Green Projects

This photo is green, but in reality this project has lots of colors....red, green, white.  It's my daughter's Christmas Quilt.  The odd pin-like-thing is a basting pin.  The top and back are done.  The two are pin-basted.  Now it's time to decide if I'm going to quilt with or without a frame.

This green project was a gift to my daughter.  She designed a doll recently and the poor doll had no clothes.  So, I used some quilting scraps (see project above) and made a pair of pants for the doll, then found a bit of t-shirt ribbing and made a shirt.  Viola!  Green outfit!

Polymer Clay, Reenactment Costumes, and Weaving

Here's a hodge-podge of photos from this month:

My friend at Needles and Knots here in town hosted an Altoid Tin Decoration Contest.  It was lots of fun trying to come up with a way to use the tin and then to decorate it.  The end result is basketweave in polymer clay baked on the tin.

 I started and finished a corded petticoat.  I've found that they did a great job of keeping long skirts from winding around my legs when I wore them at Conner Prairie.  This one is for the 1700's costume I'll wear at the Feast of the Hunters' Moon in October.  I'm not sure if it is period, but I don't intend to show it to anyone while I'm wearing it!

This is my latest set of handwoven towels.  They are woven on a 20/2 cotton warp, use a 20/2 cotton tabby weft and a very fine, handspun cotton weft.  The purple/blue towel uses three strands of the handspun together to create a thicker yarn.  The multicolored wefts are all single strands.  There are three towels missing from this photograph.  They were woven on the same warp, with the same tabby weft, but used a brilliant blue, handspun cotton.  Much to my dismay, the blue cotton bled and discolored the towels.  It was so disappointing!

Working with the fine (to me--I usually use 10/2 cotton) cotton was, well...fine.  The biggest challenge was that I put on a longer warp than usual and tied on to the previous warp, making for more weaving to be done.  I was very happy when these knots came back up over the back beam!  Whew!

And lastly, a very sad farewell to an old pair of potholders.  I got these through an exchange at the Wabash Weavers' Guild---years ago!  They were well used and well loved.  I've replaced them with some wool ones I made, also quite some time ago, but these old ones that I think were made by Helen will have a special place in my memories!

Current Projects

These towels just came off the loom today.  10/2 unmercerized cotton for the warp and weft.  Warp sett is 30 epi.  The weave structure is M's and W's with tie-ups and treadlings from Strickler's 8-Shaft Patterns (I think it's #158).

Finding the right weft color for this warp was challenging.  The reddish-burgandy weft shows up well as did some pink wefts--as long as they were not identical to the warp colors!

Three little monkeys.  These are drier balls that have been needle felted, but not wet felted yet.  I did one of these monkeys in all grey and it was cute, but I like them so much better with more colors!

Special "Twin" project:

Marching band camp had "twin day" for their spirit theme today.  Last night my daughter and I made an outfit for her doll (that I made for her years ago!).  It was fun to draft a pattern and make the clothes together.  The doll's t-shirt is from the same program (but a previous year) as the one my daughter is wearing!

Projects--a collection

Blocking lace.  I love the effect of blocking pieces of knit lace.  The yarn over holes open up and the stockingette stitch areas become smooth...  I love it!

 Fixing mistakes.  Sooner or later I usually fix my mistakes.  It wasn't until I began to weave that I finally understood that if I could see a mistake then I would always be able to see the mistake.  More often then not, there is no effective cover-up for a mistake.  This one was a denting error, ten threads in from the edge on a warp that had already given me fits.  I tried to brush it off..."It will never show with the thick weft..."  It showed.  So, I stopped weaving, pulled out the weft, fixed the denting error and began to weave again.  It looks much better without the error!

Sewing.  My daughter decided that she needed a new dress.  She did some shopping and came home empty handed.  She went through my pattern books and found a dress design she liked.  I slowly began to work on it.  This pattern is from a collection by "The Golden Rule".  Each pattern is printed in miniature and the seamstress enlarges it based on the measurements of the wearer.  So I measured.  I drafted.  I made a muslin (I knew I would need it!  The pattern was older and I was sure the fit would be different from my daughter's preferred style....) I modified the pattern and finally made the dress.  I had to promise to not put her head in the final picture, but here it is.  The collar is gathered at the neck and comes down to a point at the center front and back.  The purple is amazing with her reddish-blond hair!

