unbiased
changed my mind on the kitchen curtains – feeling pretty happy about it
however…
made a mistake early on in the process of making bias tape for finishing them
here’s how it went:
first things first: fabric grain
the lengthwise grain (warp) runs the length of the fabric and crosswise grain (weft) runs the short direction with selvedges along both lengths
the bias runs 45-degrees to the warp and weft grains and provides stretch
here’s where i messed up
folded the fabric in half along the cross grain (weft) to cut strips instead of on the bias grain
pappardelle nest of 1-inch muslin strips
next: sewed strips together to make a single, continuous ribbon of fabric
since the strips weren’t cut on the bias they lack stretchiness
and, what they lacked in stretchiness they more than made up for in frayed threads…
after sewing i trimmed, hand creased, and ironed the nearly 20-foot length of fabric into 1/4-inch double fold unbiased tape
for good measure, here’s one possible approach to preparing fabric for actual-factual bias tape
lived and learned…
along with becoming re-acquainted with autumnal sunlight
afternoon light can be real pretty, but wasn’t quite what i was looking for when photographing the spool of unbiased tape yesterday
got up early this morning for the sunrise light
s’pretty nice
et voilà!
hall monitor
rounding up some stragglers… like the stop sign patches.
kept it simple, but had some challenges with design transfer. given the circumstances, using stencils worked really well.
picked up some red velveteen fabric from “the depot” (aka “garbage arts”) and added fusible stabilizer for structure.
transferring the design to the velveteen pile was a no-go (tried it… was a mess). instead, traced the reversed design onto the stabilizer. stitched outlines in stem stitch from the wrong side, which gave me outlines in back stitch from the right side – bingo.
4-way stop pooty-hoop
revisiting process photos reminded me that i watched all of ‘BoJack Horseman’ while working on these earlier this year – woof…
i also spy my hand fan, which i lost somewhere along my walk to work last Saturday. bummed. it was one of my most favorite shapes.
the webby bits leading back to anchor knots look neat. those knots are temporary though and get cut away in the end.
one, two, three, and four. farthest right is the prototype. lives on my jacket now – left shoulder.
so happy with the velveteen. it does shed, though.
lint rolling the edges before adding the border cut down on fluff everywhere, gunking up the stitches. ended up with a little sticker monster at the end, too.
edges all finished. backside view, before getting tagged.
hand-sewn polyester ribbon tags. fussy, sure – but i enjoy it.
thread glyphs on the backside – an unexpected delight.
“hall monitor” lookin’ ass…
nice, nice, nice
finished these in May. sorta feel like i’ve neglected processing them – didn’t mean to.
feel that way about a few things in the queue and i’m doing my best to maintain, and sometimes regain, momentum.
i don’t have a segue, but this and this are mixes that came together last week. leaving some evidence of them somewhere instead of waiting for… i don’t know! so, there they are!
ok, bye bye!
status update
status update on "762" (aka kitchen door curtain panel): finished blanket stitch along the vertical edges.
used DMC size 8 pearl cotton in topaz with Tulip big eye straight thin size Sashiko needle for these Sashiko-inspired stitches.
sketching to document and ideate – no set orientation yet. originally imagined the vertical yellow stitches as an edge-to-edge field, but that may be relentless… got seven vertical lines of topaz stitches in so far. leaving that area as is, for now.
picked plum and antique blue pearl cotton from my stash to start stitching with next. they compliment the topaz stitches and silver-gray fabric pretty well. yeah, i like that. onward!
DMC size 8 pearl cotton in plum (718) and topaz (725), and smaller size 12 pearl cotton in medium antique blue (931)
listened to the back half of this for the first time this morning. woof… thought i oughta save it here.
swapped the order of two songs on DO NOT ENTER, too. listened to it during my shift today – feels better…
ok, bye bye!
762
58” wide tweed from Joann Fabrics – i like the silvery color and larger weave.
wanted the stitch detailing to fade away and picked a few colors i thought might do the trick: ecru, 762 “very light pale gray”, and white DMC stranded embroidery floss.
(from left using 3 strands of floss in white, ecru, and 726)
using blanket stitch at the vertical edges of the panel to prevent fraying and reduce bulk. 726 blended the best in different light conditions.
(top “right side”, “wrong side” below)
continued with 762 to test stitch detailing ideas. tried options that show only on one side, and a traditional blanket stitch that shows on both. i like the “both sides” approach best. keeping even tension is easier, and it’s nice to have the stitch detail face inside and out.
fabric is trimmed down and thread color selected. wish i could have kept the selvedge with its lovely tufts, but i’m holding on to some for test strips and maybe something fun later? who knows.
slow down
mini warning sign pin process images, clockwise from upper left. started with scrap piece of yellow linen with stabilizer, stiffened black felt, and butterfly clutch pin-back. used silk to embroider a single interior line and border. glued the warning sign top to the felt back concealing pin hardware between and held in place with wonder clips while glue set. once the glue dried, it was on the jacket and out on the town.
little warning sign pin – a reminder to slow down. have had this one in the wings for a little while. taking time to reflect on the spirit of ongoing projects, and remembering that slowing down is ok – another part of the process.
freebie
prototyping. traced lavender salve tub sized discs of stabilizer backed linen remnants. a triple twist of light-gauge floral wire was sewn down the center of one disk on the stabilizer side in order to hold the future fortune cookie shape. the wire side is then sandwiched onto a second linen disk and attached using blanket stitch. and with a few swift hand moves, the disk turns into a fortune cookie. came across this tutorial when i needed help understanding the folding technique.
picked up heavier gauge wrapped floral wire and covered the ends with floral tape before sewing down to help prevent the wire from poking through the right side of the linen – works pretty nice… this was also my first attempt at using butterfly-clutch pin backs. piercing the pin through the interior to the backside hid the flat fastener, but it needed glue to keep it in place since it lacked any way to mechanically fasten. not fond of relying on glue in this situation.
tried using safety pins too, which had their perks. they were the least expensive option, i already had them, and they did a better job of pinning the width of the cookie than the butterfly-clutch, but they were cumbersome to attach. i’d been wearing a safety pin version on my jacket, and it was tricky to fasten in the right way. mine was too tight, causing the cookie to curl up into a shape more closely resembling tortellini. wasn’t mad at it, per se; but it wasn’t the intended effect…
after exploring a few options for pin backs, i landed on bar pins. they can be sewn in place at several points, provide stability across the pin width, and are much more user friendly.
imagined packaging as a narrative element, too. inspired by takeout fortune cookies and a well known “Thank You” bag motif.
designed several iterations of the cookie size packages. digitized in Illustrator and mocked up on printer paper to test dimensions and volume. used actual pins and wadded up balls of paper to make sure the packets would puff enough to hold the pins. in retrospect, i should have started with the wadded up paper. ripped up good prototypes to get the cookies out. d’oh… !
moved on to vellum for the next series of prototypes. i like using vellum. it’s a little transparent and works in the printer – nice nice. used a pattern tracing wheel to pierce a line about half an inch from the top and bottom edges, and hand sewed closed with red Gütermann poly sew-all thread. fan-creased the ends for a finishing touch.
looked into paper crimping tools and techniques and came across a tube wringer which looked like it’d get the job done and could work on heavier materials, too. the package on the left has tube wringer crimped edges, and the right is by hand. the little tags are two Avery labels stuck together, hole punched, and tied to the end of the enclosure string. i’m happy with how these came out.
digging this process. still not quite done yet – need to give the vellum printing another go. using a laser printer and the toner flakes off more easily than i want it to. don’t think the printer settings are quite right yet. also, need to try sewing the closure stitches on the machine instead of by hand to see how that turns out. maybe it’s too powerful for the vellum and makes a mess of things. or maybe it’s perfect! gotta try it.
been incubating these for a little while now and need to push them out the nest… i’ve set aside a couple prototypes as freebies to give folks that strike up conversation about the pins/patches on my jacket – things i’ve made. i imagined the freebies as an opportunity to help me talk about my work with interested folks. however, it’s still in my imagination since i haven’t yet had the confidence to take the final step and hand one over. or i’ve forgotten to bring them with me, like this morning… double d’oh!
i’m feeling nervous about putting them in someone else’s hands – giving up control – and being at the mercy of public opinion. but i suppose that’s the rub: no risk, no reward. working to remember that opinions are only as important as i allow them to be. constructive critique is one thing; ruthless subjectivity is another. i recognize the importance of putting myself out there and i’m working toward the next step, no matter what other people think of me. it’s a fortune cookie, for Christ’s sake…
*created and drafted March, 2021. posted March 23, 2022.
quilted
taped muslin lining to the floor to keep smooth. whip-stitched two smaller pieces of cotton batting together to make up the length needed.
pin basted the quilt sandwich together and captured how impossible it is to keep black fabric lint-free.
used DMC cotton stranded embroidery floss in ecru, separated into 3 strands, with a Tulip big eye straight thin size Sashiko needle. pulled strands over beeswax before quilting to help prevent fraying and breakage.
quilted in free-hand lines widthwise, starting from the center. i can see how my technique was affected over time as my fingertips became more tender.
kept the muslin lining and cotton batting long at the short edges. trimmed the batting to remove bulk and folded the muslin over to create a binding, blind stitching to the twill to finish. the light table fits snuggly in the cover, so i kept the closure simple using brass sew-on snaps to secure when stowed away.
trimmed excess muslin and batting to meet the long edge of the twill and finished raw sandwich edges with blanket stitch using 3 strands of DMC ecru embroidery floss – no beeswax this time. learned how to cleanly transition threads midway through blanket stitch using this tutorial from Upcycle DesignLab.
finished, “front” and “back”
the quilting turned out alright. started with tight tolerances and knotted off by the skin of my teeth. hadn’t expected as much shirring from the quilting process – my dimensions didn’t account for it. and while blanket stitch was considered as an alternative to more traditional finishing methods – bias tape/quilt binding – it turned out to be just the stitch for a narrow seam allowance.
i’m really happy with this.
bonus: little sachet i made yesterday to hold a gift for a friend whose birthday is today (happy birthday!). pleased with this spur of the moment project.
speedsuit
i’ve been in “heads down” mode for a little bit. listening to a lot of music — stuff that’s for listening to and not just having on in the background. it’s not easy to have on while writing without getting distracted so i’ve been working on embroidery while listening. it’s allowed me to focus on the repetition of stitches and get into a meditative zone. good for where my head is at right now.
the music is a whole other digest…. i’ll keep it simple for now and stick to embroidery.
so i have this “flight suit”. it isn’t really a flight suit, just looks like one. sort of. the actual factual name is a “speedsuit”, which i’ve come to possess since it’s what me and my fellow architecture graduate cohort wore for our graduation ceremony instead of traditional cap and gown and hood and yada, yada, yada. following a sartorial tradition started who knows when for who knows what reason, one of my classmates got everyone’s orders together and i went with it. it was one less thing to think about while being tossed around in the whitewater of the final semester of architecture school.
i’ve kept mine after all these years because it’s well made and functional. what’s kept me from wearing it is my school and degree program embroidered above the left breast pocket. i’m proud of my degree, but i don’t want to advertise it. it’s not as though the school is paying me to be a billboard. quite the opposite…
coveralls are a suitable outfit for work these days, so many useful pockets. i’m moving away from carrying bags with lots of sh-t in them, not a fan of how they cut into my shoulders. i always feel like i’m stinkier in the pitty area when i wear a backpack or a purse too. probably because the straps get mushed up in there. i’ve lost some good shirts that way... anyway, wanted to revive my pair since i held onto them and they are otherwise occupying very limited closet space.
covering up the old embroidery had an easy solution: make a patch. so i got to embroidering one of the warning signs as a cover-up. i could have ripped the unwanted stitches out, but i think it would have torn up the fabric in the process. easier to sew a patch over top, and this way i could try out other methods of representation.
graduation “flight suit” from 2014. mocked up a few sizes of patch to cover the graduate program embroidered over the left breast pocket. (the footies all balled up at the bottom look creepy…)
started out with a few different sizes of patch templates and taped them over the stitching to be covered. the one i ended up going with was a ‘tweener size between a smaller and bigger version. it’s about 5 1/2” without the border.
the base is a linen blend fabric that i have several yards of. i really like the color — it’s a warm mustard yellow. looking back at the process photos i realize i could have done more than one patch in this hoop instead of one, but i did save the scraps to use for sashiko practice. i’ve started another hoop since this one (more on that later, i presume) and have made an effort to maximize hoop economy and efficiency to prevent wasting fabric and materials.
used a light table to trace the pattern directly onto the fabric this time, foregoing stabilizer/interfacing for the design transfer. this linen has a pretty open weave and i could easily see the stitches through the fabric onto the backside. not ideal and could have been prevented with interfacing, but since it was going against a dark material i didn’t stress it too much. i also used a different kind of pen for marking the design: a Pilot FriXon pen, which is heat erasable. tested the pen on a corner of the fabric and used hot water to erase the markings away and voilà! worked like a charm.
stitched all the outlines, borders, and satin stitch fill with two strands of DMC stranded cotton and clover embroidery needle. not sure which size. not the biggest and not the smallest needle in the pack.
just measured the needle with the set of calipers Sam got me, i think it’s a #5 needle (here’s a chart to reference next time). i’m assuming that needles are measured at their shaft length without the eye/shank, making this a #5?
2/4/2021 - just getting started. used backstitch for the linework. i’d started out trying stem stitch and didn’t like the raised effect. should have taken a photo but didn’t before picking the stitches out and doing it over again.
2/4/2021 - started the satin stitches moving from right to left starting at the arrowhead.
2/4/2021 - the satin stitches at the bottom of the loops were tricky to keep consistently tensioned and also not pierce the fabric too many times leaving holes.
2/5/2021 - catching rays to help it dry faster. don’t know if this actually worked, but i liked how it looked from outside. so there.
2/5/2021 - done drying and ready to seal the edges in Mod Podge. i stitched another row of linework outside of the first border as a guide for the interior edge of the satin stitch border. i don’t think it was absolutely necessary, but i like to have it. i’ve found that guidelines help keep my stitches neater.
2/6/2021 - glued the edges to prevent fraying and started making my way around…
left & middle: J&P Coats Silk Finish Crochet Cotton, right: linen thread
top: Nun’s Boilproof, middle: DMC pearl cotton, bottom: Royal Society Embroidery Floss
sidenote: started out using the scanner to document these pieces and was fighting it at every turn. trying to get the white balance to work or arranging things on the scanner bed, it was becoming a project in and of itself. was starting to set up a long and unnecessarily arduous process just to digitally capture threads. no thanks. yesterday was a nice, sunny day and the oxalis (Bermuda buttercups to be exact) in the yard were blooming and looked pretty, so i took a loose piece of bristol i’ve been using as a background for these kinds of little vignette photos and went outside. used a rock to keep the paper from scooting away in the breeze, and found it a handsome accompaniment. this one is a rock Sam brought home from a recent walkabout — a practice both he and i have carried on from our mothers. we are rock collectors.
the photos above are from yesterday, but these are some threads i picked up midway through the patch making process from a local vintage seller who had a pop-up shop in her garage. Sam and i came across her set-up by chance on a walk the weekend before last. there were so many interesting things for sale, but i was drawn to a little basket of threads and sewing notions. got a couple wooden spools of a bright yellow cotton thread, looks like somewhere between a #5 and #8 pearl cotton? could use it for quilting. also got a little skein of linen thread and several skeins of embroidery floss: Nun’s Boilproof thread size #3, DMC pearl cotton #5, and Royal Society Embroidery Floss without a size indication but the words “ROPE” instead. i probably won’t use the skeins of embroidery floss because it would require taking the packaging apart, and a big draw for me was the old school packaging and labels. the spools and linen don’t feel as precious since there’s no packaging to get through in order to use them. i’ll be giving those a whirl on future projects when i can.
2/8/2021 - made it around with smoothly laid stitches. a miracle.
2/8/2021 - stitching the patch in place while on the phone with mom.
came back to it on the 8th and completed the edge stitching, which i just today learned is called a “merrow border”, and sewed the patch onto my coveralls over the old embroidery. it looked good, but i hadn’t considered the direction of the arrow and proximity to my armpit until finishing up the patch and putting the coveralls on. not that i’m suggesting there’s a hidden interpretation when arrows and armpits meet, it’s just hard to see the arrowhead in the fabric folds since the suit is a bit baggy on me.
i was a little bit bummed to realize the arrow position after the fact — i just hadn’t seen it when i mocked it up in paper earlier. not to worry, it just provided another reason to try out more patches. i have a few more iterations in the works now, each different in one way or another. i’m using it as an opportunity to experiment with technique and materials. there’s one design that i’ll swap out for the one on the coveralls now and the rest will be put out into the world somehow. not too worried about it.
all stitched on. the color combo and patch geometry reminds me of Napa Auto Parts. i dig it.
ok, made it through that one. i started writing yesterday and paused for a bit to step away and take care of some other things: embroider a little, hang out with Sam and Simon, practice guitar. i didn’t see any need to barrel through and finish last night — there are no deadlines here. come this morning, i had some jumbled feelings of doom and gloom around recent medical goings on. it’s been a month-long endeavor to figure out what’s what, and i’ve reliably come to the most catastrophic conclusion with every new piece of information. handling medical situations with calm is not my strong suit, but i’m working on it. adding “battling hypochondria and catastrophizing” to my growing list of things to work on…
whatever it is, i have to just roll with it. i can’t wish a good outcome into existence or continue living in fear of the worst. it was important for me to confront my feelings of anxiety and fear, externalize them, and try to turn my attention to the present. i’m glad that i’m getting things taken care of — or that i have health insurance at all — and i’ll work on responding to new information as it comes rather than succumbing to the knee jerk reaction to spiral out into doom and gloom.
*deep breath*
P.S. i’ve had something on my mind that i want to add to the previous entry:
a big part of why i was uneasy and upset with folks for not observing the “rules of the trail” is because of the global pandemic we are still experiencing. i have complicated feelings about going out in public as COVID-19 and its numerous variants continue to put devastating numbers on the boards. there’s an inherent risk involved, and i do not take lightly. i’m relatively young and relatively healthy — *knock on wood* — yet it remains a consideration wherever i go. the grocery store or gas station are one thing, but it isn’t essential to go on a trail hike and eat oysters. however, i do want to continue to enjoy the outdoors and support local businesses. everything took place outside, with masks on, and we did our best to keep a safe distance from other folks as i usually do. just wanted to add that little bit of context.