PolarGrrlPurls

Another Instant Gratification, A Hat, and Some Sewing

I liked the scarf I made for Kim so much that I ended up knitting another one for my mom, though I omitted the fringe this time. It's knit in 2 skeins of Malabrigo Rasta and the colorway is Zarzamora. I cast on 17 stitches and knit until I ran out of yarn but I forgot to measure it before I wrapped it. Suffice to say that it's very big.

 
 

I've also been knitting away at the holiday gifts on the list. Most recently, this has been a hat for an artist friend, Ric Haynes, and another for his lovely wife, Lorraine. Ric's hat was knit in Classic Elite Skye Tweed using the Claudiapattern written by MJ Kim and published at ExArtStudent. I made a few minor changes to the pattern as written, giving the hat a slightly longer ribbing band before the start of the lattice cable and I used a slip/knit/psso decrease in the prep row for the lattice cable and again for the first set of decreases for the crown, as I felt it made a much neater transition. The Skye Tweed was lovely to work with and I now wish I had much more of it.

 

I sewed a bunch of 9"x14" pillows filled with dried lavender buds and buckwheat hulls as holiday gifts and they came out very well considering 99% of my sewing skills have been gained through trial and error.

 

I'm particularly proud of the overlapping flap I used to keep the shells filled with the buckwheat inside the cases and yet avoid buttons and zippers. I even remembered to prewash/dry the fabric so that it can be washed and will not shrink later!

 

Aren't these batik fabrics beautiful? They were remnants!

For one friend I couldn't decide on a color and so I put purple velvet on one side and teal on the other and made the overlapping flap at the end instead of in the middle.

 

Now to wrap them all up and get them in the mail....

Pretty Pretty!

Over the past several months, I have been creating some textile pieces that are purely art. I have been using them as a therapeutic process to deal with stress and a bumpy ride through childhood. The projects have mainly been centered around photographs, both from the net and those I've taken myself, printed onto transfer paper and ironed onto fabric pieces that are then pieced together or appliqued onto other fabric.  I had almost run out of white cotton to use as backing for the transfer images and so made a quick trip into Winmill Fabrics to pick up some more. While I was there, I noticed that they had restocked their collection of batik fabrics and took a few extra minutes to explore the possibilities. I liked quite a few of them, but found that I could not leave the store without this one:

I also bought the chocolate linen shown below. It is deliciously soft and has a beautiful hand. I'm thinking a gored skirt...

It's Only Been 2+ Years

We moved into this apartment more than two years ago. It's time to get curtains for the kitchen, right? I'd like to be able to say that I whipped these up in a few hours at the sewing machine but that wouldn't be quite true. It was more than a few hours...maybe 6 or 8? Sewing is not my strongest skill. This project has been fraught witht worry and insecurity (maybe because of my weak sewing skills? Nah...) First, I was worried that the wreaths of fruit and flora would look too "country". After that I was worried that the red broadcloth would combine with the green background of the print and conspire to look overly festive in the holiday sense. Then - and this really was the worst - I worried that I wouldn't have enough fabric. I bought the end of the bolts for both. And if you're wondering why there are green ribbon tabs as well as red fabric tabs at the top of each curtain that would be because I did actually run out of fabric. I also didn't have enough green ribbon to do all the tabs. I could have gone to the fabric store again and bought some more ribbon but I'm cheap. I put a band of fusible interfacing between the layers of the bottom red trim to give the curtains a little body and weight.

 

Levis, Revisited

I've been doing a lot of knitting, but seeing as I have all this time on my hands lately, I decided to try and clean/oil my sewing machine myself (rather than pay $50 for it) and see if I could figure out the problem with the feed dogs. After only 15 minutes of maintenance I had my machine working perfectly again and I'm very proud of myself. To celebrate, I sewed up this quick little storage device using recycled back pockets of old jeans. I will put a narrow curtain rod through the "rod pocket" created by the waist bands that I left on the top patches and hang it on my coat closet door with a couple of brackets. As you can see, it's already filled with scarves and gloves and I'm scheming on getting more recycled pockets for the next one. I could see this being very useful for any accessories or even in a sewing room , work room, or office for small tools that you would want to keep visible and within easy reach. To stabilize the patches, I backed them with a half yard(ish) of denim I had in the fabric stash leftover from another project. Marikal is modeling it for me until I can get the rod and brackets. Isn't she a great model? ;)

I Made It!

