Tutorial: Lazy Bubble Skirt

Skirts were the very first thing I ever sewed for Rylee, mostly because toddler skirts are about the easiest things in the world to sew. There was a period where she didn't wear them because they got in the way of playing, stooping and crawling. Now that her legs are much longer she can wear them again without interfering with all the glorious rampaging and mess making that compose her days. But A-lines and twirly skirts started to bore me so I decided to try a bubble skirt. I searched around and found a number of tutorials that, while good, seemed needlessly complicated. At the rate she's growing I want a minimum investment for maximum cute.

Thus, I give you: the lazy bubble skirt. I hesitate to say *easy* since one step is a little tricky but it's the laziest possible way I can think of to construct a cute, poofy skirt for a little girl from about 12m - 5T or so.

You will need:
* Approx 1/2 yard of shell (main) fabric
* Approx 1/2 yard of lining fabric
* 1/2 yard of VERY soft and stretchy 1/4" elastic. I like knit elastic for this. For a stiffer elastic you might want to allow a little more.
* Approx 1/2 yard (waist measurement) of 3/4" elastic
* Waist measurement and skirt length measurement of the child to be clad

NOTE: Because I really, truly mean it when I say I wanted this to be a lazy undertaking I give myself a lot of "slop" in the yardage so I don't have to do things like iron 1/8" hems. Because who wants to do that? So if you have a piece of fabric that you are just DYING to use but it's a little bit short you can get by with less if you use narrower elastic in the waist and narrower seam allowances.

Step 1: Measure child from waist to the desired skirt length. I love to have these hit around the knee. I made the one in the tutorial a little longer because I want it to last. For Rylee this was 12".

Step 2: Cut your main fabric four inches longer than your desired skirt length. E.g. for this skirt I cut the main fabric 16" long. One full fabric width (usually about 44") should be right for 12month - 5T. At the outside edges of that range you might have to play around with cutting it narrower or sewing a few extra inches on the edge.

Step 3: Cut your lining fabric two inches longer than your desired skirt length (or put another way, two inches shorter than your main fabric). For Rylee's dress that was 14". Trim the fabric if necessary to make the lining and the main fabric the same width. I also trimmed the selvage here to avoid a huge seam allowance on the fashion fabric.

Step 4: Right sides together sew the short edge (marked with a red line in the photo above) on the main fabric. Repeat for the lining fabric. You should have two tubes (i.e. you are not yet sewing these together). Make sure to use the same seam allowance to keep the tubes the same size. Press the seam allowance open.

Step 5: With right sides together, aligning seams, slip the lining tube into the main fabric tube, aligning the bottom edges. NOTE: Very important that you align the BOTTOM edges, especially if you have a directional print. I had to check with my video game geek husband AND the internet to make sure I had my invaders going the right way. In the photo below I am pinching the BOTTOM edges of the fabric.

Step 6: Divide the bottom edge into quarters. One mark will be the pressed seams. Mark the opposite edge with a pin (show above), pinning fabric and lining together. Mark the points midway between the pin/seam by either folding the tubes in half again or measuring. Your fabric should now be pinned together in three places.

Step 7: Cut 18" of your soft, 1/4" elastic. This will be stretching around the entire circumference of your skirt (approx. 44"). This is also the part that will be around the little knees and you want to make sure there is still room to run. If your elastic won't stretch that far then cut a slightly larger piece.  Divide the elastic into quarters by folding or measuring, marking with pins.

Step 8: The only tricky step in the whole process. The one place where speed and slapdashery are  NOT your friend. Go slowly in this step and you will be amply rewarded because it is really 2-3 steps in one. You are going to attach the elastic AND seam the shell/lining together in a single step. I use a triple zizag for this to make sure it's nice and stretchy. If your machine doesn't have a triple zigzag then double should be fine. Starting at the pressed seam(s) lay the elastic down just inside the aligned edges of the shell and lining. I like to line the fabric edges up with my presser foot and have the elastic just slightly inside that. You might need to mess around with the stitch width to make sure you are catching the elastic. Hand crank a few stitches and stop with your needle down in the fabric. Now stretch the elastic until you align the first pin in the elastic with the first pin in the fabric as shown below. S-L-O-W-L-Y sew the elastic to the first pins.

