The Writing Of Alternate Family Histories

Ok, I’ve finished writing my "Making Trilobite Pies" booklet, a nice little 10 page booklet about ‘our’ family harvesting trilobites out of Lake Michigan and selling them as pastry pies in the early 1900’s.  That was a blast to make.  I’d done it as something fun to put together in an afternoon, though it took a few days actually to pull it all together and cut and paste the cover properly.  I think I have maybe 5 hours of time put into that one.

The second is now called "Leprechauns Of Upper Wisconsin".  It’s also a pretend family remembrance going back from the 1930’s to maybe 1810.  A compilation of what happened up in Marathon County and further north, with the old homestead on lands the Leprechauns also occupied and how the two groups mixed (for good AND bad) with old photos.   Man it was fun to do!!!! LOL!  I think there’s about 5 hours of actual work with the text and rewriting.

I snagged a lot of old weird photos off the internet ‘images’ page, doing searches on vintage photos, hats, odd photos, etc.  Anything odd that grabbed my attention got twisted into the story.  It’s an exercise in creativity for the most part.  Working it up as family history is a challenge.  There’s some pretty bizaar stuff from the early 1900’s.  They took some really odd photos. 

Using the Arial font wasn’t right for it, I really didn't like the look of it, so I’m waffling around with other fonts, maybe going with Calibri, to make the booklet look ‘older’ like the home done ones I used to see back in the 1960’s that my dad did for the postal history club. 

New Item Again, Caviar on Toast

Got going on a cat toy item.  I've been looking for a print in cotton that looks enough like caviar to make a caviar on toast catnip toy.  Finally found a print of grapes and grape leaves that sort of qualifies.

The toast is two layers of dark tan felt with a layer of chocolate polar fleece between them and a small bit of stuffing.  I sewed 2 1/2 x 2 1/2" squares out of that.  Then took the grape fabric and cut 4" circles, doing a gather stitch and stuffing them with catnip and fiberfill. 

They looked too plain to just tack down on the center of the toast so I used green felt and cut a small leaf, snipped around the edges to make it look a bit like parsley and folded that in half, tacked it to the ball of caviar and opened the leaf to do one stitch in the center so it lays nicely across any green leaf print on the fabric, hiding it enough to give better focus on the balls of caviar (ie: the grapes).  It needed a little bit more so I cut a rectangle of green felt and sliced into it to do a bit of 'green onion' too, putting that opposite the parsley leaf.

They ended up pretty good!  And went together fairly quickly too. I have two dozen done and another two dozen in pieces waiting assembly.

A Little Late In The Season, But.....

I got in at a small Steampunk event for next month, $40 booth space price, focus on Steampunkers and costumers and a small amount of gamers.

I tried my hand at making muffs, which I know are a winter item, but hey, they're Steampunk as well.  The pattern is simple - 15x18" outside, 12x18" inside dimension, and a 12x18" piece of batting between.  Only 4 lines of sewing per item, detail the corners with a little hand sewing and it's done, but I did add a small wrist loop to the inner seam in case someone wanted to carry theirs that way. It tucks down inside the muff itself.

I found the basic info here:
http://www.lovetosew.com/muff.htm 

I made one, then sized it down to 15 instead of 18" because the gap on the 18 was too large.  And I made them elegant, using the nice snow leopard fur from JoAnn's with swirl velboa fur inside for tactile and warmth, and on some I put a strip of silver brocade down the center for a more classy look.  Steampunk is very Victorian and these look nice.  Not sure how many will want to buy  something in April to use next fall though.