A WordPress Site

Author: 459856pwpadmin

Heavy Lifting

I’m still here, although I have yet to find much time for sewing.

Now that G has been given the all-clear, I decided that is well past time that I started whipping myself back in shape. And so I have been at the gym every day the past week (or at the physical therapists — I am not yet up to gym and PT in one day). 6 days and 9 hours of exercise later I can definitely say that I am more exhausted than I can imagine, but I also have less back pain, and less sciatica. Yeah for me. I also think my pants are a little looser in the waist, but I think that is more due to wishful thinking than any actual visible benefit of exercise at this point, unless I am just too tired to lift my fork to my mouth.

Going to the post office on the way home from the gym has also been a challenge this week as the September fashion magazines are rolling in:

The vogue is so heavy I have to have it flat on a table to look through it. To think I had hopes of reading it on the exercise bicycle. Ha. I would have to use both hands just to hold it and would have to stop and put it down to turn a page — not good for exercise.

So my progress through these wish books is slow. That is good, because I think I also need to take my sewing slowly, with a plan. I need to sew what I am going to wear now, not what I hope to wear later in the fall, so that leaves plenty of time for perusing the mags and dreaming.

But what is that plan? I have no idea. I only know I am sick of the few clothes I have been wearing and am ready to dress again. But in what? I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out, because at this point I don’t even have energy to figure out what clothes I have much less what I might need.

As to these magazines, I am still working my way through the 4 buckets of mail I picked up from the post office after I returned from a trip of a mere week’s duration. I don’t think I have ever gotten that much mail in a week in my life….and at this point I only hope that I get caught up before I go away again.

August 24, 2007
Sew Stylish Dreams

¿ ¿Sewing time, what’s that.?? Just finding time to write seems to be a struggle this week.

Thursday night I met a friend at the local Barnes and Noble for what was billed as an evening of knitting but actually ended up being an evening of browsing through knitting and sewing books, drinking coffee, and talking up a storm. Not a bad way to spend an evening at all.

When I walked in to the store, I saw the new Sew Stylish magazine and quickly grabbed it before heading up the escalator. After that, I kind of flipped through it here and there between fits of talking and giggling, put it down on a shelf while I looked at crochet books and proceeded to forget all about it until I was leaving the store. Then I had to go back in and buy a copy. Of course I am glad I did because I have been hauling it around with me ever since, flipping through the pages, looking at the articles and the ideas and just generally getting a major sewing inspiration hit.

Generally I have been very interested in this magazine even though I did not subscribe to it, although I would have eventually. I cannot be convinced that my failure to subscribe has lead to its demise, barely before it got started, because I have been down this road too many times with magazines from Taunton Press. I have been charter subscribers to most of their new magazines, loved them, and have been sorely disappointed when they cease publication and my subscription is applied to one of my other Taunton subscriptions (like Threads, my subscription to which I believe is due to expire in something like 2011).

But enough grousing…back to the magazine. There are a lot of good tips and ideas in this magazine and more than just a compendium of ideas and tips, I like the way they have tied all this information together by building a collection of garments based on one pattern; Simplicity 3631:

I am actually rather impressed with the things they have turned out of this with this pattern, and if you haven’t looked at this magazine, I think you should. I would have loved something like this when I was learning to sew because it ties ideas for actual garments that I could sew now in with all kinds of useful information that I would otherwise have to search for in a bunch of different books without much confidence if I was doing the right thing when applying it to the garment I was trying to make.

This pattern is on my "to buy" list, even though I was not particularly thrilled with it when I first saw it on the website. There was a pretty interesting discussion about it over at Stitcher’s Guild but I wasn’t really convinced about it until I started looking at some fall inspiration garments and thinking about a few things I wanted to make, including my plans for making something inspired by that Anthropologie embroidered baby-doll top that will be neither baby-doll nor a top by the time I am done with it. Unfortunately this pattern was not yet in stock last time I was in my local JoAnn Fabrics before I left for Knoxville. I continue to hope that the pattern drawers will be restocked soon.

August 18, 2007
Off to Knoxville

We are off to Knoxville tomorrow morning early to visit baby Owen, who is apparently turning into quite the mobile little person since we saw him last at the end of May. I am not taking my computer and will be out of touch but will catch up upon my return. There is also some promise of actual sewing in the future if all continues to go well.

