YES!! No.

You want to see something kinky?

That, my friends, is a binding attachment for an industrial sewing machine.  You see there a very handy diagramatic illustration of what it does.

Yes, you remember all the hours you've whiled away making bias tape, ironing the bias tape, lining up and pinning the bias tape then sewing on this bias tape binding to something, only to find out that it's not lined up between the top and bottom?  Hours you no doubt could have used catching up on Real Housewives of Atlanta trying to decide if you love NeNe Leakes or hate NeNe Leakes.  I'm sorry, but those hours are gone.  But waste no more!

Or so I thought.

I bought a version of this attachment to bind the edge of the shearling/ sweatshirt baby quilts, and in my test samples, I finally got it to work perfectly, as proven in Exhibit A:

Your eyes are not playing tricks on you- that is perfect.  Bias tape made from t-shirt (a continuous length for the whole binding cut strategically from a single t-shirt), and a layer of sweatshirt and shearling.  You feed them in together and the attachment folds, encases and stitches it top and bottom.  That is a truth and not a lie.

So I finally put a finished quilt up for slaughter, all scared and holding my breath as I tried to feed it through my machine.

Demons.  After having to call my nanny out to the studio to hold the tape as it fed, while I held 'fore and aft' and surgically manipulated the tape with tweezers every time it jammed, we got all the way around.  Triumphantly, I said "We made it!  Yes! This looks pretty j'awesome!"

Then we looked closely and realized it is all gobbled and ripped and ruined.

But now it's ours which is a sort of nice downside to ruining a for-sale item.  "Seconds", they're called.  So back to the drawing board.

I emotionally recalibrated from my high then low extremes by making a good old-fashioned piece of do-nothing art.  (And taking half of a Diazapam.  But that's really more for the kids.)

The Baby Hobo Mothership!

Phew.  It is done.  Behold the Baby Hobo International Headquarters!:

300 sq. ft. of pure disorder, coming right up.  I sort of failed to budget for storage solutions, so after this photograph was taken and I proceeded to move in all my other equipment and fabric, it became not pretty, rill fast.  But that is how it goes.  I will iron it all out over time, then post an honest picture of the place as it actually operates as a workroom.

I need to build a bigass cutting table, and procure just a couple of shelves/ carts, then I'll be good. I will report back from the floor shortly.  I am currently just trying to bust through a couple of orders and reel in the dough, you know.  So I can buy me a Mercedes Benz.

Baby Hobo On The Horizon

That sounds like part of a retelling of some weird acid trippy dream "Then, there was like this boat?  A boat?  Yeah, I think a boat, sailing toward me, and it had like this, baby hobo in it!  It was SO WEIRD!"

I would like to, in this single post, tell you everything I have learned. Ever. No just kidding.  only things I've learned in the last month.

1.  Babies cry because they're babies sometimes and you don't have to do a touchdown dive toward them the moment they make a peep.

2.  Booze DOES HELP.

3.  Businesses (like Baby Hobo), grow gradually, not overnight.  Especially when you have thirteen thousand kids.

When you spill a whole cup of coffee on your computer, your number FOUR key will never type a FOUR again.

5.  You should spend every cent you have on help to keep you from losing your shit because you have thirteen thousand kids.  Make up for it later.

6.  I need to do creative work.  I thought I was going to immerse myself in mothering until the day all of my children are in school full time.  I feel immersed alright, like I'm drowning.  I cannot do this twenty-four hours a day every day.  I need help and I need to do my own creative work.  For the good of everyone.  Luckily, I'm with a partner who calmly recognizes this, and feels the same way (on my behalf), so she's been totally on board helping re-evaluate the plan.

7.  I want to make money doing creative work.  I've stopped doing myself the disservice of thinking of it as a hobby, and decided once and for all that creativity really is an important part of my identity. To respect my talent, I want to use it to make money- so I can contribute to all the other abundance and privilege I've been afforded.

8.  Doing my own creative work is infinitely more satisfying than being an art dealer.  I liked the curating aspect of that gig, but the toil! the interpersonal heartbreak! the lack of tangible reward!  None of these are (so far) part of sewing baby shoes. It seems way easier to build a brand of useful products than to massage a vague, pretentious identity for an art gallery.

