Author: Pam Kocke

NOLA mom of identical triplets. Talent Acquisition at Automattic. Enjoy reading and photography and sewing and bookbinding.

Making Halloween costumes

I’ve told this story before, but I started sewing right after Mardi Gras last year. Right after I spent a day frantically buying random things and hot glueing and doing anything I could to avoid a needle and thread for our Mardi Gras costumes. All things considered, they turned out pretty well. But then within a week I fell headlong into this sewing obsession, and I had to wait until Halloween to get an opportunity to finally make costumes for the boys that didn’t involve tying fleece together or safety pins.

But they just wanted to be soccer players, and as you might imagine, we have plenty of soccer uniforms floating around. No sewing required. And then Mardi Gras came around again and they could not be convinced to go in costume (tweens, amirite?)

Now they are nearly 12 and my chance to lovingly craft costumes for them is probably nearing the end, so I hounded them endlessly for ideas that I could make. Inexplicably, Miles came up with a penguin, and Linus decided he wanted to be the Easter bunny. I mean, of course.

We had an event yesterday (Sunday) and these decisions came on Friday, so I didn’t have long. I could have made Oliver’s costume as well, but I was not unhappy to see that we could buy it at Target. So we did:

Hilarious, right?!?!?

So back to Miles and Linus. We went to Joann and bought a bunch of black, white, and pink fleece. I’d make Miles a tunic he could wear with black leggings, but I’d need to make Linus pants as well.

Since a penguin needs flippers, I didn’t want to just use a standard shirt pattern, so I thought the dolman sleeves of the Pumpkin Spice Dolman from Patterns for Pirates would work well. I printed out the smallest size and got to work.

Boy, it sure is easy to sew when you don’t have to worry about finishing seams!

Miles also needed a hood for his penguin head, so I used the pattern pieces from the Go To Jacket I am working on for Linus, and just used a pajama pants pattern for the bottoms. (I would have used the P4P pattern for this as well, but I had a Simplicity pattern for kids’ pajamas that was just as easy.)

Then I cut out a white chest piece and sewed a red bowtie (guess where that pattern came from?), stuck that on, cut eyes and a beak from felt and voila! We had a penguin!

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Next up, the Easter Bunny!

This bunny got a pink belly and we made him a Halloween-themed bow tie. Because the Easter Bunny respects holidays that aren’t his own. He didn’t need a hood since we’d purchased ears. I used eyeliner to paint on whiskers and we dug out Linus’s Easter bucket and filled it with eggs. I also found some gloves that belonged to a Mario costume from a few years back. Too bad one was lost at the mall. Oh well. But still, the cutest Easter Bunny ever (promise he and the penguin weren’t as grumpy as they look here.)

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Since Halloween isn’t for another couple of weeks, I have some time to adjust and finish their costumes. Miles needs shoe covers for penguin feet, and he wants the belly to go down further. We need to attach a tail for Linus, and maybe figure out how to secure the ears onto his head better. And of course I need to make my costume (no spoilers.)

Sewing the Ellis skirt, take 2

Back in March, I made a test version of the Ellis skirt by Cashmerette. I had bought a kit from the designer with nice denim and all the accoutrements (rivets, button, topstitching thread, etc.) but I only got around to using that kit last week or so.

The problem is, I gained a bit of weight since March so I wanted to size up a tad. But long story short, I sized up too much. Why do I always do this? Plus, I didn’t seem to learn anything from the mistakes I made the first time. If I decide to make this skirt again, though, I know exactly what to do.

  1. SIZE DOWN.
  2. Sew the ding dang zipper closer to the center front seam! Don’t line up the edge of the zipper with the seam, but line up the zipper teeth.
  3. I realized that when the zipper is lined up the way I did, the waistband ends up being too short. So then I had to take apart the waistband and add more length to it.
  4. And then LATER when the waistband was too big, I had to take it apart and remove that length.

So, don’t look too closely is all I can say.

