Dinner party trick: Pizza dough focaccia

Ever since watching With Love, Meghan* on Netflix a few weeks ago, I’ve been in the mood to make focaccia bread. Unfortunately, several of my previous attempts over the years have turned out badly. I truly don’t know why—I’m a decent cook and it’s supposedly very easy to make!—but it’s come out cracker-like or fully charred on multiple occasions. Still, I have some time on my hands at the moment, so I figured it was as good of a time as any to try to get it right!

When I looked for a recipe to follow in two different cookbooks I own, I discovered that both Joy of Cooking and Julia Turshen’s Small Victories base theirs on pizza dough. And yeah, I could have made the Joy of Cooking pizza dough from scratch first, as they instruct…but then it occurred to me that Trader Joe’s sells pre-made pizza dough for like $2, and going this route would mean I wouldn’t get flour all over my kitchen, and would increase the likelihood of success. So that’s what I did and it’s turned out perfectly all three times I’ve made it!

I topped mine with Parmesan cheese, herbs de Provence, and flaky sea salt. It was a big hit with the Bolognese this past weekend. My ultimate goal is to serve it in my garden with lemonade, as Meghan does, but I’m taking things one step at a time. 

Like I said, the recipe is from the Joy of Cooking, but this one is extremely similar/should work! (Note: I used an 8 x 8 glass baking dish as opposed to a baking sheet, and only put it in the oven for 20 minutes even though my recipe called for 25.) 

*All of my thoughts on With Love, Meghan are perfectly summarized in these two Substack posts: Spoiler: Meghan’s show isn’t what I thought it would be and Let Her Cook. 🥖

Cozy little iPhone games

As part of my ongoing quest to be on social media less, especially since last November, I’ve added a bunch of games to my phone—because sometimes you want to zone out for a bit or are bored waiting in a line, but you’d prefer not to open Instagram or be bombarded with the day’s latest horrors.

Here’s what I’m generally looking for in an iPhone game:

• Something that is played vertically. I’m not looking to turn my phone into a Nintendo Switch when I’m sitting in a doctor’s office waiting room, so this list doesn’t include any games that are super immersive or time-consuming. 

• Beautiful art, good music, and satisfying haptics. A lot of mobile games are just Not It for me, aesthetically speaking. I want to play games that feel elegant and nice. 

• Something that offers infinite lives, without a lot of microtransactions, ads, or attempts to upsell you. I’m not opposed to paying for mobile games, but I’d rather do it once versus constantly being compelled to buy lives or upgrade. The exception to this is games that you can only play once per day (like Wordle). 

• Gameplay that is challenging but not impossible. Anything that is too difficult gets boring after a while! 

Puzzle Gods. This is actually a game from Netflix—they have a bunch of them, both for mobile and within the TV app—and it’s free with an account (though you can also buy it for $1.99 if you’re not a Netflix subscriber). The best thing about it is that it’s essentially all-you-can-eat: It’s ad-free, there are no in-app transactions, and you get unlimited lives. In terms of the game itself, it’s a classic match-three with very cute art and fun sound effects. You can also skip levels that are too hard after a certain number of attempts, which I like. And with 1500 levels, it’ll take you a while to get through all of them. 

whPsh! This is a match-three game that I downloaded after playing my way through Puzzle Gods. It does limit the number of lives you have in a given session, but I liked the vibe and how the developers talk about the game, so I was willing to pay the $9.99 for unlimited access. Pro tip: Change the music to “vox machina” and the “item theme” to the round flat circles and turn the music off entirely for the nicest experience.

Monument Valley. I’m usually not into mazes or spatial puzzles, so I was surprised by how much I liked this game. The graphics are beautiful, and, coupled with the music, mechanics, and story, make for a kind of magical experience. There are currently three editions (all available as separate apps). The biggest con is that there aren’t a ton of levels/I was able to play through all of it very quickly. This is another game that you can access for free with a Netflix account, and that also has a paid option. 

Queens. I learned about this game from Terri, as I was not previously aware that LinkedIn has games. You can only play once per day, which is a bummer because I really like it! 