10.  A person can be addicted to tofu.  "Hello.  My name is Lisa.  I'm an addict."

11.  Eat less + run = skinnier.

Now.  There are two hot, sweaty guys building out the interior of my new studio as we speak (which, 100 degrees in a closed room?  You couldn't pay me enough), so by this time nest week, I expect to be putting up a final coat of paint and moving in!  My equipment that is, not me.  Although, on a tough night, you never know.

My amazing store, Green Genes is so awesome, and they are really supportive of all my ideas and work I'm making.  So, in the fall, I expect to see a slew- yes A SLEW of Baby Hobo products available there and on Supermarket.  Finally!  Woot.  I said woot.

Wanted: Shoemaker's Elves

OH I ALMOST JUST WROTE "I COBBLED TOGETHER THESE TEN PAIR OF BABY SHOES".  Then I stopped myself.

But I did make these, and by golly they are going fast, y'alls.  It seems that The People want some soft baby shoes that stay on and promote sartorial self-respect at the same time.  I've told you before not to underestimate a baby's desire to dress well.  And look at this way: the better dressed your baby is the more people will want to hold him or her and the more times you can claim you "just have to run to the bathroom" while you hide in the loo and shoot a few rounds of "Words With Friends" on the sly.  Good plan, no?

Now, I need to talk sewing.  Thems be buggers.  I am having a nice time sorting out the technical issues of baby shoes, and there are many, so it may take a while.  Call these the Beta Shuz.

These fit a 6-12 month foot, per the guideline set by those most ubiquitous of baby shoes, the Robeez.  I realize of course that these are not styled so different from Robeez actually, but to me that like saying, "Hey, your t-shirt is shaped suspiciously like those other t-shirts!", as there's only so many ways to wrap a baby foot in fabric.  The difference we have here is in my patented Not So Damn Ugly® feature. Also, these stay one like crazy well.  But the elastic doesn't strangle the baby ankle either.  So take that.






So, it took me a loong time to make all these, because I have like 8,000 kids.  What I need is an intern!  Now that my studio is in the works, I'll have a respectable place to house an intern, and hopefully get this party started some.  For now, these are mostly sold before I posted them, but there will be a few available at Green Genes in Chicago, and a couple on Supermarket soon too.

Next up: the 0-6 month size.  I have to figure out exactly what is smaller about a younger baby foot and what is not.

Shuz II

I lost those rad shoes I made for Griffin!  BLERGH!  I am so mad.  Though I was a Smarty McSmartytown, and made a pattern before I sewed them.  Ha ha!  Take that, bastardly Gods of Lost Baby Shoes!

New Shuz:

Show Me Crabs!

I have found it.  Something I truly hate about being a mom.  I mean, it makes me want to hurl myself headlong into the nearest wall repeatedly until I black out.  Putting on kids GLOB BAM FORKLING mittens!  I can probably count on Phinny being an 8th grade drop-out and working the pole by fifteen with the number of times I've laid out a string of terrible cuss words while trying to get her to put her tiny, floppy starfish hands into a pair of mittens.  (Which she won't wear unless they "work".)

"Thumbs, honey!  THUMBS THESE ARE YOUR THUMBS!  The short, fat one, c'mon, baby, just get your thumb into that ONE SEPARATE PART.  There's only one seperate part, and you have only one thumb.  That's it, just your thumb, NO NOT YOUR THUMB AND FIRST FINGER!  Just the thumb, honey- YES YES, there it is, show Mama Crab Hands, show me crabs!  Yes, pinch!  It's on!  See, your mittens are working!  NO NO NO, don't pull that off, NO NO!  Ohhhh.  GLOBBAMMIT!!  Okay, do over, ladybug."...

Aaaaand Repeat.

Girl needs mittens when it's cold, girl don't want to wear mittens nohow.

I thought if I made a pair of soft flexible mittens with an articulated thumb- you know, where the contoured thumb is attached from the palm, instead of a flat thumb-shaped appendage sticking flat out the side of the mitten, that she would be more likely to wear them.  I thought, given the expert and natural fit, combined with a tight, but soft, ribbed cuff, the mittens would be comfortable and would stay on.  Uh huh. 

