12 hours on flowers! The promised eternal imposters.

Pattern made from tracing the real flower shape. Cut from two layers of cotton, prior fused with spray adhesive and ironed together. 

Assembled with Tex 70 upholstery thread, just a few stitches, one bead and leaving long strings.

Growing….Overflowing

Tacky glue, Mildly dilute. Thread tails taped to hangers to try. 

Tied some to a twine vine. 

And made a branch from a rejected electronic scalp massager (?…There are mysterious things in this house that I am not responsible for…) some leftover wing wire and paper tape. Cut 3/4” tan cotton strips, soaked them in diluted tacky glue and swirled to secure. Glued on the remaining yellow bells once firm. Finished the twine vine and branch blossoms off with a bit of acrylic base greenery.

They’re weirdly plastic-like stiff.

Throwback to when wet watercolor paper was the only thing I thought of growing flowers from.

♩ There's a house we can build

Every room inside is filled

With things from far away ♫

*got too flower flinging happy and why did I not move the jar ~2" to the left to cover the outlet.*

In between the cheerful chaos of my bro flying home, buying a car, flying back to the cold climate he dubbed “So much suffering”  for a couple days, returning here again by plane and yesterday cruising to the coast for the adventure of new employment, Twas time for our mom’s birthday enjoyment. Imagine living to be half a century! I used to want to be just a Jedi but now I hope to be a fraction as good as she..in addition to that.

 I owe her everything. For she’s kind enough to tolerate fittings, wears, and lets me cut her hair ( thanks to Free Salon Education on YT…..am I allowed to admit this now since it’s the post-Plague era? Still weird? ).

 Birthday + Mother’s Day makes.

Chestnut knit cardigan made from a jersey sheet and finished with petite pleats. 10hrs.

*should have ironed it but photographed in the “wad & hide it, she’s coming!” mode*

Leather drawstring pants, 7hrs. Pinned on dress form because, little does the lifeless model know... she has absolutely no legs.

Circular cut flounces and rolled edge hems.

Aqua top -4.5Hrs.

Navy one-4.5hrs plus probably x3 extra because it had to be redone. The fabric lacked stretch so the fit was funny. I pattern drafted off of a lycra reference garment, and, it being 3 am, in that thick state of painkiller proof exhaustion so lacking logic, I blindly cut out the thick textile and realized the tragedy too late.

I cut out the side panels and live-human-fit Princess seam replacement panels on each side while apologizing profusely for the flop. Added two flounces on each shoulder, elastic waist gather at the back, and detailed with multicolor boho-style  thread “quilting” lines along the edges and ruffles-to hide the alterations.

Fits now (too big on this dress form), but cannot say I’m guiltless over what the poor garment has been though. 

French seams on all.

^ The low energy butterfly attempt.

Unfortunately confusion proved contagious amongst the creations. 

“Cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just when you especially want them to be good” - Anne Shirley

I have an explanation for its aesthetic. Not a good one, but a long one. 🦋

The birthday and bro week:

1: We had no idea he would be back so soon, so I flew into frenzied cooking, confection and bread baking mode.

2:Our neighbor passed away, and a lightbulb moment of “I’ll bake 7 batches of cookies out of sheer ignorance of what else to do” flickered on. Then there was one other little thing, a drawing. Fast/rough 4x6, done in a two-day frenzy from a photo found via The Power of Googling Names to slip to them at one of the sad events.

3: I decided to make a double-batch/four layer/6.25” tall (when bald/without toppings) tuxedo chocolate cream cake since my bro was present…but without consideration of the 6.5” tall cake holder height.

4: Aforementioned cookies used a profuse amount of powdered sugar, so barely enough was left for the buttermint dough butterfly.

5: I figured out how to maneuver the wheelchair about the kitchen so I can take over the dishwashing and less grieve my mom! And any new unskilled work to crash between is craved for. Thankfully the stationary nature of cooking has steadily remained doable from a tall ordinary chair. A half-hour here, an hour there, If I rest, I writhe, to be busy is to thrive!..?

6: As result of 1-5, I got terribly, flare-ably tired. 

and thus, the cake decor did visually suffer. Sorry, Mom. Even though she didn’t mind 😭

Good gift packaging is an art foreign to me, but perhaps it’s never too late to fumble about with fluff and feathers.

(Any tips are appreciated from those who do such things better!)

I never know how much content to carve into a blog entry, so I suppose I’ll lock the newers in a Doc, for the next chime of the clock?

PS: Here is some no context yard nature.

BEHOLD

[x6 speed]

... the clouds swirls are real but the colors are embellished.

Okay, goodbye now!