Half Bass Bag, Part 1

I'm feeling needy and unfulfilled, so I'm designing something for myself. I want it to be germane to me and my valid feelings, so I'm calling it the Half Bass Bag. Once it's drafted and tested I'll put up the pattern as a "free but please make a charitable donation" item on my website because, y'know, this is how most people with advanced degrees from ivy league institutions Make The World A Better Place.

Onward.

If it's going to be a Half Bass Bag, it behooves me to make sure the "half bass" part is accurate. (For the record, I was bummed that I could not find any donkey fabric.) I have Robert Kaufman's fish fabric from the "Sports Club" line, but not being a fisherwoman myself, I am not certain which of the fish are bass species. I know there are a large variety of bass and many aren't even closely related to each other. My closest experience with bass involves them being already gutted, scaled and usually pre-filleted. I wouldn't know a live one if it bit me in the... bass.

Here's a photo of the fabric. I've put a pin through what I think are the most likely suspects based on a Google Image search. If there are any fishing folks out there who can confirm my picks or direct me to a correct fish on the fabric, I would be ever so grateful. Here's what I'm working with, and thanks in advance:

Blueberry breakthrough

For years I have avoided making blueberry hamentashen because blueberry jam tends to boil and run at oven temp. The jam goes all over the cookie sheet and pours onto the bottom of the oven, leaving a big mess and a bunch of empty hamentaschen at the end.

I was in the grocery store looking for fillings for this year's batch, and my eye fell on pie filling. Aha! Pie filling is meant to be put at high heat... and presumably it's made up so that it stays where you put it. So blueberry pie filling went in the basket, and blueberry pie filling went in the hamentashen. I guessed right... pie filling works very well:



Finally, after all these years I can make blueberry hamentashen with wild abandon. I even updated my recipe in the online archive.

Be happy, indeed!

Hag sameach, everyone.

Pick-a-poodle

I am making 3 poodle skirts. Two are for my daughters, one is for my friend's daughter/daughter's friend. My youngest and the friend both wanted pink skirts. My youngest was quite specific: she wanted a black poodle with a black sequin leash:



So I need to decide on a combo for the friend. For reference, my older daughter has a turquoise skirt with a pink poodle and opalescent pink leash. I have 3 options for the friend. The first is to duplicate exactly what my youngest has. The merit is that it's high contrast and easily visible. The downside is that variation is fun.

The second option is to change the leash to matte silver:



The upside - the matte silver is seriously cool in person (doesn't photograph accurately). It looks very good with the matte silver embroidery around the applique. It's still pretty high contrast and easily visible from a distance. The downside is that at first glance it doesn't seem noticeably different than DD2's version.

The third option is to change the leash to matte silver and the poodle to white:



The upside - very obviously different than the others. There would be 3 different colors of poodle for each of the 3 girls. The girl's complexion is very fair and really is at her best advantage when wearing light colors. See above about how cool the matte silver looks in person. Downside - much lower contrast. (Still obviously a poodle skirt.)

I am planning to make crinolines for the girls. I am hoping that by making the skirts stand away from the body a bit the details of the sequins and appliques will be more visible. But I won't know until it's all complete.

Anyway, if you have an opinion about which combo I should do for my friend's daughter please post in the comments.