Sew Distracted

Back? Sewing? Catching Up

This is a repost (mostly) from Restingmotion.  As usual I don't know what I am doing, and there may be no point to this.  But there may be reasons to keep sewing posts here.  I say this only because I just finished copying knitting posts to purlsandmurmurs, where there is a reason for doing so.    If this ridiculous, I bet your pardon.

I feel overwhelmed and like I have been frittering my time away, this is not exactly true.

There has been sewing, mostly simple.

Two cross covers, one in lenten purple, one in holy week red, for my church.  These were additions to the set of each made last year, to accommodate a new processional cross. 

And one simple garment for me, this a chiffon cardigan to wear to an event.  The dress was already in my closet.  The cardigan is red silk chiffon and is a fairly simple garment to make.  I did use a pattern for this, Marfy 3303 which is one of the "free" patterns included with the purchase of the Marfy 2014/2015 annual catalog.  The pattern picture is shown below:

There are two pattern pieces, two front pieces and two back pieces which are seamed at the center.  You would think they are rectangles, but they are not, part of the genius of the pattern.  Tucks are made at each shoulder, and there is a side seam, but it is in the interior of the cardigan, allowing the edges to float and flutter freely, as if the cardigan were simply a shawl.  The clever cutting and seaming allows this to fit and flow on the body nicely, and also to stay in place when one is dancing.  Always an advantage in my book.

I also made six baptismal towels, four in March, for Easter Sunday. 

And two more two weeks later.    Each towel is made by hand from ecclesiastical weight linen, with hand embroidery and hand hemmed.  The entire process takes me somewhere between 8 to 13 hours, the variation depending mostly on the baby's name.  the  shortest of these took me 8 1/2 hours, and the longest slightly over 12, or somewhat over 70 hours total for the six towels, but less than 80 hours.  I love doing this, and I am sure I could find a faster way, but at the moment this is still a labor of love.

There has been some knitting progress, but nothing has been completed.  I am still working on the ribbon cardigan.  As much as I love both knitting and ironing, I find that this project tests my patience.  I may like to iron but ironing yards upon yards of rayon ribbon flat is tedious at best.  I have just finished ironing the third 100-yard skein of ribbon.  I need to wind it on a spindle, after which I can knit another section of the sweater.  The knitting itself is also slow, fun, but slow.  There have been evenings in the past month where one row of the twisted basketweave stitch is all I can accomplish of an evening.  Of course, the body of this cardigan is being knit in one piece, so the rows are not short.  Sometimes self-justification is all that keeps us going.  I know that I will love this cardigan.  I love the fabric that I am creating.  But it will be a long time before I take on another ribbon sweater.  I will be happy if I have finished this by fall, which is, realistically, as soon as I would wear this sweater anyway.

Greater progress has been made with "Murder of Crows".  I finished the body of the sweater and have picked up the first sleeve.  This too will be a fall sweater, although there are still early mornings in the garden which would be cool enough to wear this sweater, were it finished.    I really like the way this sweater is turning out and knitting it has reminded me that, as much as I love complicated texture and color work, patterns that require thought, it is also very good to have a simple mindless project on the needles. Pardon the dark photo -- an unblocked sweater on a dark background,  taken on a deeply cloudy day.

 

This is a repost (mostly) from Restingmotion.  As usual I don't know what I am doing, and there may be no point to this.  But there may be reasons to keep sewing posts here.  I say this only because I just finished copying knitting posts to purlsandmurmurs, where there is a reason for doing so.    If this ridiculous, I bet your pardon.

I feel overwhelmed and like I have been frittering my time away, this is not exactly true.

There has been sewing, mostly simple.

Two cross covers, one in lenten purple, one in holy week red, for my church.  These were additions to the set of each made last year, to accommodate a new processional cross. 

And one simple garment for me, this a chiffon cardigan to wear to an event.  The dress was already in my closet.  The cardigan is red silk chiffon and is a fairly simple garment to make.  I did use a pattern for this, Marfy 3303 which is one of the "free" patterns included with the purchase of the Marfy 2014/2015 annual catalog.  The pattern picture is shown below:

There are two pattern pieces, two front pieces and two back pieces which are seamed at the center.  You would think they are rectangles, but they are not, part of the genius of the pattern.  Tucks are made at each shoulder, and there is a side seam, but it is in the interior of the cardigan, allowing the edges to float and flutter freely, as if the cardigan were simply a shawl.  The clever cutting and seaming allows this to fit and flow on the body nicely, and also to stay in place when one is dancing.  Always an advantage in my book.

