I have a love of signs, especially religious signs. These are a few that I have collected over the years and used as decoration on the fence in our back yard.
This sign came from a house around the corner from me in North Portland. I never met the gentleman that lived in the house, I use to walk my dog past the house and look at all the interesting signs that he had painted and had up in front. Often there was a sign that said "No Visitors Today", so I did not disturb the occupant. I never found out what happened to the gentleman that lived in the house, there are rumors that his brother moved him, that he was taken away by social services, that he had so much stuff in the house that he moved out of the house and lived in a tree in the back yard. One neighbor told me they called him Smiley, they could not remember if they called him that because he always smiled or because his last name was Smiley. One neighbor said Smiley had a wife, the other said he was not married but had a room mate. Smiley did have some sort of tree fort that he often sat in during the evening, I believe that is why some people think he was living in the tree. Once a day Smiley would go into the back yard and ring a bell that he had hanging from the tree while yelling something that was often incoherent. One neighbor said Smiley was yelling earthquake. Not sure how many of these tales are true and how many are just rumors. I don't know if Smiley is still alive today. I wish I had taken the time to meet the Smiley, he sounds like a very interesting man. When the house sold all the signs were just put in a dumpster, my neighbor Jessie saved the sign above. Jessie eventually gave me the sign because his wife thought it was weird. It's about 4'x4' sign on a thin piece of wood. The sign has some damage to the upper left corner most likely from when it was tossed out. It has a nice green patina from being out in the weather for several year.
When I met my husband, he had moved to Portland to buy a building up on 42nd and NE Sumner. The building was once used as a Hare Krishna Temple. The Krishna's had remodeled the building opening the walls between the apartments. Only problem is they never closed out the permits and that caused a lot of issues for us when we started to remodel the building...but that is another story. The old Hare Krishna sign was still hanging on the building when we bought it. Rumor has it that Steve Jobs use to go to this temple to eat the free rice on sundays while he was attending Reed College. Steve Jobs also took a calligraphy class at Reed and some people think that he painted the sign for the Krishna's.
These two signs were give to me by a friend. He picked them up on a couple different trips to Mexico and thought I would like them.The top sign says that Costa Rica needs to prepare because Christ is coming soon. For the longest time I thought the second sign was a religious sign too. But it says something along the lines of "no food or drinks allowed because it disagrees with our business".
Of course everyone has seen this sign on the side of the road...Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. I changed the sign to say "Believe in the Lord Chris and thou shalt be saved" because my husbands name is Chris. I put the sign up on the fence and my husband did not notice the sign till our neighbors came over and asked us to move the sign because everyone that looked at the house to rent found the sign disturbing.
My neighbor is very talented. She has a show up in the gallery at Powell's Bookstore. She does some amazing detailed drawings. Her theme often has cats in what looks like underground environments. The show is called Curious Nature and is up till the end of April. Check out her cute tote bags, the cat is wearing a backpack and carrying a map. She details the bags with puff paint on the cat's eyes and the map. They are very cute and only $15, which is quite inexpensive for an original piece of art.
Yes, I'm hooked on making these bags. I made 3 bags using Violet Craft's fabric line called Waterfront Park. One of the fabrics is line drawings of Portland Bridges. I really loved the fabric and because my husband & his best friend like to climb bridges I bought several yards of the bridges. I made a shirt for my husband but he thought it was too uptight...so he gave it to his best friend John Law who is a bridge tender down in San Francisco. Since I have scrap of the fabric I made several of these cute little triangle pouches. I added a Portland Oregon specific crushed penny to the zipper. Now that's a cute souvenir of your trip to Portland.
Last week I received my copy of the latest Alabama Chanin book "Alabama Studio Sewing Patterns". This book includes all of the previous patterns published in Natalie Chanin's books as well as 4 more garments. The thing I like about this book is all the patterns are on a CD, I can take it to my local printer and have the patterns printed out. There are also great suggestions for variations on her patterns. Things like adding pockets, adding pipping, altering waist lines & busts, adding a color strips to hem lines as well as several other great tips. There are also new stencil patterns, one of my favorite is called New Leaves. I can't wait to get that stencil made so I can make a skirt or dress made for the summer.
One of my favorite craft thrift store is Scrap. They recently moved from my neighborhood to the other side of the river. The good thing is they have expanded. Last week I finally went to see the new store. It's a lot larger then the old space and it looks like it's more organized, thought that may be because they just moved...so it's still clean and new looking. The fabric area is well kept there is room to walk around the shelves and there is a nice area for you to sort through all the things you have picked up, you know when you get excited at all the cool things and pick up a lot more then you need..then you need to filter it all..because you really don't need all the stuff..but you might!. I bought some really nice Hawaiian fabric, though it was printed in China. I also found some large interesting wool scraps with ice skaters and trees, some nice checkered fabric and a cute little wash board. I came home with about 6 yards of fabric and a few knick knacks all for less then $30.
My lilac tree is in bloom, I have 4 lilac trees in the yard. This is the only purple one, all the rest are white. This purple lilac has some really large blooms and it smells wonderful. SPRING IS HERE!!!!
I bought a men's pant pattern when Josephine's Dry Goods was closing in Downtown Portland. When I bought the pattern I looked at the size it said 34-36-38-40...I thought that meant waist. No it did not. When I finally pulled out the pattern the waist size only went to 34". My husband said he was a 36. So I took an on-line Craftsy class on how to enlarge and reduce ready made patterns, it was called Create Any Size: Grading for Sewers. I found this to be very helpful. I had asked my husband over and over about his waist size and he kept repeating that he was a 36...that's what his Levi's said & they fit!! So I enlarged the pattern to a 36" waist. Well guess what...they were too small. I had completed the body of the pants and put on the waist band, had my husband try them on and he immediately stated they were too small. I said they were a 36", I said that I needed to measure his waist...my measurement came to 42". He then asked me if I was saying he's fat...what? NO...I'm saying you're not a 36". An argument occurred and he stated again that the Levi's were a 36". So when he left the house I measured the Levi's that he claimed fit him...the tag did say 36...but in fact the waist measurement was 39"!!! So I removed the waist band and the darts in the back of the pants. I did not want to give up on these pants because it was only the second time I have put in a front zipper and I was quite proud that it worked and looked decent. I had him try on the pants again, I ended up putting smaller darts in the back of the pants & I made a new waist band that was 40". Today I had him try on the pants with the new waist band and he loved the fit. They are snug but not tight. He can wear the pants with out a belt and they will stay up. The fabric I used was from a couple years ago, I bought 4 bolts of fabric from a woman on craigslist for $60. At that price it's as cheap as muslin fabric. I don't like to make simple muslins...I like to make wearable muslins. These pants are quite loud and they are a nice medium weight cotton. Now that I understand the pattern, I can make him a pair of Jeans or some nice wool pants. The pattern is Vogue 8719, and it's a fairly simple pattern. This project took me about 10 hours total, the next pair should only take about 5 hours to make. Or maybe I will make a pair of pants for me!!
As a reward for completing the pants I made a couple more triangle bags. These are heading to a friend that requested one...and today is her birthday. Some cute Melody Miller fabric with a crushed penny from Portland.... Happy Birthday!!
We finally repaired out front stairs!!! I do not have a before photo but believe me they were awful, moss had grown in the cracks and the treads were rotting out. We painted the stairs several years ago in an effort to make them last and it worked. But now it was time to really fix the stairs, mostly I wanted a clean look when you came up the front stairs. I mean it's the first thing people see when they approach your house..so make a good first impression. Rotting stairs are not a good first impression.
Yea!!! I saw my tote bags in the store again. This time it's the illustration my niece did for me of a hedgehog wearing glasses reading a book. They started selling over the spring break and they ordered 25 more hedgehogs. I was delivering 125 bags of the skeleton carrying books, that bag is doing great.
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I have a special place in my heart for Fabric World. When I moved to North Portland in 1988 there were no fabric stores in the area except Fabric World. Because of the missing letters in the sign I often referred to it as abic orld. I use to go there to pick up thread or zippers if I didn't want to drive all the way out to Fabric Depot or over to Mill End Fabrics. Fabric World was one of the strangest fabric stores I have ever been inside. Half the store has kids clothes from the mid to late 70s' still on the rack with plastic covers over the clothes. The other half of the store was filled with polyester fabric from the same era. There were some gems in there every now and then. I was able to get some cotton jersey for really cheap when I started to sew with knit fabric. The price was decent and I was able to make a couple of nice Alabama Chanin dresses. One afternoon I went there for white thread, on the counter was a stack of what looked like some nice batiked fabric. There was a sign that said "recent imports", the price was about $5 a yard. I remember asking about the fabric and the woman behind the counter said the owner likes to travel, she buys "weird" fabric and sends it back to the store. I bought some very soft blue cotton batiked fabric, it felt like a voile. I loved that fabric. I want back a few more time, but never found the any more of that great fabric. I remember there were two very different women that worked there, one was an older very friendly woman who I would talk to about her grandkids and what I was working on, the other woman was not as friendly and always had conservative radio playing very loud.
