Captain John Hart Costume Project

Oneal is back with another costuming project for me. He is attending a Dr. Who theme wedding and wants to go as Captain John Hart from the spinoff “Torchwood.”

I asked, “Who?”

He said, “Yes.”

I asked again, “Captain Who?”

He said, “No, Dr. Who. Captain John Hart.”

Before I could open my mouth again, he showed me the online photos of Captain John Hart. He said that’s the jacket he wants to wear to the wedding. 

Oneal said he will look for a jacket of the same color and texture and I can just convert it. Add the braid and buttons accessories, and adjust the collar and sleeves.

Easy as pie. If he can bring me the jacket (so I won’t have to make one from scratch), I’ll do the required renovations.

The search for the jacket took a few weekend trips to where jackets are sold. Remotely, he consulted with me on the options he found.

One had black sleeves, one looked like salmon, one looked like eggplant. We agreed on the maroon corduroy. I could make it work.

Next was the search for the braid material, or technically, the soutache. And the brass buttons. After total fails at several sewing stores, he landed at Carolina’s where they had these fancy options:

  

Since it was going to be a wedding anyway, we agreed to use the white one with the silver trim (but without glitter or crystals). Here’s our messaging about the soutache and buttons.

He ended up buying a whole roll of the soutache (60+ feet) and the store's entire stash of gold buttons (a dozen more than we needed).

With all the materials available, I went to work. Digging through the sewing accessories I hauled from the US, I determined that the best way to work with the soutache is with a sticky stabilizer and fusing tape. Keeping an eye on the reference photo, I estimated the size and shape of the area the soutache will cover and cut a paper pattern.

This part required a lot of patience but the result was remarkable!

The next step was to sew the soutache onto the jacket. Two straight lines for now, just to hold the panel in place. Final stitching will be done after the fitting.

Oneal went searching again, this time for dark blue corduroy material that I will use for the sleeves and collar. But his search was a bust, so I said, “How about I use a blue microfiber that I have in my fabric stash? I will show you.”

This was the jacket Oneal tried for a final fitting. Just a few buttons, and pins all over the place.

The jacket passed the fitting.

Achievement unlocked!

Here’s Oneal at the wedding, with his wife wearing the project in my next blog entry.

Organizing Recyclable Plastic Bags

Recyclable plastic bags don’t always get reused right away, so they accumulate in the dark recesses of your kitchen cabinets. And when it’s time to reuse, you “ukay-ukay” (dig) into them frantically looking for the right size bag for your purpose. It’s like stashing your underwear in your drawer without folding and then rummaging through everything looking for that particular piece you want to wear. No offense to folks who choose this kind of excitement but, to me, it’s an inconvenience (yes, I fold underwear).   

This was my stash of recyclable plastic bags before I found a way to organize them:

I figured that all I needed was some simple manner to quickly identify the bags, keep the same sizes together, and make them quickly accessible for reuse. So, let’s see what we have around the house. Aha! A stash of empty tissue paper boxes. (Hah, I bet you were sure I had those piled somewhere.)

  

Now to put up a grid to identify the bags. I’ll need a piece of paper as large as the largest recyclable bag I have in the stash (could’ve recycled a brown paper bag but I had just cut up the biggest one in my pile into a costume pattern). I sorted the bags according to size (I was surprised there were only five universal sizes) and drew the measurements onto the paper to serve as a handy guide. Then I taped the paper to the inner side of the cabinet door.

I labeled five tissue boxes accordingly, and slipped the bags into their respective storage containers. And there they are!

Now it’s a snap to put away the bags and pull out the right-sized bag for the purpose. No more unsightly stashing, fumbling, and rummaging. Recyclable bags organized. Just like my underwear.  

Cardboard Spice Rack #3

When you move into a new place, you don’t always have the amenities you’re used to. In my case, our new residence has no spice rack. Nowhere to organize my spices! It does have a blank wall above the sink, which is the only open space available in our very conservative condo-type kitchen area. I figured it’s the best place to install another handcrafted cardboard spice rack (I had created two before – one for our old small apartment in Orlando, another for a friend).

I have an inordinate (wow, “inordinate”) amount of cardboard, aka moving boxes, so this simple shelving project would make a teeny tiny dent on my stash.

Measure the wall, estimate the spice container sizes, cut up the cardboard, fire up the glue gun, splash on some leftover paint, and there it is: my third cardboard spice rack of all time.

Upcycled Pot Holders

When you realize that you didn’t pack pot holders when you relocated from the other side of the planet, you quickly make some by repurposing a couple of face towels that you did pack a lot of.  

To make the pot holder different from the face towel, I decided to hand-sew the seams, creating a pocket to slip the hand in. And I hand-embroidered these: “POT HOLDER” and “PAN HANDLER.” Catchy.

Problem solved.

Why Spaghetti Should Be Assembled at the Table

Many years ago, I was criticized for serving spaghetti un-assembled. “Uncooked” was the word used – because I brought my spaghetti to the table with the noodles not mixed with the sauce. I had always served it this way but since that comment, I conformed by mixing everything in the pot, at the stove.

Today, I decided to go back to my old way of serving spaghetti: the noodles are in a bowl separate from the meat sauce, with cheeses and peppers at the ready.

As I enjoyed my freshly-assembled personal portion of spaghetti, I was taken back to why I had always done it this way before. Here are my reasons for going back to assembling spaghetti at the table (after years of doing it the other way): 

1. The noodles don’t suck up the sauce. When you mix the sauce and the noodles in the pot, the noodles absorb the sauce, so that by the time the dish reaches the table, the pasta is past the al dente stage.
2. You determine the sauciness of your spaghetti portion. Do you want it dry-ish? Or soupy? Maybe you want more sauce than meat? More meat than sauce? You’re in control here.
3. Your spaghetti meal can be your own creation. More cheese? Some hot pepper flakes? Sweet like the Pinoy spaghetti? Garlicky? With anchovies? You can whip up your own tasty concoction – you don’t have to be content with what the cook considers his masterpiece.
4. Leftover already-mixed spaghetti is not very appetizing. After refrigeration, the sauce is dry and the noodles are too soft and fat. If the refrigerated sauce is separate from the noodles, you can reheat it to its original state. You can reheat the noodles with a little hot water, on the stove or in the microwave. Assemble at the table and you’ll forget that they’re leftovers.

So, do come by for my spaghetti. You know what to expect. Bon appetit!