Small projects

My week has been a blur. 

Only two weeks left in summer term with the usual wake-up call going on that everyone (including me the marker) has to get a push on to finish.

And two days ago my step-daughter got installed in the spare room to start her four months of bedrest until her baby is due with breaks when her husband can get home from his job out of province.

Rascal is eyeing her two dogs (nice quiet Labs) with a full exhibition of his Little Man Syndrome and if the fur flies, well I have a new vacuum. And Labs are pretty serene.

This is going to work out fine. My step-daughter ( I need to find a new way of saying this because if I could have I would have chosen her) has one of those crazy even, easy going dispositions and is going to manage being trapped without being able to do much a lot better than I would. Now if she can survive my creative cooking we are all set. I serve a lot of meals with the words "well it may look weird but it's really healthy".

And now I know about botulism too thanks to the University of Georgia Preserving Food at Home self-study course which I finished this afternoon. Since I passed, they are apparently going to send me a certificate and that baby is going to get framed and hung in the kitchen I can tell you. The clientele may find it reassuring that I do in fact know about botulism, in case what is on the plate doesn't make that apparent.

The point is I figured out a long time ago that particularly when there is a lot going on, the one thing I cannot cut corners on is my creative time. It is what makes things work for me.

On that note I finished my useable muslin version of My Favourite Purse, my first purse project, and I am so pleased with it, pleased way out of proportion to how good a job I did, since the cotton duck I used was pretty thick, and some of the stitching is not flawless as a result.

I have used this purse a number of times already and am so happy with it every time I look at it. I even hung it on the back of my bedroom door so I could look at it in bed. It has been a while since I felt that way about a project. I think making something totally new to me made it particularly interesting. Lesson there.

I have a bunch of nice purses, but for some sectors of my life, like being at the pool with the little girls, or lugging groceries, it is nice to know I am not ruining something decent when I fling it onto the floor of the backseat.

And this purse has all sorts of pockets so I can, for the first time in my life, find things when I need them.

You want that car door opened? 

No problem I have the key right here. 

You call me on my cell? 

Guess what I can answer! 

No more waiting 15 minutes for me to find my phone at the bottom of my purse and another 15 minutes for me to find my glasses so I can read the missed calls and call you back.

So what if I can't use this purse after Labour Day, I love it and will probably make another one for fall, even better now I understand how it goes together:

See. A blurry picture of inside (I was trying to take the shot with the other hand) also the white interior helps. I think all the rest of my other purses are black inside, or at least it seems like that.

As if the purse wasn't exciting enough I also decided I really needed to sew a body pillow before my guest arrived. I remember when I was pregnant that getting comfortable in bed was not easy. In the theme of good baby vibes I covered it with Dr. Seuss fabric and here it is:

So that was my sewing week.

I am aware now that I need to think about back-to-school clothes, for me, when I go offline and back into the regular classroom in September. 

These small projects have reminded me just how energizing projects you can sew up fairly quickly are. It gives me a lift to go to bed at night and know I have something finished after even little time down in the sewing room.

This is definitely going to be my fall for knit dresses and I have three patterns I haven't tried before are taxing towards the runway.

More on that soon.

Project collection

Where do I start?

I am facing facts that with two heavy summer courses (with 60 assignments a week to mark) and a whole lot of family stuff going on, it is unlikely I will be posting again before next week. Maybe a review of the new Vogues excepted.

I am also watching the clock because I am off shortly to the 40th anniversary party of some friends. He has early onset dementia unfortunately but I have to tell you if things get rough in this life it helps to have lived a good one. They have six kids (the last two were twin boys, how did my friend do it? I wondered then and I wonder now) and they will all be there today. And they all turned out too, even the twins who were a couple of characters I can tell you. It also helps to have faith, which they do in a sort of practical way.

So what has the week been like?

Yesterday my niece left for Ottawa where she is going to be spending the next two and a half weeks with my sister there before going home to Winnipeg. 

It has been a while since I had a 14 year old to take care of and I enjoyed it. We did a lot. She had surf lessons from her cousin, learned to chase toddlers (new experience for an only child - and I learned how many times a 14 year old says "Oh joy, there they go again"), now can knit on four needles (took me 20 years to get that far), and can cook enough to stay alive. For my part I now understand I need more eyeliner and  how many documentaries are on Netflicks, and that kids really are the same as they ever were, texting or no texting.

It feels odd now not to have someone in the house up till three and sleeping in till noon. I will miss her.

I have already changed the sheets in that room. 

It looks like my half-way through pregnant step-daughter has some issues and has been put on complete bed rest for the next four months. She and her dogs are going to be coming here to do that as she lives in the country and her husband travels a lot with his job. I have a ranch house with a bedroom right across from the bathroom and next to the kitchen and we are only 15 minutes from the hospital. If we do what we are supposed to, and we will, she will be fine. Personally I have decided losing one baby was enough for this family this year. More than enough.

I am always busy but I do it by making sure I have some project time, as random as it is. Here is my update for the week:

The fair isle vest. Well that project is moving closer to the finish line and I only have to cut it open for the neck and arms (yes that's what you do after you machine stitch across the knitting) and sew in 2,000 yarn ends. That will be a back-to- Netflicks project for sure. I had planned to give this to my son's girlfriend, the one I am crazy about in NYC, and I would really like this to turn out, best I can. Here is a picture to prove a) I am not that great a knitter b) I am not lying to you that I am doing this crazy thing:

You will notice, as I have, that this is not perfect. Far from it. I forgot to knit the little yellow dots in the centre of the squares in one row, but I have googled that and am now poised to add duplicate stitches to my repertoire.

I have also been working on my utility summer, going to the Superstore in shorts purse, which I hope to have finished before actual summer ends. I have never made a purse before and just used stuff lying around my sewing room so this is kind of a stuffable muslin.

I really wanted to try for a purse with a lot of pockets so it would be easier to find my things. I am super pleased with this pattern.

I have sort of a messy purse reputation. 

Once when I was working for politicians and talking to the media everyday I lost my cell phone and had to get a new one. In those days a new cell phone meant a new number. By the time I had contacted everyone who needed to be contacted, about three weeks later, I found my cell phone. It had been in my work purse the whole time, down in the dark depths, dead as a doornail along with 14 pounds of pennies.

Anyway.

Here is the partially completed purse, still needing the handle. There is also a bellows external pocket like this one on the other side, a zippered pocket inside and two smaller bellowed pockets, one of which could hold cell phone, near the top of the inside of the purse:

I used some cotton duck and I am telling myself it doesn't look this messy in real life. That little yellow tab by the zipper of course is a fix. The exposed zipper (gawd how I miss good NYC zipper access) went in fine but do you think I could get the markings out I put in to mark the placement at that end of the zipper? No. This made me crazy and I decided that every time I looked at this purse I would go off to get a wet washcloth or something to start scrubbing again and so I decided to cover it up so I wouldn't make myself crazier. Doing that well enough on my own.

Finally, I have been canning my brains out again. For no real reason other than it is in my DNA and because I find this the most soothing of my activities.

Here is what some of that looks like, I have lots of other shelves going on:

I grew up until I was a teenager in a small town in Manitoba. Canning was it. My dad's family were farmers (my grandfather excepted he went into Winnipeg and became a pharmacist and kept the rest of them going through the Depression, but that's another story). My dad's cousin's wife lost her legs quite a number of years ago now to cancer and the thing they say about her is she still got her canning done, the wheelchair worked just fine.

It's that kind of culture. 

In fact a few years ago the local jar making company decided, without warning, to discontinue a certain kind of lid. This caused a huge uproar. One lady in Saskatchewan was left with 3,000 jars she regularly used every summer useless, and the Hutterite colonies had 250,000 duds.

Even the Manitoba Minister of Agriculture got involved and sent a letter to the company saying " This province was founded on families surviving winter on home canned foods.."

So the scene is set. Somewhere in my reptile brain there is no Superstore.

The thing I like most about canning is not just that you preserve the food, but you preserve the day.

On my shelves now is rhubarb jam from the evening when the little girls and I went out back at my daughter's and they helped me pick rhubarb in her backyard, left over from the previous owner who was a gardener (my daughter is no more going to pick and can this herself than fly to the moon). Two-year-old hands picked what is in those jars.

And I have rosemary jelly made with rosemary my son grew on his hill near to ocean, and green beans my niece and I bought in the Annapolis Valley the day I drove her up to the Lookoff and I showed a prairie kid how the valley flowed into the ocean and that Prince Edward Island was just over there but you can't see it.

All that has been put down now. Down on shelves in the basement to last me the winter.

Flypaper thoughts on the week that was

It has been a busy week for me.

I have had my 14 year old niece visiting, doing the work thing, and general life.