So while those world-class scientists in Geneva are waiting for the Hadron Collider to clue us into the deepest mysteries of physics, I challenge them to design a pair of usable toddler mittens.  (Oh, and while they're at it, a sippy cup that doesn't leak.)

But let's talk about sewing.  It is not easy to make a pattern for gloves with an articulated thumb! 

Four attempts later...

And then there's the whole lining issue. 

Nonetheless, I will concede that they look really good.  In the end, I conclude that it's the toddler, not the mitten that maka me crazy.

Breaking Out of Baby Jail

Baby Hobo is not dead.  In fact, at this oddest of times, I am feeling a renaissance of affection for it, even as my Baby Griffin and Baby Annika threaten to pull me into a vortex of neediness and cute.  I was all sorts of ready to shelve my creative aspirations and my entrepreneurial impulses for several years following the birth of these babies.  "There won't be a moment to adequately shave my legs for the next five years, let alone sew," is what I rightly thought. 

Howeverly, I was able to control my impulses for all of three weeks.  Once my head stopped spinning- the moment it stopped spinning, I trained my weary eyeballs on the stack of imploring sweatshirt scraps in my sewing room, and decided that if I am making things for the kids, then it is A-OKAY to ignore them as people for a little while each day and instead sew myself to sanity.  So there.  And I have been making a sort of remarkable number of things, some of which I will show you here right now!  Yay. 

Introducing the most cozy and useful baby quilts I ever made.  (Okay, they are are two of only three baby quilts I have ever made, but still!)  They are basically like saddle blankets for babies, in that they are so heavy and sturdy (though crazy soft) you can practically mold them into an armchair recliner and leave your twins propped upright just about anywhere.  NOT THAT I WOULD DO THAT. 

 

And here are some details for you stitch-o-philes:

You'll have to ignore that t-shirt binding of course, since it is BALLS.  I need to design a good way to make a proper binding, obviously.  But I can't do everything, you guys, I have like two-hundred children.

Why Knit Pants on a Day Like This

Well, because I was sooooo busy freaking out over having twins chiles in my belly that I have gotten really behind on some things.  I explained before how I was on a hiatus from sewing after all grief and drama here in my house/ heart, but as I emerged, I managed to put a few things together. 

I did in fact have some wares up on Supermarket like I said I would- it wasn't an unkept promise!  I just never announced it because I done sold a few things then didn't get anymore up there, so it kept feeling too anemic to make a real broadcast about shop being open.

But you know what?   You should check out the site anyway, it is the sane person's version of Etsy (which in my opinion quickly become a tragic wasteland of badly made crud and a truly endless dumping ground of multiple listing mayhem). 

Supermarket

So have a look, I posted these re-purposed knit pants and bibs in the winter:

 

 

They are all either 100% cotton for lighter weather, or cashmere.  Ooooh, cozy.  Phinny wore some about every day of winter and into spring (which as you may know, on the north shore of Chicago, was the same as winter).  Now it's hot as balls.  A pregnant chick can't win.

Okay, well you know what?  Let's look on the bright side.  There was an opportunity for several attractive fashions late into the season and a few of the days, it turned out that Phinny was in head-to-toe homemade, or almost.  I can already envision her teenage eye-rolling while looking back at pictures.   But you know what?!  I never had a perm or super giant eyeglasses that she'll be able to make fun of, so the embarrassments will be confined to pictures of her.  And that's only half as embarrassing as her being embarrassed of both us.  See?  Looking at the bright side.  See here, a couple of sweet freezing spring looks:

Oh and I have a finalized bib pattern that I made a big batch from- those on sale there too:

There, now I feel better.

A Free Hat for Baby Spongebob

I am working on a hat design.  It's a square.  Done.

No, but seriously, I have been making these boxy hat's for Josephine and they look really pretty cute on her, but they can look a little, mmm, pope-like on other kids, I don't know why.  I think I need to concede to changing the pattern, and get into contouring it, but I was so liking the simplicity of these.

