable straps, so I just unhooked them and slid the wing "bones" on.  

 Sorry, that's a bit blurry, huh?

For the tail, I cut out a shape vaguely resembling a tail and glued the top to the inside of the bra.  It folds over the hooks, so you can still reach them underneath the tail to unhook/hook the bra as needed. It stuck out a bit, but I figured with the weight of the feathers, it would hang lower eventually.

 For the tail, I just started at the bottom and alternated red/yellow layers of feathers.  At the end, there was some white interfacing showing, so I added some jewels and mini feathers for the following embellishment:

 And here's the back:

 For the wings, I started with a layer of yellow feathers.

 I then added a layer or red and, to keep it consistent with the rest of the bra, I added a few jewels at the edge of the wing.

And there you have it!  Photos to come tomorrow of the final bra...just in time for submission to the fundraiser.

Czech It

Last weekend we picked up a local paper that featured a list of all of the summer festivals in our area, so we decided to head down to the probably self-proclaimed Kolacky Capital of the World, Montgomery, MN, for their annual Kolacky Days.  

I guess a Kolacky is some sort of doughy treat with a filling, such as raspberry, apricot or poppy seed from the Czech Republic.  They were out of the raspberry, so we got a package of the poppy seed, which I was informed by the vendor, is the traditional filling.

 That's a package of kolackies.  They look like dinner rolls.  How many were in the package?  Six?  I don't know and I'm too lazy to go look at the bag.  Anyway, my reaction to these kolacky treats?  Meh.  

Maybe the raspberry is better.  Maybe that's why it was sold out.

Before we ate kolacky, we wanted some awesome festival food.  Maybe some good Czech food?  We should have known, however, that Czech food would be pork-based sausages.  Anyway, since we don't eat piggies (they are smart, like dogs), our choices were pretty limited.  We ordered potato dumplings and gravy and you could have that with or without sauerkraut.  We were served by a girl wearing a crown.

We missed the dance routine by the girls in traditional costumes.  Bummer.

I love the ribbon on the waistband.

We then moseyed over to the craft vendors, the majority of which were grandma crafts.  You know what I mean...old lady crafts with bears and kittens and flowers, like these:

 And these tissue box covers...though I'm semi-drawn to that red and pink one in the lower right quadrant:

And so we made our way back to the car.  I'm not sure we were even at the festival for more than an hour (did I mention it took an hour to get there?).  Plus that town had some sort of funky smell.  I've googled to see if there is a landfill or something in the area, but nothing has come up.  It really did stink.  Sorry, Montgomery.  

On our way back to the car, we stopped at a sweet shop/antique store, LaNette's Antiques and Lace.   It was kind of neat that you could sit at tables among all the antiques and enjoy your rootbeer floats...and sorry for the blurry picture -- I was holding the baby and she was squirming.

That's some local soda (or pop, as they call it here) called Spring Grove.  I've also seen it come in Cream Soda flavor.  Yummy!  

We were sitting next to these patchwork curtains that were on display and I kept admiring all the different fabric squares.

 Check out those red and white whales, above, and, below, I love that honeybee fabric.

I think I've caught the quilting bug and I really want to make "I Spy" quilts for all the kids I know.

So there you have it:  Kolacky, old lady crafts, local root beer, and fading patchwork.  

BiP, I mean, Bra in Progress

So I stayed up until 1:00am sticking jewels on my bra and then finished the cups after about an hour this morning.  I also started adhering the feathers.  This is what it looks like thus far:

 I tried to make the cups look sort of firey.  I was running out of yellows on the left cup and then found a bunch of them in another canister of jewels, so the right cup feels more flamesque.  

 I found the bra at the Goodwill for $2.99.  I was hoping to find a sassy red bra, but the nude works.  I can't decide whether or not to go full feather along the back straps.  I think I definitely want to do a shoulder pad feather/jewel thing and a tail where the clasp on the back is.

I wish I had more little jewels to fill in the holes, but quite truthfully, I don't think my fingers can take much more glue-gunning.  My left pointer is my jewel-sticker-onner-finger and it is blistering, but not so much that I need to call in the EMTs like on this week's Project Runway.   Okay...back to feathering.

Rummaged!

I love rummage sales even more than I love yard sales.  Maybe because lots of people bring lots of things, so there are lots of great bits to paw through.  And sometimes stuff is just in piles that you have to dig through.  Anyway, yesterday I went to a HUGE rummage sale.  It was super organized with rooms labeled for men, women, children, toys, housewares, etc.

I found a vintage sheet set for our bed.  I love vintage sheet sets.  The fabric is always so much nicer than anything you can find at the stores.  I think that the elastic is shot in the fitted sheet, so I may have to find a bottom, but look how pretty:

In the game room, I found this game called "Anagrams" for $1.00.