Step 9: Repeat for each quarter section of fabric and elastic ending back at the pressed seams. The last section won't have aligned pins, you'll just be finishing up the last piece aligning it with your starting point.

Step 10: Check and make sure you seamed all the way around. If your elastic doesn't quite reach it's ok. Just make sure you complete your seam all the way back to the beginning and do a few reverse stitches to secure. At the very end of my seam here the elastic snapped away and I couldn't quite make it reach. It doesn't matter as long as the fabrics are joined all the way around.

Step 11: You now have a gathered "bag" of your fabrics.

Step 12: Turn the skirt so that the wrong sides are together and your lining fabric is to the outside. Line up the top edges of the fabrics.

Step 13: To make the waistband first turn under about 1/2" on the top. If you are short on fabric you can serge the edges together here, but I like a neater look. You can also make this first turn a little narrower, but it's hard to turn both much narrower than this and an extra 1/2" of fabric is worth it to me to be lazy.

Step 14: Turn again about an inch to an inch and half. A little less if your waistband elastic is narrower than 3/4". Again, lazy wins the day for me here and I make a very generous band. Sew around the lower edge leaving a 2" opening to insert your elastic.

Step 15: Cut your waistband elastic about 1" shorter than child's waist measurement. I sometimes do a little bigger if the elastic is stiff and I want to make sure it doesn't pinch. Bonus tip: Use tailor's chalk, pen or marker to mark once side of the elastic so you can check to see if it twisted while you pulled it.  This happens to me all the time and I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out.

Step 16: Using a safety pin or bodkin, pull elastic through the waistband, secure it and then sew the seam shut. Done!

 

Side note: I'd love to say that this was all part of sewing things up to match Rylee's orphan garments, but the plain truth is that I bought the fabric because I was coveting. BUT, I did just buy the shirt at a Just Between Friends sale and both it and the baby legs *were* orphans. And I really dig the demure plaid collar with the over-the-top geeky fabric. So we'll call it a win.

Lazy Fare How-To: Mise En Place

Almost done with my trashy vampire novel, so how about a post that might be useful?

First, please notice the title and see how truly clever I am. Drop the "i" from faire, removing the suspicion that I misspelled Laissez. End up with a much cuter wordplay description of the kind of party throwing I'd like to teach. So from now on these how-tos will officially be part of the Lazy Fare (TM) approach to party planning.

First up! Mise en place. What is it? Why would you want to do it? And what's the Lazy Fare way?

Mise en place: What
A fancy French term that literally means "put in place." If you've ever watched any cooking show and observed each ingredient in its own little bowl that's mise en place. In fact, each ingredient in its own container is hard-core mise en place and decidedly not lazy fare. It's preparing all your ingredients ahead of time, before you begin any cooking and/or mixing together.

Mise en place: Why
There are a number of reasons for doing mise en place, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. We'll set aside why the pros do it, since if you're a professional chef you're not going to learn much from me. So why might you want to do this as part of party planning or even for everyday cooking?

1. It makes recipe preparation much faster by "batching" the type of work you're doing. Despite what we're told, multi-tasking is bad. By being in either "prep mode" or "cooking mode" you work more efficiently.
2. It allows for quicker assembly and cooking times. This is different from #1 because here I'm talking about the actual time you spend cooking the final dish. If you're having a multi-course dinner party you will almost certainly have to prepare at least one dish during the party. You can jet into the kitchen for 10 minutes to assemble something if all the prep is done up front. For everyday cooking, it allows you to have a meal all prepped and ready for cooking. I have more time to prep earlier in the day and dinner time is always frantic. Some people even do their prep after dinner for the next day. At the very least you get a fresher dinner on the table in less time.
3. It lowers your stress while you're cooking (see multi-tasking is bad above).
4. It allows you to bunch up prep across multiple dishes (dinner party) or meals (weekly meal prep). This is really a variation on #1, but I'm on a list making roll. It's much easier and faster to slice 5 onions one time than one onion 5 times. Not to mention, why clean-up more times than you have to?
5. When people ask what you're doing you can affect a snooty french look and say "Why, I'm doing my mise en place of course." Bonus points if you act shocked that they even have to ask.

Mise en place: (Lazy fare) How
The most straight-forward mise en place is what you see on most cooking shows: every ingredient in its own little container. But unless you have a staff doing this for you it's way more work than you need. You can get all the benefits with a streamlined version.

