Cookie Monster

These are about 4 or 5 inches in diameter.

On second thought, better make that Monster Cookies, because they're huge! I'm always looking for things that my husband, Scott, can have for breakfast that don't involve a bowl or milk, since usually he's eating breakfast in his car on the way to work. He needs something that will fill him up and give him lots of energy because he doesn't always get lunch at the same time, and sometimes it's a long time between breakfast and lunch. Most breakfast rolls/muffins aren't filling enough or are more sweet than nutritious. I'd heard about "breakfast cookies" that were loaded with granola-type ingredients, but hadn't seen a recipe. Then my September issue of Martha Stewart Living came and, lo and behold - a recipe for breakfast cookies! I immediately showed it to Scott to see if he wanted to try them and he was game, so I decided to try it.

Raw pumpkin seeds, raw sunflower seeds, Craisins, dried blueberries & dried apricots.

I made a few changes to the ingredients, since Scott wasn't totally enamored of some of the dried fruit choices. The original recipe calls for dried mango, dried papaya, and raisins or dried currants. I substituted dried blueberries for the mango, diced dried apricots for the papaya, and dried cranberries for the raisins. The rest I left the same. In shopping for the ingredients, I found that it can be difficult to find raw pumpkin seeds and raw sunflower seeds at the local chain supermarket, unless they have a really good bulk foods section. They can be expensive, too. If you have a Trader Joe's near you, I found all my nuts, seeds and dried fruit there and really reasonably priced. I'm pretty confident that Whole Foods would have them all, too, but we don't have one near us.

I use a chopper for my nuts and chop a handful at a time.

The quantities of this recipe seemed huge to me (except for the dried fruit), and I was skeptical. I mean, it's supposed to make 8 large cookies using 1 cup of batter or 16 smaller cookies using a half cup. So why would you need a whole pound of butter? I suppose that for all of the dry ingredients you would need a lot of fat to hold them together. Anyway, I was right - this makes way more than 16 small cookies and they were by no means small - more like 4 or 5 inches across. When I added the oats to the recipe the dough kept trying to escape from my mixer bowl and it was hard to keep it from clumping on the paddle.

Escaping dough! This recipe is huge. The white area is the dried coconut.

The dough is very stiff and I decided to use the half cup size. Even then, the amount of dough was enough that I patted them down significantly in order to avoid having cookies that were thicker than an inch, which made them spread out enough that I could only get 5 or 6 on a sheet. The fun part was putting the banana chips on top before baking; I pressed mine into the dough slightly to make sure they didn't fall off. This recipe easily made 18 or more very large cookies. I highly recommend a large drink with them - juice, milk or your favorite coffee beverage. And if you're someone who doesn't eat a lot of fiber, make sure you drink a lot of water throughout the day, since this is a lot and you'll need the water to help digest it. And as with any high fiber food, you may notice a slight change in your number of bathroom trips. *grin* My husband commented on its effect on him.

Verdict: My husband liked the one he had yesterday, although he didn't have a drink with him and his only complaint was that he needed something with it, as it felt dry on its own. Not terribly, but he felt it needed a couple of swallows of something to go with it. I had one this morning with coffee and it was pretty good. I think it might be good crumbled over yogurt as an alternative to granola or muesli. If I make this again, I'm definitely cutting the recipe in half (except for the fruit, perhaps), since I'm not sure that my family will eat all of these giant cookies before they start to go stale.

You can find the recipe here.

On the Menu: Meringue and Two Kinds of Sorbetto

Colette Meringue skirt in denim with t-shirt by Rock Steady clothing. I love this outfit.

 As part of the Colette Patterns Spring/Summer Palette Challenge, I decided to try my hand at the Sorbetto tank top pattern, available on the Colette website and the Meringue skirt, found in The Colette Sewing Handbook. These are pretty much the only garments I was able to get done from the challenge, because I had to pack up my entire sewing room when we moved, plus I was in the hospital for a week with gallbladder issues. Ugh! But I digress. I'm a late-comer to the Sorbetto pattern; I think everyone familiar with Colette Patterns has tried it, not least because it's a freebie but also because there are so many ways to adapt it. I've seen it with and without sleeves; with a box pleat, with an inverted pleat and with no pleat; embellished with piping, lace and buttons or simply plain. People have made it into a dress. The possibilities seem endless.

