Ordinary Time

Late last spring I finished a denim skirt that I had sewn using my self-drafted pattern. You never saw it because I wasn't happy with the fit and so didn't really consider it finished. I tried a few things hoping that simple fixes would get it to fit right, but I knew deep down that I was going to have to take off the waistband and open some of the seams and take it in. It sat in my studio for weeks waiting for me to prod myself into action.  The combination of my drafting class starting again (which meant I would be busy working on other things) and one too many times standing in my closet wishing I had a denim skirt to put on finally was enough to force me into picking up a seam ripper. You know what the really silly thing is? It took me one afternoon. I could have been wearing the skirt all summer if I hadn't made the process into a bigger deal than it was.  So finally, I have a completed denim skirt to share that actually fits. This was made out of five worn out pairs o...

Last week I shared all the quilt pieces I had cut out because I was suddenly consumed with making the Sparrows quilt. By the next day I had made one of the blocks.  The instructions don't have you make one block at a time, instead they are written to make all 24 in assembly line fashion. Because I had everything cut out and labeled, that is what I decided to do. I wasn't quite sure how I would store all the pieces, so this would get it off the studio table as well.  For this past week I have pretty compulsively worked on this. It happens sometimes that I get an idea in my head and need to drop everything to focus on the idea. This was one of those times.  As of this afternoon I have all the blocks nearly completely finished.  This is a much bigger quilt than I had thought. The blocks in the above photo are overlapped in order to fit on the table. They will also be wider when they are finished.  The fabric in the birds that seems as though it's tan is actually gr...

And some of those projects really need to get done, especially if I am going to weave things to sell at Christmas. You start a new and completely unrelated project of course.  Over the weekend I became overwhelmed with the desire to make a quilt I have the pattern for. No, I don't know why, but that's what happened. So on Saturday I dug through fabric and on Sunday I spent much of the day cutting out all the pieces.  Some of those piles have 48 pieces in them, most have between 12 and 24. It was a lot of cutting especially because I was mostly using up scraps, which meant I couldn't make nice piles and cut several at the same time.  Here is what I'm going to make. Cute, huh? This is made with solid colors, but I realized I don't have a lot of solid colors in my stash. Mine will have more patterned fabrics. My color palate will also be different. Here are the four colors that will make up the birds. The whole quilt will have a slightly darker toned aspect to it.  My ...

Back in May, when my pattern drafting class ended for the summer, I had just finished drafting a peasant blouse for myself. And the pattern then sat around for a couple of months waiting for me to do something with it. Last week I finally cut it out and took my time sewing it up. (I enjoy sewing so much more if I can really take my time with it.) Today I finished the buttons and buttonholes on the cuffs, which was the last thing needed.  I'm very pleased with how it turned out and with how it fits. I made it out of an old 100% cotton sheet that had ripped and was too far gone to be repaired. As a result, it is incredibly soft, like a very old favorite shirt but without the breaking in period. Here it is: The buttons came from my rather extensive button stash. About that button stash as well as other sewing notions I have on hand. Many of them have been salvaged. Here's an example. This is a pair of J.'s shorts that had become so worn out that they just needed to be thrown a...

I go through seasons of how I want to spend my time. Recently it seems that fiber-related activities just haven't been making the cut. I'm not worried about it, just making an observation. My interest will cycle back around again.  Some parts of the country are suffering through a heat wave. (Is my household the only one that seems generally grumpy as a result? I'd rather have below freezing weather. I don't even have to stop and think about it.) Since it's not much fun being outside, I took care of some things inside. One of those things was finish a sewing project that has been kicking around for a couple of months. It's a bit silly it took so long because it's just a T-shirt and I used a server for the long seams. Here it is. The pattern is one I drafted last spring. The fabric came from Vogue Fabrics. Last summer when L. had a Saturday Morning Physics class at Northwestern, I used some of the time to go visit Vogue. This was a remnant I saw that I though...

This is what I've been working on for the past couple of days and it's far more interesting than showing you a picture of my computer and telling you I spent the afternoon on Teams. (A new online  Certificate program in Equine Assisted Services began today, which I am co-facilitating.) This is the English paper piecing (EPP) project I have been working on. After fiddling with the placement for a few weeks, I finally had something I liked.  This is seven hundred hexagons. You can see it wasn't quite enough. I figured that would be the case, so I wasn't surprised. Here are the three fabrics I'll use for the last forty or so hexagons. In the meantime, though, I really need my studio table. I was also more than a little concerned that some animal or child would accidentally move them around. Today I spent labelling each hexagon with it's place in the design. (It's paper piecing so there are papers inside that I can write on.) I went by column, giving each colum...

To be clear, there is nothing finished to share, but there is significant forward motion. First, I had my last hardanger embroidery class tonight. I'm realizing I shouldn't take night classes. I am not a night person and not at the top of my game. But anyway, I finished learning the rest of the techniques I needed to know to finish my piece. Here is where it stands currently. Because of the white fabric on a white table it's kind of difficult to see the cutwork. Here is a better view of where it's cut and how the wrapping will look when it's finished.  The other bit of forward motion is that the loom is dressed and ready to weave. So, finally, all 40 inches and 900+ ends have been threaded, the warp is wound on, the front has been tied on and the tension evened out, errors corrected, and the warp opened up to weave. The combination of the width with the stickiness of the wool yarn could mean this will be a slow weaving project. We'll see. We'll also see abou...

