The Enchanted Bobbin

Loulouthi hexies for Bloggers Quilt Festival S'13

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:58:00 +0000

It's been a couple of cycles since I entered a quilt in Amy's Bloggers' Quilt Festival

and I'm delighted to be getting out of the quilt closet once again.

WELCOME!

I can hardly wait to browse through all the lovelies in the various categories and really hope that you enjoy the little quilt I have to share with you, which I'm entering in Amy's new "throw quilt" category.

Loulouthi Hexies

This is one of those projects that took a loooooooong time from start to finish, which makes it especially meaningful.

47" x 54"
hand pieced (English paper piecing)
free motion quilted on my domestic sewing machine

I began this project as part of the Summer 2011 "hexalong" organized by Lynne of Lily's Quilts. I began by experimenting with a variety of hexagon shapes and a small set of Anna Maria Horner's then-new Loulouthi line of fabrics, which I was combining with solids from my stash. One of the delights and challenges of Loulouthi is that it is far, far, far from a "matchy-matchy" kind of line. The line has its own internal scrappiness, with a very wide range of colours and print scale.

My collection of hexies started to grow....

....and grow and grow...

~~until the walls hung with vines~~...

Oops...until it started to feel a little out of control.

Sooooooo....

I reined it in, establishing Kona lagoon and aqua as the only two solids to be used throughout, and also establishing a configuration of 60 degree stars and tumbling blocks as the basic "building block" of my layout.

Once I had this basic unit figured out, it became much easier to move forward and to do some heaxagon experimentation within the basic pattern (as you can see in some of the pieced hexagons that run along the edges of the finished quilt!).

EPP is slow, no doubt about it, but I'd say that most of the time it took to make this quilt top was spent thinking...trying to figure out how to balance the wildness of Loulouthi (and the scrappiness I was really enjoying) with my need for harmony in the layout.

Finally, more than a year later, I had a throw size top I felt happy with!

And now, with the help of my sweet daughter Chloe who was willing to hold the quilt for a few minutes before school today, I have photos of the finished quilt,

which is backed with AMH's "Summer Totem"

and free-motion quilted on my domestic machine in a very relaxed loopy pattern.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Enjoy the quilt festival!

camp memories

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:15:00 +0000

Hellooooooo! Happy spring (she writes, optimistically, as we in Toronto exit from a spell of chilly weather).

I have been meaning to post something about the absolutely wonderful, exhausting, memorable time I had at Brenda's Camp Stitchalot...but somehow the days and now the week/s have slipped by, and others -- like Rossie, Katy (here AND here), and April -- have done a great job capturing its spirit.

The fact that I have next to no photo documentation of the weekend has been one hindrance to blogging about the experience. But the fact that I neglected my e-mail, instagram, flickr, and camera are actually really good signs: I was there, I was having fun, and for at least a little while I wasn't at all concerned about the world beyond. And fortunately for me, my fellow campers (and most especially my dear friend Melinda) did document and now there's a great pool of flickr photos to serve as our collective scrapbook.

The opportunity to focus on sewing, and I mean really focus (as in sew-every-waking-moment-focus) was amazing in itself. For a few days weekend-before-last, I forgot about my research, my writing, my deadlines, my admin responsibilities. I wasn't thinking about what to make for dinner. It was a great treat!

Most memorably, I had the chance to spend time with a group of women doing the same thing, and doing it with humour and enthusiasm. The talent and generosity of both our "counsellors" -- Brenda, Rossie, Katy, Rae, Melody, and Rashida -- and fellow "campers" is really stunning. It was just what I needed and I wish we could do it all over again, monthly!

I admit that my camp spirit waned on Sunday morning as my thoughts turned to the drive home and the very serious work in front on me...I think I even uttered the sacrilege, "It's ONLY fabric!" during a spontaneous scrap swap...what was I thinking?

I repent.

And I hope to go back to camp next spring!

Project Cardigan

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:36:00 +0000

Things are going pretty well around these parts: writing & thinking work is getting done, plans for more such work are in place (which is greatly reassuring)...and a little crafting is underway too, knitting mostly.

Knitting and writing have a longstanding relationship in my life; this is good. Very good.

And in addition to my writing goals for the summer, I now have some very lofty knitting goals too: since (when not on research leave) I live in cardigans and skirts in the fall-winter-spring (and even some of the summer...it's basically my work uniform), I would love to devote myself to some selfish knitting. Cardigan knitting. Let's say, 5 new cardigans for wintertime. Wouldn't that be nice?

PROJECT CARDIGAN! We're off to a good start, I'd say.

(1) The year began with an adaptation of Andi Sutherland's Agatha cardigan, made from a very delicious, earthy, mustardy colour of Cascade 220. It is like a deep ochre with flecks of red in it. I love it and have already worn this cardigan much more than any other sweater I have made for myself in 3 decades of knitting!

(2) And today I finished my version of Jane Richmond's Grace cardigan, made from Tough Love sock yarn by Sweet Georgia, in a yummy shade of pumpkin. I an indebted to another ravelry user for the yarn and colour choice...I really don't feel I can take credit for that at all!

As I detail in my ravelry notes (follow the links above), I chose to make this sweater with some positive rather than negative ease and I lengthened the body and sleeves a wee bit. I like the way the lightweight fabric drapes. More comfy than having it be tight all around, I think.

Buttons for both are from my nice stash of vintage buttons, most of which were bought as a lot from ebay a few years ago. Apparently they had been in storage after a shop had closed down, and all were still on their cards with their (now) outrageously low prices printed on. The buttons I sewed on my grace cardi today are an odd bunch, in 2 shades of tangerine and 1 of pale yellow. If the quirkiness of the buttons gets on my nerves, I'll switch them out at a later date.

There has been other knitting happening too, not all of it selfish, and also some charity sewing, but I'll hold all of that for another post, another time. For now, I'm going to rustle through my yarn stash and plan my 2013 cardigan #3.

Happy stitches to you all!

Agatha cardigan, take 2

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 12:51:00 +0000

I have been a knitter for most of my life and while I have knit many well-loved sweaters for family members, my track record in sweaters made for myself is less-than-stellar. All have been well-knit (if I do say so myself!), but there were always fitting issues....

I'm finally conquering this and I'm thrilled!

In my last post I showed the sad state of Agatha cardigan from this pattern by Andi Sutherland. The design of that sweater is super-cropped and I had somehow deluded myself into thinking that extending the waistline (after the decreases) and including a nice wide band of ribbing would make it right for me. Wrong!

I ripped back to the waist shaping with the plan of shifting straight into hip shaping and a more average hip length. In short: I am really changing the shape and style of this cardigan.

Keeping in mind that I don't yet have a buttonband and I still have a little AGGRESSIVE BLOCKING to do (after 30 years I am finally going to be in the possession of blocking pins and a good mat!!! I have ordered these and these!), the fit is....GOOD!

Excuse the midnight photos.

Most exciting: I know how to make my next sweater a BETTER fit!

I am so grateful to Nic and Liz for introducing me to Amy Herzog, sweater fitting goddess. I linked from her blog to her Craftsy class, which I watched in its entirety this weekend. I have already learned soooo much from Amy and am finally starting to understand what I can do with my sweater knitting to make some very wearable, flattering items for myself. Yaaaayyyyy!

