After Four Years of Exile...

We have finally moved to a place that has room for all my fabric and Fergus (plus at least 20 other cats for Fergus to get beat down by, including a random grey kitten that ran into our apartment today). It also doesn't have the stupidest tenancy agreement of all time, so even though I'm paying more, it's probably all worth it. 

Since I can put shelves on anything that doesn't move and we're paying more for rent, we are getting rid of the storage locker. We have enough room that we don't need it, and while I packed it like tetris before the move, we finally got down to the original layer and brought it all home today. This was virtually all my stuff, including my quilt hoop, the parts of the industrial sewing machine (now in the basement), the homemade drumcarder and fibre, the tubs of dyestuff and pots for dyeing, and the two jumbo tubs of FABRIC.

Ooh tub of TREASURE. SO EXCITING. Those are the poly brocades I hoarded on top. I started pulling everything out of them as soon as possible and depositing it into multiple piles around the living/dining area.

Fabric piles everywhere! And patterns. And test designs. And things I sort of made. And interfacings/fusible web/buckram/timtex. And other wonderful things.

It turned out I had lots of white fabric (mostly silk) for dyeing. Some cotton, linen, organza and also some kind of stiff silk I have no idea what I'm going to do with. It's almost like paper. Definitely silk though, which is my favorite fibre ever:

Especially duppioni, apparently. I love the versatility of silk and the way it dyes. It's the perfect fibre and if silk worms weren't so disgusting and nasty, I would totally raise them to reap the benefits of their hard work and sad little lives. Yay! But they ARE nasty so someone else has to do it for me. I also had some silk hankies (these are pulled out cocoons) in there, which I used in felting projects mostly.

 I took most of the quilting cotton in the form of fat quarters with me and they sat on the shelf of my room, but a few of the larger cuts I put into storage. I found some nice plain blacks and whites, both of which I've bought more of since. Plus some cotton, wool and silk/wool batting. Unfortunately I can't decide which is the wool and which is the silk/wool. Love wool batting though.

 

Various apparel fabrics plus the sari I bought all cheap. I also had a couple of patterns. I keep trying to do clothing sewing, but I'm just not that good at it. Mainly because I want to be able to sew like Alexander McQueen already and am always sadly disappointed that God didn't just make that happen like when the lame walk and the blind see.  IT'S JUST AS VITAL. Like who wants to make t shirts? I want to make COOL STUFF.

I totally did buy that Japanese Vionnet book in anticipation of him changing his mind on that this time though!!

These are muslins, test blocks and half finished projects. Never have known exactly what to do with some of these. I also have the ties and bits for the crazy quilt I have always been planning. One of these days I'll start it!

 I even found actually finished projects as well (yeah I do have a few of those). This was my big bagua batik. The tiger was probably my favorite, and I dyed the colours with procion mx and sodium alginate. I remember the black being really problematic and it ended up fading quite a bit after I put it in a window, though it was meant to fade out on the edges. Mama was like "let's put it on the table for decoration" haha.

  I also found the logwood dyed things had shifted quite a lot into brown from purple. Gotta watch those browns. And logwood of course. The dye woods are in their own tub, though I suspect I'll have to replace all the noxious chemicals I'm still not supposed to have.


Also,  FYEAH DRAGON











I did not find the three missing quilts. I think they are gone. Mama keeps saying "I didn't take them, just the other ones you found under my bed!!" Sigh.  It's possible they got moved, but they are not in any of the places my other things are. RIP quilts, where ever you are:

:(

Who Needs a Man as Long as There are Art Supplies

 My uncle's immortal words live on.

 As you all may recall, I like Janomes. One of the things I have never liked about them is that they have a pretty small throat space (which, if blogger weren't mysteriously blocking random photos, you would see from the earlier post).

So about three years ago, Janome released the horizon 7700, which featured a colossal 11 inch throat space. It was also red and featured a wiener dog in its ads (which I'm pretty sure were made especially with me in mind cause I was like OMG it's stretched out JUST LIKE A WIENER DOG. Yeah. Janome's ad team FTW there).

Anyway since that time, I have repeatedly broken the 10th commandment over it and rued the day I decided to go to school instead of buying sewing machines.

So now that I am done wretched school, I can buy things that aren't tuition, textbooks or food. Just happened to decide to covet it again online a week ago and discovered that Northgate Sewing has it on HUGE discount and were also throwing in its special table. I think the model is probably being retired to make way for the 8900.

