Buggirl's Increasingly Strange Tokyo Tales...

I attended a kindergarten "Sports Day"....

There really isn't any translation that correctly captures what an 運動会 is so we generally call it sports day. It involved some crazy-assed convoluted games and mighty cute and I really should post pictures with descriptions of what is going on...but before I have time to sit and do that properly all I have to say is....

CHILDREN DRESSED LIKE SUSHI YOUR ARGUEMENT IS INVALID.
( Picture Page Driveby...so much! )

I'm trying to quickly make use of my extra scraps from projects. I still have another curtain to make for Eva-belly, but from scraps too small for that (and from scraps from a yellow curtain I made for the studio kitchen) I made some new zippered covers for three throw pillows in my bedroom.
( Pictures. )
And I bought The Colette Sewing Handbook and look forward to making more skirts and...hopefully...dresses this spring. I am very happy with the book's approach to sewing as a process and a lifestyle.

Before...and this doesn't even show how horrible those curtains are:


( Step by step I make more pretty! )

Before I went to America, H of the Matsudo studio was asking what everyone was asking...would I be staying in Japan or not.

I told H that if I stayed at the studio, one thing needed to be fixed...she looked worried and then burst out laughing when I told her that the horrible curtains would have to go. I was, of course, dead serious. We've got a sad assortment of 100yen shop curtains, shower curtains, and "someone took curtains from their last job" curtains in what is a lovely studio.

I was in Ikea today. I resisted some fabric choices that would have been totally me, but maybe not really studio appropriate. My first choice for studio ok fabrics for the curtains was this:


But it's 999yen a meter. Cheap, but when you'll end up using meter and meter of it and I want to keep things on the cheap...I'd texted H and showed her some fabrics and she was excited, but she's having a rough time in Osaka right now and admited that the pictures were her best news all day...

so I picked up ten meters of a cheaper fabric, marked down to 399yen a meter and being phased out, but there's still bolts of it.



It's not perfect but it's worlds better than what we've got up and it will actually fit the windows. I made two set of curtains for the windows and dressing room. I'll see how they look in the studio in the next few days and see if I should pick up more fabric for the odder sized things with curtains. This is my Christmas gift to H.

The skirts I've made....they are the hit of the elementary school I'm at right now.

Teachers found me to see what I was wearing today because they'd heard about my awesome bike-skirt from the kids...and today's drunken skeletons did not disappoint.

And I didn't even bust out the woodland creatures yet!


I will neither confirm nor deny that I stoped at a fabric store today on the way back from my shrink.

I still need to hem it but I feel good about having made a muslin of a skirt pattern I think I drafted, um, 4 years ago, adjusted as needed, theaded the serger...

( SKIRT! )

Ok. So I haven't stopped sewing yet.

( Skirt and skulls behind the cut. )

It's really dangerous for me to have made a simple skirt pattern that works for a meter of fabric. It makes resisting fabrics very hard.

I've also taken to, once i've made an object, cutting the leftovers into 5cm strips so I can eventually make another scrap busting funquilt.

I was tired last night, the result of duet rehearsals (I have 3 workshops, 3 classes and a show this weekend).

But, apparently not to tired to stash bust based on my train iPad doodle. It isn't perfect but it will do the trick.


( Totting stuff bag )

Yes. I seem to have accumulated a ton of cotton leftover scraps.



It's actually much brighter in person but I took the picture at night with mixed lighting types.
I have three more squares laid out that still need the strips sewn together...then comes top-stitching. 4 squares are all topsticthed but that leaves 16 to go. Audible. Game of Thrones books. Thank you.

The chairs behind the quilt? I'd say the most frequent fabric in the quilt came from the left over fabric from when I made those cushion covers.

I will has quilt to banish the darkness of winter...and possibly induce fits.