Now...it pretty much goes
without saying that I do not have the space or the time to put a picture of
everything I've made on this site. I don't even HAVE a picture of everything I
ever made. But this page will give you a sampling of some of the projects I
have done. My small business is called "Sew What!", but I am
currently not working for the public...I want to finally do some things for
myself.
I made some curtains
for someone for her dining room and breakfast nook. They were made of
large-square blue and white Gingham check fabric, and the backing was insulated.
I hand stitched the bottom hems on each curtain. These were very long curtains.
Then, when I was finished and since there were so many curtains, I labeled each
curtain, put them in garment plastic bags on hangers, after giving them a final
pressing. They were ready for delivery!
And, since I no
longer work for the public, I've been making things for my OWN home. I have been
making my own sheets and pillowcases. I also buy old vintage cotton sheets from
anywhere between the 1940's and 1960's, and make my sheets and pillow cases from
them. I really missed the old, heavy sheets from my childhood. And they ALL had
to be ironed. This was all before the 'wash 'n wear' polyester sheets that came
along in the 1960's, which I hated.
So, I'm back in my glory of ironing and
starching my sheets every week. And nothing feels better against my skin,
especially in the summer. The sheets are cool to the touch.
As you can see by the pictures, I
love using 'piping' on my hems for my bed linens.
The same person I made the curtains
for found some feral cats on her deck one day last year. It was a mama cat and
her kittens. All the cats, including mama, were black and white.
My friend began feeding them and little
by little they became friendlier.
It must be pointed out that person is a 'dog person'. I'm a 'cat person'. So, this was a very new experience for
her.
We had many conversations of the 'do
and don't' kind. Eventually she was able to catch a few of the younger
kittens, and eventually the mother cat, and bring them to the vet to be 'fixed'.
But every day she'd email or call me
with the Kitty Chronicles. She'd say on the phone, or in the subject line of her
emails, "Kitty Chrons! Kitty Chrons!"
She named all the cats as she became
more familiar with each little personality. And one of them was named Susie Q
(probably a boy). And that's how my friend would always write about Susie
Q....(probably a boy)
She does it to this very day.
Flash forward later in the year, my
boyfriend and I were at a huge fabric shop and we were looking at the kitty
print fabric. Tom and I are both 'cat people'. And lo and behold, there was some
fabric called Kitty Chronicles. It was later noticed that the fabric print had
actually misspelled Chronicles...they spelled it Chronicals. But the fabric was
black and white and looked like Cat newspaper print. Too cute!
Anyway...I had a brain-storm. In
appreciation of all she did for the feral cat family, I wanted to make a cat
doll for her. I wanted the cat to be black and white, as well as her clothes, to
match the fact that all the feral cats were black and white.
And there you have it, the finished
product. I had an old cat doll body, which was black and white, and it was
PERFECT for this doll idea.
And I made the doll look like a girl,
with a full-skirt dress with pinafore and black and white striped
pantaloons.
And, even though she 'looked' like a
girl cat, I glued two black pom-poms on the butt to resemble cat
testicles.
This kitty would be named Susie Q
(probably a boy).
I even used a little metal tag around
the neck of the doll.
Then I went shopping to buy the perfect
tissue paper and gift bag. I bought a plain brown paper gift bag so I could put
my own decorations all over it.
I have a million cat themed rubber
stamps and a lot of them are black and white cats.
Perfect.
So, I put black and white cats all over
the gift bag. And in-between the cat stamps I took my alphabet stamps and hand
stamped each of the feral cat names all over the bag. I used phrases that my
friend used in describing the cat antics and adventures. It was a very
personalized gift bag.
Then I surprised her with the kitty
doll. She really enjoyed it.
In the month of June 1998
I completed a costume for one of my acts. The entire bodice is
hand beaded and sequined and also has metal dangle things. In these pictures I
am only getting a picture of the costume...I am not 'dressed up'. I
entered this costume in the Piedmont Interstate Fair and won first place. I
try to have something that I've made to put in the fair every year. I compete
with six counties, so, when I win I am very happy.
I have made many, many,
many dresses...a good many of them have won blue ribbons at the fair. I make a
lot of my own clothes...and I made most of my ex-husband's shirts and shorts, etc. I
learned how to make men's clothing by making them for my dad. He can still
wear shirts I made for him eighteen years ago. And these two pictures are of
some of the Kleenex box covers I've made.
The white dress in this picture has
a matching hat and all of the lace work on the dress and hat is hand beaded
and sequined. I won a blue ribbon for first place and a special award.
Oh....and the weddings
I've done...I would love to have a picture of all of the wedding attire I've
made. The pictures of this wedding dress date back to 1993. A young girl
approached me with a pencil sketching of her 'dream wedding dress'.
She couldn't get a seamstress to touch it. I love a challenge and took on the
job. I made the dress for her. She had a severe case of Scoliosis, yet wanted
an open back dress. I just built up one shoulder with extra shoulder pads and
you couldn't see that she had scoliosis. The other pictures are of a few ring
bearer's pillows I made.
I have also made many
more dolls than what's shown here in these pictures. I have them all over my
house. And I have no clue as to how many dolls I've made for other people
through the years...too many to number, but I did make a few for myself as I
went.
All the dolls pictured
here, with the exception of the blue and pink cat dolls, have won first place
blue ribbons. The black and gold cat dolls, Percival and Priscilla, were the
very first dolls I ever entered in anything...and I walked away with 'Best In Show' and two first place blue ribbons. I was so proud.
I
have pictures of all the dolls with their ribbons, but a lot of them aren't
clear enough to put on this page. The last picture is of my Sherlock Holmes
cat doll. He's Siamese and even has real leather suspenders that I made by
hand. The blue and pink cat dolls never were entered, I made them for someone
else.
You're just not going to
believe this next one...I had a king size canopy bed that my ex-husband made for me. I wanted to hand crochet a canopy top. I did the math and
figured that I would have to crochet 280 small motifs, or squares, put them
together, then crochet a border around the entire thing. On July 10, 1997, I
broke my left arm....I had just completed my 279th square. I only had one more
to go before joining the long rows of squares and crocheting the border. By
the third day after breaking my arm, I crocheted again. It was so slow, but it
was therapeutic.
Little by little I got more successful and faster. I finally
completed the project in time to enter it into the fair. I got a first place
blue ribbon and a special award ribbon.
So, the entire project took me 453
hours and 20 minutes to complete. I used nine and a half miles of thread. The
last two and a half miles of thread was crocheted with that broken arm. It
cost only $68.56 in thread to make it. And I finished the project just 15 days
before the deadline, in order to enter it in that year's fair.
In September of 1994 a
producer from one of the local TV stations asked me if I'd be interested in
making a cow costume, life size, for a commercial. It was for a video rental
place called 'Moovies'. I jumped at it. Trick was, there was no
pattern...so I had to design it myself. I worked for a vet at the time, so I
used a lot of the reading materials to study on muscle and bone structure. I
had only about three weeks to do this in, as well as work my regular full-time
job.
The commercial was scheduled to be shot in October. I worked so hard on
this. I made the head from Papier Mâché and the body from cloth, using wires
for shaping. This drove me crazy, but I loved it. I got to go on the
commercial shoot, in case there was a problem with the suit. My ex-husband went
with me and helped. A little over a month later, the producer himself
delivered a copy of the commercial to me. There is so much I could tell you
about this whole thing, but it would take up a lot of space.
