Circus in Wonderland - a photo essay

What a whirlwind couple of weeks! I've been thoroughly entrenched in a tiny, windowless, airless sewing lair at the circus school sewing my little heart out for 43 incredible teenage performers. There were four wonderful moms working on the over 100 costumes required for the show and we had a great time supporting CircusWest  in A Circus in Wonderland. After spending almost 40 hours at the gym over the last four days, repairing popped seams, washing make up and blood out of costumes (a cut toe!), attaching D's unicorn horn part way though each performance, mopping dirty floors, bobby-pinning buns and braids into place, I am really looking forward to getting back to working with cotton in the peace and quiet of my sewing room tomorrow.

It takes a small army of dedicated volunteer moms, former CirKids and make up artist students from the Blanche MacDonald School to prep the kids and get them into character.

The morning starts with an airbrush machine,

 then lots of braiding/backcombing/pinning and hairspray, then to detailed makeup, finally ending with this:

The unicorn is my D, the lion is one of her circus BFFs. They did a fun acrobatic act representing the unicorn and lion's duel for the crown.

The show was even better than last year's and the Alice theme brought in hundreds of audience members (30 members of the Vancouver Lolita cosplay group came in elaborate costumes!) that might not otherwise have been exposed to this amazing youth circus. I think 5 out of 8 shows were oversold, which is amazing since 400 seats was considered a sell-out.

Here are just a few photos so you can get a sense of it.

Alice first goes through the looking glass

A whirlwind of Alice imposters dance inside the looking glass

The Red Queen on her trapeze

The card queens enjoy a cuppa on the double trapeze before getting down to business

Alice and the Mad Hatter enjoy a flower poi act

A backstage silhouette of the tissu (aerial silks) performance

Super cool tightwire trick!

A stack of Blind Mice

Stacking cards handstand act final style (D in lower right)

The amazing cast of Circus in Wonderland!

There you go! It was really a pleasure to spend so much time around positive, supportive, motivated and hard-working kids. They are total slobs, but hey, you can't have it all.

I completely missed out on participating in SewMamaSew's giveaway day and I feel rather disconnected from blogland, but I'll try my best to get back in the swing. I'm eager to get sewing for myself again. Hope you are all well and working on fun projects!


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Peace: Liberty edition

Prior to making my Peace, Boston flag, I had basted my teeny 1/2" Liberty hexies together into a peace sign for my new spring jacket. After buying the jacket on impulse from a shop window display, I was surprised to see that every second woman in Vancouver is wearing a similar one - jeez.

Now mine is a little different.

These tiny hexies are the last of my Liberty scraps from last year's challenge by The Organic Stitch Co when I made this and these. Jo's got a 20% off sale on her ENTIRE shop, so I've re-stocked charm squares in the hopes of making the sweet spool quilt from Alexia's book Liberty Love.  Yardage purchases will have to wait until I hit Old Blighty in person in July. I want to have a proper fondle before I plunk down big coin on that tana lawn! Jo's got a new mini charm package - fifty different 2 1/2" squares for under $12. It's the perfect snack pack for someone looking to dabble in Liberty and her shipping to Canada is super reasonable.

 To Boston with Love UPDATE: An exciting event/venue opportunity in Boston means our flags have to be there earlier:  if you want your flag(s) to hang in the opening, they need to be in Boston by May 21st.  Flags arriving after that date can still be added. See VMQG site for details. Take an hour this evening and make a flag to be a part of this super exciting modern quilt guild movement!

Jigsaw Love

In February, the VMQG block challenge theme was hearts, hot pink, orange and linen. Members were to make blocks and challenge themselves with a new technique in their block construction. There were lots of people who have never worked with linen before (hello, swishy fabric!). We got some amazing blocks back for our group quilt!

I volunteered for first crack at jigsawing the blocks together. My idea was to put a bit of structure around some of the hearts with an improv log-cabin feeling...more like little borders really. I didn't want to go all crazy wonky since this will be passed on to other guild members and it's no fun getting an un-square, totally insane partly finished quilt top to work on!

My block contribution is the bias appliqued string of hearts. I've always wanted to try applying a folded (wrong sides together) bias strip by sewing along the cut edges, then folding the strip over the seam (concealing the raw edges) and appliqueing the folded edge down.  No bias bars or bias tape making gizmo necessary. It took some planning to get the heart shape right, though. This is a great way to apply stems and vines by machine, too. I first saw this method used by my pal Double N Dianne on a sweet 1930's repro quilt she made.

I can't seem to find any photo tutorials for this in a google search. If anyone knows of one, please share a link in the comments and if not, I could take a few pictures to show anyone who is interested!

Sewing is taking place here, but it mostly involves circus costumes these days (not very exciting since all I make is the basic bodysuits). The big show is in a couple of weeks and we've got lots of work to do! I've also finished a very special quilt but I can't share it quite yet. Hopefully in a couple of weeks.  