Knitting, frogging, and knitting again.  I would like to knit shawls.  I have a little "shawlette" that is wonderful to wear around the house.  It's just enough to warm my back and shoulders, but not enough to get in the way of doing things.  I have a new shawl book, so I found a pattern I liked and cast on.  Of course I modified it...and in the end, I didn't like it.  This is a traditional triangle shawl with a point at the center back.  I'm not fond of the style (why did I cast on?) and I didn't like how stiff the finished fabric felt.  I kept going, hoping that things would get better, but they didn't.  In this photo, the shawl is off the needles and on a string so I could wrap it around me and see how it worked.  It didn't.  It got to sit on the table for a few hours while I did some research and chose a new shawl design.  Then it got frogged.

This was one of the reasons I frogged the shawl.  I knit a sample with an extra ball of the same batch of yarn on bigger needles.  It was so much softer and had much better drape.  I tried one more needle size after this picture.  Swatching is really helpful!

In my research to save my shawl, I discovered a new webpage:  Laylock Knitwear Design.  The shawls are fun, but scroll down and look on the right hand side for the "Shawl Knitting Cheat Sheet".  Wow!  It's a single page pdf with instructions for make five different shapes of shawls all from the same three stitch cast-on!  I've decided to make a "heart-shaped" or crescent shawl because it will have longer ends for tying.  And, I made some swatches:

Neither of these have been blocked, but they are here anyway!  On the right is the pattern as written by Laylock Knitwear.  On the left is my modified version--no yarn-over holes and a three stitch garter edge.  The knitting is progressing.  I hope there will be another shawlette in my drawer soon!

Challenges with Finished Sewing Projects

Original pants with seams marked to make a pattern.

It all started with a pair of pants, a Craftsy class, and me.

I signed up for "Jean-ius" at Craftsy.com and successfully copied my favorite pair of pants.  I was so excited!     My husband took some photos for me and I was going to post them to the blog.  That's when it hit.

"It" is the challenge of loving myself for who I am and appreciating the fact that I have a functional body.  The pants photos didn't do that for me.  I fell from the wonderful high of accomplishment down to a low of not fitting the runway
model mold.

A few days have passed.  I haven't worn my new jeans yet.  Maybe I'll break them in on Sunday after church.  After all, they are new--I don't want to wear them outside for weeding just yet!

Daryl Lancaster wrote a nice post about sewing with handwovens recently and referenced a weavezine column she wrote a few years ago.  Know Thyself is a good reminder that I am who I am.  I have a body with quirks...some of the quirks are new and I haven't gotten used to them yet.  Some of the quirks are as old as the rest of me.

So, huzzah for challenges.  Huzzah for finished projects.  And, huzzah for taking the time to learn something new.

The finished, re-created pants.  They fit just like the originals!

Carding, Crocheting, Lasting Shoes, and Sun bonnet Sewing

 A few of the things I have been doing lately:

Drum carding.  I call this particular blend the "how the leopard got his spots" blend.  It is two different types of wool.  The pale, grey longer wool and the dark brown, short & curly wool.  The goal with this blend was to get spots of color in the final yarn.  I made a sandwich with the grey wool as top and bottom layers and placed the bits of dark brown wool directly onto the large drum of the carder.  The top layer of grey was added via the licker-in drum and a streaky batt  was the result.  The yarn spun up nicely.  I am always amazed at how quickly I can spin two ounces of worsted weight yarn compared to the time it takes to spin two ounces of lace weight yarn!

Spots of brown on the bottom layer of grey wool

Top layer of grey shows some brown streaks,

Two ply yarn from the grey & dark brown wool sandwich.

Crochet Motifs.  I picked up a book by Edie Eckman  called Beyond the Square Crochet Motifs.  I've been using my stash of handspun sample yarns and trying out different motifs.  This is #99.  My first sample of this motif was crocheted in a multicolored yarn.  It's on the bottom in the photo.  It's cute, but it didn't make my socks go up and down (That phrase comes from one of my husband's programming professors at Purdue.  Apparently he would say, "If that doesn't make your socks go up and down..." referring to a particularly wonderful bit of coding.)  At any rate, I pulled some other yarns from my stash and before I knew it, I had four cute little flower motifs with grey centers.  Then I got to thinking that a dark accent at the center would look even better, so I made a few more!  Here they are put together into a headband with a dark, knit underlayer.

 Shoe lasts.  Some of you may remember that I have dabbled in making shoes.  I discovered that making shoes takes work and practice...and there are lots of things I have yet to learn in order to make good shoes! One of the helpful things for making good shoes is a pair of lasts or shoe forms.  I don't have any.  However, today I took a step towards making my own.  I placed a light weight plastic bag from my groceries into an old tennis shoe (it was laced at the time) and poured plaster of pairs into the bag.  After an hour or so, the plaster had set enough to remove it from the shoe.  Voila!  An attempt at a home-made shoe last.  Now to make some more shoes and test it!

Sun bonnets.  I was able to volunteer on the grounds at Conner Prairie recently and got to dress in costume.  From my corded petticoat to my bonnet I was costumed like I was from the 1830's.  It was fun!  I came home and discovered that my oldest daughter had been working on a sun bonnet with the girls at church that were preparing for a pioneer trek journey.  Only the sun bonnet was tiny.  It's little brim would have left my girl's face burnt to a crisp.  So, I went looking for a better pattern.  And found this one at a Mormon Pioneer Trek site (http://www.mormontrek.net/Pack/PDF/Slats.pdf).  The pattern is simple--it's just a rectangle with  one end trimmed to a curve.  The curved edge covers the back of the neck.  The rectangular edge gets stiffened with slats.  Add a set of ties to  the back to keep the neck cover from flapping and a set of ties on the inside to keep the bonnet on the head and it's done!  I must admit that I cheated and used modern materials for my slats.  The pattern calls for cardboard or wood slats.  I had neither.  Instead I used some needlepoint plastic that has been hanging around the house for years!  Hooray!  I didn't have to buy anything new, I used something that I had on hand, and I won't have to worry about ruining my bonnet in the rain!

My sunbonnet.  Now I know the pattern works, I'll help my daughter make her own.

Odds and Ends

 I've taken up a new fiber-hobby:  bobbin lace.  Like my lace knitting, this is one that requires time and concentration.  So far I have made two tiny samples--they aren't even considered true lace!--but they were neat to weave!

Bobbin lace is essentially weaving that is tensioned by pulling the threads against pins.  The manipulations of the bobbins creates the woven sections.

I've made some new little bags.  These are based on a tutorial posted at Sew Together.  They have a zipper at the top and angled sides so the bottom sits flat.  The one with the bright yellow zipper was my test piece made with commercial fabrics.  The other three are made with handwoven fabric from a network drafting sampler I wove recently.    The zipper insertions are all slightly different on the purple bags.  I like the look of the bag at the back best.

T-shirt neck Ribbing Removal

My great aunt loves t-shirts, but hates the ribbing around the neck. It used to be that she would take her shirts to a seamstress who would do the work for her. This week she brought her new shirt to me.

In theory, I knew that this job could be done. --Remove the ribbing. Turn the neck fabric under twice and sew.--But, I had never done this before and I was full of trepidation! After all, this was my great aunt's recorder orchestra t-shirt and I didn't want to mess it up!

A quick google search was unfruitful. Lots of people showed how to add a contrasting neck after removing the ribbing, but I didn't find any that just turned the t-shirt fabric under.

Out came one of my old and almost dead t-shirt--the '93-'94 MHC physics t-shirt that features "Fred the scary grad student" on the back. I used it as my test. I was pleased to see that there was enough stretch in the shirt fabric that the job was pretty straight forward. I took a deep breath and proceeded to cut and sew my aunt's shirt. And it worked! Now to get it back to her so she can wear it! :)

The details: I cut the ribbing off close to the stitching on the back of the neck. At the front center I cut ~3/8" below the lowest line of stitching and curved it to meet the cut at the back. I then used pins to mark the fold line, 3/8" from the cut edge, and ironed the fold. From the inside, I made the second fold to hide the cut edge and pinned it roughly every inch or inch and a half. The blind-stitch foot with its center vertical part made it easy to keep the stitching straight. I used a long stitch--3.5-- on my wonderful, old elna supermatic.


And, I finished the hat for my son. I think that his choice of using the dark green and variegated green yarns in an alternating pattern worked great! I love how these worsted weight yarns knit up so quickly! This hat was on and off the needles in less than a week. That is amazingly fast compared to the months of sock knitting for my husband's size 13 feet!

Handwoven Baby Blanket

A friend is expecting a baby any day now. I took some yardage that I had woven last year and sewed it into a blanket.

My fears of making mistakes with my handwoven fabric resurfaced. It took me a few days to decide that I really could piece my handwovens together!

There were a few new-to-me tricks--mostly flat felled seams--so I'll show you some pictures of the process.









First off, this is how I marked, sewed, and cut my yardage. The chalk line was the finished size of the piece. I sewed a small zig-zag stitch on each side of the chalk line, then cut the piece.

















The flat felled seams are a way of enclosing the raw edges. With right sides together, I sewed a ~5/8" seam. I trimmed the white side of the seam allowance to ~1/4", turned the brown side of the seam allowance under 1/4", then folded the brown (folded) edge over the white (trimmed) edge.













From the back side (where I could see the folded seam allowance) I stitched the folded edge of the brown seam allowance. No more raw edges!
















Just a note: I was uncomfortable using a new technique on my handwoven fabrics, so I made a mini blanket to test things out. I piece the nine sections into three strips of three, then connected the strips of three to make the nine square blanket. I discovered that the flat felled seams the the strips of three needed to be offset or else they got too bulky to turn. Check out the direction of the flat felled seams where the white square and the black square meet. The are folded opposite directions.

Also, I didn't like the way my binding worked. I tried to use the "fold it in half, sew to blanket, fold over and handsew to the other side of blanket" technique. (Can you tell I'm not really a sew-er? I'm just a wanna-be!) The binding (same fabric as the solid brown corner squares) was not wide enough to do that easily. It was feeling stiff like piping and was a bear to handle. I got brave. I turned on all my lights and made use of a sunny morning and ripped out the binding seam! It was a bit of a challenge. My brown thread matched the brown fabric really well! But, I succeeded and only needed the magnifying glass a few times. The final binding was machine sewn on one side, folded over, seam allowance tucked up and attached by hand.




The hand of the blanket is wonderful. It's just right for a simple summer cover for a new little one!

Updates

From the loom: "sunburst" in 20/2 tencel (warp & weft), 45 epi. I love how this is weaving! I wrote out the threading by shaft number because my printout was too small to easily read. I've been using for my treadling sequence too --held to my floor lamp by a magnet! The design is from Twill Thrills p.56.









From the dye pot: This is Romney wool roving dyed "dusty rose". It is a beautiful color, one of my favorites! The roving was only briefly wet prior to entering the dye pot and irregular dye take-up resulted. I've separated the roving into dark, medium, and light bundles and am aiming to spin a variegated yarn--dark at one end, light at the other.











The first two colors (dark on top, medium on bottom) have been spun. Light is next.













And from the sewing room: This is my latest project--a duct tape dress form. I have high hopes of sewing with my handwoven cloth. I also happen to have huge fears and feelings of inadequacy about my ability to turn cloth into clothing for myself. I believe in conquering fears by working on the underlying skills needed...so I read & skimmed Warch's "Illustrated Guide to Sewing" yesterday afternoon. The book belonged to my grandmother who was an amazing woman and could work some amazing tricks with cloth. Then I stumbled upon "Vintage Sewing Info" and read "Modern Pattern Design" by Pepin (c. circa 1942).

The two things combined made it clear that I need to experiment with line and drape...and it would be great if I could do this at small scale. (Warch encourages the creation of a mini-dress to practice skills without using great expanses of cloth.)

The duct tape dress form was made following the directions here. Basically, plastic bags were worn like a dress and layers of duct tape were carefully placed over that. It took almost two hours, start to finish, for the taping. It took less than two rolls of 60 yd heavy-duty duct tape. Right now it is hanging on a hanger with a padded cardboard insert across the shoulders. I would like to put it on a stand, but this works for now.

The next thing I would like to do is make a miniature version of this dress form. I'm thinking that 1/4 scale would be good (~16" doll size). I found a site that makes dress forms for dolls. I'd love to have one like that for me! If nothing else, I'll be taking measurements from my duct tape form and approximating "my" shape in a smaller size.

Then I'll begin to play around with some of the clothing designs in some of my "clothes for weavers to make" books.

A Plethora of Projects

My blog posts have dwindled due to the nature of much of my projects lately. There was a pair of pants for my son (a Christmas present), a set of Barbie clothes for my daughter (a Christmas present), a wall hanging made of t-shirts and machine quilted for my husband (a Christmas present), and a pair of socks for me (a Stocking stuffer)....There seems to be a theme here!

I'll start with the socks because I have a photo of them. This is yarn that I dyed in the workshop with Rita Petteys back in May. It is a 100% merino wool, lace weight yarn. I'm not used to knitting with lace weight yarns, and these socks had almost 100 stitches per round! Needles to say, it has taken a long time to get these done! The socks were knit with two different patterns from Sensational Knitted Socks by Schurch. I knit the lace pattern first. After I got it done, I paused my sock knitting to work on my mittens for Alia (that eventually got frogged and sewn out of non-itchy polyeseter fleece) and I got a lesson in color/pattern combinations. So, by the time I came back to knit sock #2, I tried a different pattern (the basket-weave pattern in the top left sock in the photo). I liked the effect of the basket-weave pattern better than the lace. I thought that it showed the colors of the yarn better. But, when they are on my feet and I am looking at them from about 5' away, they both look just fine. Go figure! ;)



Here's the wall hanging for my husband. A friend of mine makes quilts from t-shirts and she is often sewing on the binding during storytime at the library. I love her sense of design and the way her use of scraps and pieces in between the big blocks of t-shirt art unifies her quilts. (Check out the 4th picture down on the link) Needless to say, I wanted to try my hand at this. I rescued two t-shirts from the rag bag, figured out how to prepare my machine for free motion quilting (actually, I knew how to make my machine ready...It's just that this time when I tried to make the feed dog covers go on, they actually did! Hooray!), and did some quilting. It was fun and I'm looking forward to doing more!

Frogged Mittens

I used to knit regularly and I thought that I remembered how to knit mittens. The mitten on the right looks ok from the backside, but it was too narrow across the hand and the thumb opening was huge!!

I admitted defeat with the mittens and got out a knitting book, made some calculations and started again--this time with a pattern and a decorative stitch. That's the mitten on the left. I like the decorative stitch, I really do, but it doesn't show the colors of the yarn very well.

Both of these mittens got ripped out or frogged and I started again. I got the body of the new mitten (knit with a pattern, but no decorative stitch) done and had my daughter try it on for size.

The first words out of her mouth were, "Mom, it's itchy".

Argh!

At which point I gave up knitting these mittens for her, and found some scraps of polar fleece and made this bright pair of non-itchy mittens:


Hooray for non-itchy fabrics!

A bit of Sewing

Cool weather has come. My eldest daughter has been growing and requested a new fleece jacket. I hemmed and hawed, and finally gave in. It's taken a week or two to get the fabric, get a pattern (I tried making one, but it didn't quite work out), and get it finished....

But it is done now, and got worn to school today!

:)

Ruffler!

This is a ruffler. It happens to be an old Singer ruffler being used on an older Elna sewing machine, but it works wonderfully!

My local sewing/fabric store, Caldwells, is amazing. I walked into the store asking for a $10 presser foot to do gathers. The sales clerk went directly to a $40 presser foot contraption (that almost gave me a heart attack!), only to discover that it was the wrong connection for my machine. (Whew!)

Then she went looking in their used pieces, brought out a ruffler like this and told me how they work.--She also commented that she had the $10 type of presser foot I was asking about and it didn't really work!

It took a bit of searching for the clerk to find the right size ruffler for my machine, but she did. $5 later, I was the happy owner of a ruffler foot!

And look what it does--in one evening, too! This is intended to be a skirt for my oldest daughter. I need her to try it on before I do any more finishing to it.

The ruffler is a wonderful attachement. It creates evenly spaced mini pleats and sews them to another fabric all in one pass. No more basting stitches to pull!

:)

Spring Cleaning

I've been doing a bit of spring cleaning around the house. It started on Tuesday or Wednesday of last week with a garage sale purchase. This Domestic sewing machine came home with me (a bit unexpectedly)! I've oiled the machine and cleaned it up--but I don't have any experience at fine tuning a machine like this, so I may need to make a call to some experts to make it sew a seam.

The next bit of spring cleaning is without a photo. We moved to this house almost four years ago, and on Saturday I got the last box out of my son's closet. I'd been in it recently enough to know that it had some decorations and nic naks....but I hadn't been in it deep enough to discover our old box of loose change! We had over seventeen dollars in coins, and at least that much again in our children's old piggy banks that were there too!

And, the last bit of spring cleaning... This came home with me yesterday. It was a Craigslist purchase and had been living in a warehouse in Indianapolis. It's a Schacht 8 Harness Baby Wolf. There was a lot of dust and dirt on it and it took me most of the afternoon to get it clean, but it works just fine! Here it is with my test warp.

A "Real" Swimsuit

My now almost 10 year old was desperately in need of a new swimsuit. Her old one was made without a pattern and of odd material over a year ago. It worked ok, but it was odd!

This time, I purchased a pattern and spandex, and am thrilled with the outcome!

The pattern is Kwik Sew #2606 with a racing back. I got it and the swimsuit elastic from Sew Sassy Fabrics online. The fabric came from Spandex World (again, via their online store). Both stores had great service and good prices. I put my orders in on April 5th. The pattern arrived first, then the fabric arrived yesterday, and today the suit is finished!

How's that for fast!