Thigh Cookies!

I have a number of projects that I've been meaning to post, but I'm just so excited about what I made this weekend, I can't wait to share it!

The other day I was in Anatomy lab looking at MRI images of the thigh, like this:

The Fellow who teaches my section jokingly described these axial views as "thigh cookies." From this I was inspired.  Using a recipe for Pinwheel cookies often found at Christmas (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/christmas-pinwheel-cookies/) my roommate Hannah joined me and we set to work.

We made 2 red-based shades to make the different muscles, white for the bone, and yellow to make the nerves and skin.

Here's the part where I practice my anatomical knowledge, so feel free to skip ahead to the photos if you don't want to study with me. I started by forming the femur, complete with medial and lateral condyles. I then realized it would work best to build from the bottom up, so I formed the superficial posterior compartment, including the biceps femoris, semitendinosus, and semimembranosus. I then used the yellow dough to form a simplified version of the adductor canal, representing the saphenous nerve, femoral artery and femoral vein. I then placed the adductor muscles, including the adductor magnus which originates from the linea aspera on the femur. I added gracilis on the medial side, and then paused to take a picture.

Then I formed the anterior compartment including the vastus medialis, intermedius, and lateralis, added rectus femoris, which I attached to a patella, and finished it off by forming sartorius. With the remaining yellow dough I added a layer of skin to complete the entire thigh. Huzzah!

You can see the condyles of the femur and the patella sticking out here. Then I popped that sucker in the fridge and went back to studying for a couple of hours.

When sufficiently cooled, I sliced up the thigh and set each cookie out to bake.

It looks pretty close to the real thing, if I do say so myself!

Then Hannah and I packed them up and gave a bunch to the Anatomy Fellows, a bunch to our classmates, and a huge pile to the 2nd year students who are taking their intimidating Neuro final as I type. Good luck, Class of 2015!

This is what I wear when it's really important

Guess what! I got accepted to medical school!!! 

YAY YAY YAY YAY! Come August, I will be joining the ranks of the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine's class of 2016. In four short years, I might just change the name of this blog to "Dr. Hollybee Makes Stuff."

But this post is not about that. This post is about a lovely blouse that I just happened to make for my interview to said university. In the last few days before the MCAT I needed something to get my mind away from freaking out too much about the exam, and so I devised and implemented the design for this wonderful addition to my wardrobe. 

Why pale green? Why, to match my eyes of course!

I made a standard button-down slightly fitted blouse, and came up with the idea of adding the pleated detailing to the front in a kind of tuxedo-top style to add a bit of uniqueness to an otherwise normal design. 

Ohhhh my gooooodness --- those pleats took a lot of fabric!!

It took me hours to get those things right, and a number of minor burns on my hands and fingers from the iron (and pokes from the straightpins!). But I got those pleats looking gorgeous. I decided to add a flat edging to them to make them easier to deal with, and flipped one edge over to give a kind of twisted style to them. That way they were even more 3D and amazing. 

Here I am on interview day at the campus! I had just finished all the events for the day when I remembered I needed to snap a photo of myself in all my stylishness. Needless to say that grabbing a picture of myself in high winds by holding my phone backwards while juggling a full purse and a fountain soda was a bit of a challenge. But you can see me, a bit of the blouse, and even a bit of the campus in the background!

Lessons learned: I cut the sleeves a good inch longer than the pattern called for, which didn't even end up being long enough. This pattern requires a good 3 extra inches to be safe (am I that much taller than the average woman? Somehow I doubt it.). This was fixed in this case by adding another set of twisted pleats in between the sleeve and the cuffs. 

Fun fact: while working on the pleats for hours, I caught the movie "No Strings Attached" on Netflix, which just happens to feature Natalie Portman as a nerdy girl from MIT who goes to med school and becomes an awesome doctor! And then she has lots of sex with Ashton Kutcher! Good thing Demi Moore's out of the way, because it looks like I have a great future ahead of me!

Shoving another sibling down the aisle

Another year, another wedding!

Last October my older sister Ellie married her longtime boyfriend Travis, and I was lucky enough to be maid of honor for their nuptials. As one may likely guess, I enjoyed another chance to get a bit crafty (and thereby spent all my creative energies for last fall, exhausting myself in the process such that I've had little motivation for anything else since then). I have been regretting my laxness in posting lately, so I intend to document the one major project I've worked on over the past six months, which was of course comprised of a million small and large projects.

Ellie of course did the majority of the planning and execution, but I enjoyed my own ideas. So where shall we start? Ellie decided upon candy favors, and picked a cute origami box design to hold them in. I suggested the wrapping, and voilà!

I also designed the programs shown above, including sketches done by my mother for decoration. They folded at the top, with the inside text printed on translucent vellum, a series of seashells at the bottom.

Ellie assigned me the task of figuring out the centerpieces, so with the closing sale at our local Joanne's last summer, I put a little something together. An example of which can be seen here:

I found hurricane lamp-shaped vases, which I filled with crushed quahog shells we had harvested from the bay (after eating the meat! yummy!). I grabbed a bunch of nice-looking accessories from Joanne's as well, and together one of the other bridesmaids, Ellie and I decorated about a dozen, each a unique work of crafty art. Then I assigned my cousins to put them on the tables, float tea candles inside and light them. Lovely!

We had planned on the formal photographs being taken at the old front entrance of the house. My mother did a great deal of work on landscaping, making a beautiful backdrop. It's hard to see, but I put together a couple of black and red ribbon arrangements that you can see hanging from the porch and blowing in the breeze. They took a lot more work than they look, so I've been sure to save them in case of the unlikely event I can find another use for them.

