sewing Archives - Page 23 of 42

Rock and roll!

Sometimes the planets align.

Before Christmas I had an Open Hours at the Sew-op about last minute gifts. No one showed, so I used one of the ideas provided by my Upper Valley Fiber Crafts co-blogger Jenn to make this guy:

He’s from Mix and Match Monsters from It’s Always Autumn. I left him at the Sew-op to be a sample for Jenn’s last minute gifts Open Hours a few days later, and in the hustle and bustle of Christmas forgot about him entirely until I was back at the Sew-op today (and didn’t realize how much he has in common with the monster of the same shape on the website until looking it up tonight).

Incidentally, that pink button was just lying around in the Sew-op, and I was amazed what it did for the character. Just see side by side:

Personality………………… ALL the personality.

He plays the rare 8-string bass. I asked my husband if he wanted him, and he said yes, “but I didn’t want to just ask if I could have him.”

One more shot with better light and camera. I only had my flip phone with me for the above.

Sewing for sale

It’s been a while since my last blog post, and that mostly had to do with my sewing room (which is also my photography studio) being tied up. I’ve liberated it and am here to show you what was keeping it occupied: stuff.

The Sew-op is having a fundraiser/awareness-raiser sale the Friday before Thanksgiving, and we’re all pitching in to make items to put in it. Most of the fabric for my contributions came from the Sew-op, supplemented with my own stash when I couldn’t find enough that went together or were of the right kind.

The old standby, fabric coasters, was the first thing I tackled in earnest. I’ve also got a selection of drawstring bags, some reversible, some lined, some with zig-zagged seam allowances inside.

The new item was what I call “baby crinkle squares.” They are quite easy: cut a 7″x7″ square from each of two differently-textured fabrics, and cut a 7″x7″ piece of a plastic cereal bag. I usually have a flannel and a quilting cotton. Cut 12 lengths of different ribbons, twill tapes, hem tapes, rickracks, and laces, each in the neighborhood of 5″ long and in a variety of colors and widths. Avoid anything that has bits that could come off, and if the square is for a gift or sale, anything that looks like it has bits that could come off, regardless of how well attached they are in reality. I’d also avoid elastic trims.

Iron your fabrics well because this is the last chance you’ll have to do so. Pin the plastic to the wrong side of one fabric; I usually use the lighter-weight one for this. Bend each trim into a U shape, adjust lengths as desired (remembering you will lose 1/2″ off the open end of the U), put ends adjacent or overlapping, and pin 3 Us to each edge of the remaining piece of fabric. Put the trim on the right side of the fabric with the bend of the U toward the center and the cut edges of the trim lined up with the edge of the fabric. Try to space them fairly evenly but leave at least an inch between the outside trims and the corner of the fabric. Stitch all the way around each piece of fabric at 3/8″ to secure plastic and trims. If you have narrow or net trims you may want to backstitch across them at this step, for security.

At this point it’s just like the coasters, with some easier bits and some harder. Choose the edge to leave open for turning based on your trims: solid, flat trims are best for the open edge. Place your two fabric squares right sides together and match and pin corners. Pin the sides next. Stitch at 1/2″ most of the way around, leaving the center of one side open but covering all the corners, and backstitch at both ends of your stitching. Trim the corner seam allowances and turn right side out. Through a combination of tugging the ribbon loops and pushing the corners out from the inside (a chopstick is great for this), get your edges as pushed out as possible. With the open edge turned under 1/2″, pin closed, and topstitch all the way around. I typically start and end by going all the way across the open edge, but don’t backstitch, and I cut the corners with a shallow curve. I also usually tug the ribbons out as I approach and stitch over them on the three closed sides.

The part where these are more difficult than coasters is the bulk of the ribbons making it more difficult to line the fabric pieces up. Sometimes the plastic makes problems under the presser foot, as well. The easier part is when you are topstitching; since it is more substantial and you have ribbon loops you can tug for guidance, turning the corners is much easier.

To my delight, these can be machine washed (cold or warm) and tumble dried, and they stay nice and crinkly. I don’t think my dryer is particularly hot, though, so if yours is, you may want to dry them on a low heat setting. Don’t iron the plastic part, but if the ribbons get crumply in the wash you can iron them as much as you ever could.