Anyway, I went down there on Monday morning (yes even though I worked that night) just to SEE IT. They originally had three machines and a display model. Of them, the display model alone remained. I bought it anyway. The sales rep was like oh you're interested in trying the machine? And I was like no I just want to buy it. Prolly the quickest sale they ever made. Because the table was already assembled the sales rep said he would deliver it for me that afternoon. Then I went home and tried to sleep but mostly laid in my bed squealing with delight.

Isn't it perty?? When he delivered it, the sales rep insisted on setting it up in the table. So while I was working, it basically occupied a third of the centre of the living room.  I had planned on putting the table in storage so that I could set it in the store room where it could sit forlornly with the other machines, but since he set it in the table mama decided to put it back against the wall, which I guess is its new home.

Yay its spot. Yeah it's basically sandwiched in there. What can I say, it's the crapartment. Space is at a premium. Between it and Gigantor, there is a lot of competition for attention.

The thing that the throat space facilitates is of course free motion quilting. So the first thing I tried today was a sampler of sorts. I definitely have to get a tension that works for me (it's on auto right now) but it worked okay. One thing I like is that the machine OPENS (the old Janome didn't). 

I already know that I don't like how squat it is; the working space is really short. I think that's a minor annoyance, but I used to quilt with my head on the machine occasionally (yeah, ergonomics pheh). You can see the shortness here. I have to have the presser foot down to change the foot because there are bars in the way otherwise; it's that short.  It'll take some getting used to; it feels like the machine is in the way of the visible space a little. I think it might also be the height of the table. I can open the machine and eliminate some of that, but no putting my head on the machine anymore.

Anyway fun times playing (less fun having the money come out of my account, but hey it's less than some other things...). And it's the same colour as my new phone. :) Holly suggested names and I am leaning towards Shemar. :P

I can be productive occasionally. I Just don't like it.

I am sick. And alone. So I decided to avoid going out or cleaning by making something. I had planned to make a dress out of eyelet lace with a silk bodice last year and like everything never got around to it. Since it is now kind of attempting to be warm, I thought I would try and make it. I was going to draft the pattern, but had recently bought the Hotpatterns Weekender Monaco dress pattern, which looked much like the idea I had so I decided to use it instead.

It worked out pretty well. It was a simple pattern with little shaping so it was difficult for even me to ruin. I originally added the optional sleeves, but the first try on with them had me immediately ripping them off. (they are gathered and looked nauseatingly precious with the lace) So now it is a sleeveless dress. I don't like sleeveless dresses so much but at least it doesn't give me the same queasy feeling that eating an entire bag of cotton candy does.



Here be the dress. Well me wearing the dress. Ignore the fact that my hair is not straight and looks like a lousekitch (before anyone asks, I have no idea what a lousekitch is, beyond that being what my grandma called your hair when it looked terrible). I am also reminded of how much I hate those new fricking glasses. Bah.

Because I used the lace edge for the bottom, I didn't even have to hem it! Surprisingly I actually did all the rest of the finishing for it. That's unusual for me and one of the reasons I don't frequently sew clothes (besides that I'm terrible at fitting).

Here is the back yoke on which I also used the perty silk. I would have liked to have gotten more of the back of the dress into it, but hey it's not particularly special. I also wish I didn't look stoned, but the fix red eye does that to you (well crack does too, but I don't have any of that). When I was a kid I closed my eyes in pictures all the time because they always went red.

I hate that Hotpatterns no longer drafts their patterns in different sizes anymore (though I understand why they don't for practical reasons). They used to draft for women who were well endowed, ones who were average sized, and girls with smaller chests than a lot of men (guess which group I fall into). Anyway this was the first multisized pattern I tried and once I had finished it I realized that a good inch needed to be taken out of the front insert. I am terrible at altering patterns but I did attempt to redraft it in case I make another in the future because it is a nice pattern, and not too difficult to make. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't.

As it is mostly eyelet fabric, I decided to make a separate slip rather than line it. originally I made the slip too big so I brought it in and it is now too tight in the butt. Well fortunately it's stretchy. I admit I was getting lazy at that point.

When I took the pictures of the dress I also took some that tell a little story, it's like a vignette. Remember the Continental? It's kind of like that but more violent. I call it Two Books, One of Life and One of Death:




Hello my friend it looks like you have some heavy books that you might like to offload and leave at my house for ever awhile...I'll keep them as a favour...






Oh they are your old Seminary textbooks? You don't want them and want to share them?? GIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sweet boookssmmmmmm are they Owen? Carson? Schaff's Nicene and post Nicene Fathers?






They are The New Measures, Good Morning Holy Spirit and Your Best Life Now?! Where the hell did you go, Crackerjack School of Divinity?