Honorable mentions (a.k.a. games I like, but that I’ve either fallen off playing or that don’t meet all of the criteria above): 

• SP!NG

• I Love Hue and I Love Hue Too 

• SimpleMatch3

• Two Dots

• Threes

• CozyMahjong

Let me know if there are any other games in this vein that you love that I should check out! 📱

I can’t recommend this rice cooker enough

Lately, I’ve been thinking about all of the good shit I haven’t gotten to blog about in the past two years—the stuff that I’ve used super consistently, and that really stands the test of time. This Zojirushi rice cooker ($172 on Amazon) is one such thing!

I wasn’t a big consumer of rice for most of my life, but Kiyana had mentioned wanting a rice cooker several times, so I decided to buy this one for her for Valentine’s Day a few years ago. She now says it’s one of the best gifts she’s ever received, and I have to agree—this thing is amazing! It just makes extremely delicious rice literally every single time with minimal effort on our part. It’s fully turned me into a rice person…like, I will now sometimes just eat a bowl of plain white rice straight out of the rice cooker because it’s that good.

This particular rice cooker also has some additional features (including a vegetable steamer and the ability to bake a cake) that we haven’t taken advantage of. My only real complaint is that there are two components that aren’t dishwasher safe, but it’s also not that big of a deal because they are very easy to clean (especially compared to burned-on rice that’s glued to a pot). 

A few items I recommend to go with it:

• Rice washing bowl with strainer ($8 on Amazon). Washing the dried rice before you make it is the most tedious step in the process, and while it’s truly not that big of a deal, it’s significantly easier now that we have this tool. Pro tip: Use a whisk to swish the rice around in the bowl when you’re rinsing it! 

• Tamaki Gold California Koshihikari Short Grain Rice ($22 for 4.4 lbs. on Amazon). I think the Zojirushi could make any rice taste good, but this rice is excellent.

• Rice storage container with measuring cup ($15 on Amazon). This is definitely just a “nice to have” item, but I do think it’s helpful, given that our go-to rice comes in a 4-lb. bag that is a bit unwieldy. And the built-in measuring cup makes the whole process that much easier. 

There are a lot of different Zojirushi models, and I have no doubt that they are all fantastic (especially after seeing what other people are saying about the brand online), so if a different model is speaking to you, I’d say go for it! 

Please share your favorite rice-centric recipes in the comments if you’re so inclined! Our go-tos are slow cooker chipotle-honey chicken (great over rice instead of in tortillas), miso honey chicken and asparagus (we do green beans), and a sticky miso salmon bowl, but I’d love to add some new ones to our regular rotaysh. 🍚

A red and white shoofly quilt for my valentine

I finished my first full-sized quilt earlier this month! I made this one as a (belated) Valentine’s Day gift for Kiyana; she asked if I’d make her a red and white quilt (a very common combination, historically!), and shoofly quilts are supposed to be fairly easy and beginner-friendly.

Pattern: Penelope Handmade (though this one is no longer available)

Fabric: Kona cotton in tomato, AGF Studio in creme de la creme, and starfall satellite tan yardage (for the backing)

To be honest, this particular quilt felt a little cursed—a bunch of things went wrong/were annoying, but in the end, it was all fine! I’m happy with how it turned out, and I learned a ton when working on it, which I’m currently applying to my second go-round with this pattern.

One of my biggest takeaways was that I should put on music if I’m struggling with a particular step. I generally don’t have music on when I’m doing stuff around the house (I kind of just…forget that it’s an option?) but I was fighting for my goddamn life when I was quilting this. (The difference between quilting something small and something large is…significant!) Then I remembered that there was music playing when I went to “social sewing” hours at my local quilt store—a fun mix of ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. With that in mind, I started blasting oldies (beginning with the Now & Then soundtrack…perfect, honestly) and it helped so much! My lines still came out pretty wobbly, but I felt much less stressed the entire time. I’ve since made a full playlist that I will be utilizing when I quilt my second shoofly this weekend.

Kiyana loves the quilt, which is all that matters…but no one loves it more than Valentina.

I actually ended up teaching Kiyana to sew a couple weeks ago, and she used the leftovers from this quilt to make some shoofly blocks of her own, which she then turned into a dog coat—her first project.

So now Valentina has a quilt of her own to wear (but still prefers ours, naturally). 🧵

Let’s yap!

Comments are officially ON on Just Good Shit (for all posts starting today, that is)!  