Because my main problem is always getting a good fit at the bust line, I decided to perfect the fit of the original first before I tried to branch out. A scrounge in my stash revealed some lovely pale blue shirting that I used as a muslin. After much adjusting for my full bust and re-adjusting to take into account the rest of my figure, my wearable muslin looked good enough to start making the final versions. I wasn't completely enamored of the fit, but decided I could fine-tune it with the final products. This was also the first time I'd really used my dress form for bust fitting, as it's a relatively new purchase, so that enabled me to get a good fit at the bust.

Sorbetto Version 1, untucked. I'm still not enamored of the waist shaping and I think it looks better tucked in.

The final versions fit in my color palette far better than the muslin, naturally. Version 1 is made from a beautiful quilting cotton that has an amazing hand and which has been sitting in my stash for about 15 years. Yes, you read that correctly. It's a bit more country/Americana in feel in terms of the print, but I love the maroon and cream of the flowers against the cadet blue background. I chose some vintage lace from my stash as a simple embellishment on the pleat and finished it with ready-made maroon bias tape, since I've made my own bias tape for a few projects lately and I'm over that. Plus, I was impatient to finish it after all the time I spent fitting it. I may tweak it more later by adding a dart at the hemline in order to fine-tune the fit at the waist and to compensate for the added fabric that occurs when I do the FBA.

Sorbetto Version 2 with piping and buttons. I'm digging the fit on this more than this first.

Version 2 is a really nice geometric print in stripes - black, navy and maroon on cream. This fabric is something I bought specifically for this challenge, mostly because I love the print but also because the quality is fabulous for quilting cotton. It's from the Aunt Grace fabrics by Marcus Brothers and it comes in a green and orange color way, too. I used navy piping to accent the pleat this time and navy vintage buttons from my stash. Ready-made bias tape again, this time in navy. I made both versions using French seams, so there are no raw edges.

Both of these tanks look super cute with my Meringue skirt. I'd been contemplating this skirt and looking at all the different versions I'd seen online - solid vs. print, light vs. dark, etc. I found myself returning to a denim version done by Sarah at Rhinestones and Telephones, and thinking that it seemed like the perfect everyday skirt. I think she says she wears it at least once a week. So here's my version, in non-stretch dark denim.

This is a size 16 with no alteration other than taking it up an inch in length. Ideally, I think I probably should have taken the waist in slightly in the back. Not enough to do a sway-back adjustment but just deepening the back darts a bit. I should note that the fit was pretty good overall before I had my surgery but because I lost weight (and fat!) in the hospital, the fit is not as great at the waistline any more. I plan to take it in a bit at the waist by deepening the darts. What I love about this skirt is how it's a good basic with just a twist (the scalloped hem), and pretty much every top and every shoe works with it, I can wear either Sorbetto with it and throw on my maroon cardigan if I need more sleeve coverage. And it's super cute with my favorite striped t-shirt, as you can see from the top photo.

Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater

Okay maybe not a pumpkin eater. But definitely a pumpkin wearer. Mr. T looks good in orange (at least I think so) and in homage to my dad and The Netherlands, I've become fond of dressing him in orange. Plus, there's always the benefit of being able to spot him in a crowd if/when he runs away from me. Which happens more frequently than I care to think about.

This orange isn't as bright as some other things he has, but as soon as I saw this French terry on etsy, I knew I had to have it. It's really a burnt orange color mixed with a dark brown, in a medium weight, which makes it an ideal layering piece. This pattern is from the 4/2007 issue of Ottobre, and it's known among those who use Ottobre due to its round pocket openings, which are such a cool design feature.

I went with a cotton interlock in a car print for the hood and pocket lining, since the cars have the brown, orange and linden green colors I was using in my SWAP (yes, this is part of that). There are some turquoise ones, too. Plus it matches the striped Hilco ribbing that I got from the Ottobre etsy shop. I didn't have a lot of that so I used a plain dark brown ribbing at the waist, since that piece had to be wider.

