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Restingmotion

Dream On

One of the pieces of fabric I took with me to San Francisco was a beautiful piece of mudcloth I had picked up several years ago at a sewing expo in Baltimore. I love the fabric but had never made it up because, although I had a vague image of what I wanted to make in my head, I was not sure that the fabric was my best color and I was therefore not sure how to pull it off. I took it to San Francisco with a vague idea that I might be able to use a new pattern of Sandra’s for it, but that did not pan out, and also thinking that I might be able to find some coordinating fabric to use with it.

Well I was successful in finding coordinates and I am very happy with the results:

The grayish fabric on the left with the yellow pattern is the mudcloth, I have about 4 yards and it is 30" wide. Although you can’t see it here, there is a greenish cast to the gray, that is the problem shade. On the right are two Japanese cottons I purchased to go with the mudcloth. The lighter blue/gray one will be lining and perhaps carried up onto the collar to frame the face. I was originally planning the black one with the taupe squares to be cut as a bias binding between the lining and the mudcloth, but I bought extra to use as a top to wear with the skirt I plan on using with the bottom fabric, which is an upholstery fabric, silk and rayon that I plan to cut on the bias for a skirt to wear with the coat/jacket. I will probably also use it somehow in the jacket but that is still rather vague. The top fabric picks up the beigy-yellow of the bottom upholstery fabric and the grey of the mudcloth and will be incorporated somehow, probably as trim. This is all still rather vague in my mind; all that I know is that I like the way the fabrics work together.

This is a close-up of the texture of the bottom fabric with just a corner of the black and taupe Japanese cotton.

I envision the whole jacket as a kind of coat or topper, roughly 3/4 length although that may not be possible given the yardage on the mudcloth. I would like some kind of standup or dramatic turned back collar. The day after I bought this fabric Sandra came in with a coat which is a draft for a swing coat pattern she has coming out for Vogue in September. I tried on the model, which is a size D, and it fit me very well through the shoulders so there is little I would have to do in the way of alterations. It is basically the style I am after so I will wait until that pattern comes out.

In the meantime I want to put these fabrics where I can see them and let them inspire my sewing fantasies.

May 26, 2005
Help Me if You Can

I took the plunge and opened the box I sent home from San Francisco. I knew the purple silk top/jacket was in there hiding after I banished it from my sight the last sewing day. Happily it is not as bad as I remembered.

Here it is in its current (unfinished) state:

It is not bad but it does look a little better on me than on Matilda here. However it is much easier to photograph her. I am not usually fond of drop shoulders but I decided to keep them here because I was not sure how easy the laminated silk would be to sew. It is easier than I thought and I can even manage a little easing, but not much. Of course drop shoulders look even worse when you have no arms…

I still don’t like the way the front hangs. It looks more like it was cut incorrectly or is too small, neither of which is the case.

I tried moving the button over, not fastening it at center front as specified in the pattern, and there is plenty of room to do that, as can be seen here:

If I did this I could not use the pretty butterfly button because it looks best in the center and I really don’t think a large butterfly perching on the center of one’s breast is all that attractive. In fact the bust point centering issue is the main problem with this plan. The closures for the two sides would end up being right at the bust points. Now I forgot when I cut this that I usually have to take fabric out of the center of my garments, from between the bust points and move it to the outside. I guess that means that my bust points are closer to the center front line than most patterns. Given the slanted fronts, I am not sure how I would have done that anyway. It is also possible that moving closure to provide more overlap throws off the hang of the sleeves. I can’t tell that on me because my hands are busy holding the top together so I can’t look at how the sleeve hangs, and Matilda, well she doesn’t have arms anyway so it is hard to tell.

The other plan is just to shorten the top:

As you will note, I just folded the hem up, and not all that evenly either. Still the point gets across and I think the top is much nicer in the shorter length mostly because the opening is not so wide and does not look so much like a mistake. When I tried the top on over pants it also looked nicer short, trust me on this.

Aside from the fact that this is the much easier fix, I really think I like this better but I am going to think about it a few days. If anyone is reading this, please tell me what you think. Any help really is appreciated here because I still alternate between loving this and hating it.