In the meantime, I have been savoring a few pages each day from this wonderful book which arrived at my door last week:

It is filled with beautiful ideas and wonderful ribbons and although I live in a rather modern house and most of the ideas presented are along the lines of home decor, I remain entranced.

I love ribbons and anything that justifies my passions with taste is fine by me. There are certainly ideas here that are filling my brain with dreams.

Have a good week and I will back after the 14th.

August 6, 2007
Marfy order

Since the Marfy pattern book arrived, several weeks ago, I have been perusing it periodically, attempting to make some kind of decision concerning my pattern order. But now the time has come for the order to go in and I had to make some decisions.

In the past, I have ordered at least one coat pattern each year. This year, although I have plans to make several coats, I ordered no coat patterns. Do I have all the coat patterns I need? Not likely. Still nothing really stood out.

Not to worry, there was no shortage of patterns on my list. Here they are, in numerical order:

I really love this dress. In fact there is a Simplicity pattern that seems similar which I had considered buying but have not picked up yet, primarily because it has yet to find its way to the stock drawers at my local Jo-Ann Fabrics.

I might even like this dress better. I like Marfy’s fit better.

I ordered the jacket as well, although it is not really that unusual. But it goes so well with the dress and given how nicely Marfy patterns are drafted I doubt I will be disappointed.

Whereas it took a little while for that first dress pattern to firmly implant itself in my mind, this jacket caught my eye almost immediately. I just love the detail of the angled dart in the front with the pockets and the peplum in the back. Very simple, but very nice

.

A blouse with interesting darts.

Then there were two rather feminine, "dressmaker " style jackets as opposed to the more tailored style that often attracts me. I really liked both but they also seemed terribly similar and different at the same time. First I would like one, then the other. Then I would decide to buy both, then I would convince myself that they were too similar to buy both. Then I would quibble again as to which one was most worth buying. In the end I just decided to buy them both.

Perhaps I am just intrigued by ribbons and bows this season, as one of the reasons I liked the above jacket was the little ribbon tie closure, and that is one of the features that I like about this blouse, as well as the gathers at the bust and the rather fitted shape through the waist.

I am also intrigued by the skirt. I passed it by at first, and then noticed it again later when I was looking for a pattern for a relatively straight but flippy skirt for a particular piece of fabric. This skirt is not what I had in mind for that fabric but it has stuck with me. It seems that a lot of skirts have godets, and a lot have bias ruffles, but this pattern, as it appears in the sketch seems to be some combination of the two and I am suitably intrigued. It is not that I couldn’t probably create something similar, but that I want to see how the people at Marfy do it.

The "year of the dress" may or may not be over, but I seem to be just getting started. There were two dress patterns that really caught my eye. First, I have been looking for a dolman wrap dress and this one looks tempting. The second dress has that nice soft gathering again, with a fitted band holding everything in shape at the waist.

August 4, 2007
What is inspiring me now

[In my own truly obsessed fashion, I did not like the way this post originally showed, so I have reformatted it with new pictures. The originals (if you saw that post) were downloaded from the Anthropologie website, but they were too small to see anything . All new photos have been scanned from the August catalog. ]

Sewing is seems to continue to be something that continues only to exist only in the virtual reality of my dreams, hence the excitement over sewing on a button. In a world where getting through the most basic stack of work seems to be a never ending task, I continue to be thrilled to have clothes that are clean and not held together by safety pins, and I continue to be be consoled by dreams of sewing.

The day my power dry arrived from Ressy’s Co-op, I dreamt of sewing slips. Even that bit of mundane virtual sewing was refreshing.

Yesterday, many of my spare minutes were spent dreaming of of the inspirations found in the August Anthropologie catalog. This month was absolutely filled with inspirations

First there were the dresses:

The first one is definitely not for fall, and may be too youthful of a style, but what I am actually attracted to is the combination of the dramatic floral print with the color blocking and this can be easily adapted to another look.

I love this layered wrap knit dress with the bubble skirt that does not bubble too much, but just hangs so nicely.

And I love the shape and the idea of the last dress. The dress is made from a sweater knit, and it is described as having "paint-like" metallic stripes. When I look at the photo I can’t tell if the hipline is gathered, tucked, or smocked ofr if the stripes are actually painted on the fabric. I suspect they are not painted and there is some kind of gathering going on there, but one could probably fake it by simply painting stripes, angling them into the waist on the finished garment, and saving oneself a little extra bulk at the hips. I doubt, however, that my artistic abilities are up to rendering anything as nice as the large painted flower on the skirt. Paint by numbers anyone?