I also made six baptismal towels, four in March, for Easter Sunday. 

And two more two weeks later.    Each towel is made by hand from ecclesiastical weight linen, with hand embroidery and hand hemmed.  The entire process takes me somewhere between 8 to 13 hours, the variation depending mostly on the baby's name.  the  shortest of these took me 8 1/2 hours, and the longest slightly over 12, or somewhat over 70 hours total for the six towels, but less than 80 hours.  I love doing this, and I am sure I could find a faster way, but at the moment this is still a labor of love.

There has been some knitting progress, but nothing has been completed.  I am still working on the ribbon cardigan.  As much as I love both knitting and ironing, I find that this project tests my patience.  I may like to iron but ironing yards upon yards of rayon ribbon flat is tedious at best.  I have just finished ironing the third 100-yard skein of ribbon.  I need to wind it on a spindle, after which I can knit another section of the sweater.  The knitting itself is also slow, fun, but slow.  There have been evenings in the past month where one row of the twisted basketweave stitch is all I can accomplish of an evening.  Of course, the body of this cardigan is being knit in one piece, so the rows are not short.  Sometimes self-justification is all that keeps us going.  I know that I will love this cardigan.  I love the fabric that I am creating.  But it will be a long time before I take on another ribbon sweater.  I will be happy if I have finished this by fall, which is, realistically, as soon as I would wear this sweater anyway.

Greater progress has been made with "Murder of Crows".  I finished the body of the sweater and have picked up the first sleeve.  This too will be a fall sweater, although there are still early mornings in the garden which would be cool enough to wear this sweater, were it finished.    I really like the way this sweater is turning out and knitting it has reminded me that, as much as I love complicated texture and color work, patterns that require thought, it is also very good to have a simple mindless project on the needles. Pardon the dark photo -- an unblocked sweater on a dark background,  taken on a deeply cloudy day.

Looking Back, Moving Forward

Below is a post I wrote for Restingmotion.  I am cross-posting again because basically I am considering retiring this blog again and rolling everything back into a single space.  I will still write about sewing and needlework, but under one heading.  I very much think I broke everything out into separate boxes again just because I was generally struggling.

 

Anyway, let me know if you have thoughts, any thoughts.

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Somewhere around about the time of my last blog post my brain started working again. I felt as if a switch that had been jammed for a long time suddenly slipped back into position. It was that sudden.  I was still tired, I was still recovering from my fourth cardiac procedure of the year, but suddenly it felt like a cloud had lifted and whatever remnants of my old self that were still hanging on stood up and listened, 

As I was suddenly finding myself increasingly alive, increasingly doing, I also found that I stopped writing.  I had no urge to write.  As is evidenced by the erratic nature of this, or these, blogs over the last two years, this was part of an ongoing struggle.  In many ways I write to make sense of who I am. And yet, in many ways the "me" in me was in hibernation.  As that dormant part of myself began to reawaken, I found I needed time for reassessment and nesting.  Writing would come in its own time. 

Anyway, I am still here.  I can honestly say the last 3 1/2 months have been the longest period of good, at least in terms of health, since July of 2020.  I don't yet feel like I am out from under the mountain because the simple truth is that I was barely coping and there are tons of the daily stuff of life with which I was barely managing.  I did what I needed to do.  I tried to explore my creative instincts. I read a great deal, but I am not convinced that all the circuits in my brain were functioning.  Of course they weren't functioning. My brain and my body were in siege-mode.  I was doing what I needed to do to get through it all, and now I am dealing with the wreckage that surrounds me.  But the wreckage is the past. All that matters is now.

I am a different person than I was on the eve of my 62nd birthday.  Pain, cancer, heart issues, all these things changed me.  And although we like to say that getting through these things is a journey, and when we come out on the other side we have achieved something, the truth is that for the most parts these are journeys we would really rather not take.  We are changed. And parts of us are lost in the process. A part of who I was before has been erased, and a part of who I am today has yet to be discovered.  

And yet, the need for an assessment prevails.  Not an assessment of illness or health, nor necessarily either an accounting or an owning-up. I suppose I simply feel the urge to reflect on a few trends.

I read 83 books, fewer than in the previous few years. My reading slowed considerably in the last three months of the year and I found myself beset with an urge to reread, even books I had recently finished.  I reconned this a shift in my mental landscape, perhaps an acknowledgement that something essential had been missing.  This is not surprising. I have always been a collector of words and ideas, of books, not just a reader.  For me reading is relationship, and a worthwhile relationship, like a good book, grows with the retelling.  Primarily however, my reading slowed because my ability to do increased.  In the business of resettling and rebuilding, there is peace in the slow progression of words on a page, of ideas filtering through the interstices of thought.

2022 was also a year that  I managed to do more sewing, and more in the studio than I had in the entire time since George died in 2013, more than since I left Hyde Park at the end of 2011.  This despite flirtations with heart failure and four cardiac procedures. This despite long weeks where I felt very much like I was living at the bottom the ocean. Small though my accomplishments were, they were very much a good thing.

The photos in this blog post are mostly gathered from various posts on my sewing blog, which is once again being retired.  I will never be the world's greatest seamstress, embroiderer, weaver, any of that.  I don't care and it doesn't matter.  Nor do I always want to maintain a blog devoted to a single subject. You will simply have to put up with me.  The original decision to retire sewdistracted was sound, its resurrection arose from my own feelings of division and loss, feelings that are best returned to the past.

Here also is an accounting of sorts.

1.  I did a lot of alterations.  I needed things to wear and I was stubbornly resistant to going out and buying things simply because I could.  Some things were bought, it is true, but many things were taken in and a few were completely reconfigured.  I only posted two of the many items I altered, (a linen tank/tunic that surprisingly is still in my closet, and a pair of slacks).
2. There was a steady stream of church related sewing, both in terms of mending and making new items.
3. A friend and I made a plastic-wrap sloper/muslin and I worked with that somewhat, although not enough, both modifying knitting patterns and working on sewing muslins.
4. I sewed three simple summer dresses.
5. I fitted five muslins for future dresses, all basic styles that I will be made and worn, perhaps in multiple iterations.  This was done during a fabulous seminar at PaperMaple Studio in New Orleans, another experience that did wonders for my state of mind and improved skills.
6. I organized my pattern stash.
7. I organized three corners of my studio. There is more organizing and sorting to be done. Yarn remains only partially unpacked and there is an entire closet to design and put to use.
8. I went to the boro stitch workshop at Arrowmont.
9. I went on a sewing retreat with friends and I thread traced a dress.
10. I finished said dress only to decide I didn't like it.  I proceeded to take it apart, and redesign it in a way that I think works better. I have not yet completely put it back together. 
11. I made gifts, mostly quilted, mostly small projects, but not all.
12. I started to refresh my embroidery and hand-sewing skills.  At first I despaired that my fingers would ever work again, but eventually my fingers began to cooperate, stitches became more even, the feel of a needle and thread became calming rather than stressful.

All in all I sewed 39.6 yards of fabric in 2022.  It is not much, and yet it is more than I have sewn in many years.  For the most part I was happy with the projects I completed. I sewed more fabric than I bought, also for the first time in years. 

Cross-Posting

The following was posted to restingmotion yesterday.  Because it is about stitching, I have decided to double post it here.  

 

I don't yet know if this will be a regular occurrence, or in fact what direction my blog entries will be following as I am finding myself on new ground and am settling in.  Still sewing, still playing with thread, just evolving.

 

Thank you for your patience.

-----------------------

A week ago today I came home from a workshop at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in nearby Gatlinburg.  This is what I took:  The Boro Stitch as a Brush Stroke, taught by Deborah Fell. 

I had been looking forward to the class all year, and although I had ended up missing other classes due to annoying health issues, I was determined not to miss this one.  I didn't really know what to expect.  I didn't think I would learn a lot, technique wise, but I hoped this would ignite a creative spark.  I was right and wrong.  Oh so very wrong. And yet completely on point.

In fact I found the workshop overwhelming.  I was tired.  One week post my third ablation and fourth surgery since March, I was very tired.  But sometimes it seems that exhaustion allows cracks to appear that otherwise might have been remained firmly shut. 

I had been wanting to play for a long time.  I had dreams and ideas and I would sketch them out in my crude fashion, dump my fabrics and yarns in a pile and stare at them in frustration only to pack them up again and go back to something tried and true and familiar.

Our studio space was filled with inspiration. Deborah brought many samples.  I took many many photos, most of which seemed to have disappeared, although I am certain I took them. That doesn't really matter.  It seems to me, and I do not think my brain is the only brain wired this way, that inspiration files both inspire and limit.  Perhaps better that ideas become fleeting memories.

