T-Shirt Quilt from AliciaSquared's Perspective

I can't believe I totally missed this entry (I really do read your blog AG...I really really do!) about the infamous T-Shirt Quilt project that I did with one half of AliciaSquared several months ago...from her perspective.

I'm going to say this now - AG is a lot nicer about writing about me then I would have been (seriously, I made pin for 2 hours, then caused her to bleed...and then had her sew the blanket in reverse!), and she's pretty magnificent...even if she steals my FTRs.

An Apology to My 10th Grade Geometry Teacher

Dear Mr. D,


Remember me? I was in your 10th grade Geometry class  20-odd  a very long time ago. I was the snarky little Asian girl, second row from the back, who would sigh dramatically and saying things like: "but when will I ever need to know how to the figure out the diameter of a circle? I can just use a ruler and measure!" or "ugh, WHY would I never need to know how to make a perfect pentagon?!".


Although you kindly gave me an A (OK, I begged and pleaded my way into that A), I really never learned nor remembered the concepts...and now, years later...

You were right.  I do need to know this stuff.  I use it every day in the Sweatshop.  Or, I should say, I need to use it every day, but due to sleeping through your class, I have not a clue what I'm doing when it comes to figuring out the circumference of the design of the new messenger bag so I can be sure to buy enough trim.


If it wasn't for the kindness of Twitter followers and Facebook friends, I would still be trying to figure out how much to cut out to make the waist for a circle skirt.

And that whole debacle with making a perfect pentagon? Thank you YouTube!

In that overly warm, right after lunch, spring semester class, you stared me down and told me that one day, I would indeed need to know this information. At the time I scoffed, but you were right. I did need to learn this. 


So, I am taking this opportunity to apologize for ever doubting you. I eat my words every time I run into a problem that requires something that you tried to teach me. I wish I paid closer attention. Saying that I regret not being a better student doesn't really cover it.  Especially as I sit here, trying to remember how to figure out the angle of this corner without a compass or a protractor.


With every fiber of my, now wiser, heart, I apologize.


Sincerely,


~LittleAsianSweatshop


P.S. Do you offer remedial geometry classes for those of us who somehow passed college level Calculus, but still can't figure out how many yards fabric I will need to make an ottoman with a diameter of 18" and a depth of 14"?

The Sweatshop and the Long Weekend

With the exception of theater tickets on Saturday, for the first time in nearly six months, my husband and I found ourselves with a completely free weekend. Nay, not just any weekend. A completely free *long* weekend. Excitedly, we danced around in our underwear (to the chagrin of our neighbors, I assure you), and shouted out what we wanted to do for the weekend:

"Let's have crabs for dinner!"

"I want to invite AG over for sewing and wine!"

"Let's work on the house and yard and stuff!"

"I wanna stay up until 3am!"

"Let's make that green chili that you were talking about!"

Quickly, I jotted all of this down on a list:

I love making lists!

Fun, yet productive. Well...productive if it wasn't for Fate's sense of humor, and our natural Sweatshop tendencies.

Friday night, I was able to get together with the aforementioned AG for an evening of sewing, crappy American-Chinese food, Hello Kitty First Aid, and totally embarrassing sewing-fail. After AG left, demoralized and in a semi-stupor from the gluttony of dinner, I sat on the couch and proceeded to watch horrifically mindless TV. Made more horrible when I realized that it was nearly 3am and I had just watched 4 hours of "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding".

Well, that's that! I thought, looking down at our "To Do" list.

Check and check.  Kinda.

Now, one would think that after crawling into bed at 3am, one would sleep like the dead until 1pm. Well, clearly, that person hadn't been on the go constantly for the past six months. My body has forgotten how to sleep in. I was up at 8, and after some tossing and turning, I "checked" to see if J was awake (by "checked" I clearly mean, I repeatedly poked him until he was up).

After the post office run, J's mood brightened considerable and took me to our favorite Sunday breakfast spot...even though it was a Saturday.



 

                                Before the devastation                               After the devastation

 As we  ate  gorged, we decided to run some errands and pick up brick pavers so that we can get started working on the yard. I'm not going to lie...our epic 4 hour home improvement shopping trip quickly devolved into 3.5 hours of buying crafting/sewing/Sweatshop stuff. Oops!

When we got home, we felt that it was too hot to do the manly-yard work that we had originally planned...so instead we headed inside...where J worked on ottomans, and I worked on making fascinators.

The key to any good list, is the ability to adapt!

By the time evening rolled around, we were both deeply engrossed in our projects and had to quickly change to make our dinner reservations before watching the Shakespeare Theater Company's performance of "The Merchant of Venice" which was *brilliant*.

Clearly...no home improvement work actually happened on Saturday. *BUT* we did purchase the brick pavers that we needed...so we counted that as a partial win. Right?

                                                   It's been 7 days and the pavers are still there. 
                                                But at least it's in the yard...that's progress, right?

Sunday morning, we blithely awoke and decided to run to the market to pick up crabs for dinner. Naturally, I dragged J to an Asian market, where they had Dungeness, Crystal and Stone crabs as well as the ubiquitous Maryland Blue Crabs. J's eyes nearly popped out of his head, and we walked away with all four types of crabs for an evening of feasting!

Crystal Crab                         Maryland Blue Crab

Dungeness Crabs                        Stone Crab

Again, it was really hot out (or at least, that's what we kept saying to each other), so, again, we retreated into the nice AC climate of the house to continue working on ottomans, fascinators and other Sweatshoppy projects. Just as we were starting to give the crabs the hungry eye, my parents called to invite us over for an evening of gorging (as all my family events tend to be). We hadn't been over for dinner in a few weeks, so we quietly put the crabs into a cooler filled with ice, and headed to my parents' home for an evening of steaks and ribs.