I've been doing things, really. I have all 900+ ends threaded on the loom. I have drafted and made a skirt and T-shirt, and am now working on drafting a pattern for a peasant blouse. There are over 600 hexagons sitting in a bag waiting for me to start playing around with them to see how they'll fit together in a quilt. I have a sweater cast on knitting needles. And for none of these things do I have pictures to of which to share with you.  Here is what I do have. The beginnings of my real hardanger project.  And Timmy the sheep who I sheared yesterday.  I was able to completely shear Timmy in less time than it took to only halfway shear Fred. My hunches were correct. Fred's wool is so thick, stretchy, and full of lanolin that he is really hard to shear. Plus, his wool is black and his skin is black. For anyone who has knitted with black yarn, you know exactly how difficult it is to see what you're doing. I also sheared Timmy in a different way so that I had better angle...

I'm pretty sure that not a single one of you who read my Fiber Monday posts stops and thinks to themselves, "Gee, it's a shame that E. doesn't have enough projects to fill her time. Maybe she should learn something new." But yes, the woman who has at least eight different projects she is working on concurrently, did indeed sign up for a class to learn something new. At least this skill doesn't require large pieces of specialized equipment.  My Monday post is late tonight because I was in a class to learn hardanger, which is a Norwegian form of cutwork embroidery. I had actually done some years and years ago, but couldn't really remember much about it. Here is my first practice piece that I came home with tonight.  I put it on the green book so you could better see where the cutwork was.  Here's a closer picture.  Next week we'll start on a small project using the skills we learned tonight.  I have visions of weaving some linen yardage, drafting a p...

Always in late spring I feel starved for color. Whole there are a few things blooming (thank you, forsythia), it is still pretty a monotone of brown things outside. This explains my newest weaving project. My loom had been empty too long, and I decided I just wanted to weave something pretty. I went through my stash of weaving yarn and found somethings that will satisfy my need for pretty and colorful.  It was those variegated skeins on the right that I needed to work with. I'm now working on planning the color changes and doing all the number things, then I will be set to start measuring the warp. It will be a throw... or maybe two depending on how the amount of yarn holds out.  One of the reasons why my loom was empty for so long is that I am consumed with my English paper piecing project. I have a lot of little octagons basted, so I decided I could start playing with them to find a design. (I think playing with hundreds of little pieces of color is one of the biggest draws ...

I am so close to being done with the making the actual skirt I have been drafting the pattern for. Here's what I have done. The front: Notice the fly zipper. I have made so many fly zipper over the past two weeks. I think I all paid off because I'm happy with this one. The front has pockets with a nice lining.  This is the back. You can tell where I left off sewing today. I'm finishing the seams where the yoke connects to the panels which is why this hasn't been pressed yet. It will lie flat once I do that.  The back also has went pockets which I drafted to fit my phone. Here is the pile of 14 (!) pattern pieces I had to draft in order to make this skirt. I'm not sure I realized how involved my first drafting project actually was. That's probably for the best.  Tomorrow I'll finish the yoke, see the side seams together, do the waistband, and then hem it. It shouldn't be too hard to finish. I would love to be able to pack it for my trip to Arizona to visi...

It's difficult to use photos to show what has taken hours of work because it is very hard to tell the labor behind the picture. Here is what I have accomplished this week.  This is the muslin of the skirt front of the pattern I'm drafting. It has pockets and a fly zipper and I have all the pattern pieces for this drafted and ready to be copied in their final form. I have learned a lot. I'm thrilled to have this pattern. It's been a lot of work. I anticipate that as I go and draft more patterns that the process will become faster and easier. There is just such a steep learning curve at the beginning stages of learning to draft.  I always say if you want to know what my mental state is, take a look at my desktop or my kitchen. I think I'll have to add my studio to that list. Here is what my work table currently looks like.  It's driving me a little nuts, but I still have the back to finish tomorrow, so it makes no sense to clean up now. I'm crossing my fingers...

I don't have much to share today. Much of my time this past week was spent doing horse related things and not fiber related things. It's such a shame that the hours in a day are not infinite. My pattern drafting class had a week break, which was very good because my business took a lot of time, but also not very good because yesterday I realized I had quite a bit of work I needed to do in order to have my next class be profitable.  This is why I have spent a pretty significant chunk of time trying to understand how to sew a fly zipper. It has always been one of those things that just hasn't made sense in my head, so I did a pretty good job of avoiding fly zips completely. Until now. Because the skirt I am drafting has a fly zipper. I couldn't really move on until I had figured them out.  I am happy... oh, so happy... to be able to share with you my first correctly sewn fly zipper.  I don't even want to say exactly how many hours these two pictures represent. The goo...

The bit of my mending pile that did not get tackled over Christmas break wasn't so much mending as adding. I had a few shirts and sweatshirts that I had collected that I wanted to embroider my business logo on and use for work shirts. This would be machine embroidery, not hand embroidery. I already had the file for my machine and had done this before, so in theory it should have been easy.  But machine embroidery involves getting out a lot of supplies I don't normally use and switching parts of my sewing machine. It is also one of those things I don't do quite often enough to keep the process fresh in my head, so it also involves a bit of figuring out as well. Yesterday afternoon I had a few free hours and I really needed the shirts that had been decorating my studio for months. It was time to bite the bullet and just do it.  When it's been a while since using the embroidery function, I always start with the shirt I care about the least. That way if I make a mess of it,...