Some photos remained though, and I made a collage of some of Deborah's work that she brought to share.  For me, perhaps the collage itself, both in the act of combining the images  and as a reference piece for my own folder, is greater generator of ideas than the individual works were, as much as I admired them.

That first day, I was very overwhelmed.  I was tired.  I was dehydrated.  My pulse was erratic.  I perhaps had too much to drink the night before following a very stressful drive.  I was too literal in my intent and that is quite a statement from a woman who believes life itself is a metaphor.

We were supposed to let grow of rules but I struggled with that idea.  I wanted to make neat orderly controlled embroidery stitches, exactly the kind of stitching I used to make, but at the same time the kind of stitching I have been struggling with lately.  My hands do not work they way my younger hands worked.  But eventually something snapped in place and I realized that it is not just my hands that do not want to do what they used to do; my psyche also wander in new fields, fields of random stitches and overlapped collages of life. 

Things started to loosen up on the second day.  I had always been happy to be there, in this workshop with my fellow students, but something started to become easier.  At some point on Wednesday I was bubbling with excitement.   An idea had cropped into my head, and as I pursued it, sparks started firing and one little patchwork sampler took on a life of its own.   Black canvas, various upholstery fabrics, thread, bronzed wire, sisal twine.    This was the first piece that I felt was really finished, was itself, and came from some place outside my conscious control.  It is still perhaps my favorite piece of the workshop, although I did not say that at the end, when we were supposed to evaluate our own work.  It was all too emotional for me then, too connected to what I wanted it to be, too connected intention and desire, struggle and hope.  Even a day later my perspective changed.  

Honestly, I think everything I did was a success, even those pieces that are not successful in and of themselves, not successful as something I want to save.  I suspect that some are simply unfinished.  Some might be cut up again and take on new lives. Who knows.  But the success is in the play, in taking those first steps and sometimes in learning that forcing the issue is the wrong path to take.  There are one or two pieces I want to love, that started off with promise, and which I initially was quite satisfied with, but which now I see took a hard turn in the wrong direction, where I forced the issue, letting my conscious mind determine the direction the work should.  Somewhere, subconsciously, it knew what it wanted to be. But I lacked trust.

Looking at the photo above, at my own body of work, I see things differently than I did at the time.  Distance.  Perspective.  I see connectivity that I had not noticed; potential as well.  

That one week at Arrowmont was probably the best thing I did this year, even at the risk of exhaustion, or as mentioned above perhaps because of that very same exhaustion.  It wasn't just me. It wasn't being inspired by Deborah Fell's work, but by the entire class, by the people I met, the work I saw around me both in the studio I was working in, in artist's presentations, in odd corners here and there.  I had misplaced something and I found it again.  My hold is still tenuous.  But that is part of the journey.

My other favorite piece is not in the photo above.  I finished it the last morning. It started out as a stitch sampler, an attempt to solve a problem in another one of the sampler squares (which is on that wall), but it suddenly took on a life of its own, becoming its own thing.  It doesn't matter what kind of thing it is, or in a sense if it is "art" or not, if it is "good" or not, simply that it is what it needs to be.  

I see a lot of playing in my future.  Everything is a new spark.  Everyday is a new ignition point. 

Hello From The Studio

There have been some happy hours spent in the studio this summer and yet at the same time there is very little to show for that effort.   Much of that was spent in handwork practice that I am not ready or willing to share, or that is not mine to share.  Some time was also spent with some older textiles, refreshing my memory regarding textile restoration, hand work, and organizing thoughts and plans.  It always seems like the planning bit is the longest part of anything really, and in many ways the least amenable to blogging because it can take me days to organize my thoughts into a path, and longer yet before that path becomes coherent.

 

Why should it be so complicated you ask?  Don't I just want to make clothes?  Well, yes. Yes I do, but being myself, I can even manage to turn that into a maelstrom of musings.

 

First however, I finally finished the bookcase that goes in the Northwest corner of the studio.  It had been partially assembled, and I had some piles here and there, mostly on the pressing table, making it unavailable for current projects.

 

Here is the finished corner now.  Well the rubber mallet is no longer on the floor; it has been properly put away.  I added four cubes, and shifted the bookcase slightly so it occupies that entire end of the room between window and wall.  This required moving the white plastic cubitec unit that I had built in the laundry room, and later found to be less useful than I had hoped, out of the basement and across the way to the studio.  Then of course I had to remove all the books, expand the bookcase and put everything back.   