Lazy fare = doing the least amount of work for the best possible finished dish. And here I'm actually distinguishing between the kind of work you do standing on your feet in the kitchen and the kind you can do sitting in front of the TV or over coffee and bagels (Eric's and my favorite party planning activity). We want to minimize the first kind by doing more of the second kind. But still the least possible amount of both. Lazy, remember?

I'm going to use Alton Brown's Guacamole recipe for this example because it's yummy, lends itself well to demonstrating what I'm talking about and I made it last weekend for a Cinco de Mayo party so I have pictures.

The recipe is here: Alton's Guacamole Recipe. I'm pasting the text at the end of this post just in case they move the link. It might be useful to have a copy of the recipe in a 2nd browser tab while you read through this. If you're hardcore go ahead and print it and mark it up.


Step 1: Read the entire recipe through at least once.

Step 2:  No really. Read the entire recipe through at least once. 
I'm not kidding about this and I'll wait while you do it.... looo dee dooo...done? Good. I used to think that cooking was something everyone could do, because I've been doing it since I was about 8 or 9. Then I watched The Worst Cooks in America and realized that a lot of people don't learn how to cook when they are kids. The number one mistake I saw these rookie cooks make was to just plunge into the recipe without reading it all the way through. It's not a good idea even if you're not doing mise and it's impossible to do mise without reading it all the way through.

Step 3: Group the ingredients together based on the steps in the recipe
This is the lazy fare part of it. For regular mise en place you would just prep all the ingredients in the list, one by one. That's usually a waste of effort and dishes.

Here are the groups from Alton's recipe:

• Avocado
• lime juice
• salt, cumin, and cayenne
• onions, tomatoes, cilantro, and garlic

Step 4: Start preparing the groups of ingredients, working from the "bottom" of the recipe up
I try to dirty as few bowls as I can in this process, which means I usually have one of the groups prepared in the bowl, pan or pot that I plan to use for the final mixing and/or cooking. In this case I would prep the avocados in the bowl I served the dip in. And I would prep those last since it's step one of my recipe. i.e. once I had the other three groups prepped I would just start following the recipe. If you're doing your mise  with the intention of preparing the final dish at a later time you could use any container for the "main" group.

I also like to do the prep work in the order that is least likely to cross-contaminate, either with germs or just flavors. So plain veggies first, then stinky veggies, then raw meat. I don't have to worry as much about my knives that way. (I don't worry at all about my cutting boards because ours are color coded by food type, but that's a neurosis for another day).

For this recipe I cut all the veggies into a single bowl, measured the spices into a separate bowl and squeezed the limes into a third bowl. That was my entire mise. I then peeled the avocados as I started mixing the dish.

So I had this

Step 5: Assembly!

Which should now be easy, peasy. This assembly took less than 5 minutes.

Yummy! 

For a future post: Doing your mise en place for several recipes at a time.

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Guacamole

Recipe courtesy Alton Brown

Prep Time: 20 min

Inactive Prep Time: 1 hr 0 min

Cook Time:--

Level: Easy

Serves: 1 batch

Ingredients

• 3 Haas avocados, halved, seeded and peeled
• 1 lime, juiced
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne
• 1/2 medium onion, diced
• 2 Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
• 1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
• 1 clove garlic, minced

Directions

In a large bowl place the scooped avocado pulp and lime juice, toss to coat. Drain, and reserve the lime juice, after all of the avocados have been coated. Using a potato masher add the salt, cumin, and cayenne and mash. Then, fold in the onions, tomatoes, cilantro, and garlic. Add 1 tablespoon of the reserved lime juice. Let sit at room temperature for 1 hour and then serve.

Entertaining, the lazy faire way

No, that's not a misspelling. I'm not talking about laissez-faire as in fancy economic theory with a fancy French name. It's just my silly franglish label for doing the least possible amount of work to get the best possible results. In my previous life it would have been phrased "If you want something done efficiently, assign it to a lazy programmer."

