Cobbler Dress by Charm Patterns (Patreon)

Even though my kids are grown, after years of habitual weekend bulk baking/cooking I still do it. Just on a smaller scale.

This past weekend I did a bunch of bulk baking and cooking for the week/month. I wanted to get it done before the heat came in this week. I become a lethargic slug in really hot weather and will live on seltzer water, tortilla chips and vegan ice cream unless there is easy healthy alternative available. I was an early adapter to clean eating (at least mostly and my kids are now thanking me 20 years later) and I just hate how I feel when I eat like crap. It’s also expensive to eat convenience foods, so I like to plan ahead.

For kitchen days, I like to be comfortable and okay with getting stuff on what I am wearing. This dress is perfect for that. It’s a pullover dress. No buttons or zippers. Deep pockets and ties at the sides. I’ve also make the top and pants version of this too. But pants are my enemy in hot weather.

I get ask about my vintage chrome and formica dinette set. It was purchased for under $500 in Helena Montana about 20 years ago. It is true vintage and has survived my children and all of their friends for many meals.

Fabric: Vintage floral cotton bedsheet that I thrifted.

Pattern: Cobbler Dress by Charm Patterns (Patreon)

Alterations: No alterations. But I will size down next time. I think this pattern ran on the bigger size. I will also opt out of the ruffles. It gave me flash back to my church dresses from the 80s.

Bowls: My two favorite vintage Pyrex bowls. A primary yellow 404 (I think. Pyrex collectors know what I mean.) Also, my hefty true opal 404.

Stay cool friends. xo-Thea

Vintage Sewing - Gertie's Scout Dress

I failed to post last week. I did post about my make last week on IG. I was elbows deep in tax junk that my mind was elsewhere. I’ll post about that make later this week.

However, for Easter of course I made a dress. I wore it for the majority of the day to cook in. We had discussed as a family prior to Easter what we planned on wearing and I knew what I planned to wear wouldn’t be nice to cook in, So I whipped up a nice housedress for the day.

Pattern: Gertie’s (Charm Patterns) Scout dress.

Fabric: Vintage Japanese black spring floral print. With tulips of course, I am married to Dutch man.

Adjustments: French seams throughout. Front zipper closure. The original pattern calls for buttons. I’m an odd bird because if I can swap out buttons for a zipper - I’ll do it. Zipper front house dresses are my absolute favorites. I also currently don’t have a machine set up for button holes. I know attachments are easy to swap in and out but I like to have machines dedicated for tasks. I’m extra I know.

I skipped the tab closure on the sleeves too. I knew I’d be moving around and lifting things a lot, so I kept the sleeves open but added some colorful binding.

Bonus pictures of me in my vintage 80‘s dress (with my daughters Nieves & Jina and my son Trevor‘s girlfriend Sophia) that I wore for our family pictures.

Gang gang.

Our normal family pose.

I hope you had a good weekend!

xo-Thea

Halloween 2021

Happy November to you. I hope you all had a very nice Halloween. We had a fun Halloween season. (That I started decorating for in August.)

I unfortunately, didn’t have time to release all of the products I wanted to on our Darkness Drive collection. We’re still adjusting to just one of us being a full time maker. I still plan on releasing those items in the coming months.

I documented my Halloween Week wardrobe. Many of the items you might recognize from previous posts, others were just some casual wear for sitting on my buns for the AdobeMAX conference.

I shared our annual laser engraved pumpkin video on YouTube. It’s just a fun thing that we’ve done every years since the inception of our business.

Trick or Treating was still a little weird this year. We saw a lot of neighbors asking questions and saw suggestions of how to do it safely. I came up with a little self service display pictured above. We always do something away from out front door due our beloved rescue dog who isn’t fond of little children. We had more trick or treaters than we did in 2019 and our little display (which looked much cooler in the dark with the battery operated candles glowing) seemed to work out really well.

Now onto fall projects. I have a stack of thrifted wool that will be skirts and jackets soon. I also have to clean up my Christmas ornament designs. We’ve already sold quite a few over the weekend.

xo-Thea

Vintage 1970's Nishijin Pachinko Machine + Mother's Day 2021

I took a hint and a few nudges and very recently started sharing some vintage things I’ve happened upon or acquired. First was my 1940’s Vanity. That was on my wishlist for so long, I felt it warranted a dedicated vlog/blog post.

Just a few days after acquiring my vanity another long wished for item was checked off of my list.

A vintage Pachinko Machine!

After some Mother’s Day shenanigans, John and I share a bit about the machine in my video this week. John did have to do some light repair with more to do in the near future. It is fully functional and super fun. it is everything I hoped it would be. As mentioned in the video, we do intend to mount it on a wall of our family room and do an entire photoshoot around it. Because, it’s us.