This afternoon I am going AWOL however and taking my machine, a layer cake, and the pieces for that purse I have been wanting to make over to a get together of some sewing friends.

Really due for that.

Listen I have to tell you how much I have read and re-read your comments on the last post, re hair and glasses. This is probably vanity but when you go through certain stages you realize that you need to retool your look so you look like a good version of yourself in the time and place you are now.

And when you do the grey thing the fact is the colours you wear change and you have to make some decisions. 

The best way to describe this, and my week, is in the list. Good luck with it. 

Then off I go to pack up my sewing:

• My niece is so smart.
• She lives with her mother and my mom and this is a reflection of that household.
• My kids didn't watch only documentaries at 14.
• I believe Drop Dead Fred and Braveheart (viewed 24 times by the boys) were on then.
• I can recite "Men of Scotland " in my sleep.
• Too bad Mel Gibson went off the rails.
• Good thing he made that speech before he did.
• At least the boys think so.
• I am seriously considering dumping the grey and black and going navy and colours as my new neutrals.
• 30 years work/dressing to standard is just about long enough.
• I have decided to do some fill in the gap activities with my niece.
• We have done how to cook Thai, plum cobbler, and 14 easy vegetarian lunches.
• So far so good.
• Texting trumped my "let's can five quarts of beans" session however.
• Don't get that.
• Have taught her to knit.
• She is about where I am skill wise after half an hour.
• There is a lesson there but I have a feeling I am not going to learn it.
• Taught her how to remove shoulder pads from Value Village items.
• Totally failed trying to explain the 80s.
• Thinks I am faking it that we wore these things.
• Plus button earrings.
• Was on radio yesterday again.
• Sat in a studio with learned folks and said things like "that's nuts".
• Maybe the person who lives in the blog should stay in the blog.
• Saying what you really think can make you sound like a dip.
• Take it from one who knows.
• They want me back.
• This is stressful.
• Am going to be doing some webinars for Burdastyle.
• My people get the dip.
• This is not stressful.
• Have ordered smaller, pink rimmed glasses.
• Haggled down my optometrist assistant who revealed they had made two pairs of my lens by mistake.
• Got a cut price on the frames.
• Think she thinks I should go quietly.
• Like in a denim jumper down to my calves.
• Not happening kiddo.
• Like I should be taking fashion advice from a woman who wears a strapless sequinned T shirt to work.
• Doesn't she know I have a face for radio.
• Eyelid primer is a great invention.
• Should have had it in the 80s.
• Am thinking it is all about the lipstick.
• Thanks to the blog reader who said get off the diary.
• Thank you thank you.
• Saw ENT and my reflux throat is A OK and I am off the meds.
• Think the dr. is annoyed. 
• He told me medication was the only answer.
• I feel great.
• And I get to go sew now too.

Vogue 8880

It seems to me that I have been cooking for the last month and my sewing has been quick and easy.

I decided that I needed something cool to wear with skirts and had some lovely swiss dot that I thought would be comfortable to wear.

So to be the last person to get on the peplum bandwagon before it left the station and I decided to make Vogue 8880:

Here it is on Vogue's favourite crabby model.


And here it is on me, less crabby I hope in two views. One I think is a better picture of me and one that is a better picture of the top, construction wise. The skirt is the Magic shirt in stretch cotton poplin made last summer:

I am pretty pleased with this top from the wearablilty point of view, and will probably make another one with longer sleeves in a knit at some point. 

O.K. I have a styling question for you.

I got new glasses. 

I felt I needed an update but so far around here the only person who likes these glasses is Miss Scarlett. She is three and also thinks wearing sparkly princess crowns is the best way to dress up so her's is a minority opinion stylewise. I told my daughter that I thought I needed to look hipper and she pointed out that was fine except I am not exactly hip (your own kids tend to miss these things in you) and she wonders if I have spent too much time in the East Village this year. Personally I am not sure I have spent enough time in the East Village.

Anyway.

Over the last year I have let my hair go natural a.k.a. grey owning to the fact that hair dye does not one damn good thing to my hair, even my hairdresser says she has never seen any head get so frizzy and fried with the mildest of all formuals (she muttered something about my hair was short on protein, which didn't seem to me to be a highly scientific analysis).

Anyway I need some honest second opinions since it seems to me that these new grey glasses are bringing out the grey in my hair, so my question is - should I colour it? Hair dye is cheaper than new glasses.

Does anyone know of any really natural DIY haircolour that works - there are a few around, but I have no idea if they are a good idea or not.