This jacket (on the right) really appeals to me, and although it is described as being made from a sweater knit, I can really see this made up in a lovely wool double knit. I was very tempted to order this jacket, and if I did not already own several gray cardigans and jackets with dramatic and interesting collars, it would be winging its way to me as I write this. Instead, I dream of making something inspired by this shape in a different neutral color — perhaps a rich deep brown or even a lovely deep red.

The styling of the black corduroy jacket on the left doesn’t really appeal to me, but the embroidery does. You can get more detail here. I love the idea of this kind of dramatic detail on an otherwise simple shape.

But by far and away the item that most captured my imagination is a sweater. It is, unfortunately not a sweater that I could find on the website so we can’t zoom in and look at the detail of the embroidery yet. Even though it is a sweater, it is not something I plan to knit:

"Softer than felt" they say. Well, the photo looks almost felted but I am not going to knit this and felt it and embroider it. I do however think this is another look that could be darling in a nice wool double knit. The problem would be the collar. If I made the garment out of wool double knit, it could be difficult to find just the right yarn to knit a matching collar. I could, however, just make a sewn collar of the same double knit fabric. I am interpreting this look, not trying to make an actual copy.

The color of this is not good for me or I would have ordered it too, and Anthropologie has the annoying habit of not stating how long the garments are in the catalog or on the website so I suspect it would be too short anyway.

I don’t like the shape and length of the sleeves and I would do mine differently. I could do the embroidery. I used to do crewel work, but if I were going to put the time into this it would have to be something I would really love. And it just might be. My dreams include plans to play with a muslin of this shape, and I have a lovely soft violet-blue double knit that would probably look lovely in something like this.

Perhaps dreaming of making something like this is a bit ambitious given the current state of my sewing life. But hey, it never hurt anyone to have grand dreams, now did it?

August 3, 2007
Still Here

I am still here, but I seem to be existing in a lull state of late. It is not just sewing that is suffering due to my general state of ennui; knitting, reading, even cooking have basically ceased.

This is unusual. Typically my great stress-reliever is time spent in the kitchen whipping up a meal for someone, or a batch of cookies. Cooking got me through college and grad school, finals and orals are literally a piece of cake after a night spent baking. I know that my stress-relieving techniques fed many a happy dorm-mate during my college years. But now, nothing. Even when I venture into the kitchen the inspiration is gone and the results may not be particularly appealing. It reminds me how much of what we do is more than just following directions. There is a bit of soul that goes into making things.

I know this too will pass. The one-seam pants that have been languishing for weeks will be conquered (they are not the problem) and I will find where I left my creative side (is it under the living room sofa?) and snap it back in place.

Things may already be looking up.

I actually sewed a button on my pants rather than safety pin them together yesterday: They weren’t the buttons that came with the pants. I know I saved the button when it fell off. I know I put it in my pants pocket. But I washed the pants — no button. It may be lurking in the bowels of the washing machine, or it may have fallen out anywhere — when I changed to swim?. These are the kinds of things that happen when one is not oneself.

I love that phrase, "not oneself". Who might I be?

I also turned out a pretty decent dinner tonight. Simple, but decent. Pork chops, broccoli, baked potatoes. All-American right?

A lovely bit of salad was fabricated from a few things I found in the pantry:

A local peach. A tomato. The tops to some local onions. Belgian endive, a navel orange, and a little olive oil round it all out.

I think I’ll be back soon.

July 30, 2007
New Vogues

Well, the new patterns have been up at Vogue for a few days now, and as anticipated, there are quite a few I like. I haven’t finalized my order yet, but here are the contenders that are moving in and out of my shopping cart depending on my moods and thoughts:

Well, now I have loved this since I first saw it posted online, before I even got the Vogue Patterns magazine. I will not make it in the same kind of fabric. And yes it is true that the off the shoulder styling is not practical for many things, but I love it anyway and I can see myself wearing it for dressier evening events. I also love the skirt, so this one goes into my cart.

On this pattern it is the jacket which calls to me. The top is nice, the pants are nice, the jacket is wonderful, especially if one looks at the seaming on the back (which I did not copy to post here). Great jacket, and I think I have exactly the perfect thing for it waiting in my closet.