While I wait for my new blocking supplies I am going to start my "test sweater" for Amy's class. I'm using a cardigan pattern called "Tempest" from Knitty Spring 2008, probably with some subtle colour blocking rather than stripes. I have some gorgeous emerald solid and variegated Koigu KPPPM on hand for this project and, most importantly, I have several modifications planned: I'm going to move the back waist shaping from the seams to the 1/3 and 2/3 points in the back piece, I'm going to knit a size based on my upper chest measurement and add 1" worth of vertical bust darts, and I may eliminate the front waist shaping altogether (still mulling that one over). I'm excited to get started....

Finally, I have one other sweater-fitting resource in the queue and that is Ysolda Teague's Little Red in the City, which I mentioned in my last post. My overloaded brain and overloaded calendar can only handle so much at once right now, so I'm going to work through "Tempest" with Amy...and then I'll start to explore Ysolda's lovely, detailed book.

For now, it's on to my green cardigan and some more adventures in pattern modification.

so many balls

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:57:00 +0000

Hello Blogland! It's been a while. I'm happy to report that my mind is on my work, where it really needs to be during this precious research leave (which is almost at an end, sniff sniff)...and there is still a little stitching going on, but nothing like the fury of thread, fabric, and yarn that characterized deep winter.

This little blog serves me very well as a kind of diary of creative efforts and I don't want to abandon it even as I get deeper in my two current book projects. So while my posts may be brief, I'm hoping to keep them going!

I have a few quilt sampler-related things I'd like to write about...soon....My Farmer's Wife quilt top (finished nearly a year ago, egads) is next to be basted and hand-quilted...my Pony Club sampler and Nancy Cabot 1933 sampler both seem like perfect summer projects for me, given the fact that I have soooooo many balls in the air right now.

I love that sampler blocks offer themselves up as small, do-able tasks, objects of challenge and beauty in their own right, each offering a sense of accomplishment on a small scale. Mmmmmm. Sooooooooon.

Meanwhile, I can report a quilt finish -- my second Scrappy Trips Around the World quilt, based on Bonnie Hunter's excellent tutorial. This one is the product of the over-loaded red-pink-orange corner of my fabric stash and is a gift for my good friend Miriam, co-conspirator in the mass conversion of 14-year-old private school girls to the Cult of the Quilt (more on that soon, too). I hope to get some good photos of the finished quilt soon but for now here is some evidence of its existence: Saturday night basting party.

This time around I used 3.5" strips to make my blocks, and this larger size has some REAL advantages. First, everything goes more quickly: each block finishes at 18", so 25 blocks and you have a queen-sized quilt. Yay! The larger squares also show off larger prints; this is great too.

Fabrics: scrappy with a big dose of Denyse Schmidt. The "stems" of each block (for lack of a better term -- these are the lines that criss-cross this quilt) are two of the black and cherry prints from Denyse Schmidt's Greenfield Hill and the backing is yards and yards of "Preservation Peony" from that same line. It looks lush and vaguely decadent. I bound the whole thing in a red and pink polka dot print from Denyse's first line for Joann's (can't recall the name).

On the knitting front, I finished the main part of my Agatha cardigan...but after blocking (and obviosuly before making the buttonband) I remembered why it is that I should avoid cropped styles: my shoulder-to-waistline distance is really small. And then my waistline to hip length is relatively long. So with Agatha's waist shaping (which, in the original pattern, never gets reversed), the bottom of the cardigan just straaaiiiiiins around my tum. Not comfortable and not flattering.

You would think I would know better by now...but no. I just knit along merrily, despite the nagging voice that said, This will not work for you!

Anyway, live and learn.

I have unravelled the body up to the bottom of the waist shaping (see the giant ball and the smile of a woman no longer restricted by a too-small-cardigan?).

I'll pick up the knitting at this point and start hip increases right away. I think a longer cardigan will be nice too...I just have to go back to Romni wools, where I prematurely returned 2 skeins of this yarn, thinking myself to be a buttonband away from a finish. Sigh.

Knitter know thyself. Discovering the timer on my camera is a step in this direction.

It's a hard pill to swallow, but after 30 years of knitting I'm still learning about what will and what will not work for me. In fact, when I started knitting in the early 80s, "fitting" was not an issue that knitters discussed. You followed a pattern, probably one for a sweater with dropped shoulder and boxy pattern pieces. Maybe it's because I'm such an experienced knitter that it's hard to break with habit and think critically about how to tailor a pattern to me. I'm going to work on this.

(EDITED TO ADD: even with this amount of "frogging," I can see that the fit of what's left is not ideal. The bunching on the side under my arm, at the bust, is probably due to the fact that I need an FBA -- more increases at the bust -- while I could probably do with a smaller size for the basic shell. These are exactly my fitting issues in sewn garments.)

From a little online research, it sounds to me like Ysolda Teague's "reference" section in Little Red in the City is probably the best guide to fitting shaped knits. And how can I resist that title, sooooo perfect for me?

Do you have any favourite reference books for shaping and customizing your knitting? This old horse is ready to try some new tricks....

Nancy Cabot, 80 years later

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 15:23:00 +0000

I first heard about early 20th c. quilt block designer "Nancy Cabot" (pen name for Loretta Leitner Rising) about a year ago -- and there is a great flickr group dedicated to exploration of her modern-feeling designs.

But about a week ago I stumbled across a new website -- one that is honouring the 80th anniversary of the debut of Cabot's Chicago Tribune column: Moore About Nancy / the Nancy Cabot sewalong.

Candace is offering daily blocks c. 1933, all of which finish at 6"... and after lurking for a several days I felt inspired to dive in yesterday.

I have a bit of catching up to do, but I have made 4 blocks so far -- using a tiny stash of Aneela Hooey prints and some white Essex linen as focus fabrics.

"star and cross"

"wandering foot"
-- a block I adore, although I *may* need to redo
because my block is 1/4" small all around, boo!

"georgetown circle"

"beautiful star"

...because I really needed to be working on 2 samplers at once (!). Want to join me?

Swoon! Or how I got stuck hand-quilting when I wanted to be on the new machines

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:41:00 +0000

So I was between machines but wanting to move some of my works-in-progress forward...and I decided to hand quilt my Swoon, that quilt top I started a year ago (January 2012) and finally finished over the holidays.

And now I have outlined 7 of the 9 blocks (in cream and grey perle 8 cotton, using the aqua Etchings blueprint yardage I have been saving for the backing, and Hobbs Heirloom wool for the batting). My plan is to echo the shapes with additional lines of quilting and also to stitch along the sashings strips (which are made of the Etchings blueprint in cream...I ran out of my cream solid background fabric!).

But boy am I aching to get on the Juki and the Bernina, my new-to-me toys!

I really, really want to move on to the quilting of my Farmer's Wife sampler, the making of Pony Club blocks, and some garment sewing experiments for myself...and at the same time, my mind is turning to writing, where it really needs to be during this precious research semester....

What a sweet dilemma, huh? I do realize how fortunate I am.

Anyway, I promised my bloggy friends some progress shots of the hand-quilting...I warn you that my personal standards for hand quilting are fairly low, the effect is just soft and homey, nothing prize-worthy here.

But Ramone and Penelope are big, big fans of all this hand-quilting, so I may have ribboned in the Kitty Cat Quilt Show.

Gone mechanical

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 23:52:00 +0000

I love sewing machines...yes, I do. I truly do. This has been one of the discoveries of the past 3 years, as sewing & quilting have become a major part of my life!

This week I made a big change.

I sold my Janome Horizon.

Now I certainly don't want to bad-mouth this machine: it served me really well for 2.5 years, I learned a lot while making 30+ quilts and lots of little girl clothes on it. It has a million and one features. It is loved by many.

But I had the sudden revelation that one machine cannot do it all -- piece, free motion quilt, hem, topstitch -- without being a wee bit...fussy. I asked a lot of the Janome Horizon, making it switch tasks repeatedly, and all she wanted in return was exactly the right thread, exactly the right needle, a perfectly wound bobbin...or else!

It dawned on me that what I really needed were two machines (try explaining that to your family, squeezed into a small urban house): one for quilting and another for garment sewing.

It also dawned on me that I had had it with computerized machines. What I really love are sturdy, heavy, metal, mechanical machines (I spend quite enough time on computers), ones that purr when you oil and clean them, and that aren't mystifying. My 1947 Singer Featherweight taught me that.

And I think it's important that you love your machine(s)!

And now I do, I really do!

I found a new home for the Horizon (wow, there'a ton of kijiji interest in that machine!), and now I have two machines that together cost a lot less than a new Horizon. To some this would look like a step down, but for me it feels like a huge step UP! Here are the details.

Garment (general) sewing

Channelling my great aunt Lucy, who was a fabulous seamstress and used a very simple machine, I focused on finding myself a beautifully-made, tuned-up zig-zagger with at least one decorative stitch, manual buttonholes, needle position adjustment, and I chose a middle-aged Bernina as my all-purpose, garment sewing machine.

Meet the Nova 900, built in 1980.

stitching teeny tiny strips (ties for Frida's dress) was a breeze

My yellow-trim Bernina Nova 900 came with all her original bits and bobs, including a hard-shell case (lined in lime green!) and the manual.

I invested in two more of those fabulous Bernina feet: a 1/4" piecing foot and an invisible zipper foot.

I am a total Bernina convert! (If I were in a position to buy a new Bernina, I would definitely go to Karyn at the workroom: to my mind, the ideal sewing machine dealer is one that is local and who actually loves to sew!)

This is by far the best sewing machine I have ever worked on...and because it's an old machine, it also was far from the most expensive.

I made Frida's birthday dress yesterday and I couldn't be happier with this machine! As an experiment I used the Nova and only the Nova for the whole project -- including seam finishing, which I did with ease with the Overlock foot (470). The Blindstitch foot (016) worked amazingly well for topstitching (who knew?!). I may actually make more clothing simply because I enjoy this machine so much.

Quilt making

(piecing, straight-line quilting, free motion quilting)

For quilting, I went with a straight-stitch, metal, mechanical, semi-industrial workhorse bought from a (recently-discovered) awesome local dealer (Cloverdale Sewing Centre, if you're in the Toronto area!).

Meet the Juki TL-2010Q.

I'm in love with this machine too!

I tested my Juki thoroughly before committing...free-motion quilting with everything from beautiful variegated Aurifil 12 wt to a nasty, twisty, miserable 50 wt thread I bought at Creativ Festival two years ago, and which made my Janome Horizon throw a fit. I fmq'ed with tight crazy curves, swoops, twists, everything nutty you can imagine...and the stitching was PERFECT! No eyelashes at all, perfectly balanced stitches.

Yes pleeeeaaase!

I finished quilting my version of "Scrappy Trips Around the World" as soon as I got the Juki out of her box (ummm, that would be yesterday! I got right on it!).

Working meandering loops with Connecting Threads cotton thread in white, the quilting was an absolute pleasure! By this morning I was making and attaching the binding (using the Juki's included walking foot). Ahhhhhhh!

I am one happy woman today!

And I'm very happy to talk machines, so please let me know which ones make you a happy stitcher.

Eeek! My Ruby Star skirt!

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 15:29:00 +0000

I just saw that my Ruby Star skirt was featured on the blog of Brenda's wonderful shop, Pink Castle Fabrics! Eeeek!

That photo is from last September -- here's the original post, if you'd like to read a wee bit more about the skirt. The sight of bare legs and toes (and my messy back yard...how'd that wheelbarrow end up in my photoshoot, anyway??? I have to have a word with my photographer) makes me long for springtime...especially because this spring I will be travelling with my sweet sewing friend Melinda to Brenda's Camp Stitchalot! Double eeeek! And Ms. Ruby Star herself, Melody Miller, will be there!

Phew, time to calm down and get a start on this rainy Sunday.

A final little note: I am feeling a bit destabilized by the fact that my sewing machine is getting serviced right now (I have been sewing a lot since the fall semester ended)...soon it will be purring happily again. But in fact I am considering selling it in favour of an all-metal, non-computerized workhorse, maybe-just-maybe the Juki 2010q (I'm going to test drive one soon), which may be better suited to what I really do on the machine than is the fabulous Horizon I currently have. More on all this soon, so many details to contemplate and to resolve....Of course, I always welcome your advice and words of wisdom!

In the meantime I am going to dream of sunny days, smooth stitching, a tidy craft cupboard and a clean desk....

Best wishes for a very happy, peaceful day.

2012, the year in stitches

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 13:42:00 +0000

Phew, I'm back! I have had the hardest time contemplating a blog post: the past 6 weeks have been very hectic, both while wrapping up the semester (trying to tie up loose ends before I start a research leave in January) and then in a frenzy of crafting activity once work let up.

But first and foremost: happy holidays and happy new year to you all!

I have typed and retyped and finally deleted my attempts to say something profound and somehow affirming about the way 2012 has ended. It seems an impossible task, in the face of violence that was both almost incomprehensible and yet so tragically real. I am so grateful for my family, my life, my city...and my heart goes out to those who have suffered so greatly.

On a lighter note, I did a little sewing this year and it brought me great pleasure -- as have my sewing friends, near and far. It's hard to imagine my life without stitches and without my quilt-world friends!

Without further ado, here are quilty objects that I brought to completion this year -- 15 quilts, ranging from crib- to king-sized; 3 hand-quilted pillows; a tote featuring mini-English paper piecing; and a wool suiting pincushion also EPP'ed.

Here are some other odds and ends -- including some knitting, some garment sewing, and some things not completely finished (like my Farmer's Wife sampler, which I finished piecing but have not yet quilted) or very much "in progress" (like my Ruby Star-inspired Pony Club sampler, which I am enjoying immensely).

There are lots of odds and ends missing from those mosaics -- more dresses and simple skirts for Frida, a bunch of cowls and scarves knit this fall for Chloe and me, for example -- but it's fun to take stock of all this. And one project has squeaked in under the wire, leaping from the WIP pile to the "quilt me" pile just yesterday:

Yes, that's a "swoon" quilt, which I had 2/3 pieced last spring...but which sat in a closet until a couple of days ago. It feels great to have this done (or at least fully pieced).

I have learned so much through my sewing adventures this year and there is so much more I want to learn and to try in the coming year!

I am really looking forward to 2013, excited about the two projects on my desk (one a monograph that will bring to completion research I started several years before Frida was born, another a book that promises to be visually beautiful and non-academic).