What do you mean I just need see God move through these works? I don't think he has bowel movements.



Then at this point there would be lights flashing from my eyes to kill so I left the red eye in that one. I thought I would leave it at that to avoid an R rating.

Somewhere around here I wondered if I wasn't overdoing it on the pain medication. You know looking at that second last picture I really do look like I'm on crack don't I. Maybe the complete works of Origen is in there.

I Has Noo Toi!

Now I don't really need a new sewing machine but I am a brand loyal sort of person so every time I go to the quilt store I always look at Janomes (and as a brand-loyal person, I have always wondered if the e is silent or not. I usually say it, but the lady at the store did not and that just opens that right up again). Anyway the mechanical version of the QC is on promotion in all Janome dealerships, which makes me wonder if they are phasing it out-I am wary of computerized models in a completely luddite sort of way, and the thought made me kind of want to buy one while they are still around.
So they were basically throwing in the table for the price of the machine (the tables are usually extra and they make you pay lots of money. Everyone is taking lessons from Apple on How to Charge Extra for Everything and Still Have Idiots Buy Your Stuff these days)...Mama made me buy it. No really I was buying other stuff and she said "oh and she'll take the machine too". Mama likes making executive decisions like that. Then she said later "I guess I could have bought it for you for your birthday or at least gone halfs." Yeah that probably would have been nice.
Oh well. I got a table-and quickly disabused mama of the idea that I was getting rid of the old machine. HA!

Now I just have two of them.

In Which I Make A Dress

Digging through the piles of fabric reminded me of all the projects I had planned-a lot of it had been bought for specific pieces. One was a cheapo flowery clearance fabric I had bought to make this dress. Since it's finally getting warm enough to wear something like that, and the fabric once again has come to see the light of day, I figured I might as well make it.

When I sewed it together, I discovered the bodice was too big. Lessons learned-if you are going to make a muslin, don't wait until a year afterwards to make the actual dress as you will likely forget what alterations you had to do. I still have the muslin version I made last summer...heh.
Here is what it looked like after the first fitting-the muslin is behind me (black flowered fabric) :

I think this is an excellent picture of my tongue. The prints are due to the fact that I am always walking into this mirror (as you can see they are about nose height).

ETA-with access to photoshop (which is on my computer and not on mama's) I fixed the pictures-a little anyway.

So had to hack a bit of the bodice off, widen the seams and move the straps. Ultimately it worked out not bad. Then I had to find the zipper, which diabolical forces hid for a few hours before placing it in plain view on my desk. This happens to me often, and I know it's either boggarts or employees of Monsanto doing it. As Dad would say, "CATTLE PROD."

Certainly if we do have brownies, they have long since turned to boggarts, because they sure DON'T CLEAN ANYTHING.

Now where was I...Try as I might I couldn't get a picture that was actually in focus, maybe that's because the glasses I have on are from two prescriptions ago as I broke my regular ones at work last week-I hate those old glasses! they just accentuate the sausageyness of my already sausagy nose. Anyway-this is the best one (ignore the glasses please).


I notice that the state of my room is quite distracting-you can see the frickin floor!! But the bed and the desk are covered with crap so that's alright.

Here is a better picture of it, though wrinkly and unhemmed as of yet.


Now all I need is the fates to quit conspiring against me and my need for blue shoes to go with it.

Hemming it would probably be a good idea too.

I hate that I can't sew at four in the morning anymore. Richard says he is going to come down and we can convert the one room back into two, so Grandma can sleep and I can sew and dicker around on the computer. Of course Grandma is usually awake at that time anyway.

Where the heck is this Global Warming they keep promising us?!

Crap it's cold outside. I wouldn't've gone out but I had to get my final immunization for work.

Anyway, since I haven't worked in the last few days and I don't want to go anywhere, I was able to return to the corset I started a few weeks ago yesterday. I made the laughing moon silverado, as I read some good reviews of it on the net, and I figured since I am not the most accurate sewer I had better go with something relatively easy.
It was indeed easy, the only problems being it is a little large at the bottom (I can actually lace it closed) and well, my corset looks nothing like the one in the picture...it's supposed to be a rather long corset, and even though I added nearly an inch to the length, mine just doesn't look that long. Or really that shape. I think my waist is too low. Ah well no matter. I was actually worried it was going to be too small at first-good thing I went with a size smaller than the chart.

