Ali's house

My friend Ali spent the last year and half  in the process of finding and buying her very first house. And now that she’s moved in and has started the process of remodeling a portion of the house – there is clearly no rest for this girl – I am so happy for her! Congratulations Ali!

I could see how stressed she was throughout the entire ordeal and I hope now she can get back to what she is supposed be doing i.e. hanging out with me—whether it’s talking dogs, having a glass of vino, or eating our favorite lunch together (i.e. a Trader Joe’s log o’ goat cheese, eaten by itself and in entirety, with a spoon. You should try it.)

When I hang out with Ali, I tend to behave less like an adult and more like a kid. And it’s not just any kid I tend to act like. It’s…a fat kid. And sometimes even a mean, fat kid. Can you believe that?! Me neither! So I will try to explain so we can all better understand.

One thing Ali and I have in common is our love for food. We have very similar tastes when it comes to certain types of edibles. I would go so far as to say that a good portion of the foundation of our friendship is based on our mutual and very shameless love for a certain genre of food that can only be described as “fat kid food.”  It’s the type of food that a fat kid would eat, and quite possibly the reason many a kid is fat in the first place.

Examples of fat kid food are hostess products, candy, ice cream, marshmallows, cheese (sidenote: I went to Ali’s house after work a few days ago and she had 5 different kinds of cheese in her fridge. and a plate of homemade marshmallows on the counter), cookies, cake, pie, cupcakes, McDonalds, Chuck E Cheese, cakesters, Starbucks pastries, garlic fries, corn dogs, Doritos, soda, gum, jelly beans… you get the idea. The point is, hanging out with Ali brings out my fat kid state of mind. Now on to the mean kid part…

Ali and I both really like our dogs – she happens to have a pug named Moses as well as a pig named Oscar, who is kind of like a dog. Oscar is actually more like a dog than Moses is in some ways, so combined they equal about one dog. Ali and I both have boyfriends who would be perfectly happy if they never had to hear another “my dog is so cute/rad/funny/retarded/the best dog in the world” story again for the rest of their lives.

So Ali and I tell these stories to one another. Like kids (or self-centered idiot-women, you could argue), we often tell each other our dog stories at the very same time. Partly because our first and sometimes only opportunity to swap stories during the work day is a 10-minute break we take together when the roach coach comes at 11am. And partly because we are both more interested in doing the telling than the listening (clearly). And I want to say that we always acknowledge each other’s story and confirm that each other’s dogs are indeed the best/ awesomest/greediest/worst or whatever it is we are saying our dog is this time. But that would be a lie. The truth is that…

Ali is a nice kid so she always says “Awww, Bama’s such a good girl!” at the end of my stories. No matter what. Even if I just told her a story about how Bama decided to jump up on and pummel a poor random pregnant lady during a recent walk. But even if the story I told is about Bama being bad, Ali’s standard reply is a great one. Ali knows I just want to be told that Bama is a good girl, so that I can justify my hope that one day she will show it.

At the end of Ali’s stories I either say “Moses isn’t even a real dog” or “When do I get to bring Bama over to play with Oscar” (depending on whether the story is about Moses the pug or Oscar the pig).  Because, you see, when I hang out with Ali, I am the mean kid.

[Just to clear up any confusion: The reply I give when the story is about Oscar the pig is mean because Bama was bred to hunt wild boar. So in essence I am saying "when can I bring Bama over so we can see if she wants to try to kill Oscar." I'm only a teensy bit serious about that of course, but it's still a mean thing to say because of course she doesn't want to think about her beloved pet being carnivorized by a dog she thinks is a "good girl".]

For some reason I wasn’t able to put the mean kid part of me in check the entire time Ali was house searching and stressed out about it. I probably told her to:

shut up and stop stressing because soon its all going to be over and when it is you will have a house!  Which makes you better than me. Which sucks for me because I am older and way cooler than you. So I don’t really have any sympathy for you. Because I am a fat, mean kid who is having trouble controlling the emotion of “envy” at the moment. Now give me some more sunflower seeds please. And by the way, your dog would never survive in the wild.

The reason I am not ashamed to admit how awful a friend I have been to Ali, is because I am hoping I made it all up to her when I gave her this house-warming gift I made for her… BEHOLD!

The front of the house is mostly 100% woolfelt while the back is cotton fabric. The green polka dot “paint job” is a piece of green polka dot cotton fabric (that I found in my stash) with felt fused to the back side of it. I wanted the green polka dot wall to be a strong enough base for the other felt parts – the door, shutters, roof, and bottom.

The stitching is my favorite part of these house projects I’ve been doing, both in process and in final appearance. With Ali’s house I did rows of machine stitching on the roof to give it some texture. Then I used embroidery thread to hand stitch the detail of the shutters and to blanket stitch the base on to the walls of the house. A few houses ago, I had zero experience with bringing decorative stitching into my sewing projects. And now, just a few houses later, I have to say I have remarkably improved. It’s one of those wonderful things that just takes some practice!

I based the colors of this house on the real colors of Ali’s  house! But Ali’s real house doesn’t have polka dots, unfortunately. Or a “techno green” door

I spelled out Ali’s name on a piece of ribbon using Hambly rub-ons, and then fashioned the ribbon into a little tag. Hopefully the tag will trick someone into thinking the house came from a store and when that person ask’s Ali where she bought it, Ali will be happy. Because she will be just a little bit more sure that the house is cool-looking, and not some piece of crap example of Handmade Gone Bad-ery. Hooray.

This project isn’t my own invention. There is a fantastic book called Fanciful Felties from mummysam by Samantha Cotterill that was published recently by Stash Books, an imprint of C&T Publishing, which is where I work. Although I used my own pattern, everything I needed to know to make this house came from Samantha’s book. Thanks for the inspiration and education, Sam!