Fabric finds

Went to my local fabric store/Babylock dealer yesterday to get the extension table thing for my machine, so I can learn to do machine quilting and move a few things out of the UFO piles. It was not cheap, but I'd earned it by sticking with my fabric embargo, which meant no new fabric for 120 days.

Since the embargo is over, and the store was promoting a new shipment of "designer" fabric remnants from LA, I poked around the piles on that table. Usually this stuff is fashion-fabric dreck, but sometimes there are gems in there, if you rummage deeply enough. Here's what I found:

I do want to conserve my fabric budget as much as possible, in order to maximize binge options while I'm on the mainland this fall, but I figured I'd keep an eye out for anything that might be appropriate for the kind of fall clothes I'll want to wear on my trip. Like these.

The brown stretch jersey is absolutely luscious, not the sort of color I ever wear in Hawaii, but perfect for a city weekend in October. I'm thinking a simple long-sleeved top, maybe a little ruching, or cross-over detail. There might even be enough for a sleeveless version, too.

The beige herringbone is probably poly, but very soft, nice medium weight, with good drape. There's enough of it to make a pair of pants, if I ever finish the pattern-fitting thing. I would have passed on it, if it weren't such a perfect match, in color, style, and weight, to the brown jersey.

The B/W double-knit is borderline "meh," but could go in either top or skirt direction. I'm thinking a top to go with the black stretch twill skirt I made this spring, but am not confident it will earn a place in my suitcase.

If these fabrics had required any kind of investment at all, I would have waffled on them, as dark neutrals are not my style at all these days, but it's so easy to envision what they might become, and I do need fall clothes and, most persuasive of all, the price was right:  $1.77 a yard!  That's cheaper than muslin! Total for the three pieces: $8.31 (inc. tax), so if they end up languishing in the stash I can always use them for pattern testing.

*****
UPDATE: I just added these purchases to the year-to-date count, and here's where I stand:
YTD in: 42.25 yards
YTD out: 45.0 yards

Look at that! I'm AHEAD on the yardage acquisition for perhaps the first time ever. And once I get into machine quilting and put the backs on some tops, and add binding yardage, I'll be in even better shape.

Or not. The quilting thing is not likely to happen before my trip, and there are sure to be some substantial additions to the "in" column when I hit the Portland fabric shops. Okay, sorry I thought about that, it kindof took the glow off my (temporary) accomplishment.

Alabama-style stitching - part 1

My sewing plans for the weekend include collecting my courage and diving back into the next pants muslin. Shortly after my last post I got new front and back pattern pieces revised with latest best-guess modifications, then decided to set it aside during the workweek with hopes of returning to it refreshed; I'll report back on how that goes once I've sunk my teeth into it.

In the meantime, I finally stopped just looking at my Alabama Stitch and Alabama Studio Style books and decided to use my play time this week to start making something. However, I'm way past my personal-best mark on the current fabric embargo, and hope to keep on going until my eagerly-awaited Portland shopping binge coming up in the fall. Which means no splurging on lovely new organic cotton jersey until then. Old tank tops will have to do for a foundation.

I agree: it's crazy to apply such an extraordinarily labor-intensive process to old tank tops that are showing their age. But it's what I've got, and I'm not going to shop.

Here's where I am with it as of this morning:
[disclaimer: I did not do this all in one day. Steps 1 and 2 happened weeks ago, then I had to get around to shopping for fabric paint, and then I had to get around to getting back to this project. Step 3 and onward happened Wed-Fri this week.]

1. INSPIRATION
All I had to do was look at my lap. Which, at the moment this photo was snapped, was clad in my most-favorite so far Amy Butler print (it's a bit faded, as it has been worn and washed many times):

2. IMITATION
I disrobed, spread the skirt out on the kitchen counter, placed a sheet of tracing paper over it, and did a quickie capture of several motifs with a ball-point pen.

3. DUPLICATION
I photocopied my tracings at 200%, and then made another copy of the enlarged leafy one at 78%. This produced almost as many pieces of paper as one of those downloadable PDF garment patterns, but without the helpful line-up points. Tracings on the right, photocopies on the left:

I'm extremely grateful to be able to do this on the multi-function copier-printer in our home office; if I had to go to Kinko's for enlargements it would probably never happen.

4. MANIPULATION
After some fiddling, I got the various motif pieces sorted out and taped together.

5. PREPARATION
My top fabric is a blue "Haines Perfect Tank" size Large, a couple years old and purchased at WMart for around $6. I slid two open file folders between the front and back of the T to keep the fabric paint from bleeding through onto the back. Works out nicely, because they are a good width to keep the T spread flat without stretching or wrinkles. Here's how I laid out my stencil motifs for the front:

6. TRACIFICATION
When the motifs were in place, I tore off a piece of freezer paper and lay it over the whole shebang, plastic side down, and traced the motifs again. I did a super-quickie slapdash job of this, just as I had with the original tracing:

7. STENCILFICATION
The freezer paper became a stencil in many short sessions throughout most of the day Friday. My current "real work" project is at a tedious and fiddly stage, the kind of thing best done in short sessions with frequent breaks to prevent brain fatigue and stupid errors. Which, coincidentally, is the best way to approach a large stencil design that you realize (too late) could have been simpler, and which is going to be way more time-consuming and tedious to cut than anticipated. So I spent the day alternating between bouts of tedious, mentally numbing computer work, and tedious, mentally numbing stencil cutting:

I used both a craft knife and embroidery scissors on this, and came to the conclusion that there is no way easy to do it. I cannot imagine doing this with template plastic or posterboard. You'd have to be crazy.

Eventually, I got it done.

Next steps coming up, when I get around to posting Part 2...

book score!

The Hilo Borders bookstore is closing. I feel partly to blame, given my Amazon habit and the fact that I now download all fiction to my Kindle. But it's their fault, too, for not having what I was looking for the past few times I went in 'cause I was in the neighb., just every title ever published by the big names, and for giving over more and more of the store to non-book items.

So, when they announced 20-30% off everything, I decided to give them some guilt dollars if I could find anything of interest in their meager and already picked-over craft section. Which I did. This one:

... and this one:

(Yes, clicking on one of those links will take you over to Amazon. Sorry, Borders, that's just how it is.)

Even at discount I still paid more than Amazon's current price for each title, but I also got a couple nice bound journals at a very good price, two novels cheap, and was able to explore both sewing books instantly (in the car on the way home, as DH drove) instead of waiting for mail delivery.

I now have both "Alabama" books, which equals a lot of inspiration, and no excuse for not starting in on something right away. Except that there are some other items on the to-do list.

I have been sewing since my last post, but the current project is not anything I can show you yet. It's of the quilt ilk, and part of a collaborative thing I'm exploring with my sister. She reads this blog, and doesn't want what she's doing on the same theme to be influenced by my take on it. I can provide a sneak peek...:

... but that's it for now. That's a yard of a lovely, reddish, mahogany brown Kona cotton, and small squares from the littlest scraps pile, roughly 1.5-2.5". I'm challenging myself to make something wherein the brown looks chic and stylish, not just muddy.

In other news, I have decided to break my pattern embargo (but not the fabric one; I'm sticking with that), for very good reason. I am headed for Maine in October, to visit my parents and brother, and will be stopping over in Portland, Ore, for the weekend on my way back. This means I will need some FALL CLOTHES, and nothing will thrill me more than if I've sewn some of them myself. I have fabric, but the patterns I want to use are still on my wishlist over at PatternReview.

The embargo idea was a good one, and I did very well with it, but let's face it: I need all the sewing days I can get, and waiting another three weeks to order them feels like a wasted opportunity. So, a pat on the back to me for making it to day 96 of the pattern embargo. That's going to have to be long enough.

I might even extend the fabric embargo until October (which would make it 180 days!), because my quilting sister, Abby, is coming over to Portland the weekend I'm there, for a meet up, and we have major fabric shopping plans. It will be nice to feel I've earned a serious binge.

SoNP Skirt #2

Got another one done:

Fabric is Kaffe Fassett "Guinea Flower" that's been in the stash since I succumbed to impulse during a Fabric.com sale some time ago. I had in mind a summer dress, but the rows of flowers have a stronger linear/diagonal impact than I'd thought. Pondering how to cut a princess-seamed top from this for TNT Vogue 8232, and how to avoid having any of those little blossoms end up in an infortunate spot either above or below the waist, I gave up and set the fabric aside.

Eventually, as it so often does, my mind turned to thoughts of a skirt. And it kept imagining this fabric as a pretty summer skirt. Something slightly girly. With a flounce perhaps.

Something like New Look 6682, which I've commented on here and here. "I doubt I'll ever make it again," I'd said, documenting the pattern's flaws. Hah. As soon as I thought "skirt" for this fabric, I thought of this pattern. Shorter. Much shorter. And with the double flounce. This fabric wants to be flounced.

So I dug out the pattern, took a whopping 7" of length out of each skirt piece (which I'd lengthened 2" for version 1), and, after much fiddling, figured out how to squeeze all the necessary pieces for View D from my 2.5 yards of fabric: doable, but a tight fit. I also decided I would work with the excessive ease, rather than try to remove it, and make this up as a drawstring waist (whee! no zipper!). I left about 2.5" of the top left side seam open, folded down another 1-3/8" at the waist to make a drawstrong casing, bringing the length, as planned, to the bottom of my kneecap.

This could turn out to be a fave summer skirt. I love the length, and the pale green, pink, and turquoise flowers will go with many different tops. (Ignore, please, the ratty old camisole I've mostly cropped out of these pics; it's what I had on, and as good anything else that's clean today). Too bad so many of my sleevless T's are showing their age. I'd like to make a top to go with this, maybe something in eyelet? I have a couple of patterns that might work, but no appropriate fabric, and the embargo isn't over for another two months.

Much as I love sewing, it's handy to have a bunch of cheap sleeveless T's in the closet, and I could use some fresh ones. I'll go shopping this week and see if I can find one or two that will go with this skirt.

A dinosaur bites the dust!

Wow, does it feel good to slay finally do something constructive with this old dinosaur. The misshapen, badly planned, poorly sewn blocks for this quilt have been languishing in the darkest, most neglected recesses of my sewing room/project bins for... um... something like 15 years now.

Yup, only 3 fabrics in it: this one's all about the visual effect of purple "monkeys" twining around on a checkerboard background (that, and seeing how far I could push an acceptable color combo). The fabrics are prints, not solids, but "monotonal" in effect:, and quite lovely in person although they don't photograph well:

I still like the idea of this quilt, very much. I doubt I'm the first to make a bi-color "background" for a Monkey Wrench layout, but I came up with the idea on my own, and am happy (in a slapdash way) with how it turned out.

We'll be kind, and call this a "learning" project. If I ever decide to write a tutorial on how not to make a quilt, I can use this one as the example. This was one of the first quilt projects I tackled, and at the time I had no idea how to do things the right way, especially planning which of all those straight edges would be the bias ones. Most likely there are bias/stretch issues however you do it, although from my results I'm guessing I didn't take the best route through that particular jungle.

Don't know if I'll ever feel like tackling this pattern again, but paper foundation piecing would be the way to go, for sure. It's possible I didn't even know what that was way back when. If I had heard of it I didn't know enough to know that would be a good path to take.

More problems can be blamed on a sad combination of misinformation and ignorance. I'd been told, when I bought the machine I began this on, that the edge of the standard foot would result in a nice 1/4" seam for quilting purposes. Silly me: I believed the guy. Being a rank beginner at the quilting game, it didn't occur to me to check. So my seam allowances were all off by a wee bit. A wee bit off on a bunch of seams in some blocks and not many -- or none -- in the others, means my three blocks each came out a slightly different size. Plus, the non-adjstable presser foot on that machine pressed a bit tight, and pushed bias edges even more out of whack.

"Aaaaaaagck!!!" hardly begins to describe my emerging realization of the disaster the blocks were turning out to be, but nicely summarizes why I walked away from it and allowed these blocks to languish in a plastic storage bin for so many years.

Somehow that plastic bin came along for the ride through all my recent moves, waiting patiently for me to be over the trauma,. And there it was when I shopped the stash for fabrics to make a back for the "Nothing Too Girly" lap quilt I'm making for my husband. I saw possibilities in that bin, and enough time had passed that I no longer felt attached to making it come out right.

A little trimming down of the larger pieces, and some liberties taken with tidy seaming, and I was able to mash this together into something that looks (from a distance) almost presentable. Size at this stage is roughly 44"x68". It needs a narrow border all round (probably from the purple; I think I have enough) to come up to size.

Once I've tidied up the edges and added the border, this might even become the front of the "Nothing Too Girly" quilt. I'll let Mr. de Hilo decide which side he likes best.

My goal is to get top, back, and batting sandwiched and basted before putting it away for a bit. No machine quilting is gonna happen around here until I splurge on the table-extension thingie for my machine, which I am saving up for by abiding by the 120-day fabric and pattern embargo currently in effect.

Next up: making a pieced back for the pink lattice quilt I'm making for myself.

... No, I have not forgotten about the Kyoto skirt! Sheesh, it's sprawled all over my ironing board, leering at me. How could I forget it?

I might even sew another little bit of it tomorrow.

Future project #2

Here's one reason I haven't posted any tutorials yet:

I love this ironing board. It's extra wide, and super sturdy. My old one used to collapse on me on a regular basis, which led to much hissing and/or yelling of obscenities on my part and a refusal to ever iron anything. But this one's great. Except that I've been using it for several years now with the default muslin cover that came with it. Which has not stood up well to the great blasts of heat and steam that come from my super-duper iron.

From time to time I start to photograph the steps of something that might become a tute, but inevitably some pressing is involved, and I think, "cr*p, I can't use a photo of this hideous thing."

So, future project #2 is to make a new ironing board cover. Easy project, but the only fabrics in my stash of long enough length are pricey designer cottons that I'm not willing to sacrifice for this purpose (unless the day comes when I decide I'll never get around to making whatever it was I thought I'd sew from them, which is entirely possible but hasn't happened yet).

I'd run right out and get some fabric except I'm about 40 days into a 120-day fabric-and-pattern embargo. And I really mean to stick with it this time.

On the other hand, once the embargo is over, a splurge on a suitable length of something pretty to re-cover the ironing board would make a nice reward for honoring the embargo for the complete term (for once!).

In the meantime, my ironing board remains blotchy and scorched and discolored, and any tute photos that involve pressing will have to wait.

What's that? How's the Kyoto Skirt coming along? Um, well, I sewed up the patch pockets for the muslin this weekend. A grand total of about :10 of sewing time put in over the past several weeks. So it still qualifies as an "active" project (incomplete, but not a UFO just yet), although progress is slow.

It's time...

... to refocus on my 2010 Sewing Resolution #whatever: to do more sewing and less fabric shopping.

I was sooooooo very very good for all of January and February, then lost all inhibition about clicking "proceed to checkout" buttons somewhere around March 1st.

I thought as of last night that I was done for awhile. Until I fell for two Hot Patterns designs today: the Kyoto Skirt and Marrakesh Pants. I made the mistake of watching the videos about each garment, which totally convinced me they would be so flattering and wearable and comfortable and all-round perfect for my very boring casual lifestyle that I'd be insane not to order them immediately and sew them up. From stash of course. I have a nice lightweight taupe chino that will be perfect for one or the other, although alas not for both. And a lightweight, slightly stretchy, very drapey, very dark olive twill of some suitable kind. And lots of prints. It's not like I'd have to buy more fabric to make them.

Anyway, I'm going public with it: I intend to survive the next 120 days without buying any more sewing patterns or fabric. (Thread, notions, and interfacing allowed for projects in progress if the stash does not provide.)

That means starting RIGHT NOW through August 5, if I counted correctly.

Those of you who know me well can go ahead and chortle yourselves right off the couch, but I really intend to follow through this time.

I'm tempted to throw caution to the wind and go public with some kind of statement about how many garments/projects/UFOs I'll also complete in that time (to meet the "do more sewing" part of that resolution), but I think I've been rash enough with my promises for one day. I'll simple aim to astonish myself with my productivity in the sewing room, how's that?

