Stains!

This morning was not good. I overslept, so I got to work late and hung up my coat next to everyone else's. Now, you have to understand that I really LOVE this coat and I spent way too much money on it because I fell in love with it, so I treat it like it's a darling pet. I should have put it in a desk drawer to protect it, but I didn't want it to get wrinkled. When I walked past the coat rack just minutes later, my coat had big spots of something black (ink?) all over the front of it. I frantically dabbed it with water, which did nothing, and then tried to used someone's stain stick on it, which also did nothing. Terror! I immediately ran off to the dry cleaner and left my coat there, meaning I had to walk back in near-freezing weather.

I was scared all day that the stain wouldn't come out, but when I went to pick up my coat in the afternoon they had been able to get out about 95% of the stain and they charged $6, which is a deal compared to the cost of the coat. Still, when I got home I got to thinking that I should brush up on ways to remove stains without having to pay a dry cleaner.

By far, the best resource I've found on the subject is a printer-friendly booklet prepared by the Iowa State University Extension, and it is also presented in a different format by the Ohio State University Information Extension. This is really an exhaustive exploration of the fine art of stain removal, and it gives great instructions, but I think I actually learned the most valuable tips from its section on what NOT to do. For instance:

* As much as I want to believe that white vinegar is the cure for every household problem under the sun, vinegar can damage certain delicate fabrics. Test it in an inconspicuous area before you try to use it as a stain remover.

* Don't use dish detergent to try to remove stains in your clothes! It's too harsh.

* Bar soap can actually make a stain permanent instead of helping to remove it.

I'll leave you with one additional tip, this time for carpeting. I figured this out several years ago because I had a pet who was obsessed with finding people's drinks and flipping them over. When you have a lot of liquid like that, grab three or four paper towel sheets in a stack and just press down lightly on the wet spot. Don't rub! Just press. Use the dry areas of the towels until the whole wad is saturated, and then change that out for a fresh handful of sheets. Keep doing this until you can't get out any more moisture. If you got to it quickly and the liquid wasn't too dark, you may have gotten the whole stain out already. I was often able to do this with tea. If you spilled a dark liquid like red wine or if you spilled something sticky, you should then follow the instructions at the links above for cleaning that specific type of stain.

The Domestic Arts - 5 Key Subjects

This blog is just getting on its feet, and I've been thinking a lot about how to best explain the Domestic Arts as I see the subject. I've narrowed it down to five categories, with the home serving as the hub. I thought it would be fitting to present the concept in e-sampler format.

I am going to approach this project by focusing on five major areas, which will probably tend to overlap somewhat:

Home - Your physical shelter, maintenance, cleaning, and the concept of "home"

Food - Nutrition, recipes, cooking, food science, healthy eating

People - Hospitality, sharing things from your home with others, manners

Money - Personal finance, budgeting, frugality

Fabric - Clothes, decorating, sewing, knitting, laundry

Thursday Theatre - Bill Cunningham New York

I enjoy both fashion and quirkiness, and so for today's Thursday Theatre I'm going to recommend a film called Bill Cunningham New York. I'm a big fan of The New York Times' style section, and although I always marvel over the wonderful pictures in its "On the Street" column, I must admit that I didn't know anything about the photographer.

I won't try to summarize the whole film or Bill Cunningham's life, but I will say that he's a delight. He's so taken with the artistic side of fashion, and he gets as much enjoyment out of photographing a random person's visually engaging t-shirt as he does from attending the couture shows in Paris. He's quite a character, and the film is full of his gorgeous work. He turned 80 years old during the filming of the documentary, and he still has more energy than I've ever had in my life.

If you have a Netflix subscription (still a great value in my opinion, despite recent craziness), you can stream the movie or get the DVD. If not, you can buy it on iTunes for $9.99. It also pops up in artsy-type theaters occasionally, so check the film's website for that.

Refashion: Turning a dress into a skirt

One way to save money on clothes while getting the thrill of completing a project is to take a good look at what you already have, but never wear. We all have those things in the backs of our closets that we feel guilty about buying and then ignoring, so let's do something about it.

In this case, I bought this jersey dress because I liked the fabric, but the bodice never really fit correctly. The V-neck always seemed too low, and I would be pulling at it all day. Also, I like to wear mostly neutrals with one punch of color, and this dress is all punch! Since I liked the fabric but hated the top, I thought I'd do an easy remodel.




Total cost: $1.24
Total time: About 2 hours. I did almost all the sewing by hand, but if you used a machine it would be faster.

First, I used small scissors to snip off the bodice at the seam line above the black waistband. Then, I found some elastic which was about the width I wanted the new waistband to be ($1.24 a yard at Jo-Ann Fabrics). I bought a yard of elastic, measured around my waist where I wanted the skirt to sit, and then cut the elastic about two inches smaller than that measurement, so that it would stretch to fit. I recommend trying this out by putting tick marks on the elastic with a pen, and then safety pinning it and seeing how it fits. Make sure to leave at least 1/2" extra for the seam allowance.

I then overlapped the raw edges of the elastic and zig-zag stitched them together using my sewing machine. You could do this by hand if you went over it several times to make sure it was secure. I like to give my skirts a nipped-in waist, so I actually sewed two pieces of elastic together and angled the seams so the top of the waist would be smaller than the bottom. If you use thin elastic this isn't necessary, and of course it depends on your build and preference.

All I had to do then was fold the black waistband fabric over the top of the elastic circle and sew it down on the inside of the skirt with the raw edge turned under. In my case, the waistband was very wide, so that made it really easy. If you were doing this to a dress without a waistband, you could just fold over the top of the skirt and sew it down on the inside so that you created a little channel for it to sit. You could also make a casing and then sew the casing to the skirt. I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible, though, so I went with the fold and sew method.

So here we are with the finished product. My dress form is really modest, so I put a black turtleneck on it to prevent scandalous exposure of felt decolletage. This is also an example of what I meant when I said I like to wear neutrals with a punch of color. It's toned down a bit and I can change out the tops I wear with it to get more use out of the skirt.

Introducing Thursday Theatre

When I clean, cook, sew, or do most any domestic task, I really like to have something happening in the background. My taste ranges from the driest documentaries to the most mainstream hits, and I've taken in quite a lot of information and culture while puttering around the house. I once learned all about the Cuban Missile Crisis while hemming a skirt, I sometimes work on my French listening comprehension while I clean, and I recently hung out with Hunter S. Thompson while making some marinated lamb over coconut rice.

This sort of thing is good for developing what my amazing high school English teacher used to call "cultural literacy" and it helps the work go more quickly. A lot of people tell me that they don't do various DIY projects because they get bored or distracted by something more interesting, so this is sort of an incentive to stick with it. You don't "have to" clean the bathroom; you "get to" listen to a new podcast!

Because various kinds of media and entertainment play such a big role in the way I practice the domestic arts, I want to share things I really like with you. I'll try to choose things that are either free or cheap, because being smart with money is part of domestic science! On Thursdays, I'm going to post little blurbs about things I think are great, and I hope you'll check them out and like them too!