I am thinking this through because I have no intention of fading out, owing to the fact I am hipper than they know.

What do you think?

A question for you about clothing care

I bet you wish you came to my place for Sunday dinner. 

We run a regular salon over here once a week, discussing important and serious topics of the day.

Last night it was ironing. With a sidebar on hand washing.

The whole concept of "doing your ironing" made sense to my mother-in-law who is of the coke bottle with the shaker on top for dampening clothes before they were ironed generation - the concept meant nothing to my sister-in-law, daughter, and step-daughter.

The three of them are of the if-it-can't-go-from-the-washer-to-the-dryer I won't wear it school, and they iron nothing.

Myself, sort of in middle, am horrified by this. I think most sewers are. You just can't press as you sew and than forget about ironing after that. And you can't spend good money on good fabric and trust it to jumbling around with Mr. Bounce sheet at high heat.

I mean we know where that leads.

Fades and pills kids, fades and pills.

Myself I iron what I wear, although it tends to be on a case-by-case, day-by-day basis at the ironing board set up in my sewing room. And I admit when I do a tired morning rush out the door, more than a few times I grab a knit or something that doesn't need ironing.

This cheats my wardrobe resources and every once in a while I think I need to "do my ironing" and get ahead, be prepared more for emergencies.

My mother-in-law and my mother were of the school of ironing everything after it was washed, this was a routine and they did it. They both sprinkled clothes and put them in the freezer if they couldn't get it all done (every Canadian household always had a chest freezer downstairs at least 8 feet long) so it wouldn't mildew. I even remember my mother, at some stage we all were wearing her particularly out, had an "ironing lady." 

This involved my dad packing it all up, tablecloths, and shirts and kids clothes even, and driving it off to some poor soul who ironed it up for my mom. My dad was a teacher so this is no indication of our affluence, but of the trauma of being behind in her ironing that got to my mother, never a domestic natural, and I think tears were involved.

Anyway, women did their ironing.

I remember once being sent over to do wild little boy relief for a family friend who had four of them. She was in position when I arrived - ironing board set up on the beige broadloom, in front of her afternoon "shows," drinking a vodka and orange in the afternoon (which I thought was the height of sophistication and something I made a mental note to do when I grew up, as I only ever saw my own mother drink instant coffee).

I watched her iron tea towels and sheets and even her husband's underwear and we both ignored the boys who I am pretty sure were killing themselves somewhere in the backyard.

I understand that vodka and orange now more than I did then.

What I am sure of now is that her clothes were all set in case she had to run out the door early some time, although I realize now she probably didn't go out much.

So maybe it is OK I only half have the ironing situation under control.

Well that was last night over the dinner table and the natural second course was hand washing, something I am a great believer in. My step daughter (who confided the only thing she has to hand wash is a sweater she got from me) wanted to know what you do to get the soap bubbles out of a hand washed sweater. 

This brought on a dissertation from me on the virtues of rinse water.

And everyone went home after that.

Tell me what is your position on ironing and how much hand washing do you do at your house?

Technical notes from that birthday shirt: or how do you finish a back neckline?

For various reasons sewing guide sheets have been on my mind this week.

It all started with an email last week from an independent designer who noted that their patterns had minimal instructions because the assumption had been made that anyone who bought a pattern "already knew how to sew."

I have been considering this all week.

O.K. how do most people learn to sew?

Schools have maybe a smattering of sewing instruction jammed in between other family studies stuff, if that. My kids made shorts on semester for example. Even I didn't learn to sew at school (the project was a slip and I think I barely passed - the teacher obviously had little patience for deviation, mine was floral with lots of free form lace). 

My mother taught me the basics, things she learned from her mother, stuff like tailor tacks and the importance of grain lines, and I am grateful for that knowledge. In university I did a minor in theatrical costume design where I found out that no one can raise their arms in an 18th century frock coat from an original pattern.

But really most of the sewing knowledge I had starting out, pre Nancy Zeiman, pre sewing books, pre the internet for sure, I gathered from reading about 10,000 sewing instructions.

From this process I learned a lot about what worked, and even more about what doesn't.

Like most sewers (tell me if this is you too) I have remembered a particularly cool technique when I have found one and integrated it into my own repertoire.

For instance when I recently made Brensen Designs KISS dress I found a new way of bagging the lining in a sleeveless dress and that is the method I will use from now on. To me that meant it was a great, not just a good pattern.

