Vintage Pattern Pledge

There are some things that I get overly excited about when I discover them.  My elation will change to disbelief when I find out that someone else already knew about said awesome thing and failed to share the info with me (cuz the world can totally revolve around me sometimes, right?).  One of the times this happened to me was when I discovered vintage patterns (uh-oh, story time...).
 

I was at a garage sale a few years ago to acquire cheap sewing notions (zippers and trims and such) and came across a box of vintage children's patterns.  At the time, children's clothing was pretty much all I was sewing (cuz they have this lack-of-curves-therefore-easier-to-sew-for-thing) so I was pretty thrilled, especially since there were quite a few sizes I knew I could use for the nieces.  Those were my very first vintage patterns.

When I told my mom about them, her response was pretty much, "Vintage patterns? Oh yeah, I have all your grandma's old patterns- at least a couple boxes full."

Wait, WHAT?  You mean she kept me in the dark about the existence of easily accessible vintage patterns all these years?  Don't worry- no grudges were kept (especially if I hope to own those patterns myself some day- mwahahahaha!).  Next time I visited she pulled out the boxes and showed me a whole bunch of vintage patterns from the 60's and 70's, in an array of sizes, children's and adults, patterns my grandma actually used to sew clothes for my mom and my aunts.  My aunt told me a story of how she didn't even go clothes shopping for the first time until she was in Jr. High cuz my grandma made all their clothes.  How rad is my grandma?  

Anywho, looking at all those vintage patterns made me curious about what other kinds of vintage patterns are available or out there somewhere, maybe even from an earlier decade (cuz as my mom tells me, "Nicole, the 50's called, they want their style back.").  I started looking on Ebay at vintage patterns and even bid on some, finally winning a few, then a few more, and a few more on top of that.  I wouldn't say I have an obsession (yet), but I've definitely accumulated a decent pile in under two years.

Alas, as beautiful as they are, I've never opened one.  Not a single one- not even to see what the pattern pieces look like.  I know I didn't just buy them to collect dust, I actually want to use them.  There's even been a few vintage pattern challenges I've considered joining but didn't (call it fear if you like cuz it really was fear).  This year will be different (not regarding the fear- it's still there).  I'm making my public declaration- let it be known throughout all the land (or just a little bit of the internet) that I will participate in this years' Vintage Pattern Pledge.  Ahem-ahem-ahem, my official pledge:

I, Nicole of A Little Fabricated, will sew up at least 3 vintage patterns this year (one or more of them might be children's).

Phew!  The easy part is out of the way.  Now onto the doing part.  That only means different markings, tinier waists to enlarge, weird bust points to fix, fragile tissue patterns to attempt to not rip...  Yeah, I can do it (do I sound scared still?).

Has anyone else pledged to do something scary (to you) this year?  

Laziness Woes and Knitting

My laziness has finally caught up with me. I didn't renew my Antivirus on my laptop before it expired and now I'm having difficulty renewing it at all. Sigh... I have pictures already taken and ready for some posts (usually the biggest delay in my blogging- setting up the tripod during the right time of day then uploading the pictures onto my laptop and sometimes editing depending on how productive I'm feeling), but my lack of Antivirus means lack of posts as well. I had to get a new phone lately and decided to see if Blogger would let me upload photos from my phone (I couldn't on my last phone) so I could at least post SOMETHING. Guess what- it worked! And now you get to ignore any typos or autocorrect stuff cuz I'm doing this all on my phone (time for a tablet, yes?).

 My mom and I usually text each other photos of what we're working on. Today she covered some boxes in fabric to go in new cubby hole shelves she has in her craft room. I've been working on knitting (we had a mobile baby/toddler staying with us recently so all sewing had to get picked up for obvious safety reasons- both for the child and the projects). I've been trying to teach myself to knit, off and on, for about a year now, but would always work a few rows of a new stitch and abandon it. I decided to start an actual knitting project, just going for it (and making LOTS of mistakes) instead of trying to learn stitches individually first. While I'm incredibly slow at it, I'm sticking with it for once and enjoying it too. Yay for a project that can go to work with me/travel with me/wait in waiting rooms with me/etc... That's all for now, thanks for being my guinea pigs for testing blogging on my phone, you guys rock my socks off (if I ever wore them besides at work).

Any frustrating things that you totally could've prevented happen to you lately? Haha (my laziness is totally making more work for me).

It Must Be Wedding Season

I've (hopefully) learned three things since my last post:

-I get more involved in weddings than I think I will be
-I underestimate how long wedding projects will take
-I can't write blog posts and work on wedding projects in the same time period

This wedding was pretty special, so I'm not sorry for the length of time I've spent ignoring this blog in favor of working on wedding stuff.  You'd probably feel that way too if your mom was getting married!  Did you guys catch that? MY MOM GOT MARRIED!  It was definitely a special weekend spent with family to celebrate and cherish my mom and her new husband.  Also, it's kinda weird (in an amusing way) that my mom no longer has the same last name that I do.  She went from being a Mrs. D to a Mrs. H- at least we're still in the same half of the alphabet...