I hope the new year brings us all joy, peace, happiness, and creativity. xx

Pony Club obsession

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends! I miss U.S. Thanksgiving -- it is a much bigger holiday there than it is in Canada (where we celebrate over a month earlier) and I always enjoyed it.

Anyway, onwards....I am a blogger of little motivation these days, at least where writing posts is concerned...overworked and overtired, but thankful for the good things in my life and in the world.

I have found lots of happiness this week stitching up more blocks for the Farmer's Wife Pony Club sampler. This project continues to obsess me (along with a couple of knitting projects -- but that's a topic for another day). And I'm approaching the making of blocks as I did with the Farmer's Wife project: gathering templates, selecting and cutting fabrics for a few blocks at a time, and then stitiching those into blocks when I can find another window of time.

Through a very busy week I have somehow added 15 blocks to the stack, bringing my total to 22. I took this group shot a couple of days ago, when I was at 21 blocks. It's all a blur, really; I don't know how I pieced that much this week.

It just happened...somehow...a direct reflection of my enthusiasm for this project, which ranks currently as my all-time favourite.

I am so obsessed that I have been repeatedly supplementing ("enhancing") my Pony Club stash (in contrast to the FW quilt, which drew exclusively from fabrics I already owned -- up to the last dozen blocks or so, when I bought some gingham!).

So I must admit that Stash Love -- my vow to work with stashed lovelies only, up to Valentine's Day -- is being renegotiated. Blame my Pony Club infatuation. Happily it is bringing me lots of joy.

A quick shout out to those of you with overflowing scrap bins:

If you happen to have any Ruby Star or other Kokka scraps looking for a home, I would be delighted to swap for fabric from my own stash. I am especially keen on finding a couple of those Ruby Star ladies to fussy-cut for a future Pony Club block....

Okay, so without any more delay, here are this week's blocks and a group shot from a couple of days ago -- names of individual blocks are included in my flickr photostream (click on a photo), but I feel that for now I have said quite enough. A very happy evening to you all!

Pony Club

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 04:41:00 +0000

I have not yet basted my Farmer's Wife sampler quilt (although I have a quilting plan, and will get to this project soon), but I have had another sampler project brewing for a while now. Last weekend I got started, made seven blocks in two days (I was inspired!) -- and I want to post about the project before any more time slips by.

I am making 8" blocks (finished) from Laurie Hird's second book The Farmer's Wife Pony Club Sampler.

I used (foundation) paper-piecing for the first block, Dakota Star, but worked from templates for the remaining ones.

Dakota Star, foundation paper pieced

A Dandy

A Beauty

Gold Nuggets

Alabama

Gretchen

Handy Andy

My palette is drawn largely from Ruby Star prints and assorted Echino fabrics, combined with Denyse Schmidt's "Chicopee" and some other odds and ends.

I couldn't tell you why this book is so much harder to find than Hird's first Farmer's Wife sampler book.

As a side note, I just discovered that spiral-bound copies of Pony Club are available through Laurie's website and on the US Amazon site. Mine has a conventional binding, but I think spiral binding is a great idea for a book like this!

I found a copy of Pony Club at the Creativ Festival last month, and now that I'm working on the blocks I can report that I love it. The blocks are intricate, many are challenging, but I am thrilled to be working (mostly) with templates again.

Is that odd? Templates!!!! But it's true: I love cutting the wee little pieces and fitting them together. I love the lack of measurement and rulers. As mentioned in the book, pre-rotary cutter quilt block designs weren't tied to easy measurements -- any odd fraction of an inch is do-able when working with templates . Of course, I'm neither a luddite nor a masochist: I print the templates from my computer onto card stock, cut them out (with scissors) and then rotary cut freehand around the templates.

I actually have a few more blocks done than I'm able to share today (12 at the time of writing). I am simply behind on documentation, but do want to say that I'm sooooo happy to be working on a sampler again -- and that I can recommend Pony Club! It has been well worth the wait and the search.

jiggety jig

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 01:12:00 +0000

I'm home again, energized by a great conference in New Orleans but also feeling slightly swamped...have been on the computer ALL DAY, no time to sweat it out with Kelly (and we do need some time together, after some NOLA culinary indulgences)...until I am saved by Miss F's passionate desire to watch Lady and the Tramp, clearing some time for exercise and a 5 p.m. shower. Phew.

Quickly then: for those who contributed so generously to my research for my conference paper, I will have a summary and report for you later this week. I'm excited to share my findings with you!

For the craft-photo-deprived, a few tiny things. First, I revived a 60-degree diamond EPP project in order to have a portable piecing project for the plane (try saying that five times quickly!).

Destined to be a dolly quilt, perhaps? Who knows. All I do know is that I couldn't be four days without some stitchery!

One of the sweetest pleasures of this trip was having the opportunity to finally meet my online friend Kaelin, in person. We met when planning the Bee (A Little Bit) Japanese VQB over 2 years ago. She is just as sweet, funny, and smart in person as I knew she would be.

I have been experimenting with the "Christmas balls" from Arne & Carlos's wonderful book, and gave this one to Kaelin as a wee gift.

And here on my kitchen counter today are a few more balls -- at varying degrees of completion, and in varying size and shape...I'm still finetuning, and there will be more of these to come. They're fun and quick and very satisfying to make.

Finally, speaking of gifts, I returned home from a busy day at work yesterday to find a Royal Mail parcel waiting on my doorstep -- and knew it had to be my tote from a mystery partner in the Mouthy Stutches swap. I sent out my own creation over a week ago, and I know it hasn't reached my own secret partner yet. Here's what I made, following the brief of the Mouthy Stitches 2 tote swap, which had us making a simple reversible bag:

And here's the little bundle of delights that arrived yesterday...all the way from sweet and talented Jo (of the blog Quilty Doings by Emily's Mum) in Scotland:

Inside this sweet package was the most beautiful tote, featuring tiny little hexies in retro repro feedsack prints (Jo has me figured out!!!!), very cool semi-circles of quilting, a lovely lining/reverse side of Amy Butler Lark, a giant red button securing a handy pocket...I am sooooo lucky!

And do you see that little key fob? Yes, that's a double-decker attached with a union jack, with more tiny hexies on the reverse. Jo, you outdid yourself...and I am so touched that you made all this for me...!

Finally, I need to come clean and admit that I broke my Stash Love commitment and bought some fat quarters for a new sampler project. So while I strayed from my fabric diet, I did so with a very distinct purpose in view. I tossed my Farmer's Wife scraps into a bag and now my little storage container is a little sea of richer tones (including plum and mustard, notably absent from my FW quilt top), taking various Ruby Star prints as a launching pad. More on that soon, I hope.

Well, that feels better. I have had a bit of a blogging block, feeling like there is simply too much and also nothing to say...do you know what I mean? Anyway, I guess I am back in the swing of things...now I just need to bring some quilt projects to completion while I get started on others.

Bye for now.

living offline

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 15:55:00 +0000

I feel like I should apologize for my absence from this online space...but also feel a little strange doing so, since that implies that there are readers out there waiting in eager anticipation of what I might sew and write next (!). I doubt very highly that this is the case...!

But still, there has been a lot happening here that I have not documented because I simply haven't had much time to blog. Work is keeping me extremely busy and has also required a lot of time online (that's what happens, I guess, when you choose to write about craft and social networking -- it starts to feel like work rather than play). I am finding myself cherishing every spare moment and using that time away from the computer....

So I'll be back soon, sharing some projects as per usual. But for now, I am going to use the remains of my self-imposed 30 minute break from grading to knit. Oh, on that note maybe I can offer you some crafty eye candy, indirectly.

I'm playing with this delightful book, written by two men I'd love to hang out with (they're being added to the list of invitees to my hypothetical Very Fun Party, a game my husband and I have been playing for years) -- but I suppose I will need to learn Norwegian first:

You can fall in love with them too: watch them here and here.

a magical journey to Sultan's Fine Fabrics

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Yesterday my buddy Melinda and I went on the most thrilling little excursion. When we came back to earth (and back to my house) all we wanted to do was wrap ourselves in fine wool coating and grin like mad women. So we did that for a little while.

Who's to blame for this transformation of two otherwise rational, professional women (with acknowledged weaknesses for textiles)? That would be Sultan.

Do you know Sultan's Fine Fabrics?

If not, then OH MY GOODNESS are you in for a treat! He does mail order, but after a transcendental fabric shopping experience there yesterday I have to recommend -- nay, URGE you to visit in the flesh if you are in the Toronto area.

Melinda and I recently joined Gertie's coat sewalong -- we're still waiting for our copies of the pattern (Butterick 5824) to arrive so we can catch up and work on our fitting muslins -- and were inspired by Karyn's glowing report on Sultan's Fine Fabrics to visit the shop ourselves.

Once upon a time, you would have expected to find this shop down around Queen and Portland, in the "fashion district" (before it was called the fashion district...and when it really was a garment district, through and through). But Sultan's is in the north-west part of Toronto, in a semi-industrial area -- but honestly it's not really much of a journey from downtown (and of course quite readily accessible from the 401), and totally, completely worthwhile.

view of one section of fine shirting fabric

view from one section of wool coating fabric

As soon as we walked in I recognized Sultan: I had bought a couple of exquisite yards of Italian shirting fabric from him at the Creativ Festival two years ago! (Which reminds me that I owe my hubby a shirt...that's a topic for another post!).

But Sultan's shop is another experience altogether, an enormous space filled with wool, silk, cotton and other natural fibre fabrics -- so much more than I saw at Creativ Festival, and of a quality that (intellectually) I knew existed but which I had never EVER been able to experience firsthand. This was like being transported to another planet.

The fact that Melinda and I were looking for relatively inexpensive wool coating didn't stop Sultan from showing us the full range of goods he carries, and for this I am so grateful. He has a true passion for fine fabric and recognized in us an extremely appreciative audience. The fact that we clearly don't have the means to purchase cashmere and vicuna wasn't reflected in the customer service he offered -- which was truly amazing!

We took two sweet hours to select our coating and lining fabrics and after oohhing and ahhhing over all sorts of tweeds and plaids and houndstooth and herringbone, we both ended up with bright solid colours -- anticipating that our coats will be ready by late winter/spring, when a splash of brightness will be appreciated.

a very patient Sultan and Melinda (like me, she was drunk on fabric)

As if the journey to selection of coating and lining wasn't enough, Sultan steered us to the remnants tables...and oh lordy, I'm having trouble finding words to describe just how overwhelmingly lovely these tables are. All the remnants were at least a yard, plenty for a beautiful wool skirt...and a few of them managed to wiggle their way into our respective loot bags. Sighhhhhhh.

Melinda's goodies on the left and mine on the right

remnants!!!!

Finally, a little Stash Love sidenote: I haven't bought any quilting fabric, not a bit, and I'm sticking to that. But garment fabric? Well, that's something else.

If you do go to Sultan's, please say hello from Melinda and me!

xo

worlds collide!

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 01:49:00 +0000

It feels a little awkward, bringing my work life and my stitching together, but here it goes....

As some of you know, I am an academic -- a folklorist (I was fortunate enough to do my graduate work at the Folklore Institute, Indiana University) and, for the past 12 years, an English professor.

For the past 3 years I also have been obsessed with quilting. That obsession started with the modern quilts I stumbled across online, so totally different from the kinds of quilts to which I had been exposed before, and so inspiring.

Quite a while before I started this blog, I began to get a sense of how supportive and encouraging the online modern quilting community could be, and this happened largely through flickr. First I lurked, then I got an account, then I started commenting on photos and entering discussions, then I started building a contact list, then I found the Fresh Modern Quilts group, then I discovered the world of VQBs...and here I am, a bit more experienced and with more quilty ideas than I could possibly stitch up -- even if I were independently wealthy and child-free!

For those of you who have also tapped into flickr as a resource for creative inspiration and social networking with other quilters, it may come as a surprise to learn that those scholars who study quilting and quilters really aren't aware of the depth and breadth of this phenomenon.

That's what I'm seeking to remedy, and --

I NEED YOUR HELP!

My "read" on how modern quilters use flickr is only part of the story, and I would love to include the work and words of others. I have invited discussion on flickr (please follow the link if you have a moment!), where I have also linked a project description/participation consent info letter which I ask that you read to get a better sense of what I'm up to in this project I'm calling "Stitched Together: Flickr and Social Networking Among Modern Quilters."

I would love to hear from you -- on flickr, in blog comments, by e-mail or flickr mail...whether you have a general comment to make or a story to tell. Please just take a look at the project description and then let it flow....

Thanks and happy stitching.

odds and ends

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 12:34:00 +0000

Getting the semester started, home life reconfigured (now estrogen-heavy, with my son off at university), and a massive manuscript ready for typesetting has left very little time for crafting and none for blogging...but I have worked in a few stitches here and there. Here are my various odds and ends.

First the ends, since I have little in the way of finished objects to reprot. Earlier in the week, my extra yard of Melody Miller's orange retro clocks arrived (thank you, dear Brenda @ Pink Castle!!). That very day I prewashed and finished cutting pattern pieces from view A of a stashed skirt pattern, McCall's 6290 (but with no pockets or ornamentation).

I hadn't had my sewing machine out for at least 3 weeks, so it felt great to stitch up this very simple skirt.

The pattern is more flared/A-line that it looked from the envelope...didn't like that much, so I tapered at the centre back seam by about 1.5". Kindly ignore the chain-link, broken concrete, and plastic wheelbarrow.....

The skirt doesn't really swing up at the back, despite how it looks below...but as you can see, the Melody Miller linen-cotton does soften up a lot when washed, and wrinkles a bit. A bit imperfect (as always), but love it!

In this photo, it looks like our little knight is giving it a thumbs-up too. At least, I think that's what he's doing....

One more finish: my "diagonal lace" socks, very comfy but a little floppy.

I started a second pair from Wendy Johnson's book, this one is "trilobite"... and this time I'm going down to 1.5 mm needles. I knit 'em fast and loose, dontcha know.

Now the odds:

I have made tiny, tiny bits of progress on current English paper piecing projects, first mermaid stars, where I appliqued one and just surrounded myself with the others to brighten up a long work day, many hours spent alone at the computer.

I am inching my way towards the finish line with the Loulouthi hexies...no photo available right now, but soon.

I really miss being at the sewing machine.

Remedy: over the past two weeks I jave committed myself to a couple of projects with schedules and deadlines...and that should help to turn things around:)

There's Mouthy Stitches 2, a swap in which we're making our secret partners an interpretation of a reversible totebag pattern. Shhhh, can't say much about this....

And then there's quite a serious gament sewing project: Gertie's coat sewalong, which uses her newly-released pattern for Butterick:

My sewing friend Melinda and I will be making our coats together, which will help immensely! Our patterns are on order and we're already dreaming about wool and lining combinations...sure to bring about another garment-sewing deviation from my Stash Love pledge, but with the incredible displays of self-restraint I have exhibited this month (in the face of massive sales at some favourite fabric shops), I'm holding my head high.

xo

Stash Love misstep

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 18:30:00 +0000

A short post, and a confession: I am buying one yard of fabric. Booo, hisssss...I know. But wait, please let me explain!!!

Last week, after the Kokka stash success that resulted in a new skirt for Frida, I had the impulse to make myself a skirt from a Japanese linen-cotton stashed fabric. It struck me that Melody Miller's retro clocks would make a pretty nifty garment, and I had one yard of clocks in orange in the stash. Perfect! I dug up a basic skirt pattern and dived in...without much planning, as it turned out.

The result was a front piece cut followed by the realization that I didn't have enough to cut the corresponding back piece. Oops.

Well, today I decided to let myself off the hook and buy another yard of this fabric, despite my vow of stash fidelity. (Or maybe this is a case in which stash fidelity requires a small purchase? I'll let you be the judge.)

Melody Miller's orange clock fabric is on sale at Pink Castle and, until the end of the day, there's also a 20% off coupon. No, I'm not going to link the website and the coupon because I am not going to be an enabler! Jeesh. My transgression is my own burden to bear -- go ahead and be virtuous today, without me!

I'll be back on the wagon tomorrow.

And shortly after that I will also be clad in a very cool skirt. See you on the other side.

my love affair with English paper piecing

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 13:41:00 +0000

I love EPP (English paper piecing), mostly because it is relaxing and doesn't require great cutting accuracy (the paper pieces offer the precision) -- very appealing all around. The problem with this romance is that it has (so far) been mostly about process and has produced few finished objects.

I was all hopped up on little hexagons about 18 months ago, when I bought a massive bag of 1200 precut hexies. Then I was into 60 degree diamonds, and pieced a lot of those too. And then last summer I joined Lynne and Gayle's "hexalong" and started working (very enthusiastically, I might add) with Loulouthi and a couple of Kona solids -- working both with precut paper pieces (from PaperPieces.com) and ones I had made myself.

Process-oriented posts from last year are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

That project stalled by Fall and was left in a basket all winter, but I did pick it up again just last month -- and now it is quite close to being done. Today it looks like this:

I'm quite please with how this is shaping up...and the fact that it is going to be a finished object in the not-too-distant future.

In other EPP news: I am planning a winter 2013 workshop with my good friend Miriam, the new head of Art at a well-known private girls' school in Toronto. We're both very excited about it, more details in a few months...but for now I am getting geared up to do some test "rose star" blocks and to that end I ordered some new supplies from PaperPieces.com.

I am particularly fond of the thick acrylic cutting templates, which are new to me -- and fabulously helpful when fussy-cutting. I lovelovelove these things...with an ardour that must seem strange to a non-quilter, but which some of you might understand :) So let's take one more look at these, shall we?

Finally, I have been playing with my new toys to make some stars (rose stars without one set of outer pieces) for a winter quilt project I started last year (is there a theme here?). This one is destined for Frida's full-sized bed, where she has a couple of very sweet quilts but none that is quite big enough to overhang the sides and keep out the chilly draughts. I shaped the project around 6 yards of a gorgeous Anna Maria Horner flannel from a fabric.com sale, and while the back is lovely (long expanses of the Good Folks flannel combined with some pink and lilac solids), the front was a bit too simple to keep my interest.

A few recent developments have re-ignited interest in this project: first and foremost, Frida is now obsessed with mermaids -- which is good news for my Mendocino stash (a set of FQs bought a couple of years ago). And these look lovely with the Good Folks, as it turns out. Yippee! Here's what I'm up to now: mermaid stars to be appliqued to Frida's winter quilt.

I am so happy with this project now, and it's great to know that even with the severe limits on my sewing time right now I can still have some fabric fun.

I do love English paper piecing!

I hope all my friends in the U.S. and here in Canada are enjoying the long weekend. Best to all.

moving on, moving out

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 13:28:00 +0000

I have been checked out of blogland for a little while now, and doing very little sewing -- except for a quick little bias-cut skirt made from raspberry Hope Valley "thistle leaf" for my dear friend Freda (yes, I have multiple Fri/edas in my life, as I do Melindas!). Other than that hour of sewing, my machine have seen very little action.

The semester is gearing up, I have been on campus to do advising over the past two weeks (the university where I work, for those who don't know me well, is a 75-minute commute from my home...and with bad weather or any kind of slow-down on the highway, it can easily take me two hours to make the drive).

It was also my birthday this week and my sweet husband arranged for us to overnight on Algonquin island, which is one of the Toronto islands -- just a ferry ride from the financial core of Canada, but also a million miles away from the hustle and bustle of our city. We rode our bikes to the docks, took long rides on the island -- illuminated by the full moon, drank a bottle of champagne at lakeside, and had another great bike ride the next morning.

good morning, Toronto!

Once we were back home, we thrown back into the madness that has been brewing (of necessity) chez nous -- prep for my son's move to university. Eek.

We have a very small house for a family of 5, so we can't maintain a room for Jackson while he's at university; instead, he has had to sort through a lifetime of hoarding, mountains of artwork and computer gear, trying to figure out what he wants/needs in residence, what he would like to store back at home, and what can be tossed or given away. I have been pretty concerned about his (in)ability to do all this and do it quickly, but he has definitely risen to the challenge.

I will admit that I lost my mommy-cool at one point yesterday, but he is in good shape today -- and now we have very full garbage bins, a few bags of giveaways, and a mountain of stuff in our living room, ready to pack into the car.

And finally, although sewing time has been scarce, I have been dreaming about future projects in fabric and paper, poring over Heather Ross Prints, which is better than I expected, full of project ideas and crafting instructions. Little Frida adores it.

I also have been knitting a bit -- truly enjoying it again after a long hiatus. I don't think I want to tackle a large knitting project this Fall: I can't even start to count the number of sweaters I have knit over the past 30 years, and although all were well-made, relatively few were very well-used...many felt more like crafting challenges, intellectual projects -- if that makes any sense -- than processes that produced useful items. I just don't feel like heading down that road again, at least not right now. So for now, I'm back to making socks!

These are the "diagonal lace" pattern from Wendy Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up, made from yarn I have had in my stash for over five years. Stash Love, yarn edition :)

And now it's time to rouse The Boy so he can finish packing up his room. Best to all!

fancy work

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:35:00 +0000

Still a bit under the weather, so I'll be brief.

Sewing: I did a little stitching on my Loulouthi hexies last night before bed. That project is coming along really nicely now, almost done...if not for that one row that really needs to be moved....Photos soon.