Monday morning, we woke up and determined to knock *something* off our "to do" list, we both vowed to work on our projects and once we were done, we would head outdoors and work on the yard.

Now, if you think this story is going to end with "and we finished all of our projects and made our yard the star of the neighborhood", you clearly don't understand our love of crafting and sewing and furniture making! We ended up spending the rest of the day (even skipping lunch) to work on the Sweatshop. By 5, when the weather started to cool off, we were ravenous and went to the fridge to cook us up some crabs.

Sadly...the Dungeness crabs did not survive the night. For a while, I thought that J would also lose his will to live, as he simply *adores* Dungeness. The last time I saw him this sad, was when my I ate the last bite of his hazelnut chocolate gelato (I thought he handed it to me to finish...I didn't realize I was to just hold it for him). However, the rest of the crabs survived and they were *delicious*!

Get in my belly!

As the crabs were cooking, J started the green chili. Alas, as he was preparing it, he realized that there wouldn't be enough time to finish it off for dinner that night. And then, I was sad too.

After we finished decimating the crabs and feeling pity for ourselves while the green chili bubbled away, we sat on the couch and we confusedly looked at our "To Do" list and wonder how we accomplished so much, yet nothing on our list.

So we did the only thing one could do in a situation like this...we threw away our To Do list and just basked in the glory of our Sweatshop...

Sewing with One Half of AliciaSquared

AG is an uber talented photog and is also one half of AliciaSquared, a great blog about two friends (both named Alicia) who have decided to become roomies and from all evidence, cooks a mean meal (not that I've been invited over for a meal *AHEM*) and crafts at a level that only Martha Stewart and Sweatshops has so far been able to achieve (I dare say that they may out paper-craft the Sweatshop...we may need to have a "craft-off" to find out!).

About 2 and a half years ago AG started a t-shirt quilt. She had asked for my help to finish it as the last time she sewed anything was in 7th grade Home Ec class. So with the Sweatshop all setup, I invited AG over for an evening of sewing, food and wine.

AG also came over with a dress that needed repairing, and the aforementioned quilt that needed to be finished. We ordered some horribly fatty American-Chinese food (the kind that makes Panda Express look like haute cuisine) and proceeded to sew. Fixing the dress was easy and was completed before the food arrived.

Now, before I go further, I'm going to make a ton of excuses in a poor attempt to salvage my Sweatshop and master-seamstress reputation.

MY SUPER-LAME EXCUSES:

1. As this quilt was AG's project, I had to fight against my natural inclination to just take over the project and sew it myself.
2. Also, I will gladly admit that I am a *horrible* teacher. I talk faster then I type and I just *assume* that everyone has the same abilities that I do. I just need to rattle off a few super high level directions and I expect that everyone completely gets what is needed. I'm like IKEA directions, only not as clear.
3. I was also working on a few sewing/crafting projects myself as I had gotten a few orders in that day and I wanted to have them shipped out first thing Saturday, as Monday was a holiday and I didn't want anyone to have to wait for their purchases.
4. Wine may, or may not, have been involved in the evening's sewing.
   

drumk sewing!

So, please keep all of this in mind and don't judge me too harshly. Heh.

Since AG's quilt was made from old tshirts that had sentimental value, we wanted to be sure that the finished product was nice. But because she wanted to use this for picnics and parks, I didn't want her to spend too much money on this. So we started off by buying two yards of navy blue 1" diamond doubled faced quilt to use as the backing. By using a pre-quilted fabric, we saved several steps (and money!). I cut this fabric in half lengthwise and had AG stitch the fabric together along the width to make a backing that was large enough. Since this was to be used outdoors, I had her reinforce the seams so that it could withstand lots of wear and tear and multiple washings.

A potential future Sweatshop slave!

While AG was doing this, I was whipping out poker hair flowers, and working on the logistics of a few new products (to be released soon! Oooh! So excited!). When she was done, I had her lay out the backing on the floor, and we then laid the pieced together tshirts on top of the backing. I gave her a box of pins and had her pin the edges together before sewing.

I completely forgot to warn poor AG about pins and the necessity of always being aware of where all the pins are. I'm completely squeamish about other people's wounds (I don't mind blood, I just can't see the actual wound), but fortunately, my husband was on hand to administer first aid.

Hello Kitty is the official band aid of craft injuries

Normally, I hate sewing with n00bies (see above Excuse #2), but when one is sewing with a n00b who is a avid crafter, it's not so bad as they have a basic foundation of the importance of straight lines, keeping their workspace neat, and thinking through the steps of what needed to happen next.

HOWEVER, because they are still n00bs, they don't know to check on certain things that avid sewers would, and because they catch on so quickly, an experienced sewer (like me), wouldn't think to do the normal double checks, because they seem so competant.  Like, checking to make sure that both pieces of fabric are pinned on the wrong side.

Yup.

After working on this quilt for nearly two hours...we were | *this* | close to completion...and I realized...I didn't check, so I had AG pin and sew the backing on the wrong side, so that the seam down the middle width of the quilt was exposed.

Complete #CraftFail

AG was a good sport and had a good laugh. But I was so mortified that I promised to fix and finish this up for her, which is actually a horrible punishment if you know me (the one thing I hate about sewing above all else...ripping out seams), and I proceeded to mope in front of the TV after AG left, deflated.

Which is good for my ego (it does tend to get a little cocky if I'm not careful) but my self-esteem took a beating. I wonder if there are Hello Kitty band aids for pride?