As shown here, Phinny The Chin is quite delighted with a fine gauge knit one like this, that stretches well over her enormous bulb.

(Okay, that gleeful full-body running shot was gratuitous, but C'MON!)

Another version of the hat is two layers of densely knit stretchy sweater + a t-shirt jersey knit lining.  So warm, right? She wears this daily and it's field-testing very well.

And finally, the little newborn seamless hats.  I have to admit, I haven't actually tested these on any little noggins, in person, myself, but it would seem that the same principles of fit would apply.  I've given them as gifts and have some at Green Genes, but I need a good fit model.

What person wants a free newborn hat, like the one in this picture, in exchange for promising to send me really good snapshots of it, on an actual baby?!  (PS, the tag goes in the back.  I'm not THAT self-promoting.)

And Now For the Fun Part...

I have been spending a lot of time sewing.  I want to spend more time designing.  Who can help me?!

Baby Hobo is on the cusp now, I think, of needing to make some big decisions.  As a hobby, it has become hard work.  I had several commissions over the holidays and was forced to really sit through and sew sew sew for dollars.  I don't need the dollars that bad, so it was hard to do so much work for not that much money.

As a business, there's a ton of potential in this tiny brand.  I have an abundance of design ideas and I go ballistic with zen happiness when I have the time to work on them.  What I need to do is make a bridge from the small, personal scaled production that I do for one store, to a larger scale operation that will at some point pay me for my efforts.  I have that entrepreneurial craze, I can't help it.

Problem is, I don't want a job!  I mean, not a real job where I am slaving away at my sewing machine hours and hours on end.  But there's got to be a way, right?  I am interested in finding models for design brands made from re-purposed materials that have found a sane way to grow into money-making ventures.  I could, surely, find some benevolent soul to trust in me thousands upon thousands of dollars, and make what the business people call an "investment".  I may have to do that.  I would rather grow from the inside out though, if possible, and take on very little risk in inching this whole shebang forward.

I have been looking at brands like Cate & Levi, for example (see here, a supremely adorbs monkey from re-purposed sweaters). 

This is a brand that started, seemingly,  exactly as I have started.  With a parent who ventured into design using re-purposed materials.  He has in the last few years found a way to systematize the specialized creation of these one-of-a-kind items, such that the brand has grown large enough to be offered through West Elm! 

Now, I don't know if dude had a money tree in his house or what, but he describes the trajectory of the brand in terms that seem really doable.  Starting with him and a few artist friends sewing in a small studio office together.  I can do that.  I just need help.  I have interviewed a couple of people, still waiting to see how it will all work.  What with the no capital and all.  There's a lot more to be discussed about this. 

In the meantime,  I wish I could spend more time on the most fun stuff.  Like this part (bib colors):

 And this part (working on a design for floor textiles!):

Stay tuned, my trusty reader, and I'll find a way to get this show on the road.

Seamless Hats for Tiny Noggins

So I was making hats for baby Simon when an odd thing occurred to me.  All the seams inside a hat seems gnarly and cumbersome up against such a fragile, sensitive noggin.  That's why we all ended up putting that boring little hospital-issue hat on baby for the first month at home.  Lame, people.  Lame.  Babies need style too.  That's when everyone is coming to check them out, and the last thing they want is to be seen in that ratty little thing with a giant "Northwestern Memorial" stamp on it.  So now I am making seamless hats for newborns (and older babies too), that have all flat, internal seams.  They are double layered jersey, so they are quite cozy.

Here's pictures of them seen from the back, where they are shamelessly emblazoned with the Baby Hobo tag. It's not nearly as intrusive in real life as it seems in these pictures. 

Made from old t-shirts, as is the Baby Hobo custom:

Trapped Inside? Super Toddler Cape is the Answer.

I know this isn't the newest idea on the planet or anything, but I  find that a little person, like ages 2 through 5, really enjoys having a super cape with which they can transform their foot-walking earthbound selves into super heroes with unlimited powers. 

I'm trying to make them in colors and textures that are fun for the kids and not an eyesore to the parents of the kids.  Shiny red polyester and satin just really makes me squick.
Here's an example of a set I made for a set of twins: