You are here: Home / Archives for Sewing

A List of Nonsense born of Industry

November 3, 2011 By 5 Comments

(This post starts as one thing and ends up as something else. I’ve let it stand, as opposed to editing myself.)

I’ve been beavering away making some bibs for the Craft Fair in Dulwich on Saturday. I’m piggy-backing on my friend Jo’s jewellery stall as I did last year, so I imagine we’ll be being very badly behaved and tasting all the delicious cakes (I hope the cake lady is the same as last year – they were amazing, and she introduced me to the delights of edible glitter).

Thoughts that have occurred while I’ve been busy:
  • This room is no warmer than it was in the spring.
  • 4OD is great, because it has an archive of shows from forever, so I finally got the see the Devil’s Whore, and made myself a new hero in Edward Sexby.
  • I have a lot of fabric in my drawers that I’m probably not going to use and should have a de-stash.
  • I fiddled with the blog layout again, and wish I could find the colour green I used about four years ago, rather than the slightly odd green that looks fine on my mac, but not on my PC.
  • Signing up for nanowrimo is so so so optimistic, given that I’m three days behind already.
  • I don’t really know how to reconcile all the different parts of myself into a coherent whole at the moment.
Ever feel as if you’re floundering a bit? When I’m busy I always feel as if I ought to be attending to something else. There’s always the feeling that some parts of me are being done a disservice, by the effort of distilling them into one shape or another. Perhaps I’m trying too hard to be coherent, and the trick is to let things flow more, the way children will throw their entire being at a task and then seamlessly move onto something completely different.

I confess I’ve often thought of stopping writing here lately. My landscapes have changed since I started blogging in 2007, and I don’t know if this space suits me anymore. I keep fiddling with the blog’s layout too, because it’s just not comfortable, and each time I’m happy for about 36 hours. Perhaps I did everything the wrong way round, when it comes to writing, blogging, making, having a child. My instinct is to stop and start again, but where would that get me? At the beginning again. Where I love to be, happily master of none of the things I take up. I really fancy learning Norwegian, for example, which is really just part of a wider interest in norse myth, old english and the experience of North, and being Northern. But where does it fit in?

Elizabeth wrote of creative people who have a keen urge to pursue more than one discipline. Perhaps the nature of blogging means that I’m stopping myself from experiencing more pure joy in following my interests because of the tramlines I made for myself with the title, or the notion that I must write about everything here, and then stopping myself doing things or writing about them because of some odd idea that they aren’t suitable. I’m not good at compartmentalising. Maybe that’s it.

Perhaps the whole thing is best summed up with the trouble I have choosing a twitter name. In the dark history of the internet, you chose an avatar and a pseudonym, keeping your real identity a secret, since the internet was full of Wierdy Geeks. If I was just one thing, or had just one website, then it would be easier to settle on a name. I’ve flipped back and forward from one thing to another, causing confusion and delay, not least to my own sense of identity. This week I realised it would be much easier to tweet under my real name, since this is the only way that I can safely encompass every part of myself, and everyone is on the internet now anyway. But my name is taken. Where to now?

Should I end this post by making excuses for myself? Blame it on the darkness? Blame it on a lack of chocolate? No, my friends, I think not. No more excuses.

Filed Under: Diet & Butter, Life, Sewing - 5 Comments

Forgotten pleasures

October 13, 2011 By 7 Comments

I went to the Knitting & Stitching Show last week, with my lovely friend Jo. I haven’t been since before I had the boy, what with being firstly a new mother of only 4 weeks, and then a mother who rightly decided that a pushchair with a one year old in those crowds would be hell. This year was fine, because he goes to his lovely childminder, and so I was free to skip all the way across the river, with a sandwich from Paul in my bag (Florence is right – the food is dreadful), and a willingness to open my purse if I liked what I saw.
I took my camera but I took no pictures. None at all. I think I was just happy to be out, looking at some great textile art, as well as some fine examples of what Jo calls “misplaced effort”- you know, those things that you think, ‘technically accomplished, yes, but really quite hideous and pointless’. Thankfully there weren’t many of those this year. We truly loved the knitted herons in particular, and I was buoyed to discover that the artist had got herself a dream job as a weaver after graduating. Just a wee reminder that there are people out there following their passions to the limit.

After a lunch that included two glasses of wine my purse well and truly spilled open and I bought some lovely things from Ray Stitch and Eternal Maker. It’s the first new fabric I’ve bought in an age. I bought with projects in mind for once, and probably not coincidentally, it’s the first time I’ve felt properly excited by sewing in forever. This might also have something to do with being able to see the sewing surface again. The new fabric also made me realise I need a little bit of a de-stash, so that’s another job to stick on the bottom of my list.

But for today, I’m just going to do some actual sewing. Yes, I know. I can’t believe it either.

(Apologies for slightly blurry photos – I would have redone them, but I’ve already cut the fabric. No, I can’t believe that either.)

Filed Under: I've been shopping, Sewing Tagged With: , , - 7 Comments

Mini Book Review: Sewing For Boys

September 18, 2011 By 6 Comments

I’ve had Sewing For Boys on pre-order since I first heard about it earlier in the year, and having tried a Figgy’s pattern in the meantime, my anticipation was set to High.

Then I started getting emails from Amazon, about the release date being moved back, and then back a bit more, and then back even further, and then forward a little bit, until finally I got a despatch email.

You’d think after all of that I’d have been chomping at the bit to get started, wouldn’t you? And I am, but in a low key sort of way that has absolutely nothing to do with the book.

I love the book already, you see. It has longevity, since the patterns can be made for boys up to about 7 or 8, depending on the size of your boy. The patterns are practical, and cool, but not twee. It has small projects (t-shirt refashioning, t-shirts, simple trousers) and larger ones (jackets, smart trousers). The patterns are printed on high quality thick paper, and are stored in a neat envelope inside the front cover. It’s also internally spiral bound, so it will store nicely and then lie flat on your worktable.

I’ve already picked out these treasure pocket pants as the first project I’ll make, since we’re coming home with my pockets laden with conkers and acorns and stones. And leaves. Except he doesn’t call them that – he runs up and thrusts a bronze leaf into my hand, saying excitedly “another fire!” And they do look like little fires.

Anyway if I’m so thrilled to finally have the book in my possession, why am I not sewing already?

Do I need to say more? This is where I sew. This is now officially known as the Room of Doom, and this is actually after an hour of tidying up. It was much worse. The downside of having a loft conversion is that everything that used to be stored elsewhere has been swept down through the house on an invisible tidal wave, and ended up swilling about in the little room at the back of the house.

I’m displaced. I wander around in the evenings saying “I’m sure I used to do things”, but not having quite enough oomph to sort it all out. This week I bought a shredder. If shredding is as much fun as I think it will be I can’t see much in this room surviving.

Anyway, all that aside, if you have boys to sew for, I think you should get the book. It’s exactly what you’re looking for, and I do know how long you’ve been looking. Come back sometime in January when I’ve managed to get near the sewing machine and I’ll tell you how I get on with those pants.

Filed Under: book review, Making for Mothers, Sewing Tagged With: , , - 6 Comments

Pattern Review: Figgy’s Tee for Two

April 1, 2011 By 14 Comments

Sewing for Fitz is one thing I’m growing into. I imagined I’d do oodles of it while he was a baby, but a) life with newborns and b) where oh where are the cute patterns and fabrics for boys? The balance seems to be swinging more in their favour lately, with things like Celebrate the Boy and the Spoonflower competition to find a new fabric for baby boys, but we’re still going uphill.

So enter Figgy’s, and this pattern for a wardrobe staple – the tee. I throw a tee on Fitz every day – long sleeved, short sleeved, plain, striped, printed. He needs a whole bunch of them to get through a week, especially now he likes to hold his own yoghurt pot. Since I have some knit fabrics just lolling about in the stash, it seemed prudent to find a way of getting some of it onto my kid’s back.

First things first, I liked the packaging. The patterns come in a sturdy brown envelope, with a picture on the outside. Inside you get a printed booklet of instructions (sewn together – nice touch) and the pattern sheet. Full marks on the paper choice for the pattern sheet too, as it’s proper paper rather than tissue. When you buy a pattern that may well see you through six years you want to know that it isn’t going to fall apart.

Reading through the instructions I was perturbed by the notion of the seams being on the outside, and worried about my overlocking being uneven and my general sewing not being good enough. The best cure for that is to just plough on and see what actually happens, because most times you find that your imagined problems are, in fact, completely irrelevant. For a start, you don’t need an overlocker. No serging here. This is great news, because not everyone has one, and sometimes even if you do have one, getting the tension right can take the better part of a year. Secondly, if you can sew a half decent line, you can make this shirt. Seriously. Even if you are afeared of knits.

You use your normal machine (and by rights you should use a narrow zig-zag, except I was giddy with having actual sewing time and didn’t. No one died.) to sew the seam together as you would any seam, except you have wrong sides together. Then you press the raw edges down to the main body of the shirt and stitch it down. It is so simple and so fast, and yet looks incredibly cool.

Figgy's Tee for Two

wrong sides of finished seam

Figgy's Tee for Two

right side of finished seam

Reassured by the finish I pressed on, and had it finished in about an hour. This is partly due to there being no hemming – sure you could hem if you wanted to, but given license not to I went with it. The only change I made was to the neck, which was one raw edge too many for me, so Fitz has a more conventional neckband on his new tee.

Figgy's Tee for Two

Once I was done, I’d really fallen in love with this pattern. Now that I get the construction and won’t have to refer to the instructions so much (if at all) I can see this being one of the quickest, most useful patterns I have.

Figgy's Tee for Two

I’m looking forward to their book even more now, and can’t wait to see what it holds. Roll on August!

Figgy’s patterns can be found at Backstitch

Sewing for Boys – Amazon UK

Filed Under: Fitz, Making for Mothers, Patterns, Sewing - 14 Comments

Kindle Pocket. Must not be fancy. Must be manly.

March 20, 2011 By 4 Comments
I didn’t meant to do it, but I mistakenly bought a Kindle that now belongs to Mr J. We do share an interest in reading some of the same things, so it does mean we can buy one copy of a book and have it delivered to both Kindles at the same time. Course, he has commuting time to read in, not to mention the odd half hour locked in the bathroom, whereas these days I read for approximately four minutes before I fall asleep, so we don’t exactly read the same book in the same time. I woke up last night still clutching my kindle, which helpfully turns itself off after ten minutes of inactivity. I could have been like that for hours.

Kindle Pocket

As the whole Kindle ownership thing was something of an accident I baulked at buying a case for it, and suggested I make one instead. He was all full of enthusiasm for the idea. Too full. There were stipulations about thickness, and fastenings (there were to be none), the kind of fabric to be used, the kind of seam, placement of seam…Etcetera. Etcetera.

Some of the stipulations I ignored obviously, since the maths would get hugely complicated, but the main one I stuck to, namely to make a pocket just the right width so that the kindle slides in and out, but is held snug and tight. It took three attempts and I still think it could do with perhaps 1/8″ or 1/4″ more.

Kindle Pocket

It’s an innocuous looking thing, isn’t it? Much more subdued than lots of things I make. But Mr J is happy with it, and is very pleased that it can fold in half and be stashed safely in a pocket while he’s reading.

Kindle Pocket

And it does indeed grip the kindle like a vice. So much so that there are some improvements bubbling away in the back of my mind for it. The fabrics were chosen by himself, and are a brown wool suiting remnant from the Cloth House and an Amy Butler green solid. Very classy. And very manly too, reminiscent of having a flash lining inside your business suit.

Filed Under: Finished Things, Sewing - 4 Comments
« Older Posts