But in the end, it fits okay, not great, but well enough, and it looks like a denim skirt and I love the topstitching I did on the back pockets. 🇬🇧

Look! A weird picture of my butt! (I lightened it so you can see the stitching.)

Oh and the lining fabric went with my pocket theme…

(Like before, this is view A in the length of view B.)

Coming soon: More sewing posts, because I’ve been sewing a lot!

Month 142

I am amused when I look at this month’s picture next to last month’s. Finally some consistency from month to month!

Except this time Linus is a blond, and a few differences in jacket situations. But still. As close as we can get.

I want to include Ziggy in this month’s post because he’s so darn cute. He probably warrants his own post because look at that face. Those ears!

I think he was looking at a squirrel. I mean of course.

Things that are good

Okay so I started this a while ago, but I still want to post it. Better late than never!

New (old) alarm clocks.

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Sesame noodles (and drooling over the recipes on my New Orleans Mom teammate Shannon’s blog.) Also these Pork Dragon Noodles, which since I started this post a month ago, I’ve made a few times.)

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Buying a cheap phone for the 11 year olds.

Because 11 year olds now want to wander the neighborhood with their friends.

Fun: stalking the 11 year olds on their first neighborhood wander. (Shh.)

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Even better: getting pics from friends in the neighborhood of my kids on their walks. (It takes a village.)

Seeing my niece AND getting to eat an amazing lamb wrap for lunch. (Hair dye would be a good thing, too.)

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Sewing and 40th birthdays and good friends. (Gonna have to post more on that dress later.)

Dogs in sunglasses:

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Smiles with teeth:

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Friends who drop off a bag full of sewing goodies from an estate sale (not shown: a zillion packs of bias tape, dozens of zippers, elastic, etc etc etc:

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And getting to see 800+ of your closest coworkers. But that’s for another post. 🙂

 

2019 Grand Meetup – the details

Usually I just write one big massive post about the GM, but I’m not mentally ready for that yet (still tired) but I do want to highlight the amazing details that went into it. Kudos to our amazing events team!

Mostly, it centered around the Automattic creed, which you can read in full here.

It was always handy, in the form of the room key cards…

And more:

11 years, 9 months

My hearts. 11 and three quarters. Almost 12. Stop, time!

PS They’re loving liking middle school. How cute is Miles in his PE uniform? (He has it first period.)

Bench picture #5

When Uncle Evan and Ellie are in town, I take a picture of them on a certain bench in the LSU quad. This is number 5.

2012:

April 2015:

2017:

2018:

And today!

It’s always Linus, Ellie, Evan, Oliver, and Miles.

First day of middle school!

Middle school. I sure hope it’s kinder to them than it was to me.

I promise, they’re happier than the smiles (or lack thereof) would indicate. Especially Miles. That’s his “smile.”

They enjoyed looking at all of their past first day of school pictures, so I had them re-do this one from 8 (eight!!!) years ago.

They’ve changed a little.

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Sigh.

For now, our bus stop is literally a block and a half away, which is amazing. But we will probably move to one a bit further away so they won’t have to be on the bus for two hours (!) every afternoon. I’ll enjoy this little walk until then.

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Getting on the bus!

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Sewing tangent: I made Miles’s jacket and Oliver’s leggings. The jacket was a real labor of love, it’s the Go To jacket by Patterns for Pirates. I’ll post more about it later.

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There’s that smile again!

Sewing project: Akinori dress

I’ve made a few Wardrobe by Me patterns – notably I’ve made the Tropical shirt about fifty times (well, really more like five) for George and the boys but I’ve also made the Linea skirt twice, both times as gifts. So now it was my turn to make something for me!

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When I saw the Akinori pattern I loved it, but wasn’t sure it was for me. Mostly because of the waist tie. Pam doesn’t do belts. It’s one of my cardinal rules. (I also don’t tuck things in and I also don’t eat celery.) But if I didn’t do the tie, it would be too loose. And loose dresses, I have learned in time-consuming and expensive ways, don’t work well for my shape.

But…well, maybe I’d just give it a try. I didn’t have to wrap the tie around my waist twice. I could just tie it in the back.