 And look at what's inside!  Such pretty letter tiles.

And I'm a sucker for note card sets.  These are made by Avon and they are scented with some sort of old lady perfume, but fun!  Expect a thank you note or something on this in the future!

For twenty-five cents (!) I found a roll of wrapping paper in reversible brown patterns.  Awesome!  I'm so tired of pink wrapping paper or snowman wrapping paper at Christmas.  You are totally going to get a present wrapped in brown paper.  Hah!

I found this half-finished needlepoint kit with yarn.  Sort of fun.  I'm a sucker for these things.  And the name on the kit?  Needle Nuts.  It makes me giggle.

And my second favorite find of the day?  This quarter yard of giraffe fabric.  Oh!  I love it!  I wish there could be more of it.  I must choose my project carefully.  This cannot go to waste.

 Okay.  And my absolute favorite find at the sale?  A twin sheet set.  The set was all taped together and marked as $2.00.  We don't have a twin bed, but when the baby is older she'll get one.    I was drawn to the yellow and pink and orange and had no idea what sort of pattern it was.  But when I got home and unfurled it, I found the most fabulous print ever!  Behold:

 Giant, strange chickens on the top sheet.  And on the bottom sheet...a big chicken with a baby chicken on its head:

I am in love!  I can't wait to put it on her kid bed and I hope she doesn't hate it, but I'm the mom and I'll be in charge of sheets!  Yay!

It is also marked as "Scuda" --

I can't find much about them after my initial google search, but here are some interesting links with other Scuda textiles that another blogger found:  wall print, napkins, animal wall print, and a humpty dumpty wall hanging.

Gems and Bras

Do you remember that scene from The Goonies when they empty Mikey's marble bag into his mom's hand?  That's what I think about every time I delve into my plastic jewel stash.

I've decided what to do for my Bra:  Phoenix.  I'm going to use the gold, orange and red gemstones on the cups and then red feathers everywhere else.  If I can find feathers in orange and yellow, I may also stick them on there.  I was also thinking about doing a little feather/jewel shoulder sections.  It's all got to get done this weekend.  I'm not too worried.  I made the blue bra in about six hours one evening.

It's basically the same thing, but in red.  Not very original, but I've got all the supplies (except for the orange and yellow feathers), so...whatever.  It'll still be awesome.  Just red.

A Package of Craftiness

My mom sent me a box last week filled with crafting goodness.  My mom is a frequent yard saler and finds many great and cheap deals.  Plus she's a priceline negotiator...if it's marked 50 cents, she'll get them down to 25 cents.  In fact, we come from a long line of yard salers...my grandparents used to have a bumper sticker on their car that said, "We brake for all yard sales" or something like that.  I don't get out to the sales as much as I would like, but I hope to in the future.

Fabric...Lovely, heavy, and vintage, I think.  There are about three yards of it.  I should do a laundry test on a swatch to see how it would hold up to washing.  Sometimes I think that I can only make bags and things out of vintage fabric, because I'm afraid it won't hold up to the rigorous swishing of the washing machine.

Lace embellishment...pink and bridal, but I could see it used in a costume.  Plus, as the second photo points out, you can cut it up into various shapes and use it in a number of ways.

Kids patterns...Simplicity 8100 (can't find a link to it -- shorts and tees), Simplicity 7983 (mysterious lack of link on this one too -- dresses, tunics, capris, and bonnet), Butterick 3280 ("paper" dolls), McCall's M5865 (bonnets/hats), and Simplicity 8716 (tank, shorts, skirt, shirt, and pants).

Buttons...

Knitting book.  I don't knit, but I suppose I could learn.

Ice cream recipe book.  Hmmmm...I think I'll need to buy elastic pants from this point forward if I make the recipes in this book!

Thanks, Mom!  As always, your packages are much appreciated!  There was some other stuff, too, for the baby, but these were all the crafting goodies.

More Nursery Art

My mom sent me an anonymous package with his poster and some dog biscuits.  Thank you, Grammie.  I ordered a pink frame from Amazon.  I think I still need to go in with a black magic marker and take care of that white line at the bottom.  Hopefully, that dog face won't give the gal nightmares when she gets older.  That's the sort of thing that would have freaked me out as a kid.  Clothes hanging on the back of doors also used to freak me out in the dark when I was little.  Terrifying!

Some Velvet Morning...Glory

There's a small chain link fence between my house and my neighbor's and every year they plant morning glories.  They take over and act like a hedge between our properties, but they are so pretty.  The petals always make me think of a rich, purple velvet.