This was actually my plan from the get-go, but when I made the move to Squarespace and Kiyana was customizing this template for me (no small job!), we both kind of lost steam when it came to designing the comments. I was planning to look into a third-party system (like Disqus) and then I just…never got around to it. We still haven’t gotten around to it in the sense that, for now, I’m just toggling on the Squarespace option and not doing anything special to them, but I think that’s fine for now! You guys are smart and thoughtful and I like hearing from smart and thoughtful people, so I think it will be nice to have them on. 

I want my blog to be a nice place to hang out and yap, so here are my ground rules to foster good conversation: 

• Don’t be racist, sexist, anti-fat, anti-trans, ableist, or otherwise bigoted. 

• No body shaming or diet talk. 

• Don’t be a dick. 

• Don’t be weird. 

• Any criticism/pushback/etc. needs to be sincere and offered in good faith. 

• Just…be cool, guys! 

I’ll add more rules to this list if necessary, but I feel like this kind of covers how we should all act in public spaces! 

Any comments that break the above rules will be removed. I’ve also turned on the option to flag comments; if any comment gets flagged twice (by other people reading), it’ll get sent to moderation automatically and then I can deal with it from there! If comments are getting out of control on a particular post, I’ll shut them off on that post. I’m also setting it up so that comments on each post will automatically close after two weeks to help cut back on spam.

Looking forward to chatting with you guys again! 📣

Just a really good Bolognese recipe (+ a weeknight red sauce!)

For the past several years, Kiyana and I have been making the pinwheel lasagna from Don Angie to celebrate various holidays. (Our tradition is to have it on Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, and Valentine’s Day.) It’s a time-intensive but very special recipe that is totally worth the effort.

To make it, you have to make three separate sauces, one of which is a Bolognese. And because you end up with a lot more of this than you need, we’d freeze the extra portion to eat with pasta a month or two later…and that’s how we realized it’s totally worth making on its own, separate from the lasagna entirely!

This Bolognese is really rich and hearty, and kind of a showstopper—Kiyana’s been making it whenever we have friends over for dinner (with the Via Carota house salad as a side) and it’s been a huge hit. It feels fancy but it’s not overly fussy, which is ideal for guests.

The recipe is available for free on Cherry Bombe, and it’s in the Don Angie cookbook (which is great and I also recommend!).

Some additional notes if you’re thinking of making it:

• We use beef instead of veal because it’s easier to find

• We don’t prepare the Bolognese in a single day anymore—Kiyana usually combines the meat and makes the mirepoix a day or two in advance, just to break things up a bit

• If you have a tea ball, put the star anise in that when the sauce is simmering so it’ll be easier to fish out at the end

• This recipe makes a ton of Bolognese; we’ve been sending friends home with a portion and we still have plenty left over for ourselves. It also freezes/reheats very well!

Also! While you’re getting the Bolognese recipe, it’s also worth grabbing the one for red sauce that’s also prepared as part of the pinwheel lasagna. This has become our go-to weeknight pasta sauce; it’s ridiculously fast and easy to make and really upgrades a bowl of plain spaghetti! 🍝

If you'd like to have a cozy and pleasant afternoon, consider the New York Historical

After I got laid off in December, Terri texted me to check in, and then mentioned that if I needed some good cheer, I should visit the New York Historical. It was actually already on my radar thanks to the “Pets and the City” exhibit I’d been getting ads for, and Terri’s rec gave me a little extra motivation to check it out.

Honestly, I don’t know what took me so long—this museum feels made for me personally! I really like looking at history through the lens of “small” things—household objects, cookbooks, cards and stationery, Christmas decorations, beauty products, clothes, etc.—and I love learning about New York City, and NY Historical does both of those things very well.

While the “Pets and the City” exhibit was solid (I did not know that actual pigs used to roam the streets and serve as NYC’s sanitation department!), I thought the best part of our visit was the permanent collection of Tiffany lamps. Because inexpensive reproductions are readily available these days, I’d never given much thought to how we got here. But the originals are genuinely incredible. The lamps are largely the work of one woman—Clara Driscoll—and her team of “Tiffany girls.” (The women were employed both because Louis Comfort Tiffany believed their smaller hands were better for the delicate, nature-inspired patterns, and, essentially, to thwart a union strike. Oh and every single woman quit as a matter of course after she got married. Isn’t history fun?) The exhibit is just really well done—Terri was totally right that it makes for a cozy, cheery time—and I think it would be a huge hit with kids too.