Last summer I went to Fabric World to get a zipper...but it was closed. There were several notes on the door and it looked like the mail had piled up. It looked like they had been closed for a couple weeks. I stopped by a couple more time to see what was up, there was still a store full of clothes and fabric, but there was no indication of why it was closed or if it was ever going to open again.
In early March a friend told me that she was at City Liquidators and was told that they had bought the contents of Fabric World. WHAT!!!? I was told the woman that owned Fabric World passed away. Either her kids or her son (not sure if which) didn't want the store and just wanted to turn over the building.
Searching the internet I could not locate any indication that woman who owned Fabric World had passed away. Her name is Rose Mary Gospodinovic, it's not a common name so you would think if she passed away there would be some record that would pop up. In fact the only thing that came up was the case against a Curtis Gibson who was found guilty in 2013 of stealing $1million from Rose in 2007-2009. He claimed she was a friend and he was inventing the money in property. Rose Mary is about 88 years old so it may be that she is getting too old to take care of the business. She also had or has several other pieces of property that come up in her name. From my searches it seems that the property and business was put into a trust. I'm sure there is more to the story but this is all I have for now.
As a fabric addict I decided to check out what City Liquidators had bought from Fabric World. I was told that Rose Mary had traveled a lot and often sent things she bought back to the store. That City Liquidators had taken out of the store a lot more than just 70's clothing and fabric. There was reported to be some expensive Gucci bags and shoes. I did not see the bags or shoes but I did locate an entire room of polyester fabrics. City Liquidators is selling the fabric by the bolt. There are some gems in the mix. I found some yellow 100% wool, some 70% wool and 30% nylon white, blue, green and red plaid and a bolt of burgundy plaid fabric (when I got it home I realized it was 100% acrylic). Several of the bolts are being sold for $29 a bolt, which for 10 yards of wool is excellent. But several of the bolts are not full bolts, so you are getting about 5 yards or less of fabric. The other problem for me is that I do not really need 10 yards of fabric, but I bought the bolts anyway. Some of the larger bolts are being sold for as much as $59 a bolt and the fake fur is being sold for $250 a bolt. I mean really!!!!...this fabric is about 30-40 years old. Polyester has come a long way, the polyester/acrylic they are selling is not a good kind....it's thick and very scratchy. Think of those nasty polyester pants with the elastic waist band that your grandmother wore...that's the stuff they are trying to sell. There are boxes of craft items, zippers that are $.99 (almost new price), tons of lace and some nice cotton rope that may be great for macrame.
If you are like fabric this is worth checking out, but don't go there with high expectations. The price's will have to come down, in fact some of them have already dropped since I first went in to see what was available 3 weeks ago. They have re-priced 1/2 bolts of fabric to $10, but most of the 1/2 bolts are acrylic. If you have time to dig..you may find some great deals. I did locate some cottons and wools in the mix, so there are still some great fabric to be found.
Vintage Apron
A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Sew Mama Sew. I had signed up to get a message on different challenges or submissions they may want from the sewing community. I was not chosen for their most recent request for submissions to make something for the kitchen. So since I had this vintage apron pattern out on my sewing table and have been waiting for a reason to make it, I challenged myself to get it done. The pattern is a Simplicity 4868, a bib apron with a pocket. I have an apron from this pattern that my great grandmother made years ago and I wore that apron till it fell apart. I have the pattern in large, medium and small, I guess my great grandmother loved this pattern too.
I had pulled out the pink fabric to cut out the apron several months ago but never got around to cutting out the pattern. Once I started to lay out the pattern pieces I realized I did not have enough of the pink fabric...I dug into my fabric bins and came up with this blue fabric that is printed with a cute Country Fair type of scene.
I completed the apron in less about 2 hours, I did sew the back strap on upside down at first and had to take it off. I also had some problems with the way the back tie was connected. I think of this as a trial run. Now that I know where I had problems, I can make it again. I will also play around with using different fabrics for the front and sides.
I love wearing these type of aprons with a summer dress that doesn't have pockets. Or maybe wear it when I'm up in the community garden. The skirt is nice and full so it would hold a lot of vegetable. I always forget to bring a container with me to the garden and often end up filling my skirt of top with my bounty. I have always liked aprons that have a full front and of course POCKETS. Next time I make this apron I will put two pockets on the front.