Yesterday morning I turned in my term paper and took my final exam for Western Civ. I. I can't believe I made it through! The prof said that he's email/call each of us today and let us know our grades from the final and for the class. I'm hoping I got an A, but I'd be just as happy if it were a B, seeing as I've been away from school for so long. The past 5 weeks of school has taught/shown me a few things, though:

1. I need to better manage my study time
2. I need a desk for schoolwork; the coffee table and kitchen table are not comfortable enough for long stints of reading/note taking
3. The kittens must be banned from the area when studying, as they like to play and get in the way and generally distract me
4. Term papers take an average of 3 hours per page in research and writing; best to plan accordingly
5. It is not necessary to re-write my class and text notes as long as I reread them once a day
6. Paying attention to the prof's teaching style can save a lot of time and aggravation in planning my studying
7. Make sure your printer and laptop are communicating long before your term paper is due so as to avoid printing problems at 3:00am the night before it must be turned in
8. Ditch the idea that you'll be able to study at work on your lunch break; it's far too distracting an environment
9. Establish study goals for each day so as to avoid doing too little one day and having to catch up the night before the next class
10. Establish a repertoir of fast, easy, cheap meals to make at home, or you will be eating take-away and delivery food far too much

The next few weeks are also shaping up to be rather busy. I'm taking a mandatory 1 credit class in research and study skills for the second half of the summer, as well as working on getting together a work space as referenced in #2, above. I also have a meeting with an accountant and then a financial aid advisor to see how many internal organs I'll have to sell on the black market to pay for school in the fall.

In my knitting world, I've gotten the first sleeve of Nina up past the elbow, but then stopped, due to the term paper and the heat. (It's been 95+ with a dewpoint of at least 70 for the past three days. Yick.) I have been giving some attention to a long neglected straight-knit sock and have gotten it almost to the toe decreases on the second in the pair. After the Desk Project, as it will now be called, is complete, I'll be taking the sewing machine in for a tune-up/cleaning (nope never got around to it last winter) and then I'll be starting on a super-simple quilt top. Even I can sew straight lines, right?

Making Your Own Circular Needle Case

It occurred to me that maybe someone would be interested in how I put this thing together. I’ll bypass the parts where I misplaced the fusible interfacing in a pile of paperwork, where I had working thread get wound up in the bobbin (6 times), and where I had a needle break and fall under the plate and I had to take the whole business apart and fish it out with tweezers. Moving on, nothing to see here.

Caveat emptor! I’m not very good at this “sewing” business so don’t expect an eye for exacting detail. And I don’t know all those fancy technical terms, either. The measurements are correct, but after that, you’ll have to use your imagination. I used 100% cotton calico print, bought on sale for $1.98/yard and Gutermann all-purpose thread, if it matters.

Materials:

• 2 pieces of Main Color (MC) fabric 20.5”W x 21”H (I bought a yard)
• 7/8^th yard of Contrast Color (CC) fabric for pockets, cut into 24 squares measuring 5.5”W x 6.5”H
• Lightweight woven fusible interfacing (I bought several yards, but I guess 1.5 yards would be plenty)
• Large Sew-on Snaps
• Fabri-Tac Glue (for convenience only)
• Cutting implement
• Measuring implement(s)
• Pins, thread, etc.

1. Cut MC fabric to the right dimensions.

2. Cut a piece of fusible interfacing to the same dimensions as the MC fabric.

3. Follow package instructions for fusing the interfacing to the wrong side of 1 of the pieces of MC fabric. (This will require an iron and a flat surface.) Set aside both pieces of MC fabric.

4. Cut 24 squares of CC fabric to the right dimensions.

5. Cut 12 squares of the fusible interfacing to the same dimensions as the CC fabric squares.

6. Follow package instructions for fusing the interfacing to the wrong side of 12 out of the 24 squares of the CC fabric.

Note: You should now have 24 squares of contrasting color fabric, half of which have fusible interfacing on the back.

7. Pin CC squares together, right sides facing and sew around three edges, leaving a seam allowance of some sort. (I think mine was somewhere around 1/2 inch.) The open side should be one of the sides measuring 5.5”.

8. Trim fabric at corners at a 45-degree angle to eliminate bulk. Turn CC squares right side out and turn in the bottom raw edges by ½ inch. Iron flat. These are now your pockets and are ready to be sewn to the MC fabric background.

9. Locate the MC fabric piece with the interfacing on the back and a box o’ pins. Working 1 row at a time (with the 20.5” sides of the MC fabric at top & bottom), pin the CC squares to the MC fabric, using the following guidelines:
   1. Bottom row: Bottom edge of pockets should be about 1.25” from the bottom edge of MC fabric & ¾” from left and right sides. There should be about 1/4” between each pocket.

   2. Middle row: Keep pockets in line with those on the bottom row and allow about 1” between the two rows.

   3. Top Row: Keep pockets in line with those on the middle row and allow about 1.25” between the two rows. You may need to adjust things slightly to allow for a little space between the pockets, as well as a seam allowance for the MC fabric.

