Three Days Until Easter? It's Egg Time, Baby!

Grammy Coloring Easter Eggs with Lars, 2003

Remember when your kids were really little, just barely old enough to understand that something special was going on when the holidays rolled around?  Remember how exciting it was to set up the Easter egg dye for the first time and watch their amazement when the eggs changed colors before their wide, wondering eyes?  You didn't need to do anything fancy, and you didn't need anything other than food coloring, eggs and vinegar to create those memories.

Fast forward about a decade, and I am starting to realize that there may be more holiday craft memories BEHIND us than ahead of us.  Which is why I'm ramping things up a bit this year, with more advanced egg coloring plans that are better suited to my 8 and 11 year old helpers.  I'm not going to know ahead of time which year will be the last that my kids are interested in coloring Easter eggs, so we can't take any eggs for granted!

I've been trolling around on Pinterest for ideas (you can see all of them on my Easter board here), and I've narrowed it down to a few ideas that are different enough to pique the boys' interest, but easy enough for them to get good results without too much assistance:

Madras Electrical Tape Eggs, by Jen Wallace of Indie Fixx, tutorial here

These eggs by Jen Wallace of Indie Fixx remind me of madras plaid Easter shirts or ties, and they were made by wrapping the eggs with electrical tape and repositioning the tape between colors, an idea Jen got from a Martha Stewart Living tutorial here. 

I like this idea because we already have electrical tape out in the garage, and it's just basic egg dying with a fun twist. 

Another Martha Stewart idea we'll be borrowing is the DIY egg drying rack made of 1/2" foam core and straight pins.  Ingenious!  I've always hated the ugly blemishes you get on the eggs if you set them on a paper towel or back in the egg carton to dry, and with multi-dye techniques you'd get multiple ugly splotches, one for each color. 

The second technique I want to try this year is marbleized eggs, another Martha Stewart project (instructions here).  This is another method that builds on basic egg dying.  First you color the eggs the way you normally would and allow them to dry, and then you swirl them in a second shallow dye bath in a contrasting color, with olive oil drizzled in the dye bath.  I'm picturing this kind of like how they drizzle the olive oil and balsamic vinegar on a plate at the Olive Garden when they bring the bread out.  Is that the Olive Garden, or the Macaroni Grill?  It's one of those Italian restaurant chains where Bernie refuses to eat because he always gets an upset stomach every time we go there. 

Back to the eggs!

Eggs Embellished with Temporary Tattoos

One more idea to throw into the mix: In the past, when they were much younger, I tried giving the boys stickers to embellish their Easter eggs, but I seem to recall they just fell off, resulting in disappointment and tears.  I found this photo from Tina Roth Eisenberg of SwissMiss showing plain brown eggs decorated with temporary tattoos.  Lars LOVES temporary tattoos, so much so that he'd plaster them all over his face if we allowed it.  My boys probably won't be excited about sweet little bunny rabbits, but maybe I can find some fake tattoos that will fulfil the twin objectives of arousing little boys' enthusiasm while respecting that this is, after all, a religious holiday (there will be NO SKULLS AND CROSS BONES on our Easter eggs.  Period!).

If Bernie ever comes back from getting his oil changed, I'll head out to round up supplies for our Easter eggs.  The boys have an Easter egg hunt and craft party at church on Saturday, so that means I need to dye four dozen eggs today and have everything ready for decorating them on Friday.  I'll try to remember to post pictures!

Happy Easter!

Tetelestai: It Is Finished! My Pettiskirt UFO is No Longer Unfinished! Wahoo!

If you're just now joining us, you can catch up to speed on this pettiskirt project for my niece, Princess Petunia, by clicking here. 

Last night before bed, I stitched one of the two skirt layers to the satin waistband tier.  This morning, I pinned the other layer to the satin waistband, right sides together.  I tried to err on the side of too many pins rather than too few, because the chiffon and the satin are both slippery suckers.   Here's the waistband satin rectangle with one layer stitched on to one side, and the other one pinned, ready to take to the machine:

I decided to use my walking foot to attach the chiffon layers to the satin waistband because I thought the regular presser foot might snowplow the ruffled chiffon all out of whack.  If you don't have a walking foot, you might want to stitch this step upside-down, with the chiffon ruffles next to the feed dogs and the satin layer on top.  I've got the raw edges aligned and I'm still using my pink Olfa line for my 1/2" seam allowance.