First Friday

This month we start my ambitious First Friday efforts with art journaling. “Art journal” is a difficult idea to pin down (read: search for), and can mean a lot of things:

A record of art projects (dates, materials, patterns, etc)
A book in which to try out artistic techniques and materials
A book-scale version of a vision board, or an active meditation
A diary in which words are augmented by or replaced with images

All but the first are typically included in blogs and advice sites about art journaling. The last idea is the one I want to focus on, though with “diary” meaning any remembrance or meditation on your life – so the third version is intertwined with it. The important bits are that it is personal, drawn from and expressing your thoughts and experiences, and visual, in addition to or in place of being verbal. This allows you to engage with your feelings in a different way, or express the parts of your life that just don’t want to be put into words. It will almost certainly also be distilled or abstracted; instead of a story of all the details of the day, experiences will be presented figuratively, or individual pieces drawn out and given special prominence.

I feel safe saying that most people who art journal do so with drawing, painting, or collage. The fiber arts seem likely to be adopted only by people who feel a special connection to them. One such person is Susan of Plays with Needles, the inspiration for this month’s topic. I was fortunate to happen across her blog about the time of her first post about her Scotland travel journal. It is a work in progress, and I get excited whenever a Gaelic title shows up in my feed reader, knowing she’s sharing another part of her trip or her book. She’s given me permission to share photos.

The book itself has Scotland-themed fabric pages with pockets, places for needles, scissors, and floss, and a paper notebook tucked in the back. She made it in advance of her trip, to collect ideas and materials specifically for needlework, and is now turning it into a memento of the trip.

The photos come from a post preceding her trip where she describes her intent, and one since her return in which she also talks about how she made it – click through for many more views. Susan is also posting about “fiber tourism,” we might call it, including an antique needlework exhibit and Harris Tweed. You can see them all here.

Although it is nothing like a book, Melanie Testa’s project to journal via embroidering her clothing and bags is closely related; a shirt in that article has embroidery related to a trip she took, and on her personal journal she follows up with many posts about small bags she’s embroidering with skylines she sees, a profile of her cat, and other personal images.

I’m a slow embroiderer, but I love it, and now that I’ve discovered the joys of non-cross-stitch embroidery on evenweave I could see undertaking a project like Susan’s or Melanie’s. Or something smaller scale, like Jennifer Hunold’s daily journal embroidery on a single piece of fabric.

Thinking about fiber journaling reminded me of a daily quilting project I read about over a year ago. After a lot of frustrated searching (where is that website?!?), I determined it was “Quilting Day by Day,” an article by Nancy Halpern in the May 1997 issue of Threads magazine. I no longer have the magazine and the article is not available online (the part of me that never wants to get rid of anything began cackling triumphantly at this point), but I know she made a square every single day for a year, even if it was nothing more than a piece of appropriate fabric. I remember in particular a pieced airplane, tilted slightly upward, that she made several times for days taken up in travel, in different orientations to represent the direction. At the end she sewed the squares into a large irregularly-shaped sheet. It inspired me to think about doing such a thing for myself – but what a commitment! I didn’t even start. You can find other people inspired by Nancy, though, such as Laura West Kong (all posts about that quilt are here), Karen of Hat on Top, Coat Below, and Carla Louise of Oh Sew Addicted.

Fiber art journals are a difficult topic to search for, and the only other book-formed journal I found besides Susan’s is monthly paired mini-crazy quilts and embroidered journal panels from Million Little Stitches. In that vein, Doughty Designs made nine months of monthly journal mini-quilts, all separate. The embroiderers are in on the monthly journal projects as well, with a Flickr group begun by The Floss Box.

Of course many art journalers incorporate fiber into their paintings and collages, but I would be interested in seeing more work entirely in fiber art. The larger time commitment means some immediacy is lost, but also can make for a more thorough meditation on the topic. Have you journaled with fiber?

The stitching at the top is mine, presented to you courtesy my scanner (!) in this gloomy weather we’ve been having. “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember…” But if it looks like pine, well, that’s fine; pine symbolizes creativity.