As you can see, I had a little bit of trouble lining up the stripes on one of the pocket openings, and the stitching that holds the lining to the body of the sweatshirt is a little bit too close to that opening. I was in a hurry and didn't bother to draw a chalk line before I stitched it. Live and learn. The stitching itself is a new decorative stitch from my machine which is even more like a coverstitch in its appearance than the triple-honeycomb, which used to be my go-to for the RTW look.

Score!

Sometimes fabric shopping can be a crap shoot, especially when you have a tendency to limit yourself to the clearance rack. JoAnn's Red Tag fabrics are almost always polyester nightmares, though in the past I've found amazing treasures, like cyan-blue stretch cotton french terry, floral-print white cotton twill, and black cotton with an amazing multi-colored embroidered border.

A few Saturdays ago a trip to JoAnn's ended up being one of those really good days for finding fabric, and here's what I got:

-Yellow cotton eyelet, dyed with a natural dye:

Maeve picked this out for part of her summer wardrobe. This should be fun to work with.

-Navy and white polka-dot chiffon. Yes, it's polyester, but I've been looking for a polka-dot chiffon to make the Taffy blouse from the Colette Sewing Handbook, and this fits the bill perfectly:

-White cotton stretch woven with red embroidery:

Not sure what this will be, but I'm thinking a blouse of some kind.

-Two different rayon/Spandex knits:

These will be shirts or summer dresses/tunics, I think.

-The pièce de résistance, lightweight stretch cotton sateen in red and white butterfly print on navy ground:

The printing on this fabric is phenomenal ( I know it's not obvious from this blurry photo). Normally in a dark stretch print on white fabric, when the fabric is stretched you can tell that it's printed on white because the white will show. Not this one. I've been planning a Rooibos dress but couldn't find a fabric that grabbed my eye. As soon as I saw this print it was like it shouted "Rooibos!" at me. Now I just have to buy the pattern.

Bath Time!

Mr. T's birthday was last month and he wanted a bath robe. I'd been thinking of making him one since the winter 2011 issue of Ottobre had robes in it but hadn't gotten around to it. A birthday present is always a good excuse for making something, and it was a change from the other things I'd been working on.

This pattern calls for the robe to be made up in 2 different fabrics, with the outer layer being a poplin or other similar woven fabric and the inner layer being made of flannel. Flannel is okay if you're looking for a warm robe but doesn't work so well for absorbing water when you get out of the bath. I decided to make the inner layer out of terry cloth so it would be more useful as an after-bath garment. The good thing about this pattern is that the lining isn't made to be sewn right sides together and then turned - the robes are constructed as 2 separate pieces, with the hood also being separate, then putting them together so that the hood is sandwiched between the 2 layers but the wrong sides of the 2 layers are together. Which means that you need to finish the edges with a bias binding or else you're left with raw edges. Of course, this enables you to use a fun contrasting fabric.

I used a cotton woven from JoAnn's in a rocket ship print that Mr. T chose himself. Actually, he carried that darn bolt of fabric all over the store and didn't want to let go of it, until Scott handed me the bolt and took the boy out to the car. The blue cotton terry also came from JoAnn's. The bias binding is red with a white star print, left over from the girls' Delft dresses from 2 years ago. I also used it for the pocket, one side of the belt and as belt loops - the pattern doesn't call for belt loops but without them you'd have to sew the belt on at the back, and I wasn't willing to sew through the terry layer to do that.
Here's a shot of one of the belt loops:

This was remarkably easy to do, although the bias binding is slightly time consuming. This pattern seems to either run small or my son is extremely large for his age (I've been told this on more than one occasion) because this is a size 104 and it fits perfectly. Normally he wears a 98 but I know from experience that European robes always seem to be shorter than the ones you find in the U.S., and I wanted to be sure it would fit, especially since the terry was thicker than the suggested flannel. Also, the hood is shallower than one might expect.

As you can see from the first photo, he's incredibly happy with it and he wears it prior to and immediately after every bath or shower, which is a bit unexpected.