This pattern is much more versatile. It can really span a wide range from very dressy to somewhat casual depending on the fabrication, and I love the jacket as shown both in its closed versions and worn open. I also love every other garment included in the pattern so it has great potential for multiple uses.

Two other jackets appeal to me, the lovely short coat or jacket with the angled tucks in the back, and the the Anne Klein jacket which is shown belted here but I think would be just as lovely unbelted. It has a lovely curved peplum type shape in the back that I think would be quite flattering.

As I said before, I am a great sucker for blouses, and these really appeal even with their strong shoulder emphasis and strong sleeve shapes, or perhaps it is because of their statement making possibilities that they attract.

I love a good blouse that can stand alone with a simple pair of pants or a skirt, not just a blouse that plays a secondary role, and these blouses show good potential.

I suppose it is the drama of the collar on this dress that appeals to me more than anything else, but I keep waffling on the decision. I like the sleeveless version better than the long sleeve version, for no particular reason that I can put my finger on. I had a knit dress that looked like the long sleeve version once and it was incredibly warm, almost too warm to wear anywhere except perhaps a drafty castle in Scotland, not one of my normal haunts. I suppose that memory could be haunting my thoughts. But the dress did look good, and there is no reason I need to make this dress out of densely knitted alpaca.

I also love this look. I think of the jacket and skirt as a dress like look more than as a suit and I adore the tunic over pants for its sporty simplicity without being too casual. This could be lovely and elegant in a beautiful wool crepe, or nicely casual in a tweed or other fabric to wear running arund town or perhaps even as a light jacket over simple pants and flats for coming home from the gym.

And while I am on the subject of dressing to go to and from the gym, I
love the tunic in this pattern. It would be perfect over leggings or
slim stretchy pants and flats to wear as a transitional piece when
stopping in at the store, gas-station, or post-office. It could look
casual but still pulled-together.

July 19, 2007
New McCalls Patterns

Although I can’t exactly say that I never met a pattern I didn’t like, because there are tons of bad patterns out there. I also cannot say that I am not easily seduced by the promise of new patterns. I have an extensive pattern collection, far more extensive than either my fabric or yarn collection, and I am completely unrepentant about it. Well, except for occasional periods where I fret about storing the ever-growing collection and keeping it well enough organized that I can actually find things.

And I don’t necessarily wait for pattern sales. There are several reasons for this.

* There is no Hancock Fabrics near me.
* My local JoAnn puts the patterns out weeks after they arrive and there is nothing more frustrating than driving 40 minutes to buy a pattern that isn’t there..
* My collection is large enough that I don’t necessarily remember what I have and by shopping online I can compare line drawings to my own personal pattern catalog and make a much more informed decision. This doesn’t keep me from buying very similar patterns for subtle changes or differences, or sometimes just buying them for comparison purposes. Nor does it keep me from buying a pattern I will probably never sew if I am intrigued enough by the design details or potential.

By the time I have gotten online, looked at my own catalog and decided to buy a pattern it makes no sense to get in the car and drive to buy the pattern when I can just click a button and have the pattern find its way to me.

I do realize that this is probably the lazy way out. But it works for me.

Therefore it should come as no surprise that I went shopping on the McCall’s Pattern website last week. My purchases arrived today.

This isn’t really that complicated of a dress and I have several basic patterns in similar shapes, but this particular pattern is being added to the collection because of the neckline pleats. Of course, I could do my own, but I probably won’t. And although I may end up working on these pleats and moving them around to fit me, I would rather see how someone else does it and work from there rather than draft my own.

I don’t yet know if I will make this as is, or use it as a jumping-off point for several other ideas that are mulling around in my brain.

I really like this look: the strapless jumper with a blouse, and although I have tons of patterns I don’t have anything like this. Strapless was not my thing during my "dartless" years. I had trouble keeping everything in place.

I am intrigued by how one can wear this look without the blouse pulling out and bunching up under the arms, or the dress slipping around. But I saw a lot of this look last fall and into this year, both as a jumper and a dress with a jumper look so I am willing to dream about it, or at least save the pattern as a testament to the styles of the times. And I am actually intrigued enough I might give it a try. I am convinced that I could be far more successful now than I was in my younger days despite the lack of a youthful figure.

I have always been a sucker for a great blouse.