 At this point in the project, there is a LOT of chiffon fluffed up around the sewing machine.  I was glad I had pinned so thoroughly, but I still had to be careful not to let the satin layer get bunched up or twisted underneath the chiffon.

 There you can see it all nicely lined up to go through the machine.  I picked the red-headed pins because I like any color as long as it's red.  Oh, and also to make sure I could see the little buggers through the turquoise chiffon.  Sometimes they got caught in the holes in the bottom of my walking foot, and I tried to be vigilant about pulling them out as soon as the pins passed behind the presser foot so they wouldn't catch and snag in the mountain of frills behind the machine.

Here's what it looked like with both skirt layers attached, finally all one piece:

My pattern instructions told me to put the elastic casing in next, before sewing the side seam, but I decided not to do it that way because wanted the side seam allowance to be inside the two skirt layers instead of up against the princess's skin.  After all, princesses are very sensitive...  Since I have had only a few previous experiences sewing with elastic and none of them went very well, I hunted around through a couple of online tutorials to figure out how to proceed.  After watching the Martha Stewart Pettiskirt Tutorial video three times, and reading her written instructions a few more times, I finally figured out what the heck they were telling me to do.  By the way, I do not suggest that you make the whole skirt the way the Martha directions tell you to do it.  It's backwards of the way my pattern and every other tutorial say to do it, and I'm suspicious that the woman in the video (who sells pettiskirts commercially and claims to have invented them) may be intentionally obfuscating in order to sell more of her readymade skirts.  Sewing the skirt from the top down instead of from the bottom up would be a nightmare, trying to attach miles and miles of frill to the hem of a skirt that's already gathered up instead of to a flat layer!  But I digress...

You can see in the photo how I've marked with tailor's chalk the 1 1/2" space just below the fold that I am going to leave OPEN in the side seam, so I have someplace to thread the elastic through.

 Okay, side seam sewn, skirt flipped down wrong sides together, and we're ready to sew that elastic casing!

 In this photo you can see the little 1 1/2" hole in the side seam where I'm going to thread my elastic into the casing. 

Now, if you have never sewn an elastic casing before, you might think that it would be a good idea to stitch 1" down from the folded edge of fabric to sew a casing for 1" wide elastic.  You would be wrong, and you would be sorry (I did that once on a pair of pajamas for one of my sons).  This is like sewing rod pocket curtains, and you have to sew the tunnel wider than the elastic (or curtain rod) you will be driving through the tunnel or else you are going to get stuck. 

It turns out that the distance from my needle in center position is exactly 1 1/4" from the edge of the stitch plate, so I was able to use that as my guide as I stitched the casing; no pink tape required.

I pinned along the fold line of my slippery satin fabric before attempting to stitch the casing and again, I'm glad I did, because it was slipping and sliding all over the place.  Sewers' words of wisdom: At the end of your project, you'll regret the seams you didn't pin more than the ones you did!

 I raised my machine bed up so I could use the free arm for this part, although the skirt is SO hugely puffy and bulky that it was still tricky to control.

...and there you have it!  The elastic casing has been sewn, and you can see the little cave entrance that I left open for inserting my elastic.

At about this point in the process, I couldn't help myself -- I had to "try on" the pettiskirt and take a twirling break. I knew it wasn't going to fit me once I fit the waistband to the size of a 2-year-old...





 I used 1" wide "non-rolling" elastic for my skirt, and I hooked a big safety pin to the end to help me feed it through the elastic tunnel (known as a casing to serious seamstresses). 

You probably already knew about the safety pin trick, but I think my binder clip idea might just be an original innovation.  Scratch that -- I'm sure somebody has thought of this before.  Anyway, I used a small binder clip from Staples to keep the tail end of the elastic from getting accidentally pulled into the tunnel.

I overlapped the ends by an inch and used the triple straight stitch on my Bernina to sew a square with an "X" where the elastic overlapped.  I also stitched down vertically through the waistband with my triple straight stitch at the front and back of the skirt to make sure the elastic can't get all twisted up when the skirt is worn and washed and washed and worn again.  I loathe twisted elastic!