10. Using a zig-zag stitch, sew the pockets to the MC fabric on three sides, leaving the top edges open (to form a pocket) on the bottom and middle rows and the bottom edges open on the top row. This will create a top-most row of pockets facing in the opposite direction from the rest. There is a reason for this, so trust me it’s not a mistake.

11. Locate 2^nd piece of MC fabric and pin, right sides facing to the piece with the pockets. Sew around three sides, leaving 1 edge open. Turn it right side out, fold in the raw edges of the open side by ½” and iron flat.

12. Sew open end closed.

At this point, you are pretty much complete. How you keep the whole thing folded neatly and closed is up to you. The point of having the top row of pockets facing in the wrong direction is so that the needles don’t fall out. To achieve this when folding, fold bottom up to the middle, top down to the middle, and then in half left to right. I used a 1.5” strip of the CC fabric, wound around it like a ribbon on a gift and secured with a sew-on snap (that I tacked on with glue and then sewed after it was dry because it’s easier and the snap doesn’t go sliding every which way while you’re trying to be neat and tidy about the hand sewing) to keep things together. You could just as easily sew on ribbons or use a rubber band. I don’t think binder clips would work, but I could be wrong.

My Masterpiece is Complete! (Or, how I spent my Saturday)

O.k...so it's not exactly a masterpiece, but it took a damn lot of planning and measuring and sewing and resewing to get this right. The pictures don't exactly show it, but each of the top and bottom rows of pockets folds into the center and then the wole program is folded in half again before being put inside the harness. Folded up, it measures approximately 9.5" x 7.5" and with 12 pockets will hold all of my circular needles and space for more. It's not particularly small when folded up, but it's a lot better than having a bird's nest style tangle to go through, needle sizer in hand, in order to locate the needle I need. I'm planning a smaller version with just 4 pockets to take a long in the knitting bag. I think on that version I'll add a zipper to1 pocket and use it for notions.

Oh, and lest you think that I spent the whole day trying to get this puppy together, let me assure you that it didn't take nearly that long. It took half the day. The other half of the day was spent knitting on the gift socks, the baby socks, watching television, sleeping late, and cooking.

So Frustrated!

I guess this is what I get for not taking the time fully think out a design idea before getting to the sewing piece. Good thing I use inexpensive materials, since I don't feel bad about tearing the whole damn thing apart or maybe even throwing it out and starting over. I am, however, totally frustrated. ARGH!

My last sewing project came out beautifully (if I do say so myself). But I took the time to figure out measurements and closures and nasty things like that. So...I spent several hours sewing this evening (I don't sew nearly as quickly as I knit) and I have nothing to show for it. But I know what not to do. Which is progress, I suppose. Hmph.

I realized that I haven't posted about the New Year's Revs lately. So! By way of an update here is...an update! (Um, yeah.) While I haven't written about it much, the past two weeks have been very difficult on a personal front. My ex is getting married and I'm invited (with my current partner) to the wedding. I'm happy for them, but I'm also aving some feelings of anger about it, since that was all I ever wanted from that ex when we were together. Not that I want to get back together, though. I can definitely say that this is a case where I can thank gawd for unanswered prayers. But.....it's still hard to wonder why it wasn't me, you know? Seems all rather shallow when written out, but hey.....allow me my moments of silliness, will you?

I also lost a good friend to cancer this week. While I don't usually use real names here, I'll make an exception. Cheryl was one of the nicest, most genuine and caring people I've ever had the pleasure to be friends with. While we were at least 15 years apart in age, she had a young heart and a generally positive outlook on life and we really connected on many levels. She was a talented artist and we shared many hours talking about our respective crafts. She made dolls, hand sewn from fabric with complete wardrobes. Truly stunning work. She never married or had children, but had a lot of friends. I will really miss her.

So what has this got to do with the New Year's Revs? Well, it means that my eating plan went all haywire. I've not lost any weight. In fact I've gained back the 3 lbs. I lost. Sigh. Frustrated yet again. I have managed to get back on the wagon, so to speak, the past few days, however, and there's nothing else to do but to keep plugging away at these new lifestyle changes. Nothing worth having has ever come easily. My two fitness tasks for the month of February are to buy sneakers and join the gym. I'll deal with actually going to the gym next month. I'm still on track with the financial goals, and I'm doing pretty well with studying for my biology final exam in April for the education Rev. The biz goals are proving a little difficult, as I need more $$ to get some of them done, but I'm still chipping away at those things that require no (or less) money.

So...there you have it. February has, on the whole, been a really poopy month thus far. But I guess when you're at the bottom, there's only one way to go...right?