Tutti Frutti

A quick little post about a shirt I made for Gwyn for Christmas. This is the Imke shirt from "Sewing Clothes Kids Love", with the pieced bodice. I actually threw this together after I bought her a pair of pants for a Christmas gift and felt like it needed something to go with it. So I dove into the stash and found these 2 fabrics, both purchased from Fabric Fairy about a year ago. These are really nice weight cotton-lycra knits and I think they're from Flapdoodles, but I could be wrong. The ribbing at the neck is orange and red Campan knit by Hilco that is leftover from a piece that I scored on ebay and used to make the dinosaur shirt for Tallon. I felt like it needed a little contrast and the orange was just the right pop against the aqua background.

Of course, I couldn't just leave it un-embellished - this was for my girl who loves all the extras and likes to go through my stash of iron-ons, patches, ribbon, etc. to pick out the right stuff. I felt like the fruits needed to be somewhere else besides the bodice, so I cut out some of the shapes and fused them to felt, then stitched around them to be on the safe side. Then I cut out the felt and sewed the shapes to the sleeves as though they were patches - 3 on the left sleeve and 1 on the right.

I added some Farbenmix ribbon "Helga and Friends" to the right sleeve before I sewed on the fruit patch; I only used it on one sleeve because I don't always like things to be balanced, design-wise. It makes it more interesting. On the left sleeve I used a yellow and orange flower patch that I had in my stash and, of course, there is the obligatory Farbenmix label on the right sleeve. I love how this turned out and so does Miss G.

Mr. Green + Jeans

It never fails to amaze me how many pairs of pants Mr. T actually needs. It took me forever to work my way through the SWAP I was doing for him, and I'm still working my way through it. These pants are both made from the same pattern, just in different fabrics.

This pattern is from the Fall 2005 issue of Ottobre, the #15 jeans/velveteen pants, in size 98. Let me say that this style is an extremely wide leg, so if you don't like that style of pant, this is probably not one you'll like. I like the knee patches and unique pockets on it, as well as the fact that it has an elastic waist, which makes them easy for the boy, since he doesn't have to struggle with a zipper when he has to use the potty. Funnily enough, the wide leg comes in handy for that, too, since he does better without pants around his ankles and I find that with these pants I can slip one leg out without having to remove a shoe. So much better in a public bathroom, right?

"Treasure pocket" made from contrasting color.

Anyway, these are made up in a kiwi-green brush denim that is an unusual color but it works really well with a lot of the things I've made in the SWAP. There is dark brown topstitching on the pockets and seams, including the knee patches. On this pair I chose to use a different fabric for the little "treasure pocket" on the left knee patch; I used tan-grey denim left over from the knight jeans that he outgrew. The cool thing with the pockets is that you only need to finish one side and the bottom, as the outer side is inserted into the side seam of the pants.

Back view

The second pair from this pattern was made from blue denim with brown pin-stripes. The magazine shows a denim version of these pants which uses the wrong side of the denim for the knee patches as a contrast. I didn't really like the wrong side of the denim, but I decided to jazz things up by alternating the direction of the stripes  on the knee patches, as well as on the back pocket and hip areas. I like things colorful, too, so I decided to use a red thread for the topstitching. I love the way this turned out.

This is an easy pattern to put together, although the stitching on the pockets and the knee patches is time consuming. You could just as easily eliminate the knee patches and the decorative stitching on the pockets though, and just have a basic wide-legged pant. I did have one problem with the instructions and that was with the waistband. I just didn't get it. I made the green version first and tried to follow the instructions but it just didn't work for me. I thought maybe I was tired and I looked at them again in the morning and no, still not working out. I decided to just serge the edge with the seam allowance, then attach the waistband, so that the served edge would be on the inside. This way you end up seeing the edge but it's not unfinished. The instructions call for the inside edge to be turned under but I seemed to not have enough fabric left. Perhaps my elastic was too wide, owing to the fact that it doesn't come in metric here in the U.S. That would explain it. In any event, I love the way these turned out and they look adorable on him.