In the meantime, the sun is shining and Vancouver gardens have exploded into spring bloom. It's just gorgeous here now! I hope spring has sprung in your town, too.

Peace, Boston

To find out how you can send your love to Boston, please visit the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild blog.

It's the little things....

....that you need to keep your ipod/iphone earbuds from tangling.

Made in the hours before our vacation flight, for my daughter and nieces. I used this free tute and some of my fav accessory fabric, Michael Miller's Mirror Ball Dots. Yum. Like candy.

Aloha!

Miss me? I'll give you one guess as to where my family and I have been hanging out for the past few weeks. I have a lot of photos to sort through, but I just wanted to stop in and say 'hi' so you don't think I've completely abandoned Poppyprint.  If you are not on Instagram (where I was posting regularly), here's a little taste of what we saw, and did, on vacation.

Green sea turtle enjoying a sandy snooze - we felt very lucky to see this old fella on our first day!

hibiscus

pahoehoe lava


It's about to get really pointy...a'a' lava

Got Kapu issues? Place offerings in their mouths at Pu'uhonau o Hanoaunau

It's geck o'clock!




Plumeria


Pololu Valley


A cacao pod - yes, this is where chocolate comes from!


late afternoon nap for this guy


Mauna Kea cinder cones


This is what my family looks like at sunset in 50 mph winds and 9000' elevation. We hiked up to the sunset lookout at the Mauna Kea Observatory Visitor's Station. I haven't laughed this hard for a very long time, we had so much fun despite all the grit in our eyeballs.

Did you guess Hawaii? The Big Island? YES.

Regularly scheduled sewing to commence tomorrow. I've had a tough time with jet-lag and recovering from a traumatic flight home (all is well), plus I had a full schedule of family commitments beginning the day we arrived home.  I am definitely looking forward to turning my machine on. Although I brought some teeny hexies along in a pouch, I decided to keep them safe from sunscreen-laden fingers and I read 5 books instead. Oh, the luxury!

Did anyone else take a Spring Break or Easter vacation? What did you do?

Loving Liberty

Last month I visited the sewing wholesaler to gather prizes and giveaway goodies for my retreat when I spied a copy of Liberty Love by Alexia Abegg on the manager's desk. Playing the innocent, I said "oh, I didn't realize that book was for sale yet!". Of course it wasn't for sale yet, but a businessman isn't going to pass up a sales opportunity, is he? Out I walked with a smile on my face and an advance copy of Liberty Love in my lovely Happysewlucky-made fabric shopping bag!

Having read the book cover to cover, I can hardly think of anything else beyond my trip to London in July and fondling Liberty Tana Lawn in person, IN THE LIBERTY FLAGSHIP STORE!  I've previously declared my love of sweet spool quilts and even made a few selvage ones, so it's a no-brainer to put this one on my Future Quilts list. Liberty charm square acquisition is in full swing!

Instagram is loaded with amazing photos of people making the Marcelle Medallion quilt. It is exciting to see how different the central medallion looks in different colours and prints (check the flickr group for pix). I love medallion quilts, so I'm sure there will be one of these in my future, although I don't think I am keen to piece flying geese with tana lawn, so I will probably use my cotton scraps.

To kick off my own personal Liberty Love fest here, I went with a quick but satisfying project: the Around Town Tote. Alexia taught a class at Keli's amazing Drygoods Make.Do.Mend workshop last weekend and after seeing photos of the bag that K2 made there, I realized this would be the perfect gift for a friend's 50th birthday. 

I know my friend is an over-the-shoulder bag carrier, so I made the straps longer. The pattern calls for upcycling a leather belt, but I've got a buttery soft deer hide that's been waiting over 20 years for the perfect project, so I cut strips from that. Due to it's stretchy nature, I decided to stitch two strips together, rough side in, for stability. A 100/16 topstitch needle did the trick...I just went slowly with presser foot pressure turned right down and a teflon foot. I don't have an awl, so I used the same needle without thread to pre-pierce marked holes for the hand-stitched X's (sewn with doubled polyester thread, a leather needle and thimble). I didn't have any magnetic snaps on hand, so I made a tab and wooden button closure instead.

My favourite way to add some oomph: triplestitch topstitching

The Liberty tana lawn was purchased from Katy on destash ages ago. It looks amazing with Essex yarn dyed linen in black (what doesn't?!?). That linen came in a hefty 5 yard chunk from Marmalade Fabrics because I know I'll use it for many projects. For the lining, I chose Summersville weave and added a divided pocket for iphone and keys on a fob.

It is kind of hard to tell, but this bag is a very generous size (I hardly had to suck in my gut for this picture)! 

I'm definitely going to make more of these. It's rugby shirt stripes: the Liberty glam version!