Buttons and Stripes

As promised, here is a pic of the button-down back of one of my beloved J.Crew stripe tops.

Cloche hat: Goorin Brothers | Top: J.Crew | Jeans: GAP Outlet | Canvas sneakers: Grasshoppers via Amazon | Tote bag: via ModCloth

Last Friday my husband and I went on a date to watch a local single-A baseball game. Our home team is a feeder team for the Houston Astros. They played a feeder team for the L.A. Dodgers. We lost, but that's all good. It was still a beautiful summer night.

The nice thing about smaller-stadium baseball games is that we can get up and walk around with ease. Below is an ad from one of our favorite restaurants here that we saw while stretching our legs. It sure caught our eye!

Happy 4th of July for those of you who celebrate it!

xo, Gladys

Garden: Harvest Time

The vegetable garden is finally ready for harvesting!

On Sunday we picked tomatoes, bell peppers, carrots, lettuce, and even a bit of broccoli, and we ate the carrots for afternoon snack and made dinner with the peppers and broccoli that same evening! (We made pepper steak served with rice, and my husband and son gobbled up most of it with me.) We actually waited a little too long for the tomatoes, since a couple of them were so red and ripe that their delicate skin ripped off as I picked them. We'll pick them sooner next time; there are so many on the vines that we'll have a plethora of tomatoes this season.

On Saturday my husband uprooted one of the carrots to see how they were doing, and it was disappointingly small, dry, and not orange at all -- yes, despite how lush and full the carrot top was. We tried again on Sunday and came up with three decent edible carrots (albeit not very pretty), though the large one was blaaaaand. We're not sure what went wrong, but we'll probably tweak the soil and watering for the next round of planting. (We're planning to plant sweet corn next year as well. My mother-in-law tells us corn is one of the easiest things to grow.)

I took the following photos last week Tuesday and Wednesday, and the tomatoes and bell peppers were especially ready for harvest by Sunday.

Bunches of tomatoes turning orange and red (we should have picked them then):

The broccoli developing florets, slowly but surely:

Eggplants dropped from their flowers over the course of a day. The second photo on the right below shows an eggplant that we didn't even realize was close to coming out. We'll need to wait until they're substantially bigger before picking them, however.

The bell peppers are particularly large, beautiful, and plentiful. Some of them are supposed to be red bell peppers, so we don't know how long to wait for them to turn color. But we couldn't help picking four of the larger ones for dinner on Sunday night! They were nice and crispy and smelled wonderful:

This is how tall the bib lettuce is getting. Sadly the leaves all have a bitter aftertaste now, but my son still likes to eat them freshly picked:

To harvest, we poked holes through the mesh just big enough for our hands to reach through. So far the mesh seems able to maintain its structural integrity. We'll see if any rabbits or squirrels figure out that there are holes big enough for them to get through or to tear open even larger. So far, so good.

xo, Gladys

Tutorial: Star Wars Envelope Pillow Cover

(ETA: I've updated this tutorial to create sharper corners while using French seams. See steps #5-8.)

With Darth Vader this time! (See my Yoda pillow cover here.) This was for a 6-year-old boy's birthday. Lots of boys in my life are digging Star Wars right now, which is nice because I'm digging it, too. :-) He got some Star Wars LEGO sets for his birthday this year, so I thought I'd augment those with a pillow. I asked his mom if he'd prefer Yoda or Vader, and she said Vader. The Darth Vader panel looks kinda retro with the flame-y lettering and the cheesy lava in the background, but the character after all was born in the late-1970s. Overall, I'm liking this vibe. (And, you know what, I don't think I ever realized just how skeleton-like Vader's mask has always been.)

Note: I hesitated to call this a tutorial because 1) it's so simple and 2) lots of tutorials for envelope pillow covers are all over the internet. However, because it had been a month since the last time I made a pillow cover, I felt like I needed a refresher. And since I liked the way I did it last time -- French seams and all -- I thought it would be a good idea to put together a more thorough post on making a pillow cover, at least for ME in the future, hence the use of the word "tutorial." If you have any questions or would like to point out any confusion with my instructions, let me know in the comments or via email. Thanks!

Envelope Pillow Cover Instructions
For a 16" x 16" square pillow form*

Fabric:

• 17" x 17" square of fabric for the front
• 17" x 22" rectangle of fabric for the back (if your fabric pattern is one-directional, make sure that the fabric dimensions are 17" wide and 22" tall)

* If you want to use a different-size pillow form, remember to add an inch to both the wide and the tall dimensions for the seam allowance. For example, for a 20" x 20" pillow form, your front fabric dimensions will be 21" x 21", and your back fabric dimensions will be 21" wide x 26" tall.