Backing up…

I decided to use the linen print I bought last summer at Mill End in Portland. I wasn’t sure if it would be flowy enough, but what the heck. If I didn’t use this fabric now, it would be another year before I could, since summer was technically ending soonish. (I mean, not really, this is Louisiana, summer is year-round, but I like to pretend it’s cool in the fall and wear seasonally appropriate clothes.)

So I got to work sewing up the pattern. Pleats always confound me, but I figured it out (with a little help from the designer and other sewists in the Facebook group.) But then I got stuck again with the semi-circular front insert piece. It was tricky because it uses a sort of burrito method (which I used in the Tropical shirt as well) but I was okay with that.  It’s when I got to sewing around the front insert piece and it was just waaaay too big.

That’s excess fabric I’m pinching.
Pretty pleats!
You can see how low the neckline might be here.

I asked for help, unpicked those pleats like fifteen times, tried easing the fabric around the circle, etc, etc, etc. Finally, I just said “screw it” and cut about 1/2″ from the insert pieces all the way around and sewed it up. I figured if things were off down the road I’d deal with them then.

Hooray! I made it work!

But it all worked out from there! Everything went smoothly! And I put in one of my new labels I got in Virginia.

I put it on and decided wrapping the tie around my waist twice added too much bulk to my (nonexistent) waist, so decided just to tie it once in the back. Much better! But now the ties were almost dragging on the ground. I wore the dress out last weekend and just tied a bow. Later, I cut about 18″ off each of the ties. May have to cut more off, we’ll see.

Also, the neckline is way too low for my comfort, so I need to tack it in place a bit. I used a safety pin when I wore it.

I made Terry take a picture of me at her house, so here you go!

Voila!

The Great Road Trip of 2019: Part 2 (off the road)

So I’ve already blogged about the two days we spent in NYC as well as the fun we had getting to Virginia. But most of our trip was actually IN Virginia and we did a lot there, so I need to post about that now!

So uh let’s see. We arrived in Virginia Thursday night and were all pretty exhausted. Dinner. Wine. Sleep.

Friday we walked to Chipotle for lunch. Then we got ready to go our first professional soccer game. The boys were very excited. We went to Audi Field to watch DC United play New England something. I can’t remember. The boys got free scarves! The sunset from the stadium was gorgeous. Anyway, ultimately the game ended in 2-2 but we didn’t mind because it was exciting.

Outside the stadium
In front of the field – check out Miles’s new “smile”.
Beautiful sunset view. Look, the Washington Monument!
Linus
Miles
Ollo

Saturday, the boys and I drove to my sister’s in Clifton. It’s about half an hour from Kiki’s, and it’s a pretty drive if you take the shorter (I think) route but it’s also windy and hilly so I prefer to take the boring highway route. I know, it’s bad but what can I say?

I’m going to put the rest of this behind this link. There’s a lot.

140 months

Lazy Sunday. I took this at 6pm and Oliver was still in his jammies. But it was gross outside and apparently they pulled an all-nighter so whatever. School doesn’t start for another 10 days anyway.

The great road trip of 2019, part 1

I already blogged our road-trip-within-a-road-trip, and now it’s time to post about the rest of it. I’d better start with Part 1: Getting to Virginia.

Kristina flew down Sunday night, and we spent Monday getting ready for the trip. Packing, laundry, making sure we had a plan for our roadside attractions. Oh, and eating delicious meals at Picnic Provisions & Whiskey and Molly’s Rise and Shine. Highly recommend both. Also visiting Terry and taking the boys to Dollar Tree to pick out road trip snacks (I gave them each a $5 budget.)

Monday morning, we hit the road with my new cargo bag on the roof. First stop, the giant catfish in Slidell! (Huge thanks to the website Roadside America for all of our stop ideas.)

A couple saw us pulling off to take a picture with the fish, and thought it was hilarious, so pulled over as well and offered to take a picture for us. Thanks anonymous Slidell couple!

Lots more road trip adventures inside!