Fiber Monday - Finding my sewing machine

Over the weekend I finally finished the napkins and dishcloths I had been weaving. I took them off the loom, cut them apart, hemmed them, washed them, then gave them all a quick iron. Here they are:


There are ten napkins, all in the same pattern.


Here is one of the dishtowels. It will be a gift. It has a slightly different pattern from the napkins.


The blue dishtowel is the same pattern as the one above. I'm pleased with them. I'm also very happy to be done with this particular project. It feels as though I have been working on it forever. 

Having hemmed everything, I had my chair moved over to the sewing machine. (It usually is in another part of the room next to my spinning wheel. It is annoyingly difficult to live the chair between the two spots. I think I just need to get a second chair.) But having the chair there, it made me think it had been a while since I had really seen something. 

I had a book checked out of the library that was mentioned in one of my weaving groups as having a good pattern for using with hand woven material. Since I had a free afternoon, I decided that it might be useful to trace off the pattern and begin fussing with it. The first step was just to make it as printed to see where I was starting from. This required making a muslin. I don't like to use just muslin fabric to make a muslin because if it turns out to be wearable, I want to make use of it. So I dug around in my stash and found a bit of fabric that I thought would work. It was barely enough and I needed to piece together the back. But, it worked for the most part.


The neck is finished with bias tape. I discovered quite a bit of bias tape I had made a while back that matched. Instead of hiding it, I decided to let the bias take show. 


There is a lot of ease in this pattern. The front fits decently and, but the back really needs several inches taken out of it to give it a little shape. Being overall happy with the pattern, this means that it's worth it to make a genuine muslin that I can take in and create a new back pattern piece with. That's a project for another day. An entire blouse done start to finish in one afternoon isn't a bad day's work.

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