A month without sewing

Here we are, Jan. 31, and I have not even plugged in my sewing machine this month. In fact, said machine is poised to head to the spa for annual servicing (which should have happened last fall, but I was busy sewing). Probably I'll drop it off at the dealer/servicer on Tuesday. Could have done it this week, or even last, but it involves walking into my local fabric store and as we got closer to the end of the month I felt increasingly determined to make it to Feb. 1 without buying even an inch of fabric during January. Staying out of fabric stores seemed like a good way to do that.

I have also been keeping track (hashmarks on a sticky note) of every fabric sale/free shipping offer/special pricing/pattern sale, etc., sewing-related email I've deleted unread. For January that total has reached an impressive 68. Emails read: 0. Fabric purchased: 0. Patterns purchased: 0. So far so good for not adding to stash situation.

Did I miss a few bargains? Sure. Do I care? No. There will always be another fabric sale, probably within a week or two. And another pattern sale. And if I miss out on a lovely print or a particular pattern, no biggie. There will be new and desirable options coming down the pike soon enough.

Downside of focusing on a ton of other stuff this month is that no sewing = no progress on the UFO piles. Maybe I'll find some time to bite into one or more of those when I get my machine back from the spa.

Broke the Embargo

I broke the fabric embargo this morning. Multiple excuses for giving in to temptation:

1) This great deal ends 12/29 at midnight EST. Why until Jan. 1 and miss out?

2) It will probably be 2009 before I pick up my parcel from our PO box, and it will be '09 before I pay the AmEx bill. Kindof fudging the "no more fabric purchases until 2009" thing, but close, so close!

3) Wanted to get the discount on this fabric to feature in Mum's next b'day gift (she turns 75 in Sept. '09 and will want me to make her something). Once it arrives I'll shop locally for coordinating prints and solids.


4) Bought a yard of this pink/white print to go with two I already have for a six-panel skirt pattern I plan to make with mixed prints. I can almost claim that fits the "fabric needed to finish a UFO" exception. Except that I haven't started it yet, so it's a UFO only in my mind.


5) Can't really justify this Xmas print, but it was on sale and I am thinking ahead to next year. Would like to make either a tree skirt or Xmas placemats/napkins; have a few FQs in the stash but needed a main fabric. If I wait 'til next year's holiday season it will be too late to buy fabric, because I'm just too slow at getting sewing projects done.


Also added to the order enough of this truly stunning Kaffe Fasset cotton to make a blouse.

Received a 5" sq. of it in the KF charm pack I bought pre-embargo, have been drooling ever since at the thought of making something to wear from it. No excuse, other than to get the discount. I'm already working on a "wearable muslin" of a blouse pattern which, if it turns out well, the new fabric will be perfect for.

On the plus side, I first went nuts and loaded up the shopping cart with at least twice as much stuff, then got strict and deleted a lot of it. Sneaky way to indulge and feel restrained at the same time.

Don't wanna sound humbuggy, but it's serioulsy time to BAN SANTA from this house! She's been WAY too self-indulgent this year. As usual.

FABRIC EMBARGO

That’s it. I’m done.

I am NOT buying ANY more fabric for the entire rest of this year.

I mean it.

Oh, except I did just sign up for this swap, so I’m going to have to pick up a few FQs to send to my swap partner. Oops.

But no more fabric for me.

I’m going to be strict about this.

So far today, I have successfully resisted buying this set of pink Amy Butlers, from Rural Fabrics Etsy shop:


And this one:


I want them because I have this idea that I want to make a pink girly quilt. I'm savvy enough about how my psyche operates to know that mostly this means I want to accumulate pink girly fabrics. Whether any quilting would ever get done is open to question.

I also resisted this drapery fabric remnant (fabricguru.com) that I very much want to drape on my body:


I want all of them. And many more.

But I can’t have them.

Yet.

If I keep this up, there’s a good chance Jan. 1, 2009 will become infamous for the excessiveness of my online fabric shopping binge.

But it’s early October still. I don’t have to worry about that yet.

Progress reports to follow.