My sister had the idea to order a large selection of variegated flowers and arrange the bouquets ourselves, so you can see some more of our handiwork there. It was my mother's idea to include the long, flowing ribbons, and I think they turned out splendidly if I do say so myself!

My absolute crowning glory, however, was my mother's dress. I picked out the pattern and the fabric myself, and my mother never thought it would become her as well as it did. But I knew, so I charged ahead, even when I realized the pattern was undoubtedly the most difficult garment I have ever made.

The. Hardest. Garment. Ever. Well, it was worth it!

Was there anything else? But of course! It may not be considered crafty, but I did get around to doing...

Bridesmaids' hair

And Bridal makeup

Was there anything else? Oh well. After having recounted all of that I'm a bit too exhausted to remember!

Happy weddings!

A Secret Project: REVEALED!

I have a funny habit of making surprise presents for friends and family as gifts. Now you might not think this habit is so funny, but it tends to mess up my blog-posting schedule since I don't want to post anything online about it until the recipient has had a chance to receive and enjoy their gift.

But now the suspense is over! The gifts are given and I get to reveal all the secret projects. This post will be all about my brother's birthday present, so stay tuned for the next post where I reveal my other secret project.

Back in May, 2009, I was trying to decide what to give my brother Eric for his birthday. After much flip-flopping and wishy-washing, I came up with the great idea of making him a needlepoint pillow since I just happened to have a piece of cross-stitch cloth lying around, and oodles of embroidery thread doing nothing but entangling itself slowly.

I hate using cross-stitch patterns since I always lose count, and I usually get "writers' block" when trying to come up with an original design, so it wasn't long before I decided upon the image to stitch: a free-styled replica of the painting he had made for me the previous Christmas. Here's a picture, taken by his fiance Susan, of the painting in progress:

And here I am, enjoying the completed work on Christmas day, 2008. The painting flew back to Louisiana with me the next day, and it sat propped up on my piano from whence it inspired me in May to cross-stitch the pillow.

Now I know what you're thinking: "But Holly, if you were making it for your brother's birthday in May 2009, why haven't you posted it yet?" The unfortunate answer to that is as follows. I began the project a week before Eric's birthday. By the time his birthday had arrived on May 25th, I had been forced to realize that his present would be late. And not just weeks late, butmonths late. This was going to take a very long time.

So over the next 10 months I stitched and stitched and stitched (and occasionally paused for other, significantly shorter projects as you have seen). Countless movies and television shows flew by as I added row upon row, and color upon color.

In March, 2010 I was nearly finished. During a lull in drilling, I completed the stitching during my last hitch offshore, and was excited to come home and finish it for good.

I trimmed the edges and sewed a velveteen backing of dark burgundy that I happened to have some extra of from a random Halloween costume from 2008. I soon realized I had to make a trip to the fabric store for two reasons: A. The pillow would look ridiculous without some sort of edging, and B. I had no stuffing to make it pillow-y.

So I bought piping and polyfill, and returned home eager to finish it. The piping turned out to be a good fit, although I had been worried it would be too bulky. There wasn't much of a selection at the store, and I'd already bitten off far enough to chew with this project that I wasn't going tomake my own piping. For goodness' sake! I bought a yard of piping, thinking that to be plenty. I was one lucky idiot, however, for I hadn't measured the pillow's picture and the one yard of piping turned out to be just barely enough.

My trusty Janome sewing machine barely got through the multiple layers of thick material, but after a bunch of false starts, a few unfortunate arrangement mistakes on my part, and a broken needle or two, I finally had the thing pieced together.

I stuffed the darn thing and hand-sewed the hole closed. I used fabric glue to close the ends of the piping, which were prone to some nasty unraveling. I considered hiding it with a bow of a similar color, but I eventually decided the disguise unnecessary and the embellishment overmuch. It wasn't the neatest finish, but I hope it gives it a little "handmade character" rather than detracting from the quality of the cross-stitch work.

Overall I am terribly proud of the final result. This was my first ever freestyle cross-stitch, and I was thrilled with how true to the original image it turned out.

It came a year later than planned, but Eric was very patient with me and was able to enjoy receiving it at his birthday party this year!

90th Birthday

My grandmother recently informed me that it would be very welcome if I were to send a birthday card to her brother, my great-uncle, who turns 90 in 5 days.

I decided to to one better, and crochet him a little gift as well! I've seen some freeform crochet pieces on Etsy.com which has gotten me interested in improving my talents in that form.

I thought I would make him a "badge of honor" to celebrate his 90 years, so I took the same red thread I've used for many previous projects to put this together.

Upon creating the base form, I wanted a bit of lacy embellishment. I decided that making loops around the entire number would make it too frilly and difficult to read, so I came up with a clever font that reminds me of a whimsical Microsoft typeface I remember from years ago (but cannot come up with an example to display).

I thought an exclamation point would create a good balance in the overall look, so I ended up with "90!" as the final result. I soaked them in a 1:4 mixture of stiffening solution: water and blocked them out.

I sewed the 9 and the 0 together before blocking them, but the exclamation point i left separated because I wanted the loops to be in their final shape beforehand, thus enabling the positioning to be just right. This turned out to be the right decision.

The 1:4 stiffener:water solution was also a good guess. It gave it enough stiffness to keep it flat, but enough flexibility so that it still felt like fabric. I then decorated a card to attach it to and used a large safety pin to affix it with.

I had briefly considered using an actual brooch backing, but I decided that a large safety pin would be easier for 90-year old fingers to work, since my intention for this piece is to be pinned to a shirt.

And here's an example of it pinned to my shirt!
It looks pretty snazzy if I do say so myself.