The next and last step in my pettiskirt pattern tells me to tie a bow and then hand-tack it to the skirt, but that doesn't sound very secure to me. Instead, I cut a 36" piece of satin faced ribbon, cutting the ends on a 45 degree angle with micro-serrated shears to minimize fraying.  I made a little pleat at the center and then used my trusty triple straight stitch to secure that ribbon firmly to the waistband of the skirt.  Then I tied my bow, and tacked through the knot part to secure the bow to the skirt so it can't come untied.

Ta da!

Hee hee hee!  How cute is THAT?!  I just have a handful of hot pink ribbon carnations that I want to stitch on by hand, and I can do that this evening while my boys are at choir rehearsal.

Update: Okay, here it is with the little flowers, really and completely, totally finished:

As I finished stitching the little flowers on by hand last night, my husband made helpful comments such as "What are those pink things supposed to be?  They look like wads of gum.  No, spit balls -- they look like pink spit balls."  Well, Lover Dear, they are supposed to be my own personal touch, and I sewed them on very securely so they could not come off and become choking hazards, so they have to stay, even if they look like used-up Bubblicious to you.  If I was not running out of time (Princess Petunia might be wearing this for Halloween), I might have used some of my leftover chiffon strips to make larger fabric rosettes to combine with my little ribbon flowers.  In fact, if you have lived this project vicariously through my posts and you think making a skirt from scratch is beyond what your sanity can handle, you could always purchase a plain pettiskirt from someplace like Chasing Fireflies and then embellish it with ribbons and little flowers or sequins or whatever from MJ Trimmings to make it your own.  If you do, send me a picture -- I'd love to see it!

Update December 26, 2010: It's only the day after Christmas, but I've just had an Epiphany!  If I ever make another pettiskirt, I'm going to use the adjustable buttonhole elastic, which you can find here.  There's a tutorial here on how to adapt readymade jeans by adding the buttonhole elastic. 

Perfectionism in Love and War: Martha Stewart Just Works Harder Than You Do

Once upon a time, Americans were known for having a "strong work ethic" that was a legacy from the pilgrims who invaded founded our nation.  I know this because I learned it in American history class, and if you read it in a textbook then either it's actually true, or else it's so widely believed to be true (like George Washington's cherry tree chopping) that it's a fiction with more power than fact.  But in modern American culture, those who work hard and strive to be the best that they can be are ridiculed and ripped to shreds for the sin of "perfectionism" while lazy, ineffective people are held up to be "normal" and well-adjusted members of society.  Oh, yes they are -- everyone hates Martha Stewart for not only being better at a lot of things than everyone else, but for turning homemaking into a lucrative career.  Career women hate Martha for baking cookies from scratch and ironing bed sheets.  Women who don't work outside the home hate Martha for making so much money baking cookies and ironing sheets, and for looking glamorous while she does it.  She wouldn't be making so much money if there weren't tons of people furtively reading her books and magazines, watching her on television, and listening to her radio shows, but it's not cool to admit that you like Martha Stewart.  It's much more socially acceptable to have a Cathy mug (that is, Cathy Guisewite's Cathy cartoon character) on your desk than a Martha Stewart mug that says "It's A Good Thing."

How pathetic is that?  So, no; I'm not to be counted among those who will be mourning the end of the Cathy strip once Guisewite lays it to rest next month.  I'm one of those who is wondering whatever happened to the myth of the American work ethic?  When did high standards, hard work, and success become shameful in our society?  Was it a backlash against 1980s films like Mr. Mom and Baby Boom that claimed women could "have it all," glossing over the tough choices women have to make in real life and making them feel guilty if they failed to handle everything as seamlessly as the working moms of the screen?

Maybe that's the real reason for the national pastime of Martha-bashing.  Maybe we don't hate her because she does things better than we do, but because she makes it look so EASY when we know that it's really, really HARD.  We hate her for having a full staff running each of her households and doing all of her housekeeping for her while she's on television showing us how to properly clean the silverware that we don't own in the first place, for having assistants and creative teams coming up with fabulous ideas for which she seems to take the credit.  We hate her for the perceived dishonesty, and for the unfair advantage.  But, once upon a time, Martha Stewart was a young single woman from a blue-collar background who worked hard and started her own catering company with a friend.  She was good at something, she worked really hard at it, and she turned her domestic interests and aptitude into a multi-million dollar lifestyle brand -- while a lot of other women were lying on the couch eating chocolate while obsessing about their weight, and trying to solve their problems with shopping instead of with good old-fashioned hard work.