But wait, there are photos: before I got sick I made a little skirt for Frida, the girl who (generally) wears dresses only. I really wanted to use my Oliver + S Music Class pattern, which Frida approved of in the abstract, and I also wanted to finally use up (most) of a couple of Echino prints which had been stashed for a couple of years. I didn't have enough of one single print to cut the pieces for the whole skirt, but fortunately they coordinate and this pattern has side panels that are just asking for special treatment. So here it is....

She's a happy girl, as you can see.

And as for Washington Square? Done.

I'm happy not to know the critical literature on this novel; it's nice to have a break from that larger discursive realm sometimes, especially when I'm reading to pass the time while sick. Here's my take on it, this novel that feels more like an extended sketch, so small in its scope but with characters so well drawn: ultimately we can admire Catherine and only Catherine, as obstinate and plain as she may be described to be, she also achieves a kind of autonomy. Those around her are revealed to be such fools, all so narcissistic in their individual ways.

The novel ends with Catherine "picking up her morsel of fancy-work," which I'm sure many critics have taken as indicative of both her conventional femininity and a certain pathos and futility. I know that's how most of my students would read it. But (without spoiling the ending) I would like to think that James has a more nuanced understanding of what a woman's needlework might signify. And it's lovely to have an audience for whom I don't need to spell that out...!

State of the Stash, August 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:47:00 +0000

Thanks very much for the words of encouragement about my vow of stash fidelity! I feel especially motivated right now...having just brought a new-to-me piece of sewing equipment into the house: my early birthday present was a secondhand Janome Coverpro 1000CP. If I wasn't feeling under the weather today I would be making sample hems all day long...but I'm not good for much other than sipping tea, reading, napping and (now) blogging. Soon enough....

Anyway, in what now looks like a burst of pre-cold energy yesterday I organized my fabric cupboard to make room for the new machine. Here is the State of the Stash, August 2012.

With the exception of long cuts (neutral solids and also prints I can use for backings), my quilting fabric is in a 3-doored Ikea cabinet in the dining room. My machines are there too, although the 1947 Featherweight (the black box propping the door open in this photo) currently lives on the floor. The Coverpro is the upper Janome in this picture:

Solids, a few special collections (Birds and Bees, Habitat, Sherbert Pips, AMH voile, My Folklore, Far Far Away II) and dec weight odds and ends are on the shelves above the serger in the right hand cabinet. As you can see, I have plenty to work with over the next six months.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that there's also a rubbermaid container full of garment fabric (including cotton knits) in our laundry room and a couple of cuts of shirting cotton in my clothes closet. It's a lot. You perhaps can see why I want to stop the inflow for a while and just create from what I have!

All of this leads me to Stash Love dilemma #1: what if it's free????!!!!

The kind woman from whom I bought the Coverpro gave me about 20 pounds worth of two-way stretch fabric -- about half of it stretch cotton, the rest synthetics including some stretch lace, but the high-quality stuff that dancewear is made from (she had been making dancewear with the coverstitch machine). She also gave me loads of thread (wooly nylon and metallic) and some elastic.

Zoinks! What was I to do?

Of course, I accepted it. Do you think I'm crazy?

I'm going to figure that this kind of opportunity cannot be overlooked. And although I had to wash it all twice (even three times in a couple of cases) to get rid of garage-storage mustiness, there's hundreds of dollars worth of fabric here (and one large cut of dark red fabric was still hanging outside at the time I took this photo). This is all well worth it.

Finally, knowing that I have to look at my Stash Love button for at least the next six months and also that one or two of you might actually want to join me on this journey -- please do! I can promise lots of encouragement from this end! -- I gave button-making another try.

There's less info now (the expiry date of Valentine's Day is no longer there), but at least it's legible!

Back to a pot of lemongrass tea and Henry James's Washington Square.

Stash Love

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 02:22:00 +0000

I am taking a pledge.

It is going to be a little tough, but also worthwhile: I am going to play with my stash -- and only my stash -- for the next six months.

No new fabric purchases for me...until Valentine's day 2013.

Notions and batting...yes, these need to be replenished, I am under no illusions about that. But I have loads of fabric for making both garments and quilts and I want to use them! I want to start to see some clear space in my fabric cabinet.

Of course, the fact that this year we will have a child in full-time daycare and one in university makes a "fabric diet" an appealing prospect too. But I am going to focus on the positive: I am not denying myself new fabric, I am committing to make nice-nice with the beautiful fabric I have.

I don't expect anyone else to jump on board -- please keep having fun with your fabric collecting, and do tell me about it....But if you happen to be in a similar boat to mine, with a strong desire to explore what you have without taking on any new cargo (I am resisting the image of a sinking ship...there's no shame here), then please feel free to grab my very amateurish little button (there's a code to copy off in the left hand bar...but perhaps I should try to improve this little button since I'll be looking at it for the next 6 months. Why are blog buttons so tricky to make, anyway?! Hrumph).

I'll certainly be happy to provide lots of encouragement to any fellow voyagers -- and could use some myself.

little dresses

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 14:47:00 +0000

Miss Frida has remained pretty adamant about dresses being the only appropriate garb for her. We have managed to get her into shorts and tee shirts a few times this summer, but dresses are definitely her apparel of choice.

She recently outgrew a few dresses and has also had some moments of rebellion against the ModKids Frida dresses that dominate her homemade wardrobe ("No dresses with bows!"). Oh well. Most of her MK Fridas are getting too small anyway, so I suppose it's time to move on. (I have one more Frida cut out, from a lovely Anna Maria Horner fabric, but I'll try to adapt it so it is a bit different from the usual MKF.)

Looking through my patterns I had the sudden revelation that a few of my Oliver + S patterns -- and they're ones that I had not touched -- top off at size 4. SO...it's now or never (now or wait for granddaughters!). I cut out fabric for an Ice Cream dress and a Hopscotch dress, straight away.

Fabrics were Frida's choice, which means PINK, lots and lots of pink.

Since I am officially on holiday, I took all day yesterday as a garment sewing day, using patterns and fabric from my stash (which is extremely satisying). I finished off both dresses...and in the evening I made a pretty slinky pencil skirt (from Sew U Home Stretch) for myself. If it's tricky to get Frida to model a dress (she's wiggly and impatient), it's going to be even harder to get one of me in my new skirt. But maybe I'll give it a try.

For now, here is Frida in her Ice Cream dress, slightly disappointed that it didn't come with an ice cream cone as pictured on the pattern envelope, but very happy nevertheless.

She wanted to try this one on right away!

And we are both especially pleased with the Hopscotch dress, which I made on my (relatively new) Janome serger (I even used wooly nylon in one of the loopers, I was feeling adventurous!). This dress is a big success and super comfy in a Michael Miller cotton interlock.

She wore this dress at dinner last night, to the playground, she slept in it AND she's wearing it at school today. I think she likes it!

I don't own the larger size range of Hopscotch, so I'm going to whip up more size 4s while she can still get use out of them.

I have (or had) a fair collection of interlock, from a sale last year on Fabric.com, so this morning I cut out pieces for two more short sleeved dresses and two long sleeved ones.

I hope no one is alarmed by the sight of an Oliver + S pattern cut (rather than traced): I'm using the largest size and these pattern pieces have no size-line overlaps, so there's nothing sacrificed here. I had to trace the Ice Cream dress pattern pieces, and you know what? I really don't enjoy tracing patterns...so I'll cut this corner where I can.