The lamps alone make NY Historical worth the trip, but there were a lot of other highlights, including John James Audubon’s original watercolors (you know the ones!); real clothes from working women over the past 200 years; and “Pride and Protest,” which features the photography of Fred W. McDarrah of the Village Voice. And I feel like we barely scratched the surface on this visit; the museum is a lot bigger than we realized, so we ended up buying a membership so we can go back whenever the mood strikes! 🗽

🍑

Something delightful: The Thursday Murder Club

In the fall of 2023, I started getting into reading “cozy mysteries”—basically, mystery novels that don’t have any gore/graphic violence, and that feature an amateur detective in a small town. (Think the vibe of Murder She Wrote as opposed to Law and Order: SVU.) After reading a couple of real duds, I eventually found my way Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, a four-book series (with more coming!) that I love so, so much. 

The books are centered on a British retirement village, and the amateur detectives are four septuagenarians who live there. Richard Osman’s writing is really clever and truly laugh-out-loud funny, but the books are also surprisingly beautiful and tender. (I should warn you that as the books go on and you get to know the fantastic cast of characters better, you will cry.)

I initially bought the books for my Kindle, and then went ahead bought physical copies because I liked them so much that I wanted to be able to see them on my shelf, and then I also bought the audiobook for the first one because I wanted someone with a British accent to read me a story. I’ve already re-read the entire series once, and I will probably read them again right before the fifth book arrives this fall. 

If you need a nice little pick-me-up as we enter the muddy part of winter, I’d highly recommend the whole series!

🍑

Where I’m getting my news these days

The political situation in the US right now is Not Great, and it’s getting worse by the day. But if you’re reading some of our most vaunted institutions, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s business as usual here, which is…fucking wild! I would personally prefer to get information from media outlets and journalists that are accurately characterizing the current threats to democracy and to the American people versus treating this situation like it’s goddamn fantasy football. Like, why are we credulously trying to figure out how flatly illegal actions will “play” with voters instead of calling these things what they are? Why are we referring to disastrous cuts to federal agencies as “savings” in headlines? Why are we acting like the dead whale guy has some valid points and thus is somehow qualified to take away millions of people’s SSRIs? AHHHHHHHH!!!! I find it all disgraceful, particularly in a moment when trust in media institutions is already so low and our industry is collapsing! 

Anyway. Rather than piss myself off every single day, I’ve been sticking to outlets and journalists that aren’t acting like they are brand new here. Below is a list of where I’m going for news and analysis these days. (I also pay for a lot of these, and would encourage you to do the same with the outlets you love and want to see stick around, to the extent that you can afford to!) 

New York Magazine’s Intelligencer. This is where I’m going if I just want to see the news of the day from a major media outlet. The difference in their headlines compared to their competitors is noticeable and extremely refreshing!  

The City. This is an independent, non-profit newsroom with good values covering NYC. We love to see it! 

5-4. This is one of my favorite discoveries from the past couple years; the tagline is “a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.” It’s a super cathartic listen, while also being very informative. If you want a good, not-timely-but-also-very-relevant episode to start with, “Sierra Club v. Morton” is one of my personal favorites.

404 Media. A lot of journalists are real dopes when it comes to tech coverage. (If you’re drooling over the promises of generative AI, I’ve got a bridge to sell you!!!) 404 is independent—run by a bunch of my former VICE coworkers, who are very smart!—and covers the tech industry critically, as it should be covered. 

Wired. Similarly to 404, Wired has some VICE in its DNA and currently has its eye trained on Elon Musk/DOGE. 

Taylor Lorenz. Another very good follow with regard to tech coverage (she unmasked Libs of TikTok), and one of the only journalists I’m aware of who still gives a shit about covid and the way our current approach to public health is affecting people with disabilities! 

Hamilton Nolan / How Things Work. Hamilton is a former Gawker writer who now covers unions and labor issues. “They Are a Minority” and “Democracy and Power” are two good recent installments to check out. 

