FIFI

The Buffalo Weavers’ Guild, of which I am an out-of-town member, has a regular program called FIFI – Find It, Finish It. A grea concept.

Although I didn’t need to find these things, I did manage to finish a few things recently. First the unexciting but necessary.

Of those 12 casement windows in my weaving studio, several had issues. The frames had apparently been painted with the wrong type of paint, or painted at the wrong time of year, or not allowed to dry thoroughly before being closed, or something. When I opened those windows in the spring, paint remained on the inside of the frame, leaving the wood on the windows bare in spots. I did my research on the type of paint I should use, sanded the frames for the 5 worst windows, taped up the glass, and set to painting them. I used Snap Dry from Sherwin Williams. Pricey stuff! Sure glad I had a 30% off coupon. But what was I thinking when I bought a whole gallon?

Anyway, I put 3 coats of the paint on over the course of 2 dry days on the 5 frames, left the windows open for a few days of warm, dry weather, and then shut them a few days ago when the temps dropped dramatically. I’ve opened them a few times to see what’s going on, and so far, so good. The truth will be what happens in the spring after they’ve been shut and locked for months.

I do have to say that I was less than enthusiastic about the blue tape. As the directions said, I removed the tape as soon as I was done painting. I got a bunch of areas like this, where tape remnants had to be carefully removed with a razor blade. (Sorry for the fuzzy photo.)

The other 7 windows weren’t in bad shape, and I decided I’d see how those 5 were in the spring before I tackled the rest. But here’s the finished AND exciting part. Look!

My pants are done! They are not perfect, and I’d make changes to the pattern for the next time, but I am reasonably happy with the pants.

Before I tell you about the process, I first want to send a HUGE thank you shout out to Theresa over at Runamuck Weaving. She’s an INCREDIBLY kind and helpful woman, and I sure hope that one day one of us will travel to the opposite coast so we can meet in person. Right now Theresa can use lots of our positive energy due to some difficult times she’s facing, so send her your kind thoughts.

Anyway, to start, I had to spend many evenings very carefully taking apart those horrid failed pants. Then I got myself some 830 Pellon to use for making my pattern from the pants I really like. Cut that pattern out of muslin, sewed them together, and the pants weren’t right. Thigh, waist, and crotch all too tight. Theresa offered her long-distance suggestions on how to improve the pattern.

I didn’t have enough muslin to move forward, so had to make another trip to the store. Then I revised the pattern and repeated the process. This time the crotch and thigh seemed right, but the waist was way too big. Back to Theresa, who offered advice on improvement.

Modify the pattern and the pants again. I have photos of those steps, but I’m not going to bore you with them. It seemed really close, and the reality is that every fabric works a bit differently, so I opted not to make another pair of muslin pants, but to move forward with my handwoven.

Theresa and a woman from my Guild who sews with her handwoven fabric both strongly recommended that I use the lightweight iron-on adhesive (Heat & Bond) on my seams and cut edges. (NOTE: In hindsight, I think I got the wrong stuff. I thin I was supposed to use light iron-on interfacing, not adhesive. Oops!) I couldn’t find it in strips, so had to start by cutting long strips of the stuff, then ironing it on every edge of every piece. Time consuming, but not hard.

After this, however, apparently my brain left my body for a while. I pulled the paper (the white that you see) off the all the leg pieces of those pants before I started to pin them together and sew. It made quite a mess on the floor, so I crumpled it all up and put it in the recycle bin. BAD MOVE! The sewing machine would not move the fabric forward with the resistance of that iron-on stuff. I had to pull it out of the garbage and use a combination of that and tissue paper, pin it to every seam, and then commence sewing. I must say, pulling either the paper or the tissue off after sewing the seam was one more time consuming step, with varying degrees of difficulty. I am positive that I’ll have some paper bits in those pants for a long time. Much like the blue tape residue on my windows.