Admittedly, the entire reason I’ve wanted one is due to the movie Kamikaze Girls. That movie influenced so many aspects of my life when it came out. I often say that my aesthetic is a cross between Kamikaze Girls and Morticia Addams. At least I aspire it to be that.

My bebes doing pictures right.

My Mother’s Day was a good one. One of my long standing gifts for Mother’s Day is a group photo. As you can see, we get creative with that too. I love my brood, they are a fun bunch. I am extremely lucky.

Not sure where Trevor is for this picture but this is one of my favorite pictures from this weekend.

For those of you who follow me for fabric, you are in luck. This week I am adding some new vintage fabric yardage (That’s right yardage!) to my Etsy shop. I have some incredible mid century deadstock fabric that I plan to take an obscene amount of photos of.

Stay tuned for that.

xo-Thea

Seasons of Life - Mom of Adults

There has been lots to do recently. Yard work, work in general, vaccinations and family time in general. Like any mom I feel like the list of to do’s are never ending and often interrupted. Even in this season of my life where all of my kids are adults. I still have a well loved and busy home. Thursdays have been become a day where everyone with the exception of my son in law are here. We share a family meal or do some kind of activity or just chill.

Last week due to the mild side effects from my second shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, I vlogged 6 out the 7 days. (My side effects were a sore arm and low grade fever. ) A silly family time moment included in the vlog. I didn’t really feel it was that interesting to vlog every day. Some days I just do boring stuff and if you know me personally I am a terrible liar. I can’t make something uninteresting seem interesting. So, don’t expect to see many vlogs like that in the future.

Honestly, this is not what I envisioned what this time of my life would be like. I don’t actually know what I envisioned. Maybe my kids would go off on their ways. They have really, they just come home often and seem to like me. Is it a sign that I did something right? Perhaps? I think when you come from a dysfunctional family (like I did) and have to recover from a big trauma (like I did -a divorce and ex spouse’s alcoholism), you have to redirect energy where its needed. Just like any job/task the energy that you put into it is typically what you get out of it. I gave and still give my children everything I have. I am not perfect and they will tell you that I definitely did not do everything right. I am human and just like everyone else my shit does stink too.

I mention this because I received a few very kind messages from friends randomly over the past month giving me some of the best compliments about my relationship with my children.

Jina and Thea Starr drinking Aeprol spritzes.

“You seem so close.” That’s the common thread of each message. They came from moms with younger ones and kids that my kids’ ages. While it feels really good to hear that, I just want to drop the reminder that I am not perfect nor is anything that goes on here. I share mostly the good stuff. The kids still fight, they still get mad at me and cups are left out on every surface of my house every time they are around. Some still live at home, partly due to the pandemic but mostly because college and Western Washington is expensive in general.

I feel like with compliments like that, the underlying question is what is the secret? Aside from what I’ve already mentioned about effort, the only thing I’d add is knowing who you are.

Me: I was a single mom at 18. I didn’t come from anything grand. I’ve made A LOT of mistakes. Those are all things that people can judge me on. I learned after some time, I didn’t actually give a shit about those judgements. I learned that sometimes those who portray to be a certain way are just doing that, portraying. Things are just things, our connections with people is what matters and is life’s true gift.

Related to that, if I had to recommend only one TED Talk it would be Candy Chang’s - Before I die I want to… talk.

Life is one big roller coaster friends. Ups and downs all the time. Just try to ride it the best you can.

xo-Thea

Spring Organizing Without The OCD

I’ve been a little MIA this week from textiles. I’ve let the spring season posses me and drive me to do things like organize and plant stuff. While I m passionate about planting stuff, I have to say that I’m not a strict organizer these days. In the era of organizing themed shows and media, I feel like I owe a little explanation.

The bounty of shoes and coats from our front closet.

80 pairs of shoes organized.

In the very beginning of when I became a mother at 18, I was insanely organized. I owe a lot of that to the Asian cultural upbringing. We even had those hard plastic carpet runners in my childhood home to protect the carpet. If you know, you know. I’m American too, but we didn’t wear shoes in our house like my friends did. There’s a few other cultural things along those lines that I took into into my own adult life. It was the way of life for me. It was comforting and something I always could control.

When I was younger I have to admit, I was way more intense with things. Things were o-r-g-a-n-i-z-e-d always. Closets were colored coordinated. Cans were facing all the same way in the pantry. Towels were clean and fresh and hanging properly. (Ever see the movie Sleeping with the Enemy?) I would even comb the fringe of the carpet to make it lay correctly. Writing that all out now a decade+ later is humbling and introspective for me.