I decided to wear it for awhile yesterday as my back had been bothering me. Since I can't bend at the waist I also can't curve my back in an impossibly severe and contorted arch as I am wont to, so it does help. Well it did until my mom said "let me see", and proceeded to choke the life out of me because she wanted to see how tight she could get the bloody thing. I'm surprised she didn't put her knee in my back for leverage she was tugging at it so hard (and I think the only reason she didn't is because she's too short to do so). This was when I discovered it does close up at the bottom. And that mama is a sadist-no I guess I always knew that..

I still need to bind it and pick up some lace beading (that isn't too precious that is) for a trim. I decided to do some embroidery on it-and now I'm not sure I didn't prefer it without it. Mama likes the embroidery, but it just doesn't look as good as I expected I guess.

Anyway, here is the front with the embroidery-yes I hate it when people cut their heads off in photos-but it's only this once-the photo rendered my hair a truly hideous orange.



And here is the back-closed at the bottom as you can see-I should have made a 10 with an 8 bottom I guess. Well I'll know that if I ever make another. As for the weird curve in the chest part; I think that is because of the way I'm standing, though I did cut it a little less than straight and I had to take all the seams out there as my back is so broad. My brother and I have exactly the same build and I can say it looks better on a man.

I hate writing titles, mine are always lame.

I have just returned from Saskatoon, where I found some nice fabric for my Calvin hat. I didn't have enough of any red fabric for it, and though I considered making it white instead, once I get an idea it has to be done that way or I hate it. So I went looking for red. I found some beautiful scarlet wool that would have been perfect-unfortunately it was 46 dollars per metre of beautiful scarlet wool. So I bought some red corduroy with satin backed crepe to line it.

I decided to make a normal renaissance style bonnet and just add the earflaps. I'll need to do some kind of a band for it to hide the seams, not sure how I'll do that just yet.

The first go at it yielded a hat that is much too large for my head. Given my lack of abilities in math, one can guess that is where I went wrong. However I think I also should have measured higher on my head, as the earflaps would need to be quite high to accommodate the lack of largeness of my noggin.

It did work out nicely, however, even the crepe behaved reasonably well-it just would fit someone with a massive head. Germans would like it, they all have big heads. Maybe that rendition can be my Luther hat.

I bought some red and black silk brocade at the same time and I am tempted to make Calvin hat part deux out of that. Mama thinks that would be wasteful because no matter how I do it, it will be an ugly hat. Bah!

UFO No More

I am trying to clear out some of my longtime WIP's on my days off, one of which was my new curtain. I've had it finished for awhile but had to decide how to attach it and add the lining. I finally got around to doing so, proving it was not a UFO (unfinished object) but rather a WIP (work in progress). Heh!
The difference between the two, BTW, is narrow but vital. One floats around your house haunting you forever (ultimately a UFO should perhaps be called an unfinishable object), whereas the other is eventually completed.

I don't care for the rod I have at all, but I suppose it will do. I need mounting brackets as it's hanging on the old rod for the vertical blind right now. I also need to steam it once I get it up there permanently.

It turned out reasonably well. There are of course things I would do differently if I had it to do over again. Experience is the best teacher after all.

oh happy day
when I threw the plastic slats from the vertical blind away!

Least of the Recons

Many years ago, my mom bought me a skirt.
The ugliest skirt ever. It was a full-length wrap around skirt. Ewwww...But the fabric was nice, so I kept that skirt for years, thinking there had to be something I could do with it. I got into a mood to 'make' recently and finally reconed it...into another skirt (yeah I know, imaginative).
I made a ten panel skirt with a tulle underskirt, which I wanted to do tambour on. My mom's reaction was one of shock; 'you're making a crinoline?' as if it were skinny jeans or something. Hardly that dark force of satanic power.

Anyway, this is how it turned out:


Me standing in front of my closet. It turned out shorter than I had intended, as I had not meant to make it sit quite so high on the waist. Still, I think it looks pretty decent for being made by someone who never sews clothes-I do seem to have a hankering lately to change that though.


Here are some detail shots, as I know the affinity you spammy guys have for decent hand embroidery...
the waistband:


And the tulle underskirt, which I decided to cut rather raggedly (I do like that):

And no, no one is going to see that embroidery; I just really wanted to do it.

New Sewing Projects

As if I don't have enough of them.
I've decided I absolutely can no longer stand the despicable vertical blinds in my bedroom (I am counting the days till I may burn them!) They always fall down, manage to open up when I'm in my room naked, and are generally uglicious.
So, I am now sewing a curtain. I couldn't possibly have a plain old one, so I am piecing it in a log cabin pattern (basically squares of colour). I'm using a blue and dark brown palette (the colours of my room). The blocks are 16".
I'm not sure what I'm going to line it with yet, but so far the blocks look pretty good.