Your Local Epidemiologist. If you want a clear picture of what’s going on with public health in a given moment, YLE is a good Substack to add to your list.

Defector. While this is technically a sports outlet, they cover politics too, and pretty much every post is a banger. The Old Rules Are for Losers by Kelsey McKinney (also a good follow!) is a nice one to start with. In it, she writes of Democrats: “I want a party that understands that morality is not the same as following a list of rules that the opponent declines to follow. And I want a party with a fucking strategy. I want candidates with actual beliefs, and policies that actually matter, and plans on how to achieve them. I want a party that views the Golden Rule as something that no longer applies when the other side opts out. I want a party that will keep the Earth from burning and take care of the stacks of healthcare bills on everyone's tables and make sure that every kid has food and an education, and I want that party to put the ends before the means. I want a party that fucking cares.” PLEASE!! 

Gregg Gonsalves. Gregg is an epidemiologist and longtime AIDS activitist who also happens to have a strong moral compass. 

Mariame Kaba. Whenever I feel despair, I turn to Mariame Kaba; she’s written several books—including Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care, which I’d definitely recommend right now—and has a monthly Substack.

Rebecca Traister. Another person who I turn to when I’m feeling abject despair! Her NY Mag archive is definitely worth a read.

Melissa Gira Grant. Melissa writes for The New Republic and has been particularly good on the onslaught of attacks on trans people. Here’s her archive.

🍑

Adventures in sewing and quilting

It’s no secret that I love having a hobby; over the years, I’ve taken up knitting, embroidery, journaling, cross stitch, scrapbooking, photography, and birding, just to name a few. Now I’m adding sewing to the list—finally. 

I say finally because I really should have done this years ago—my mom and grandma are both extremely competent sewists. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I grew up in fabric stores; we spent hours in them when I was a kid. My grandma excels at formalwear; she’s made several wedding dresses for family and friends over the years (and she once outfitted an entire bridal party of Barbie and Ken dolls in tiny tuxedos and gowns). Meanwhile, my mom’s area of expertise is kids’ clothes. When I was in kindergarten, she’d sometimes get up in the morning and make me a whole new outfit before I went to school in the afternoon, and she had her own business making children’s clothes for bougie families in Chicago and Evanston that grew out of other parents in public asking her where she got my clothes. Her Halloween costumes are also epic—she’s literally won the national contests put on by big pattern brands several times in the past 30 years. 

But for whatever reason, sewing never really clicked for me. I’ve actually had my mom teach me twice—once when I was 18, and again in 2021—but for whatever reason, it just never really stuck. The learning curve with sewing is quite high, and the first two steps—making a bobbin and threading your machine—are arguably the two hardest ones. Doing either thing wrong will typically result in a big mess, which means there’s a huge barrier to overcome right at the outset. So both times my mom taught me, I completed one project successfully with her help and then kind of abandoned the whole endeavor. 

But I found myself thinking about sewing again after moving into a new apartment and wanting to be able to make simple home goods, like pillows and curtains. I decided 2025 was going to be the year. At the beginning of January, I signed up for a four-week course at the New York Sewing Center; my hope was that going to an in-person class regularly would help me build enough momentum to actually stick with it this time. I’m happy to say that this approach worked, and I’ve been on a roll for the past month. 

While I was taking the train home from my first class, I had the sudden realization that I would love to learn to make quilts, and I wondered if perhaps making squares would be a good way to practice sewing straight lines. After poking around a bit on Reddit, I discovered that quilting is definitely a feasible option for beginners. By the time I’d gotten off the subway, I’d decided that would be the route I’d take outside of class. I started working on my first quilt a week later, and seven days after that, it was done. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it showed me that I could do this, and it got me fully hooked. 

Quilting also unlocked something for me: I think part of the reason I had trouble sticking with sewing in the past is because I’m not terribly interested in making clothes for myself. I’m not saying I’ll never do it, but it’s just not something that really inspires me—because I don’t personally care about clothes that much. While making the pair of pants that we worked on in my class, I began to understand why my mom prefers sewing for kids vs. adult—she always said she likes “short seams.” And honestly…yes! And it turns out that smaller pieces that don’t have to fit on a human body are great for beginners: Taking a project from start to finish takes a lot less time (and requires less fabric!), which means the stakes are lower overall. And because the seams are shorter, you a) realize quickly when you’ve make a mistake, and b) can undo said mistake faster. Put another way: It’s a lot easier to rip out a short seam than a long one. 