I also learned a lot from alternative pattern sources. Kwik Sew and Jalie have taught me all I know about knits and Burda magazine opened my eyes to more ready-to-wear methods of construction and the reality that there were more sensible, and successful, ways to put garments together than the peculiar techniques I read in the Big Four.

All of this is leading somewhere.

After I had read my message a week ago from the designer who presumed sewers already knew how to put pieces together, I got to work on my son's shirt, Vogue 8800. This is an excellent pattern with a nice slightly retro, hip look and the fit was great. (BTW despite my earlier comments it turned out he really loved the shirt and gave me a shout out on FB for making it which was nice).

This is a convertible collar shirt, being casual and retro, and there isn't a stand on the collar, which is unusual for a man's shirt, but consistent with the style of this one.

When I glanced at the instructions I noted the usual Big Four method for finishing the back of the neck below the collar was still there, and I have taken professional level iPad shots of that method so you know what I mean:

The last stage, see how nice and easy it looks to just turn under that neckline collar edge and slip stitch it down. A sewer might be fooled into thinking this will go smoothly and in the end look like this picture.

OK this is how you set this up. Note very accurate clips right to the stitching line, already I am worried.

Where this technique goes off the rails. See how much action, and layers, there are at the intersection of the facings, collar turned under edge - all depending on those two surgically precise clips, which at this point are probably fraying and even more so because the odd stitch, the ones used to nail down the collar (making sure not to catch the free edge as they say) has been unpicked and restitched. I mean who can do this is a relaxed way?

I know all of this because in an unusual burst of conformity I actually tried this method to see if I was being too fussy. I did get it to turn out, with some fixes and restitches, but really am not happy with it, not as a process and not as a  product. I can do better.

Techniques like this, and I am sure this one was just cut and copied in from some sort of central data back without any actual person thinking this through, function only to frustrate sewers and even worse, far worse, make the learning-to-sew  sewer feel she just can't do this sewing thing.

Yes I know I have written a lot about this in the past but it always annoys me. Why are techniques never seen in ready-to-wear inserted into patterns by folks who should be trying to create new sewers, not lose them?

Are there other sewing-pattern-only-methods out there that frustrate you? What are the instructions you ignore?

Oh and how do I usually finish back necklines? I either serge right across the seam which reduces bulk and wears quite well, or I put a binding over the seam allowance. 

Tell me how do you finish the necklines of collars without a stand?

Catching up

OK, well, what's the latest?

For a start we have had some company and more to come. This is a very good reason not to sew.

One of our star visitors was my step-daughter who came home for a visit from Nottingham England where she now lives.

There are many reasons why I am proud of her, but one recently is how she turned her life around from the usual young lifestyle of partying, not a lot of systematic exercise and eating not all that sensibly. Her story is best told in her own pictures:

A strong girl on the inside she has gotten very strong on the outside too. Does a lot of crazy weight lifting and is eating a full but clean diet.

She is also incredibly funny and smart. And a smart knitter.

I did some moaning about my not so fair fair isle vest project, where I broke the record for stubborn stupidity having knit and ripped out the same row 5 times, and she took one look at it and pointed out if I put in stitch markers every repeat I could catch my mistakes before they took off.

Like everyone in the world knows this but me. 

Hopefully I will finish this unit pretty soon. Right now I feel like one of those Japanese soldiers they used to find in Pacific islands 40 years after the war had ended because no one had told them they could go home.

More stubborn than smart. I'm that kind of knitter.

Other than ripping out that same row and cooking for a lot of folks, I have continued on my pillow mania. 

There is now no place to sit in my house unless you dump about four pillows on the floor. Yes, pillow making is the ultimate in no brain sewing, but I think I need to give it a rest now. 

Even the dog has learned to throw them off the chairs so he has room to lie down. Tell me how a dog who after 9 years of failed training in just about every useful area, can figure out in about two minutes how to throw a bunch of pillows off the couch right across the room. 

This is just one of the mysteries of life along with why any body would spend this much time trying to learn to knit a fair isle vest when she doesn't actually wear vests.

And yes I did some sewing. 

My last picture for this evening is my youngest at his birthday bash last night. He has a hat I knit him on his head and the wear-to-a-BBQ shirt he requested. He has just finished a major renovation of a duplex he is going to rent out and so I figured a house shirt made sense.

He has asked that next time I involve him in the fabric selecting process. That must mean he really liked it.

One of my beautiful boys, no longer little any more:

Now what I am going to sew next?