I volunteered to make the wedding cake for my mom's wedding.  She had made a Pinterest board with ideas she liked that included some wedding cakes, so I tried my hardest to go with a style she liked... kinda.  The requirements were two tiers, coconut cake for top tier, marble cake for second tier, no real sea shells.  Really, that was it.

I realized as I was mixing the blue frosting that none of the pictures my mom had on her Pinterest board had blue frosting, they were mostly neutrals, cremes or white.  By that point I had already mixed the whole batch of frosting blue and wasn't about to make a whole new batch just to waste blue frosting.  Also, I wanted to make it totally beachy (which was in line with her theme and pictures) and what's more beachy than the ocean? 

I used crushed graham crackers for the sand on the top of the second tier and on the cake board.  I hadn't intended to dye my second tier frosting to match so closely with the "sand" but as far as frosting tints go copper looks more like salmon and brown just made it muddy-ish so golden yellow was added and voila- sand colored frosting was born.  

The sea shells were made using candy molds and those meltable candy chip thingies (not white chocolate like my family kept telling one another).  I used shimmer pearl dust in gold, bronze, red and blue and a (new) paint brush to color them.  I tried to make each one unique and with different color combos.  While I thought some of them looked funny on their own, thankfully they looked good on the cake.

I knew I wanted to try to make the top tier look like water but I couldn't figure out how at first.  I had frosted the cake in plain blue but made it textured instead of smooth to emulate waves.  I then attempted to pipe a wave design on top of the bumpy blue frosting and it looked hideous.  I was being lazy in deciding to swirl the white hideous piped frosting in with the blue instead of taking it off, and that's how I ended up with my ocean.  I'm grateful that what could've been a disaster ended up being just what I wanted.

I tried piping a shell motif onto the sandy frosting, but again it didn't work.  I didn't like it and here's a secret- I can't draw a straight line, let alone cut one, walk one or pipe one!  So I carefully scraped that off and left it alone while I thought of something else.  The night before the wedding (in the hotel room, of course) I decided on these little scrollie things and dots.  Sugar pearls (or whatever you call them) seemed to be appropriate and added a nice touch.

I finished coloring the sea shells the morning of the wedding (yeah, I brought a ton of cake stuff with me to the hotel cuz I couldn't finish it before I left if I was to arrive in time to join in for mani/pedi's).  My nieces were in the same hotel room with me and had a little fight over who got to blow the extra dust off the sea shells (while I held them out of spitting distance, of course).  The fight ended quickly and without any casualties, so it was more cute than anything else. 

Driving three plus hours with a wedding cake frosted and assembled in my car was nerve wrecking.  I read some tips about transporting a cake on Sweetapolita that I took a chance with and were really helpful (although I doubt she meant for her tips to be used on that long of a drive).  On the bottom of my passenger side floor, I used the rubber grip stuff then placed my cake (which had a dowel all the way through both tiers as well as dowels on the bottom to support the top tier) on the floor on top of the rubber grip.  The cake was too large to just be able to place down onto the floor, I had to tilt it at an angle to make sure it cleared the bottom of the glove box, but it held steady.  I used a large black trash bag tucked into my glove box and draped over my passenger seat to prevent the sun from shining on the cake.  I had my A/C on the whole time, on either the feet only setting or feet and dashboard depending on how cold my feet were getting.  The black trashbag makes a nice insulator and keeps it wonderfully cool where the cake is.  I will definitely be using these tips again!

The top tier is a three layer, 10 inch coconut cake.  I had to try four different recipes to get a coconut cake that had a nice texture and tasted like coconut.  I actually ended up modifying the recipe quite heavily, to the point where I'm pretty sure it's a new recipe now.  

The bottom tier is a three layer, 14 inch, vanilla/chocolate marble cake.  I only had one 14 inch cake pan so I had to wash and re grease/flour it in between baking each layer.  While pouring my last layer into my cake pan, I noticed I had only greased it, not floured it...  UGH!  I poured the cake batter out, re-washed it AGAIN and actually floured it after I greased it this time.  I decided to take a chance with the cake batter I had poured out of the pan, thinking that a little extra grease (shortening) wouldn't hurt it, so I poured it back in.  It baked fine, it just didn't look marble-y.  Oh well.

It happened to be my grandparents' 55th wedding anniversary on the day my mom got married, so one of my aunts asked if I would make them their own anniversary cake.  My grandma is gluten free, so this cake had to be gluten free for her and chocolate for my grandfather.  I found this great recipe on A Girl Defloured.  Actually, I tested it on my Bible Study, not telling them it was gluten free.  They all raved about it (then laughed after I told them it was gluten free) so I decided I had a winner here.  I even used the recipe with normal flour for my chocolate part of the marble cake then adapted it more to be my coconut cake.  I covered the stacked cake with a crumb coat, then after it set I poured chocolate ganache over the whole thing (since ganache is pretty stable in warm weather once set).  I decorated it with temperamental white chocolate (my fault, i melted it in a pastry bag because I didn't have a bowl) and called it good.  The people who tried all three different cakes agreed that this one was the best.  Now I just need to find a vegan/gluten free cake recipe for my sister's birthday in a few weeks!