My sewing machine 

On the first day of my sewing class, the instructor said it takes about three weeks to stop being afraid of the machine, which was both super validating in terms of why I’d struggled in the past, and also extremely accurate to my experience this time around. Sewing machines are intimidating; there’s no other home appliance that makes me feel like I’m using machinery in quite the same way. The sooner you start, though, and the more regularly you use it, the faster those three weeks will go by.

I’m currently using the Brother CS7000i sewing machine at home. I bought it for $185 in 2021 but it’s now retailing for $349, which I think is maybe because it’s an older model that’s being phased out. The newer version is the Brother CS7000X, which is currently $239 on Amazon. In class, we used basic Janome machines (similar to this one in terms of the features) that worked perfectly well. While I don’t think my machine’s computerized features are really adding much, this particular Brother model has a couple features that I love: One of the most difficult steps—putting the bobbin in correctly, and then picking up the bobbin thread with the top needle—is essentially done for you, without any guesswork. It eliminates a ton of the problems that beleaguer beginners, and to me, that is deeply, deeply worth it. 

One downside of my machine is that the “throat” (the open space between the top and bottom of the machine, between the needle on the left and the body of the machine on the right) isn’t very big. This is likely going to be a problem when I start making bigger quilts, because you need to be able to pass a lot of thick fabric through that area as you sew. Assuming I stick with this hobby, I will probably eventually upgrade my machine to one that is really well-suited for quilting, but I want to make sure I’m totally committed first. 

A lot of people online will tell you to try to get an older/used Singer model—essentially, what my mom and grandma still sew on—because machines were better made 20 years ago, and are true workhorses. While I don’t disagree, and I think it’s reasonable to use one of those if you inherit it or come across one that’s super cheap on Facebook Marketplace, I do think buying a used machine has a couple of downsides.

First, if the used one breaks early on or needs servicing, you’re probably going to end up paying a good amount to have it fixed. (Also, there are apparently only two authorized Singer repair shops in the entire state of Michigan?) And if you don’t live somewhere with a good sewing shop where you can easily get help (or don’t have a family member who can help you who lives nearby), you’re going to be very reliant on YouTube for troubleshooting…and videos showing you exactly how to use these older machines just might not be as present there. The flip side of this is that all sewing machines are very similar—I recently watched a video of a rusted Singer from 1894 being restored and was genuinely shocked by how similar it was to modern ones—so you might be able to figure out the issue even if you can’t, say, find your model’s manual online. 

All this to say: Buying a used machine is ideal from a sustainability POV, but I do think it’s worth being aware of the potential downsides and costs if you’re going this route to save money. 

Helpful resources

When it comes to getting started with quilting, Reddit swears by Melanie Ham’s “Your First Quilt” series on YouTube, so that is what I used and I would wholeheartedly recommend it. She’s a great teacher and I think the project is perfectly sized—it’s big enough that you’ll learn all the important steps (and do them at scale) and will feel extremely accomplished when you’re done, but it’s still small enough to be manageable. I watched all six videos in the series from start to finish before I started working, which I think was helpful—it meant nothing was a surprise once I got going, and I better understood why we were doing things a certain way at each step. 

Reddit also recommend the Just Get It Done Quilts channel on YouTube, which I have found to be great. I turn to these videos more for support/supplemental material vs. “here’s how to make a quilt from start to finish.” These are the three I’d recommend/that I wish I’d watched before I started making my first quilt:

• How to iron for quilting 

• How to cut straight

• How to sew straight

I also picked up a bunch of quilting books from the library, and I bought a few. The one I think is really worth owning is Quilter's Complete Guide: The definitive how-to manual by two of America's most trusted quilters. You know I love an encyclopedic resource written by a woman who knows her shit (see also: Home Comforts), and this book is very much that. It was originally published in 1993 and re-released in 2019, and it’s just a very solid foundational reference that I’ve gone back to repeatedly for both inspiration and guidance. 