At that time, I didn’t know that I was actually processing things like someone who has obsessive compulsive disorder. In life, I think we often go about things and think nothing of it until someone points it out to you. My ah-ha moment was when I had a friend over for dinner and during the dinner prep/cooking she calmly said to me “I just watched you wash your hands 10 times in under 5 minutes.” I was surprised and defensive as one would be and did nothing about it for years. But that comment stuck with me and weighed on me for awhile.

Flash forward a few years from that comment, my dad fell ill and ultimately passed on. It was a mentally and physically straining time for me as you would guess. Flash forward a bit more, I was getting a divorce now too. That season of my life was a tough one. Good things did come from it though. A roller derby league and a positive turn in my mental health. I won’t share my TEDTalk of my journey, I am just like you and I ride life’s roller coaster of changes, ups and downs and trie to navigate it the best I could.

But in that time I was able to release whatever possessed me or weighed me down to do things the way I did. I am conscious of my habits and rituals. I giggle at the idea of combing the carpet tassels straight now. The cans aren’t all facing outwards anymore. Unless it’s a joke, because that seems to be a serial killer trait in movies. We do still take off our shoes before coming into our house and my closet is still color coordinated because (aesthetics). I do really appreciate a well organized utensil drawer and a shoe closet (see above) too. I just don’t freak out about it looking perfect daily.

I still revel in finding easy ways to organize like using this photo storage box for my seeds.

Up until earlier this week I had rubber banded stacks of seeds stored in a beat, old, sad, cardboard box stored in my garage fridge. “Seeds” scribbled in Sharpie marker noting was it was. It wasn’t the best system for storing. Seeds would slide out and I’d sort though them looking for which stack had the thing I was looking for. This has been a easy gratifying solution for me.

The writing is still in Sharpie marker but things are easier to find with a quick glance.

Aside from the season spurring this topic, I know a handful of young people trying to sort adult life out. Its hard to not reflect on my own life during that time. It honestly doesn’t feel that long ago because I started so young. My words of wisdom to those young folks starting out and even to those of us who have an opportunity to start again, remember don’t be hard on yourselves. Being organized is awesome and feels good, but it should not be stressful. I promise you, there will be something else in life for you to stress out over.

And since I forgot to share this earlier this week - here’s my most recent vlog video. It features the majority of the young people in my life.

Hve an excellent weekend friends - Thea

Love in a time of COVID-19: Grant's Long Con, The Extended Version

For about two years, my eldest daughter Jina has been engaged to her guy Grant. We often joke that Grant has been precisely executing a long con to get Jina to marry him. They have known each other for a very long time and went to the same high school. They did not date then or even in college. Or did my daughter know that she was going out on a date with Grant, when they had their first date. They are a handsome couple who are really two peas in a pod. They will have a few good stories to tell their children someday. With the bonus of the pandemic causing a postponement of their wedding.

This is what I shared yesterday (March 25, 2020) on my private social media accounts:

Today, if there wasn’t a world wide pandemic going on I would’ve been walking my daughter Jina down the aisle.

The handsome couple: Grant & Jina.

Jina and Grant had long planned an intimate destination wedding out of the US. After it became unsafe to travel they modified their wedding plans - twice. Then they ultimately had to postpone it. It has been a stack of disappointments one right after another for J & G. Everyone in our clan felt completely defeated for them.

Their wedding day will happen. No sympathies necessary. Just do your part in helping to slow COVID-19. Don’t ask them when it will be either, there is no way to guess that at this time.

On the side lines as Jina’s mom, there has been very little I could do aside from being there to listen. Grant and Jina are master taskmasters for 25 year olds. They are both highly ambitious people and get things done. However, even they had disheartening moments with the over flowing river of changes to not only their personal plans, but the whole planet’s too.

They shifted to having the wedding on originally planned day at home when non essential travel was dissuaded. Once that idea came about, both parental units went into action. His family secured a place and food and drink. We were in charge of decor, music and any thing Jina needed. (Her dress was designed for tropical weather.) My youngest son Trevor became ordained to perform the ceremony. Boxes of decor pieces and bridal accessories poured through our doors. Each one got sprayed with Lysol. Sketches of signs that we were to laser cut were done. Miniature bottles to put the coveted hand sanitizer in for each guest were acquired. Then our Governor started to introduce words in his daily briefings that we all knew a “shelter in place” order or the like was coming. The inevitable postponement was going to happen.

Defeated on making it happen on the planned day, but not on the ultimate goal. They are safe and healthy as well as both of their parental units. That’s all that matters right now. Tune back in post pandemic for the rest of the story.

xo-Thea

Social Distancing.

* The links below are affiliate links.

My new lightbox. After it was set up, I questioned my life choices. She’s huge!

Vintage Sunset Embroidery kit.