Of course, no matter what happens, I really enjoyed sewing the fabric and the pattern anyway.

May 26, 2005
Yarn Candy

New Yarn is beginning to pour in! A couple of boxes have arrived from ArtFibers in San Francisco which I haven’t dared open yet, as well as several other packages. I am still too far behind in everything else so it is safer if the boxes remain unopened. Once I open the box I will be duty bound to take out all the yarn, caress it, play with it, dump it out on the flour and roll around in it, and nothing else will get done. So in boxes it remains.

This is kind of like Christmas, watching the packages pile up around the tree, with anticipation building until you can actually rip off the paper and play with the goodies.

In the meantime I need a project to start tomorrow on the train to NYC. There are several options readily available BUT I went to a yarn store while I was in Knoxville, a really wonderful store called Knit ‘N Purl and guess what? I bought yarn, but not as much as I wanted to buy.

First I got this beautiful sock yarn from Lorna’s Laces:

I just adore the colors and I have been thinking about knitting socks a lot lately. I am not sure why because I have never been a big sock wearer. Socks are portable though and easily to carry around in a bag. I also like the idea of wearing socks and would love to wear socks with my gardening clogs or LL Bean Shoes, or just around the house, but they always slip off my heels and bunch up in the middle of my foot. Perhaps I just need socks that fit. Perhaps I just need hand knitted socks! Well, if not, maybe I will knit socks for Miriam, who after all, did take me to this wonderful yarn store.

There were several other things I liked including some beautiful Noro yarns, which took considerable effort to resist I must add, but I told myself that I had just been shopping at ArtFibers after all and that package had not even arrived from California yet when I left for Knoxville.

I did however buy this:

Admittedly I was primarily attracted b y the color. It is actually kind of orange and deep burgundy, forgive the bad lighting but it is STILL raining outside. The orange may be too orange for me, but if that proves to be the case I can finish the edges of the shell I plan to make with a coordinating burgundy yarn. I am not worried. I have confidence that anything that I love can be made to work.

Oh yeah, the specifics: The yarn is Bettina by Adrienne Vittadini. It is viscose, nylon and linen. I had seen several of the solid color Vittadini yarns and was considering them, although the color selection is never my favorite in this line of yarns, but I had not yet seen this yarn. I also bought the Vittadini spring book. There are a couple of sweaters that attracted me and I was considering the book anyway. It has a pattern for a shell using Bettina and I like the basic shape so I decided to make it; this saves me having to adapt some other pattern to this yarn.

Easy is sometimes very good.

May 26, 2005
Love and Knitting

Travelling has been good for Aiko as I finished knitting last night. By the time I landed in Newburgh Tuesday I was only about 12 rows shy of finishing, but with unpacking and all the chaos at home after an almost three week absense (two trips), I did not manage to pick it up again until yesterday evening.

Here are the two sleeves:

The light is not great for photographs and I can’t go outside as it rains and rains..I am apparently supposed to be looking forward to a yucky sucky rainy week and weekend and it is COLD!! Maybe I better finish a nice warm wool sweater… who would have thought I would be craving cashmere for Memorial Day?

Last night was Tabasco’s official LOVE ME night as she crawled up in my lap and clung to me with very sharp claws if I shifted position or God forbid, dared to get up and move around. Who can blame her? First I left for 10 days — well, granted her dad was home, but he’s not the same, and then after only two days back, we both left for another four days. The poor beast was affection-starved!!

Here she is rolling around at my feet after I finished Aiko and thought I would work on the last sleeve of Wine&Roses for a while:

Wine and Roses was not a successful project as it seemed to compete with catly attention demands too much. Since I had to keep searching for a new ball of yarn every row I kept shifting around and fidgeting. I now have numerous scratches and puncture wounds in my legs to pay for my crimes. I eventually had to give up and let my hands be content stroking downy soft cat fur. First things first, after all.