Because I had such a hard time finding a coconut cake recipe (most of them ended up being white cake with shredded coconut for decoration), I thought I would share what I ended up using.  So here's my recipe for Coconut Cake:


Coconut Cake

• 1 1/2 cups Sugar
• 2 cups Flour (I used AP)
• 1/2 cup Finely Chopped Coconut
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
• 1 tsp Sea Salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup Coconut Milk (I used canned light coconut milk since it's thinner than regular canned coconut milk)
• 1/2 cup Vegetable oil
• 2 tsp Coconut extract
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1 cup Boiling Water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (Fahrenheit), grease and flour (or spray) your cake pans (two 8 or 9 inch round pans). Combine the first 6 ingredients (sugar, flour, coconut, b.p., b.s., salt) in a bowl.  Combine the eggs, coconut milk, oil and extracts in a separate bowl, mixing so the eggs are beaten lightly.  Add your egg/milk mixture to you flour mixture and combine until there's no more flour visible and mostly smooth (the coconut is going to add texture/lumps).  Pour your hot/boiling water into batter and mix/whisk until it's all incorporated.  Divide your batter between your cake pans and bake for 30 mins, or until top is golden yellow (NOT brown) and tooth-pick comes out clean.  Let rest in cake pans for 10 minutes before dumping out onto a cooling rack.

I found that assembling and frosting the cake, then letting it sit overnight (in the fridge or covered in a cake dome) lets the coconut flavors develop better/deeper than they would if you were making and eating the cake the same day.

A Blast from My Past

This past weekend for Mother's Day I went to visit my mother (cause I like her and she's my mom and stuff).  She wanted to organize and rearrange her craft/guest room while I was there, so we were busy all day.  While going through some of her fabric, I thought some of it was quite hilarious and had to share.

I haven't seen these cut-and-sew panel thingies in years but looking at this particular one, I think I'm ok with that.  My mom  wants to inform you all that I just about died with laughter after finding out the circles around the vest are to make yo-yo's to go ON to the vest (supposedly embellishing it).  She threatened to make it and give it to me as a gift.  She has an awesome sense of humor.

Star Trek fabric!  I look at this piece and remember all the years of watching Star Trek because with my dad in charge of the TV, it was that or nothing.  I guess you can find just about anything these days, but this was bought at least 15 years ago.  That makes it almost vintage for sewing.

My mom says this is Daisy Kingdom fabric.  I remember when my little sister was about 4, I found a Daisy Kingdom dress at a garage sale around the corner from home and brought it home for her.  That's about the extent of my Daisy Kingdom experience besides a few patterns found in bargain bins at the fabric stores (except my mom just informed me the vest up above is also Daisy Kingdom). 

We found some vintage UFO's in my mom's craft room too.  Like this blouse.  She has it all finished except buttonholes and button.  I actually tried it on and think it'd be cute over a shirt with a single button to keep it half closed.

The neckline has this cute curve that looks like it should be folded over/ironed into a lapel.  I think the print is super cute and this shirt is totally wearable (so she should finish it).

Here's another UFO of my mom's.  I feel I should mention that both of these were made when I was really, really little (read over 20 years ago). This one is a button-down midi-skirt with patch pockets.  I've totally seen these coming back into style, yet another wearable garment- if it were finished.  

She's already finished the hard part in my opinion- all those buttonholes!  I think I counted 8 total, that's 8 more than I'm usually willing to do (I'm a big fan of sewing clothes with closures that don't involve buttonholes).

It's even marked where the buttons need to go.  The ONLY thing not done on this skirt is the buttons.  I vote this one should be finished too.

This is actually one of my unstarted projects from elementary school.  We used to have a dress code before uniforms at the school I attended and I was going to make this dress (view B).  There was another girl in my grade who wore dresses with buttons and sleeves and I usually wore jumpers.  I wanted my own dress with buttons and sleeves so I intended to make this one.   Obviously it never happened, the fabric didn't even get cut.

A close up of the fabric I chose in 5th grade.  I still like it!

I adore this fabric.  Look at how much cuteness is contained in one cut of cloth.  Those airplanes kill me!  I can totally picture this made into a little boys shirt with the airplane stripe going across mid-chest.  

This is the phone pic my mom snapped for Facebook.  I think we did a good job.  Lots of work but now it's a space capable of lots of fun (sewing- duh!).  I also cleaned and organized my own room right before I drove to my mom's (no pics, it's boring), but now I better cool it on the cleaning front before my housemate expects me to start picking up my crafting projects.  Hehe.