Today began my “baby’s” (She’s 18) first day of online instruction. Our school district announced last week that they would do online instruction for two weeks due to the COVID-19 outbreak in our area. She’s a senior in high school so not a huge deal to us. Personally, our family is mostly low risk. Two family of our members do have underlying health conditions so, we have stepped up our self care of eating healthy, taking supplements and partaking in heighten personal and home cleanliness. My “baby” does work in the health care system though and the district’s move to online instruction was a good precautionary measure in my opinion. I think people tend to forget that many teachers are 60+, I’ve known a few to have cancer and I’m sure some care for elderly parents too. Prioritizing teachers in this situation with many unknowns is good.

Over the past few weeks of individual commentary, FB groups “debates” etc., I’ve personally had it with the hostile posts about everything under the sun. I feel like everyone wants to fight about something on FB so, I’m choosing to avoid it. I feel like that energy can be used to do better things, even if you are cooped up at home.

For me, aside from doing some greenhouse and backyard clean up, I bit the bullet and purchased a new light box. I take a ton of pictures for work and need a consistent setting. My old light box was and is great for small stuff. However, I would struggle with cramming bouquets and even some formal kanzashi pieces in it under the lights just right. So I decided to go big. Like super big, see the photo at the top to this post.

I discovered that I needed to move around within the photo booth to get my angles. After some research I decided to go with the big mama one. After it was set up, I honestly questioned my life decisions. One thing is for sure, I have no more excuses to not take photos of my work. I did hold off on that due to my photo issues but also my lack of interest of listing on Etsy. That will be another post though. Hahaha.

Lastly, my eldest and I planned on keeping this vintage Sunset Embroidery kit for our Bunco prize box. But, I might break into this bad boy for a little calming project to do. I’ll share more pictures of it on my Instagram. (The only social media I do enjoy.)

xo-Thea

Purrrfect Day

Hello Friends! I’m still alive and kicking. I haven’t been able to find time to post and restock here as much as I’ve wanted to this year. I’m truly just sitting on a ton of inventory waiting to be photographed. 6 by 6 has required the majority of my attention still.

I did manage to kick out a few fun personal projects for Halloween.

Vintage kimono kanzashi hair clip topped with a laser cut kitty. Hand painted by Thea Starr

A laser cut spiderweb wreath I designed and topped with hand-painted snakes and vintage silk flowers.

A little corner of our front porch. Including a handmade tarantula spider, created from instructions by Christine McConnell.

A little domestic fun before I head off to California for a few days for 6 by 6. I’ll be attending the AdobeMax conference. I solely use my hands for my kanzashi work, but for 6 by 6 we use all of the Adobe products. It’s such a fun event and I’m honored to be one of the selected vendors.

I post on Instagram much more frequently if you’d like to keep tabs on me there.

xo-Thea

Work is my hobby

Urban Craft Uprising was a pleasure as usual.  UCU attendees are faithful and fresh. 

www.urbancraftuprising.com

I love seeing a familiar customer who freshens up their flower collections at every show. As well as being new to someone who's attending the show for the very first time. 💗 

My display and I. Customers love the colorful display. I appreciate all the compliments about it.💗

Each show, I get a new request, a new idea and a new found love for my own work. I also appreciate the people behind making the show happen. The organizers, the volunteers and my fellow makers. Many who have become good friends over the years. 

One maker, joked that work was their hobby. While that sounds horrible and ridiculous, many for us makers, it's completely true. And we love it. I came home and began working on 6 by 6 stuff, as well as wedding stuff too. Which is a task in itself. I'm strong and strong willed, but I have had a day or two of being overwhelmed with spontaneous crying. You know, days that are reminders that I'm human.  💁🏻 

John came and helped me all weekend at the show.

I'm working this holiday weekend, but I am taking time off too since all of my babies will be home under one roof for a couple days. I gotta get my momming mode on. Happy 4th to my fellow Americans🇺🇸. Stay safe, thank a solider if you see one and have a good weekend!

xo-Thea

Living on caffeine and wishing for more hours in the day.

Everyone wants something. I really just want more time to do all the things that I want to do. I knew it would be a challenge starting a new business in the middle of a life change. I've done okay (aside from the lack of updates in my shops which inspired this post) considering all of that and still doing domestic mom things. 

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Lunches for teenagers. I know, I know, crappy "granola bars" and chips. I am a firm believer of living a little. 

I'll likely only be participating in two local shows with my kanzashi. Urban Craft Uprising and the Homemade Harvest in Redmond, WA this holiday season. I have a few stockists in the local area and I will share a list of them in an upcoming post. 

I'm currently revamping the super popular Starr Flowers and will be offering more styles and sizes. So. Many. Itty bitty mini one inch kanzashi sets are in production at the moment. I hope to have fresh listings to share next week! Including the minis! Which I notoriously never post online because I rarely have them in stock. 

Thanks so much for your patience and keep those emails coming! Sometimes I have just the thing in stock just not posted online.

xo-Thea