So I sewed. I had a few issues, one being that I couldn’t save the first waistband, and didn’t have enough fabric to cut a new on in one piece, so had to fart around a bit and design a new one in two pieces, with side seams. I was smart enough to not remov the paper liner from those pieces till after they were sewn!

Next, and I knew this would be a problem, when I cut those pants the first time I didn’t make them as long as I should have. Since I wanted long pants, not crops, I knew I’d have to make a tiny hem. I ended up deciding to fold once, very small, and pres that adhesive together, then machine stitch. Never would have done this otherwise.

I also decided that with that iron-on adhesive, I would not also take the time to otherwise protect each raw edge with zigzag stitch. This may prove to be a real mistake, but I don’t think these pants will last forever regardless, and they don’t fit exactly like want, so I’m okay with that.

I’m going to happily wear my new pants, sewn with my own handwoven cotton & linen fabric, when I do my demo at the Library on Saturday!

September 27th, 2016 | 

MonkeyBoots IronMan Jim

I’m going to start this post with the good news. My grandson had told his mom on several occasions that he wished he had a sock monkey. As it so happened, I had 1 pair of sock monkey socks in my craft trunk so made it for him. For the record, I don’t like making sock monkeys. The sock fabric is too stretchy to be fun to work with, and heaven help you if you need to take a seam out. That being said, Jack thought he was the nuts (a little monkey humor there). It was all I could do to keep Jack away from the monkey while I was sewing and then while we waited for the little boy to come and get him.

Well, the almost-five-year-old boy LOVED the monkey! Way more than I could have hoped for. So much that he gave him 3 names, just like the boy has 3 names. The monkey’s name is MonkeyBoots IronMan Jim. Quite the monkier for a little simian, don’t you think? I liked the humor in making this monkey a vest with another monkey (Julius Junior) on it.

On to other sewing adventures....
I took both my courage and my scissors in hand and cut out the pattern pieces for my pants.

I spent several hours yesterday sewing. Lessons learned or remembered quickly:

The handwoven definitely frays more than commercial fabric, so needed some type of seam treatment.
French seams are tedious and time consuming, not something I was willing to do on these pants.
Zigzag stitching was ok, but looked pretty ugly.
Overlock stitch looked better than zigzag, but was better still when I sewed both raw edges together rather than doing them individually.

I will not sew for money. Just like I won’t knit for money. I’ll do it as gifts or for myself, but that’s all. It’s not one of my favorite activities and I’m not interested in investing the kind of time and attention it needs to have a professional-looking finished product inside & out. Don’t think I could get my money back on that kind of time commitment, either.

Ok, so this morning I sewed on the waistband, made the ties, and then could try the pants on for the first time. Lessons learned the hard way:

Although I’ve never done it and doubt that I’ll start now, it makes a lot of sense to make the pattern out of muslin (or similar) first so you have an idea of fit and can make adjustments as needed.
Before getting this far, stop and think. Do I own anything similar I can lay on the bed so I can compare shapes and sizes? Don’t believe either the measurements or the pictures on the pattern.

When I sewed that vest from my handwoven fabric I made a size medium. It’s really too small. You can fudge a bit with a vest, but I sure didn’t want to make that mistake again with the pants. Plus my actual body measurements were what the pattern called large, so I made the pants large. Big mistake.

They are SO big that it’s way too much fabric bunched up at my waist, and it sticks out very unattractively in both front and back Only at this point did I realize I had been wearing a pair of drawstring waist cotton shorts, so I laid them on the bed to compare sizes.

Those pants are A LOT bigger.
So I went back to the pattern and looked at the photo on the front again.

I realize that model’s probably an extra small, but there’s NO WAY that her pants fit the way mine are cut. Even if I’d made a medium instead of the large, the legs of my pants are WAY wider than hers, and the drawstring is gathered only slightly at her waist, too. False advertising!