Method:

1. Cut your back rectangular fabric in half width-wise. You should now have two pieces measuring 17" x 11" each. These will overlap to make the "envelope."

2. Hem the bottom of the top piece: fold and press to the wrong side by 1/4". Fold again and press by 1/2", and pin. Edgestitch at the inside folded edge (i.e., sew close to the edge). Hem the top of the bottom piece in the same way. Don't forget to backstitch at the beginning and end of your seams.

This time I double stitched my hems, about 1/4" apart, for extra security. I sewed the first seam with a smidgen more than 1/4" seam allowance, and then I edgestitched the second seam. See a closeup of how it's supposed to look here.

3. Wrong sides together, align the bottom back piece with the front fabric. Pin along the bottom edge.

4. Wrong sides together, align the top back piece with the front fabric, overlapping with the bottom back piece. Pin along the top edge. Then pin along the sides, making sure to catch all three layers when you pin the overlapped back pieces. Pin the middle of the envelope for more security while sewing.

5. Sew around the edges with a 1/4" seam allowance, creating four separate seams (one on each side) that stop and start about 3/8" from the edges. You need to backstitch at the beginning and end of each seam. To speed up the process, you can use the "chain piecing" method wherein you don't snip the threads before before turning the corner and starting the next seam. (See photo below.)

6. Trim the edges down to 1/8".

7. Once all four sides are seamed, flip the pillowcase inside out and make sure the corners are opened out (there should be a hole at each corner; see photo below). Press the edges flat as close to the seam as possible. You can use the dull point of a knitting needle to help with this.

8. Sew along the edges continuously with a 1/4" seam allowance, pivoting at the corners and backstitching at the beginning and end of the seam. After that, snip the unseamed corners to reduce bulk, making sure not to cut into any seams. (See photo below.)

9. Flip the pillowcase right-side out, use a knitting needle to help push out the corners sharply (though be careful not to poke a hole through the fabric), stuff the correct-size pillow in there, and you're done!

I really love how clean the French seams look. Although I put this tutorial together mostly for me, I hope it proves useful for you, too. May the Force be with you on your sewing projects. :-)

xo, Gladys

Happy Snapshots: June

This was such a busy month! Here are my favorite snapshots from June:

Spa time (with ill-fitting goggles)

Santa Monica beach (photo credit S.K.)

Burrito (photo credit S.K.)

Cousins

Umbrella play on a hot Father's Day

Dear friend S's new baby boy

Closeup of sweet baby A

Beautiful vintage sitting area at the new local museum (we couldn't tell if it was part of an exhibit or not)

Sculpture of an antelope that reminded me of Miyazaki films

New aquarium fish -- lemon tetras

Paleo macadamia brownies from this recipe

Chomping on a brownie (if this photo looks familiar, here's why -- scroll down to the penultimate pic)

Homemade birthday card with the kiddo

Another homemade birthday card

Kitty hiding in plain sight (what a messy house)

Yummy meatloaf "cupcake" in silicone liner

Summer is just rushing by. Have a great weekend and I'll have a tutorial for you on Monday (in July!).

xo, Gladys

Jennifer Crusie Crochets

It's not everyday you find out that one of your favorite authors -- who wrote the most perfect romantic comedy novel ever -- crochets ... much less that SHE CROCHETS STEAMPUNK DRAGONS AND BUNNY SLIPPERS. She says she did this as part of her brainstorming/story-making process and calls it "yarnstorming." (Sounds like barnstorming, ha!) Could she get any cooler?

Oh wait, you haven't seen how amazing her crocheted creatures are:

Nelson, the dragon

Lefty and Bob, the bunny slippers

These guys, in her story, were real people whose souls/hearts were trapped inside these items by a mad, mad inventor. So, yeah. Jenny Crusie just got that much cooler. Way cooler. Too bad I can't get Nelson the dragon included when I buy her books. LOVE HIM. And I totally want to read that (not-yet-written) steampunk book right now. :-)

Go read her super-fascinating blog post with a couple more photos of her fabulous crochet yarnstorming projects. I wish I could undertake projects like this that helped me write that novel I've been meaning to write forever now. Sigh.

xo, Gladys