I left Wine&Roses on the blocking board when I left and shamefacedly I must admit it is still there waiting with baited breath for the long promised sleeves. Well I have 26 rows left and hope to finish them today or tomorrow, maybe Saturday as I have to go into NYC tomorrow evening. I will not take this project on the train. I can just see myself rumaging through my bag of multiple yarns searching for the next color, balls of yarn falling out of the bag and off my lap and rolling around on the train between everyone’s legs. Its not goint to happen! As soon as I can get it done, however, I can block Aiko and get both projects FINISHED.

May 26, 2005
Purling

Yesterday was travel day and was primarily spent in airports and on airplanes. I had my knitting, the first sleeve for Aiko, and my book The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman.

Here is the first sleeve, so far, extending about 1 1/2 inches above the elbow:

As I would get tired of knitting, and k2, p2 rib can be kind of mind numbing at times, I would turn to my book, which is quite interesting and I would get all wrapped up in reading, but then I would find that I needed to put the book down and let my mind do a little purling of its own, so I would pick up the needles again and knit and purl, and contemplate the ways in which the world is changing and what it all might mean.

In many ways the book is nothing new except that the world has moved ahead, while I too, to quote Mr. Friedman, was sleeping; kind of embarrassing for a retired programmer and engineer. While I was caught up in all the many things that life has been throwing my way the last few years, the world has made a giant leap forward. Of course I was getting a glimmer of this as I have been recently exploring the web more and looking at blogs and websites and all the wonderful tools and languages out there, thinking I need to play with XML and so many new things.

Friedman is causing me to think about things in different ways and this is quite thrilling. He is also bringing up many worries that have been floating around the back of my mind for some years. Even when I was in grad school in the late 80’s, engineering and math undergraduates were dropping off, and although the number of students pursuing advanced degrees did not peak until the early 90’s, even when I was in school far more of those students were immigrants or children of immigrants than american-bred. This flatter, open communication world will have totally different boundaries and this presents great opportunities, but I wonder if enough Americans will be able to grab hold and rise to the top. If Friedman is right, the new world will be one in which we will constantly have to be learning and improving and striving to be the best.

As my darling husband says, it is the ones with a "fire in their belly" that will be the winners. I worry that the ones that don’t have the knowledge and the education and the ambition will fall by the wayside unless we as a society make great changes to see that this does not happen. The answer may not be in protecting low level manufacturing jobs because those are not the jobs of the future or of success, but we have a long way to go before we can prepare large sections of our populations to be the innovators and to find the niche where they too can succeed in a world that changing much too fast.

So all these thoughts kept me knitting. As I knit it struck me with no little irony that knitting is a low level job that can really be done by anyone who practices, or by a machine even. Yet even though I love technology, I love the act of creating something that knitting provides. As we become efficient and more effective, and in many ways removed from the personal, some part of us may yearn for some basic human handicraft, something that puts us more in touch with at least a dream of simpler times. As we all know, simpler times weren’t really simpler and life was much harder. We have a long way to go to decide what is valuable in this life and what is not, and we have a lot of work to do to insure that a valuable life is open to everyone.

One nice thing about coming home though is that spring is really here. When I left the ground was still mostly bare and not many flowers were out. Now everything is green and flowers are blooming everywhere, including these lovely primulas:

Doesn’t that inspire a happy thought? Even out of barren dirt, something wonderful always blooms.

May 18, 2005
San Francisco Skirt

Here is a skirt I made last week in San Francisco. I was inspired by a Max Mara skirt in the May Vogue Magazine, although that skirt is really more ornate than mine and is made from a more summery tweed.

I purchased the feather trim at MJ trim in NYC and also bought the matching ribbon trim. The feathers and trim are deep brown with a deep violet/purple/fuschia color. The color of the wool is much more fuschia/navy than it appears in this photo, giving the overall cast of the skirt a deeper, red-purple hue.

The feather trim came sewn to a tape which inserted between the bottom of the skirt and a hem facing. The ribbon trim is machine sewn to the skirt, anchoring he hem in place. The skirt is lined and has a petersham ribbon faced waist with no band.

My next project was not as successful. I was working with this silk fabric from EmmaOneSock.com. I have never worked with a laminated fabric like this and thought it would be an interesting project. The fabric was part of a bundle I purchased and although I think it is quite pretty there is no great emotional investment here.

I decided to use this pattern: which is still available from Vogue Patterns.

Everything went together well but I was just not sure I actually liked the garment. My friend Mary says it looked very good from the back but in front it looked like it just didn’t fit, almost unfinished like it was buttoned in one place because there was not enough room although I actually had lots of extra ease in the front of the garment. I was thinking that the silk was just too light. I had originally thought of lining it but had not felt like adapting the pattern to that or doing the extra work. I am not yet sure what I think, I packed it up and sent it home. We are going to Knoxville next weekend so it will be at least anothe week before I get it out and take another look. I think that I like the pattern and I like the fabric, but it was not a good marriage between the two.

Saturday is shopping day for the Power Sewers and Sandra’s husband Dan spent the day driving 9 eager shoppers around the bay area. We went to STone Mountain and Daughter in Berkley and Thai Silks in Los Altos and I purchased fabric at both places. Those packages were sent home and I will share the goodies when they arrive.

We also went to Poppy in Oakland. Poppy has great trim and great upholstery and home dec fabric and a few other unusual things. I bought a bolt of fabric to upholster the conversation pit in my living room there a couple of years ago. This time I was very moderate and only bought once piece of trim, shown below:

It is really just a piece of flat binding with buttons sewn down the center. Each button is topped with a tiny bead. I think I will use it as trim on a jacket but it also inspires me with ideas of how to use old buttons, old pieces of bias binding and many other things.

May 16, 2005
Biased,part 2

My first project in San Francisco this past week was to work on the blue linen pants I had abandoned before the Amazon trip. Admittedly I was not sure whether the problem was a fitting issue or a construction issue and I tended to assume that the problem was caused by seamtress error, namely that I thought I had cut the right leg off grain.

On Monday I tried on the pants and asked Sandra (Betzina) to mark where the seam lines should have been on the right side. I explained that I was going to take them apart and use the markings to draft a new pattern or at least cut new pieces for the right leg. I had extra fabric and the existing right leg could be sacrificed.

She drew two new lines in beautiful fuschia chalk and I took the pants apart; the results are shown here:

Reassuringly, I learned that in this case the problem was not caused by an error on my part, just an asymmetricality in my basic architecture. As you can see by looking at the red lines I needed to move the inseam forward to the front of the pant and move the outseam toward the back of the pant. Note that the angles were not the same.

I pinned the pants together along the seam I as working on for each piece, lay my old pattern pieces over the flat linen pant pieces, and drafted new patterns to match the actual lines drawn by Sandra. When I looked at the pattern pieces, they looked perfectly normal, but when I pinned them to the fabric, aligning the grainlines, it became evident that for the pants to hang on grain, the side seams were definitely not in the same line as the grainline of the fabric.

The new pants went together perfectly well except for a little trouble with one seam lengthening a bit because I was actually sewing a bias seam and not a straight-of-grain one, something I knew in an intellectual way but had not accomodated in actual practice. I finished the pants on Monday and new they looked good and hung straight.

Tuesday I finished the pants: I cut the lining, constructed it, and attached it at the waist. I used petersham ribbon to face the inside of the waistband.

As this particular linen is rather ravelly I also felt it was better to completely attach the lining at the hem, something I often prefer to do, even though almost every sewing book I own and most instructors have not recommended this technique. After attaching the lining I hemmed the pants with two rows of hand stitching to be sure they were well anchored.

The white layer is the fusible wigam that I used to line the hemline and add weight to the hem so the pants so they would hang well and add strength to the hem.

Finally, here I am in the finished pants. They are really simple, and I think I will be using this pattern quite a bit. But I seem incapable of whipping out a simple pair of pants without doing all kinds of extra work. Pardon the wrinkles. I had been sewing on my next project for a couple of hours by the time this was taken.

May 15, 2005
Thank you, Karl Lagerfeld

Sewing week has ended but I am still in San Francisco and have a computer connection. I also have a little bit of spare time to catch up with everything that has been going on here.

