June Journal '26

What I'm making/reading/noticing/trying/learning in June 2026:

1. MAKING: I have a favorite summer dress purchased years ago that is no longer sold. I've been looking for an excuse to try creating a garment from scratch based on an existing garment, and this was it! It was a fun challenge to recreate this dress without dissecting it. There was a lot of tracing, drawing, close looking, guessing, and drawing from existing sewing techniques. The original dress is the pink/blue floral print on the left, my dupe is the peachy dress on the right.

2. MAKING: In this case, not something I made. I co-hosted a Maker summer camp that blended making with building design and entrepreneurial skills. One camper was working with a group of friends on launching a skate streetwear brand. They wanted to try engraving a skateboard! A first for me. Their initial experiment turned out great.

1. MAKING: Baking is making too! My birthday is near the summer solstice and I've been learning a lot about how Scandinavian (in particular, Swedish) cultures celebrate midsummer. There are some great cozy vlogs of folks preparing traditional midsummer meals on youtube. I've also been learning about Nordic baking more broadly, earlier this year I made some delicious Springerle cookies. To celebrate summer and continue this exploration, I baked a Swedish midsummer cake.

1. NOTICING: I visited some of the ideaLABs (makerspaces connected to the Denver Public Library system) recently and noticed some of the fun ways they organize their creative spaces. Big fan of the Fabio the Frog mascot at the Hadley branch 🐸

I keep a small collection of photos like these from makerspaces and creative spaces in museums, libraries, universities, science centers, etc. here: