HomeWork

Sophie and I attended a fun event called Swap-o-Rama-Rama as part of GreenFest at the Washington Trade and Convention Center. Piles and piles of clothes were amassed for the sole purpose of refashioning discarded items into something new. A sewing machine dealer in Bellingham brought six machines, two sergers and an overlock, as well as a needlefelting machine.

The first day, I was signed up as a volunteer, but had so much fun, I brought the whole family back for more sewing. We created our own pile of clothes with appealing fabrics or design features. Before long, Sophie and I decided to tear apart an extra-large women’s corduroy jumper with large front pockets.

Sophie has played with my mother’s hand-me down Kenmore machine enough that she knew was able to work on her own piece independently while I alternated between helping my neighbors and experimenting with the serger. There were also two large embroidery machines hooked up to tablets. I encouraged Sophie to ask for a design early in the afternoon before the masses noticed the spiffy machines. She selected the font, color and flower embellishment on the back of her bag.

I decided to take advantage of the free screenprinting offered by Scott of Mothpress. He patiently explained the silkscreen process over and over to anyone who wandered by, and embellished items with several original designs.

There was so much going on that I was unable to finish more than my single bag, but I took away a nice stash of fabrics and a perfect project bag for my to-go knitting project ‘du jour’.

Here’s the second version of my felt journal cover with a modified lining:

Instead of cutting a large buttonhole for the cover, I sewed a second layer of fabric over the lining to create a pocket. This does a better job of lying flat when closed and looks more finished than my previous method.

I hesitated to leave the edges of the flat felt wavy, but one of my students encouraged me, describing the edges as organic. My husband thinks they look ‘girly’. I think they lend the piece authenticity; there is no way this cover was cut out of wool felt bought by the roll at the fabric store. I’m particularly enamored with the quilted texture of the felt after I applied the machine stitching. This rough leaf motif was used to create hundreds of little leaves for my mobile.

This cover is now available in my etsy shop.

My new favorite book: Warm Fuzzies by Betz White. I loved my library copy so much, I bought my own from her etsy shop.

This ranks at the top of my list for felting books, and maybe at the top for all craft books. Great ideas. Clear instructions. After reading it cover to cover, I immediately raced downstairs to start sewing.

Luckily, I have a decent stash of recycled felt, so I could get started right away. However, if you find yourself without any source of holey sweaters, or the local thrift store has been pillaged by faster crafters, try LassotheMoon’s etsy shop where she has listings for wool sweater scraps. Betz White also offers similar scrap bags, but her recent popularity means they are snapped up pretty quickly.

This fish was inspired by her bird ornament pattern. While I created my own shape, I followed her directions for creating the fins, which have a piece of fusible interfacing ironed between the two layers of felt to act as a stiffener.  Fashioning the eyes took a couple of tries, and some searching in google images for inspiration; in the end, I needlefelted on a piece of blue felt and then sewed the eye patch to the body.

There is something so enchanting and relaxing about a mobile. When I saw this picture on Flickr last year, making my own leaf mobile jumped onto my mental to-do list, but something about the engineering of the piece held me back.

In the end it wasn’t difficult at all, though creating the leaves took several hours of felting, stitching and cutting. I used a little free-motion embroidery to create the abstract leaf shapes, dipping in and out of each shape, letting the machine and my intuition guide the stitches. By Sunday night, my shoulders were very sore because my seat/machine proportions aren’t right for hours and hours of sewing, but I couldn’t stop looking at the colorful pile of leaves I’d amassed.

What is more French than a baguette smothered in Brie? A wool beret, worn at just such a jaunty angle says ‘I’m confident’ in a most nonchalant way.

As soon as I saw this pattern in Simple Sewing with a French Twist by Céline Dupuy, I was gripped by the impulse to run downstairs. Since the family was away for the afternoon, I forced myself to flip through the rest of the book before jumping out of my chair, but it was a struggle. Perhaps it was because the pattern calls for recycled felt, or perhaps it is photograph of the author wearing her beret, I could not resist trying the pattern.