Now I know I could remove the waistband, take out the side seam pockets, re-cut the fabric, and re-sew. However I also know that taking out the waistband and the pockets will cause lots of fraying. While I have enough fabric to cut a whole new waistband, that’s not true for the pockets, and in reality, even it it were true, I know myself well enough to know I wouldn’t do it, and even if I did, I’d end up hating the pants for what they put me through and never wearing them anyway.

So I pinned in some pleats on one side. Would I like that better?

It’s better, but is it enough better to make them wearable? Here’s a view of the side without the pinned in pleats.

I do know this...I’m not going to make a decision and implement it in time to wear these pants for the show I’ve got this weekend. I’m also not going to blindly use the top pattern for my planned top; I may not use it at all.

I’m fed up. I’m tired from lack of sleep. I’m going to put away the sewing machine, put everything else in a bag or bin, and watc some mindless TV for a while.

June 22nd, 2016 | 

What was I thinking?

 Weaving was progressing smoothly and rather rapidly. I finished 1/3 of the warp on the first day, and on the next I was past 115′′ All of a sudden, the light bulb went off in my head. I couldn’t make pants out of the fabric I was weaving! It was far too loose for this pants!

So I started weaving anew, now packing it much more densely. You can see from the photo that after that decision I struggled to make the weave consistent...some areas are more closely woven than others. This got better as I went along, but was a challenge throughout.

The good news is that I can most likely use the more loosely-woven fabric to make a top. The pattern I bought for the pants als has a simple top pattern.

The bad news is that I’ll have to wind another warp to make up the length I need. Sigh. The good news is that I have enough yarn to do so.

June 16th, 2016 | 

Opposites attract

 I’ve been on a quest, and I still am. I want to find a silk, already dyed, in roughly a 30/2 size with a great sheen. I can occasionally find a 30/2 undyed, and can always buy undyed silk both larger and smaller sizes – sometimes with sheen, and ca usually buy silk that has more texture than sheen. Combining all the qualities I’m looking for seem to elude me. In the meantime I try a variety of silks to see what has the greatest appeal to me and my customers.

When I think of silk, the words sheen, softness, and drape come to mind. Conversely, when I think of linen, crisp and matte predominate my thoughts. So when I found yarn that combined silk & linen I was intrigued. What would this fiber look like on the cone? (I bought it from colourmart in the UK, so couldn’t see it in person prior to purchase.) How would it work up into a fiber? Which properties would predominate?

I’ve had the yarn for a few months while it was waiting for me to choose the right project. I decided on a shawl. I’d wanted to try snowflake pattern, and decided this was the perfect opportunity to develop an 8-shaft pattern and show it off in the silk-linen fibe

So I went to my computer to play with my Fiberworks software, and came up with this draft.

I measured out 480 threads of white silk-linen yarn long enough to weave two shawls, and set up the Macomber loom at 24 end per inch.

I had a blue in the same fiber that I thought was too bold for my purpose, and a lilac that I thought was too subtle. I decided to start with the blue, and was really amazed at how tame it became with the white in this pattern. (Sorry this picture is so yucky. I only shot two on the loom, and this is the better one. I tried fixing it in Photoshop, but the uneven lighting made it a real challenge.)

It was clear to me that the ‘snowflakes’ themselves – the Xs, didn’t predominate. Instead the diamonds between them did. While this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, I thought the pattern pleasing enough that I wasn’t going to re-design and re-thread. Particularly since I still had no idea how the finished fabric would feel and drape.

I wove both of pieces, took them off the loom, wet finished and pressed, and was happy to see that these handwoven shawls seemed to marry the qualities of the silk and the linen beautifully.

They have a nice drape while still maintaining body. The pattern is much more subtle with the silver lilac, but it’s still a lovely shawl. At least I think so.

I’ve worked on making some changes in the draft so that the X of the snowflake is more predominant (I now have 7 versions saved on my computer), and I’ll try the new draft with another fiber, another day.

April 8th, 2012