Here is a top that I made the morning I flew out to San Francisco, May 7th. I cut it the week before and had every intention of finishing it before I had a major computer crisis at work and managed to squeeze in no more than 15 minutes of sewing time a day. I woke up early Saturday morning obsessing about the unfinished top and got it made in time to wear that day:

The top is inspired by a Chanel top I saw at Neiman Marcus when I was visiting my Mom in early December. The original was wool jersey with silk tweed at the bottom and on the bottom of the sleeves. What really inspired me is the way it was sewn. The silk and the jersey were just overlapped and stitched with a straight stitch and then fusible interfacing was fused over the seams on front and back to frinish the seams and keep the silk tweed from unravelling.

This is my version. The black knit is a wool/poly jersey and the white/gray and black is a silk suiting; both are from CandleLight Valley Fabrics. I used Kwik Sew 2900, the same pattern I used for a periwinkle top in March. I changed the neckline from having a band at the v-neck to a facing with a triple row of topstitching around the edge to add stability.

I originally wasn’t sure about the finished length and ended up pinning on the fabric and adjusting the length just before sewing. The silk tweed was just stitched to the jersey with a straight stitch. I cut separate pieces for the outside and inside pieces of tweed, using the seam as the hemline. After attaching the tweed to the knit I fused So Sheer on both the inside and outside.

It is hard to see here, but the so sheer reflects the light slightly differently than the knit. The interfacing extends about equally above and below the line between the knit and suiting.

Here is another picture:

This one shows the inside of the hem with the hem facing and another layer of the so sheer.

I like the way this top has turned out. It is attractive and light; the interfacing keeps the silk from ravelling and the idea of having something that is usually part of the inner construction of the garment as a design detail. I think I would use it again. It would be really cute as a short, high hip or shorter top, perhaps a shell, with a short cardigan with the same treatment on the bottom. I would be limited in choice of colors,white or black, but white knit with one of the pretty pastel silk tweeds or white tweeds with brighly colored flecks which are available now would be very pretty.

May 15, 2005
Not Much Knitting..

I am still in San Francisco and not much knitting is happening here. However the sewing week ended last night and I thought I perhaps had more patience and down-time to connect and update you on my progress. The high-speed internet connection is still not working in my room but I perhaps have more time now that I am not rushing up to either the sewing room or to dinner, and thought I could work through the more tedious telephone connection.

Here are photos of Wine and Roses, which is languishing at home on the blocking board, waiting my return:

As you can see, there are many ends to weave in.

I have been thinking about the ends and realize that weaving in will be somewhat tricky because of the blend of fibers, some of which are quite ravelly and will have to be knotted. There might be some way to knot them together and then deal with the ends in a decorative but still flat and neat way. More research will be required when I get home.

I have made a little progress on Aiko, about 3 1/2 inches up into the sleeve shaping. I might finish the front before flying on Tuesday, when I will start the sleeves.

Most of this was knitted yesterday in the van while Dan drove our sewing group around the bay area for some fabric shopping.

Tomorrow I will go to ArtFibers and I will update you on all the wonderful details.

May 15, 2005
Sewing Week

Here I am at the Marines Memorial CLub in San Francisco for Sandra Betzina’s Power Sewing Week. Just the name power sewing is encouraging and I am ready to jump right in and have a lot of fun.

Yesterday was the first day and Sandra had a lot of garments to show us, including her new patterns and some glimpses of things coming in the future. We got fitted and each got to work on our individual projects. I started with the blue linen pants which were giving me problems. I had Sandra draw lines on the pants illustrating where the side seams should have been and I cut them apart and used the pant pieces to draft new pattern pieces for the right side. I still used the same crotch and waist shaping that had been previously perfected by Monica (the pattern drafting expert). In that pant lesson she showed us where to place the grain line, 1/2 inch outside the center of the pant leg, and perpindicular to the crotch line. When I look at the new pants leg they look normal,until I look at the grain line as compared to the waist and side seam shaping. Definitely some bias going on there.

I do hope to have pictures to show you all later. The internet connection in my room is down and I cannot upload my photos through the internet connection in the business center here.

Today I will line the linen pants and then start something else. The pants look really good and I can’t wait to show them.

May 10, 2005