The instructions calls for topstitching the pieces with the seams on the outside, however, one of the illustrations shows the band seam on the inside. I decided it looked better with only one exposed seam. On my next iteration, I’ll turn the whole thing around so the seams are all on the inside, just for a little variety.

The wool fabric for the red and orange beret wasn’t felted when I pieced it together. Though it looked lovely when I finished it, I thought it should be felted, so threw it in the washer for a couple of cycles along with some other sweaters that were waiting for the same treatment. Unfortunately, the brim felted to itself in some places, and in other spots firmly felted like a pair of smiling lips.

While I had planned to put both berets in my etsy shop, the defect is too noticeable for me to sell with pride. For now, I’ll post the navy beret, and sew another version of the orange & red to post tomorrow.

I was a walking mannequin yesterday, wearing a complete outfit I made, minus the Chaco sandals.

The Barcelona Skirt by Amy Butler was my first attempt at solo sewing, essentially a test skirt using leftover fabric from a skirt my mother sewed for Sophie. This is one of three skirts included in this pattern; the other two will have to wait until I return from New Hampshire.

All told, it really wasn’t too bad; I managed to figure out the invisible zipper without ripping out any stitches. Agonizing about which size to cut was the worst part.

My measurements don’t fit neatly into any category, so I had to cut for the largest size and then take in the seams when it was finished. If I wiggle a little, I can make the waist drop down to my hips. 

There is a great pattern review, tips and tutorial at the Sew Mama Sew blog. Don’t forget the Flickr Skirt Group!

Standing around chatting with a parent at our preschool this Saturday, I happened to whip out my checkbook sporting a slightly botched, very stretched needle felted checkbook cover with this design. My friend had been giving me advice because I was wearing these two numbers, and she thought I should start selling my work. When I whipped out the checkbook to show her my latest idea, she immediately asked me to make one for her husband, something a little more manly.  

The tree motif was Lance’s idea of something manly. I was so excited when I got to her house to turn it over, that I forgot to set the macro focus on my camera, so these pictures are the best of a bad set.

Pacific Fabrics sells clear vinyl printed with butterflies, frogs and flip flops for $4.99/yd. I bought 12″ of two different patterns, plenty for many more checkbook covers. Thanks for setting me off in the right direction, Sue. I love running into you on the street.

It is funny how a simple thing like folding laundry leads to a cascade of events that end up with this sweet little shirt. This story is a little like “If You Give a Pig A Pancake“.

After folding several loads of laundry, we tried to put away some t-shirts, but found the baskets were too full. Hmmm. Time to cull the old shirts at the bottom that get ignored week after week. This was a shirt bought at the Cotton Caboodle outlet on Elliott; it had sloppy seams when we bought in 2002, and after five years of wear, there really were no hems left.

Since I didn’t have any thread to match the original stitches, I decided to add a little ribbon and stitch over the oddly colored hems. The warped sleeves didn’t look right by themselves, so this bit of stenciled fabric left over from here ended up in the middle. The irony is that I like this shirt so much more than the shirt I sent for Anna’s birthday, I may have to send it to her as well.

Can anyone give me suggestions for ways to sew knit fabric without stretching it out of shape? I’m going to pretend I wanted bell sleeves and a wavy hem for this shirt, but it would be nice to know how to avoid it in the future in case I wanted something a little straighter.

Working on the little turquoise ostrich was just practice for the real repair at hand: a “new” denim shirt brutally altered by a previous owner. I picked this up at the West Seattle clothing swap (didn’t I say it was a great day?) and have worn it twice, despite the fact that the sleeves were lopped off and the threads were left dangling. When I put it on this morning, I noticed that one sleeve was starting to rip vertically, making a nice little slit towards the shoulder. By the time I had finished folding all the laundry, the slit was getting dangerously close to bisecting the sleeve. Some repairs were needed, but what?