Patterns

In general, I find reading patterns to be one of the hardest parts of sewing! (I feel this way about knitting too.) That’s actually one of the reasons I’m enjoying quilts—generally, I think the patterns are just a lot easier to work through. In any case, here are the ones I’ve used thus far…

Simplicity 8299. This is the pattern I used in my sewing class to make a simple pair of pants. It has pockets, which makes it harder, but it was definitely helpful to work on pockets for the first time when I had an instructor who could check my work each step of the way. I made these out of corn fabric that I bought with the idea of making masks from it several years ago and then never used (waste not, want not!); it’s honestly so stupid (in a good way!) and made the project feel a lot less serious and more fun. The pants also ended up being surprisingly comfortable, which was a nice surprise! (And they have pockets!!)   

Scrappy sawtooth star coaster. This is how I learned that while short seams are good for beginners, tiny seams might not be. It was ultimately fine; I finished the coaster quickly and it turned out reasonably well. But I realized that something this small can actually be more fiddly than you might think, and that medium-sized projects might be a better move for me right now. 

Soup cozy. This was a fun little project that took around an hour and 15 minutes to make, if that. It’s super practical if you eat a lot of leftover soup or otherwise reheat things in bowls in your microwave regularly. (I also got more use out of the corn fabric!) 

Simplicity 9426. This dog jacket, to me, is the Platonic ideal of a practice sewing project. It’s easy enough (though, again, I found the pattern very confusing in a few spots); it comes together quickly; and the finished item is genuinely practical. It also lends itself well to cute fabric combinations. I’ve made it twice already! 

The first time, I used a Joz Makes Quilts tutorial to make four blocks made up of 16 small squares each, which I then sewed together and used as the top piece of the jacket. (I used an extra quilted square to make the collar.) I did this mostly because I wanted to practice cutting and piecing a quilt, and because it made the coat project feel more interesting and fun.

The second time I made the jacket, I basically did a speed run and completed it in just a couple hours on a Saturday afternoon. I decided not to quilt it this time because a) I thought the stiched lines would take away from the cute print, b) I didn’t trust myself to sew the seams straight and I knew they’d be really visible since I didn’t have a matching thread color, and c) I didn’t think there was enough batting for this to be totally necessary, especially since it was already top-stitched. (Also, I can always go back and quilt it later if I change my mind.) 

Overall, I really like this pattern, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be making it several more times in the coming months. 

At the moment, I’m currently waiting on the fabric I need to get to work on a Shoofly quilt from Penelope Handmade (weirdly, it looks like the specific pattern is no longer online).  

Final thoughts

As I worked on my first couple of sewing projects, my thoughts regularly returned to my friend Alanna’s book, Knit a Hat. In the intro, she makes the case for starting with a hat over a scarf, even though a scarf is a common beginner project because it’s so simple. You only need to learn a couple of techniques to make a scarf, but, she argues, that repetition can get really boring—which makes it very easy to give up on after you inevitably make a mistake or two. A hat, though, requires you to learn several new skills at once, which keeps you engaged and also sets you up for something a lot more fun for your second project. So as I’ve been going about this, I’ve been trying to avoid metaphorical scarves in favor of hats—because if something isn’t fun to make, you’re just…not going to have fun making it! 

There’s also a section in Alanna’s book titled “It Will Be Wonky”—and this is the other thing that has been top of mind for me as I practice. If you’re not good at the beginning, she writes, it doesn’t mean you’re not crafty or you’ll never get it: “In fact, it can be good to surrender to the process, to not feel like you have to be totally in control at any given moment. And if your first couple of rows, or even your first couple of projects, turn out a little wonky, it’s not the end of the world.” 

I’ve really tried to embrace this approach as I’ve worked on my first projects, and I think it’s making a difference. Success, to me, right now, is simply finishing. I’m fighting the urge to give up just because something isn’t going perfectly, and—surprise!—I haven’t died as a result. Sure, some of my seams are crooked or wobbly or don’t line up perfectly…it’s fine. It’s a coat for a dog. (Also, for what it’s worth, a lot of little mistakes are way less noticeable than you might think when all is said and done and you’re observing your project from three feet away instead of six inches.) No one likes being bad at things, of course, but also…I keep reminding myself to get a grip. It’s a pair of corn pants! It’s a coat for a dog! 

Honestly, I'm just so thrilled to be making things again! I really missed it. 🪡

🍑