When I started this blog I had hopes that I could pass on some information that someone, somewhere might find even marginally useful. Since goodness knows I know jack-all about sewing I figured I could talk about what people say I do well. Namely, throw fabo parties. I even wrote a post all about The Zone of Effortless Entertaining

And haven't written a word about it since. But I've been mulling and thinking and have decided two things:

1. Effortless Entertaining, although beautifully alliterative, is not the correct description.Because seriously fantastic parties require serious amounts of work. I really mean low stress, freak-out free, ulcer-less, sans meltdown, with all your hair intact and the same number of gray as you started. Yeah? Ok.

2. I can't do that in a single post. In fact, I can barely talk about doing it in a single post. This started out as a post about mise en place and four paras in I'm still explaining what I'm going to say. So I changed the title and we'll mise tomorrow.

Here's what I propose to do. I'll spend some more time wrapping my pea-brain around what it is that makes a low-stress party. At this point Eric and I have done these enough times that I have to actually think about what it is we do. And sleep-deprivation has lowered my IQ by enough points that my planning skills are currently between bright golden retriever and dull chimp. There will be dredging involved.

With the pea-wrapping underway, and with the help of a ridiculous amount of written materials left over from party days I'll start putting together a few posts here and there that cover the main ideas. And I'll even try to make some of them relevant to everyday, regular cooking and meal planning (see mise en place tomorrow). 'Cause I used to be able to do that, too, and maybe it would also be useful. And then once the posts are in place I'll write something to sort of tie them all together and walk you through throwing a party people will talk about for years.

And maybe share some funny, silly stories like the time we got a red-meat-avoider to request veal.

That was at this party.

Gearing up to survive my flight

Why, what's this pseudo-book looking thing?

It looks like...a new crayon wallet for Rylee!

I thought about doing a tutorial but a) I wanted to finish during naptime which I (barely) did. And b) this was the most half-a*ed bit of sewing I've done in a long time. I didn't use pins or even get out The Good Scissors.  

I think if I do another one I'll move the tab to the other side, too. I didn't want it on the pad side because I was afraid that would be bulky. But I could have oriented it with the crayons on the right and had it close more like a traditional book.

I would also possibly make these two middle pockets deeper, too. I already had some fabric cut in 5x13 rectangles for "regular" crayon rolls. So I was sort of retro-fitting.

Here's hoping it will consume at least 15 minutes when I unveil it during our 5+ hour plane ride on Friday.

Tutorial: Reusable Sandwich Bag

My first ever tutorial! This can be used to create a reusable sandwich bag or snack bag, depending on the chosen dimensions. This tutorial is for a very generous sandwich bag, i.e. usable dimensions of about 6.75 inches wide x 8" high. This bag is washable. I don't recommend drying it if you choose non-cotton lining. It will last longer if you turn it inside out, brush off the crumbs, rinse and stand to dry rather than machine washing.

Supplies
Shell fabric: 8" wide x 18" high
Lining fabric: 8" wide x 18" high
Velcro: 6.5" loop piece and 6.5" hook piece. I'm using self-sticking because it's what I had. I don't recommend it because it's not sticky enough to hold without stitching and when you stitch through it your needle will get sticky. This will cause your bobbin to become sad and tangle your thread and make you cry. I don't want you to cry. If you're making just one of these you can maybe get away with sewing self-stick. More than one? Forget about it or be willing to change your needle multiple times. (<--- bitter voice of experience)

A note on fabric selection. For the shell fabric cotton works great. I was making this bag to replace Eric's first lunch bag. He's a very good boy and takes his lunch every day and he wore out his first bag after about a year of use. He also loves the Cowboys and since he is such a good boy and they had a piece at the cheapy fabric store he is rewarded. Logo is copyright NFL, please don't report me or sue me.

For the lining you can choose cotton again or something that is a little more waterproof. Some people use organic cotton since you will be packing food in this bag. Others chose PUL (the stuff reusable diapers are made from) because it's so waterproof. I like ripstop nylon because it's a little bit waterproof but doesn't have polyurethane like PUL. You can get ripstop nylon in the fabric store with the sporting/outdoor fabrics. 

Step 1: Attach Lining to Shell

With right sides together, sew lining and shell fabric along shorter side (8" in our example) using a 3/8" seam allowance.,.

Turn right side out. Press to align seams. If you're using something other than a cotton lining, press from the shell side to avoid melting the nylon or PUL. You should now have this. Long edges are still unfinished. If you're using nylon it might slip a little bit. Unless you had a lot of slip, don't worry about it. I put some fudge in the seam allowances to allow for this.