The Hopscotch dress is a great, easy pattern -- I recommend it highly! If you have access to a serger, that's great, but since knits don't fray you really could make this on a regular domestic sewing machine with a stretch or small zig-zag stitch. Liesl provides some "sewing with knits" guidance in her instructions, and adresses both types of machine.

I have to admit that all this sewing with knits is making me hungry for a coverstitch machine; the hems you can make on the Janome 1000CPX look so amazing (yes, I watch youtube videos of people sewing hems...doesn't everyone?).

The Hopscotch skirt is adorable...if one were sewing for a little girl who would consider wearing something other than dresses. Frida has been known to wear a skirt and top on occasion, so I might just have to make one and see if I wrestle her into it....

North Star, free motion quilting experiments, and a long overdue review of Connecting Threads cotton quilting thread

noreply@blogger.com (Prof. S (the enchanted bobbin)) — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 13:57:00 +0000

As July turned to August I started to take stock of what I have stitched up this summer, and what I still wanted to get done. It may not all get done, that is fine, but still it felt good to enumerate the projects that are in progress and the ones that I'm itching to finish.

One of those was "North Star," my quilt top from the Made in Cherry QAL last January.

I pieced this very quickly over the course of two evenings, and didn't do a brilliant job of it despite the fact that it really is a incredibly straightforward project. Little inconsistencies in the piecing would haunt me when it came to quilting, and I ended up with a few puckers in the front of the quilt (something that usually bothers me, and that I avoid at all costs) but I was undaunted this week. What I wanted most of all was to get this quilt top out of the closet and into full, usable quilt form.

I didn't have a destination in mind for this project, so I used this as an opportunity

(1) to keep using up things from the stash and
(2) to experiment.

The batting: at present, I have three queen sized wool battings on hand -- and I am pretty stubborn about using wool only for really special projects. This to my mind was not one of them. In the realm of cotton batting all I had were scraps...a mountain of scraps of Hobbs Heirloom cotton. So I set to piecing a Frankenbatting of scraps.

I'm happy to report that using the techniques shown by Jeanne Harwood in this video I was able to use my remaining Heat Press batting tape much more successfully! I'm really pleased with this product, although I didn't have quite enough for the whole batting-piecing-task (I think I used about 10 scraps of various sizes) and had to zig-zag stitch the remaining seams when I ran out. But this tape is something I am definitely going to restock.

As for the quilting: I have a long story to tell below, so feel free to skip over it...but it may be helpful to someone out there, so I will get to it. First here are some shots of North Star, quilted and bound. I was inspired to experiment a bit by Free Motion Quilting with Angela Walters. I love this book!!

I started with an orange peel design in the star (using the dimensions of each square as guide lines), and then divided the four solid blue triangles into sections with some straight line quilting. I filled them with "back-and-forth," "double loop swirls" and an odd feathery-fan thing of my own divising. The corner blue squares feature more double loop swirls.

Frida and I both love the yardage of Holiday Happy Gnoma on the back of this quilt!

So here's my FMQ saga:

When I started this quilting adventure 2 1/2 years ago, free motion quilting was of the things that drew me in right away.

I moved from my little Kenmore machine to a Janome Horizon two years ago (I had the Horizon on layaway from the time it was released here in Canada until September 2010) -- and I had some FMQing successes right away with that machine.

But then I had a run of trouble with it last winter, when the bobbin case started to rebel, popping out of place, jamming, causing endless thread breakage. It was terribly frustrating, and I ended up bringing it in for a repair (still under warrantee) and a full cleaning. It was like a new machine when I got it back, but I didn't do much FMQing with it until this summer.

And then it started acting up again, the top thread breaking repeatedly and just not making the prettiest of stitches. One day while I was working on the border of Bear Pa it jammed. I couldn't sew at all.

I was really panicked and depressed, wondering if maybe I had made a big mistake buying this machine. Luckily for me, when I called my shop I found that the woman on duty that day was herself a tech and seamstress. Bleary-eyed and anxious, I drove across town feeling pretty certain that my machine was going to have to go in for another repair.

Long story made short(er): the problem was solved by replacing my needle. My needle! I was stunned. I had been using a Schmetz topstitch needle, I believe it was a 14 (maybe a 16) because I had read somewhere that the larger eye of those topstitch needles would help avoid thread breakage. But it was actually messing up my machine.

Now that Ms. Horizon and I understand each other better, I am getting some really great results.

I used blue thread in the needle and white thread in the bobbin here -- and was really happy with my tension balance...finally...no blue showing through on the back! Hooray!

So one thing I have learned about the Janome Horizon is that it works beautifully if treated just so -- it is a bit finicky. Now that I am closer to understanding its particularities, it is quilting like a dream. Here's what she wants from me to be on her best behaviour:

*fresh needles, and the right ones. I am now using Janome "red tip" needles for quilting with a thick-ish cotton thread like Connecting Threads brand. This is what my tech recommended, and it is the only needle I am going to use from now on. (For quilting with fine threads like Bottom Line -- when used as the top thread that is -- she recommended Janome "blue tip." I now have those in my toolbox too.) In retrospect, I think I should have replaced the needle halfway through quilting North Star, since my quilting stitches towards the end were not as "clean" as those as the beginning (the bobbin thread, which was white, was starting to show through a bit on the top and I got a few loops of blue on the bottom. I played with the needle and bobbin tensions, but it didn't help. It dawned on me -- too late -- that I probably needed a fresh needle). Needles are everything!

*perfectly wound bobbins. This had been an ongoing problem for me, since following the exact steps shown in the Janome book and video was not producing perfectly tight even bobbins for me. Jackie showed me a way to feed the thread (actually skipping a step) that works perfectly! My bobbins are now great. If anyone is interested, I could post about this.

*a clean bobbin area -- no surprise there. Every machine wants that, and Connecting Threads cotton does produce a fair bit of lint, so repeated cleaning of the area under the bobbin case is essential.

And finally there are a couple of things I already had in my repertoire, like the Supreme Slider to make to easier to move the quilt, and these cotton quilting gloves for getting a grip.

I'm happy to report that free motion quilting is fun again -- and I'm hoping I can improve my skills as I work my way through some more projects.

But for now there are a couple of little girl dresses calling my name, and of course a big hand quilting project is in front of me. So it looks like my sewing time will be characterized by multitasking for the foreseeable future.

Finally, I would like to offer a little review of Connecting Threads cotton quilting thread, which I have been using since I started quilting -- and which I feel like I rediscovered this week. I am so happy with how this thread behaved for me in this project.

Pros:
*it is strong! I had no breakage at all, no matter what direction I went.
*it is cheap! I have a whole shoe box full, bought over the last couple of years -- and the low price means it's easy to justify a rainbow collection. Fun!
*it is thick! This may or may not be a plus for you, but if you like nice defined quilting stitches, this is a good thread to use. It is said to be 50 wt, but it is much different from an Aurifil 50 wt, which I use for piecing since it is so sleek and fine.

Cons:
*it is linty. You need to clean the machine frequently.
*it is a bit inconsistent in quality. Over the past two years I have experienced two Bad Spools (they kept breaking and causing all sorts of headaches). I threw both of them in the trash. But since the thread is really well-priced, I feel okay about my odds.

Happy stitching!