And there are two great, trendy jackets I picked up as well.

These jackets are both "of the moment" and they both have that gathered lower sleeve feature which I have seen in some things for this coming fall as well. I think they are still quite wearable, and they also have good "bones" . They are quite modern, but they also have a classic, ladylike appeal that is almost vintage in its inspiration. I think they have a timeless potential, or more exactly, they either fit one’s style or they don’t but neither one is boring and they could be more or less trendy, depending on the fabric and construction used.

July 16, 2007
A birthday gift to myself

As I was driving home from the hotel this morning I got a call from FedEx. They wanted to deliver a package and a signature was required.

This is what came:

My birthday present to myself: A Panton chair.

I have been harboring the idea that I would get at least one of these as long as we have been working on the deck, probably longer. Modern deck, modern furniture, no?

I sat in one in San Francisco one year and absolutely love it. It fits me perfectly: back support in just the right place for my odd back. That doesn’t of course mean that anyone else would like it. G thinks it is ok, but would not chose to sit in it. The neighbors were over and they side with G on this one. That is OK because it means there is no competition for this chair. It is MINE, all MINE. When I sit in this chair I feel like swinging my arms and legs and smiling, just like little grandson Owen does when he is in the swing. I can see that much knitting, dreaming, reading, and just contemplating the Hudson will be done from this movable perch.

But why yellow? The chair came in white (nah, too boring) and orange-red. But I had some canvas fabric that was originally purchased for some long forgotten project and is now destined to be used to make new seats and backs for a collection of director’s chairs that have been sitting around getting grubby while they were shoved out of the way during the construction process.

The yellows don’t quite match. But there is both red and orange in the stripe and I wasn’t sure red-orange would match either. Yellow will blend in, and G and I both love bright colors. With a cool gray house and cool gray deck, a little color is not a bad thing.

So as you can see, I have yet more sewing to do, and I haven’t even finished those one-seam pants yet. Too much back and forth is going on here for me to ever catch up.

And now that the deck is almost done those directors chairs need to be cleaned up, sanded down, repainted, and have new covers made as well.

The list goes on and on, but the temptation to sit in the chair and just stare at the river is also great: Even though there are fewer boats on the river, apparently due to the high price of fuel, the view is remains way to entrancing to ignore:

July 14, 2007
Our Home Away from Home

Of course it always happens during a heat wave — the AC is broken and cannot be repaired. A replacement will not happen right away as a new condensing unit must be ordered. Even a replacement of the same size would take a week to 10 days, and our previous system was woefully inadequate — in fact I am probably responsible for burning it out during the heat waves we have had this summer. Knowing full well that the unit could not handle the afternoon sun on the western wall of the house, but also having an elderly ailing spouse who couldn’t take the heat, I pushed the AC beyond its limit. The power supply to the compressor is a burnt out mass of molten plastic, metal and soldered wires. The compressor is a small burnt partially charred mess.

So now we have two homes — the hot one where I am working now, and the one shown above where we will be sleeping tonight. Even with the windows open and the fans on, the nights during this heat spell are too warm for me too cool the house down to a tolerable level for my ailing DH. He is lounging around in the cool hotel room while I am working at home in the heat, catching up on work, meeting a contractor and doing other tasks. Luckily I have a cool pool, and the sun has not yet hit the house or the 50 feet of glass on the western side, so there is a cool breeze.

If the weather breaks enough that I can clear out enough residual heat to return to our bed over the weekend, we shall be home, if not, we will have to move. This is a resort area in high season and all local hotels are booked on the weekends for the remainder of the summer. We shall be literally going over the river and through the woods to the far side of Kingston, the next nearest available hotel.

I don’t know what will be happening with my sewing plans, but I will try to sew here and there — who knows, freed of other duties I might find more time…or it may just be too hot.

Last night I curled up in the air-conditioned hotel and pondered fall sewing: The fall Marfy and the new Vogue Patterns both arrived.

The new Vogue Patterns looks quite promising and I think I will be making a large pattern purchase when the website is open. The new Vogue’s are not likely to be stocked in my local Jo Ann fabrics until sometime in August, and I refuse to patronize that kind of pattern rationing.

There are also quite a few Marfy pattern I like but I need a little more time to consider, look at patterns I have purchased in the past, and narrow down my selections. Not to worry I will show you the final list when it is finally compiled.

July 10, 2007