 

Step 2: Attach Velcro

Align one piece of velcro, hook/loop side out, on the right side of the lining fabric so it is centered on the short edge and with the top edge about 1/4" from the seam you just sewed. The distance from the top is mostly aesthetic, but I found this to be a nice margin. Stitch around all four sides to make sure it's nice and secure. Repeat for the other short edge.

Step 3: French Seam, Part Un

Fold the bag so the lining sides are together (i.e. shell side out). You may want to attach the velcro to make sure everything lines up nice and pretty. We're going to secure this with a french seam because it's pretty and fancy and will keep les crumbs from collecting in the seams.

Lining sides together (shell side out) stitch the sides together using a 1/4" seam allowance.

Notice we still have a raw edge on the right side of the fabric (also notice the ugly tangled stitch from my sad bobbin. I fixed it after this picture :). Trim this to 1/8". If we were making a garment now would be to the time to do some more pressing, but it's not really necessary. If you do press, press the seam to one side not open. Now to finish the french seam.

Step 4: French Seam, Part Deux
Turn your bag inside out so the shell sides are facing and the lining is out. Sew the same sides together again, this time using a 3/8" seam allowance. You will be enclosing the raw edge of the first seam inside this seam.

The inside seam will be sealed now, which will keep things nice and tidy inside the bag. Voila.

Ta-da! Turn bag right side out and admire its generous dimensions.

Get the attention of your favorite football fan (rear-end of dog optional)

Delight him with his new lunch bag. Recall high school genetics and appreciate why your daughter is a bit stoic.

The Zone of Effortless Entertaining

I finished my second muslin for the skirt sew-along and am ready to cut into my pretty fabric. But I don't feel like taking pictures. And I promised this would be more than a sewing blog.

So how about some of that "information about entertaining" I promised when I launched this blog?

A little background for those of you here reading who aren't related to me and don't know me in Real Life (and hey, thanks for being here!) Eric and I both enjoy cooking as a hobby and pre-Rylee we threw Parties. Note the capital P. We had a summer BBQ, a Christmas cocktail party and occasionally went all out with multi-course (read that 10-12) tasting menus for 8-10 people. People were gracious enough to tell us they really enjoyed these shindigs and some women even bought new outfits for the cocktail party. I guess we were doing something right.

I say all this not to brag but to establish why anyone might even consider taking my advice on cooking, hostessing and entertaining. Who the heck am I, right? So with that caveat here's a lovely little picture since this is how my geek brain processes information best.

Lynn's Geeky Descriptions of Various Types of Party Throwing

I numbered the quadrants The Math Way since that's most familiar to me and then labeled them for those of you who aren't complete and total nerds.

Zone I contains things like souffle, elaborate orchid centerpieces harvested from your hot houses, handmade chocolates and calligraphy place cards. That is, things that require a lot of time, effort and/or skill but are seriously impressive when they hit the table. 

Zone II contains things like raising, slaughtering and plucking your own chickens to make fried chicken, making your own puff pastry and homemade fondant. Anything insanely difficult that doesn't really show in the finished product of your party. Professional bakers don't even make their own fondant for Pete's sake. Oh, and for me you can put sunny-side-up-eggs-without-broken-yolks here.

Zone III contains things like ordering out for pizza, potluck and PBJ sandwiches. Perfectly reasonable, still hospitable, but not very impressive. Things you would serve when you're hanging out with buds in other words.

Which brings us to Zone IV. Lovely Zone IV, the secret of so many successful parties. And what types of things are in Zone IV? Well, one of the secrets (shhh....don't tell) is that it's different for everyone. You have to find those things that you find easy but that are most appreciated by your guests. For me crème brulée, brioche, meringues and most things baked live here. The trick is to build up a list of these items that you can then mix with Zone III and Zone I to throw bashes that will have everyone begging for invitations to your next get together.

There. Groundwork laid. I'm already sick of writing this post and hope it's not as tedious as it feels to me. I'll use it as a base for future posts (and maybe even tutorials?) on planning menus, using themes to plan a party, building your "Effortless Entertaining Zone List", moving things from Zone I --> Zone IV with practice and modification... Oh, just so many great things! By the time I'm done all our former guests will be way less impressed with our parties. But your future guests will be more impressed with yours. Hurrah!