My success with the little t-shirt left me inspired to pull out this ribbon trim and add it to the sleeve after I had hemmed it (no coordinating thread, again). One of the reasons I love this shirt is because I can show off my favorite stencil, P. Edward Squidersons II.

Sophie kept me company as I worked today, ironing our best napkins. She did a great job, and said it was fun! I’ve got plans for you little girl… Actually, I hope she always enjoys ironing, so I’m going to resist the urge to use her helpful nature to my advantage.

I’m suffering from a bad case of crafter’s block, or perhaps it is aesthetic intimidation caused by reading too many blogs. Each of these projects was started with a burst of enthusiasm, but for various reasons, I had to stop before I was done and now I can’t decide how to “finish” them.

This apron is made from a dishtowel and some grosgrain ribbon thrifted on Mother’s Day weekend. My original intention was to add a pocket just like this, à la Lotta Jansdotter’s Café Apron, or perhaps a patch pocket with a freezer paper stencil applique, but I just can’t picture the right “thing”. Where has my muse gone?

The inspiration for this little scissor hanger hit on Mother’s Day as well, but the ribbons aren’t exactly right, there isn’t enough room to include my rotary cutter, and the whole thing needs some interfacing or Timtex to make more rigid. Perhaps a more densely fulled piece of felt would be a better choice because the pinking shears make the bottom skew away from the top. This project is screaming do-over, but now that the bug to make it has evaporated, I’m lacking in motivation.

This lambswool and angora sweater was acquired at the clothing swap in West Seattle, but I couldn’t bear to rip it apart because it is so warm and fuzzy. Small tears at the neck in the shoulder seams needed to be repaired this week, so I embroidered a vine across the neck and down each shoulder, but this isn’t done either. More or less?

Weekends are usually my time for creating, and this weekend was no exception. I created two felt projects on Saturday that deserve their own post. First, I want to catalog the variety of things I accomplished on Sunday, an amazing day because it started with absolute silence. What a sweet sound. My curiosity got me out of bed more than anything else. Looking around, I found no sign of children, husband or breakfast. Hmmm. Call Lance’s cell phone, but no answer.

The remnants of a hastily tossed together needle felting project from Saturday night were still on the table, so I sat down to finish up.

I was trying to create a felt brooch to hold together a shawl I was wearing to a school event. The pieces were needle felted together, and a brooch backing sewn to the back. By the time I took it off before bed, two of the leaves were hanging on by a fiber; some repairs were needed to give it more structure.

The pieces of this felt flower were also on the table. It began in March after buying some silk to layer on top of felt. The inspiration for this technique came from a British fiber artist.

Suddenly the children burst through the front door, followed closely by Lance. He took them to Sunset Bowl at 7:45 am for early morning 10 pin. Did you know it only costs $0.79/game between 7-8am on Sunday? Sophie had a coupon from school, so she and Owen bowled for free. They stopped on the way to buy bagels, a quart of orange juice, a bag of mini carrots and a cucumber, so they could munch and play at the same time. As a special treat for me, they bought an angel food cake and strawberries, which they served as soon as they got home. How can you beat angel food cake for breakfast?

When the excitement died down, I showered while everyone else went outside. By the time I was dressed, the family was fully engrossed in mowing the lawn so they could play croquet (they did a fantastic job of mowing, trimming and raking front, back and parking strip - yeah team).

Not ready to let go of my quiet time, I crossed two more items off my to-do list: hang two pieces of flat felt that were getting dingy with dog hair as they fell to the floor over and over.

One remaining piece of flat felt really didn’t seem wall-worthy, so I sewed it up into a basket.

Using a technique I first tried here.

I think we stopped for lunch at some point, and then Lance took both kids to watch him play softball in Lynnwood. That gave me two more hours all to myself.

Two more lunch bags for Sophie and Owen, first tried here, checked off the list.

Family still gone…I think it is time to sit down and knit. Ahhhh.