 

This all took place over a series of days.  The books were sorted and put in order.  Then there was a mad frenzy of searching because it seems very apparent to me that a box, or two, of books is missing, and yet I cannot find them anywhere.  I am certain I had certain books, equally convinced that I would not have given them away for anything, and yet they are nowhere to be found.  It is completely illogical that, of all the things that could disappear in a move, two boxes of books would be the items that would "fall off the truck".    I have no explanation. I probably never will, and really it is irrelevant.

 

But it was a great deal of fun to reacquaint myself with my knitting, sewing, and fiber books.  Many happy. hours were spent reading, looking at patterns, dreaming dreams.   I still think I want to come up with some plan for cataloging the patterns in the various volumes and magazines, as well as the notebooks full of patterns I have clipped over the years but I am really not sure if I will ever get to that.  The world is full of patterns, and yet, I also discovered there remain many things I still want to knit, or to knit again.

 

There is still a lot of organizing that must happen before the studio is fully functional but increasingly it is becoming a space that works for me.  I really like what I have achieved so far, and it has proved functional and maintainable. There are still some boxes of things to sort through, and the two bins of UFOs are larger than I would like, but at least everything is together in a coherent way. 

 

I did get all the sewing patterns organized, or most of them.  There is a small basket of about a dozen patterns that have turned up here and there on my desk waiting for me to get around to cataloging and filing them.  I also got about 1/3 of the yarn stash photographed, catalogued, and put away.  The remainder has been corralled but I need to work on plans for how to organize the storage closet.  I got started, changed my mind, and temporarily abandoned the project.  I can't resume cataloging until I have a coherent way to sort and store the cataloged yarn. I rearranged the sewing tables, but haven't yet shifted the way I store tools and small things so that they work with the new sewing arrangement. Actual sewing then, as opposed to cutting and flat table work, is still a little bit of an adventure.

 

I bought fast-dry foam and sunbrella fabric to make new cushions for the outdoor seating, but then, when I had the time and energy, we were drenched in rainfall.  Now that it is dry, I once again do not have the energy.  Sooner or later it will all come together. In the meantime the materials are in their own corner, waiting peacefully.

 

The last time I wrote, dress patterns were on my mind.  They still are.  I ordered more muslin because I was out but I have not made much progress on the dress front.  The five dress patterns are dresses I will wear again and again, and I have no problem with that.  I am living in the three dresses I made.  They are pretty much worn, washed, and worn again.  I am perfectly content.  I could simply make more dresses and continue on my merry way.

 

But I also have a closet, a closet that contains clothes, mostly separates, that need to be worn.  Sewing dresses is easy because I don't have to coordinate them with anything else.  But what do I do about my other clothes?  I do want to wear them.  And I don't particularly want a closet full of widows and orphans.  In the past I just sewed, and knitted, whatever it was that I felt like sewing or knitting at the time, and hoped that eventually it would go with something in my closet.  But I think I want to take a more organized approach. I want a closet where everything works together, or at least with its own capsule of items.   And this means both more time thinking about what I have and what I need, and also more shifting to a more organized approach.

 

It started with these slim stretch cotton ankle pants.  They fit now and I very much like them.  Except that, as you can see, they were initially too wide at the ankle.  I don't recall if that was the style when I purchased them, (whenever that was; I am surprised I held on to them) or if I just have narrow ankles in comparison to my hips.  But I don't think the combination of this width and this length is flattering.

So I thought I could take them in, tapering down from the knee.  I didn't want to take up too much, because doing that would require dissassembling the entire pant, recutting it and putting it back together.  It would be easier just to make new pants.   The pants are now about 1 1/2 inches narrower at the ankle than they were in the photo above (see lower two photos). And the blue thread is really not that bright in real life.  

I think they look much better.  But the process of altering the pants made me think about what I have in my closet and what goes with what.  Although I was thrilled to find something I had forgotten that fit me now, I was also frustrated to see a closet full of clothes that do technically fit, but which I have no idea how to wear so that they work for the person I am now, with the body I reside in now.  I need to figure it out.  I need to let go of what doesn't work, regardless of whether it fits, and I need to have a plan to make and/or buy things that I will actually use  together with the things I have.  

 

And so it seems I have a whole new project. I have started working on that: pulling clothes out of the closet to see what goes with what, trying on outfits, photographing them, putting everything back away.  It is daunting because I have to try everything.  I've been avoiding buying new things or making new things because I didn't know what I had, and opening the closet was overwhelming. It is one thing to add a new item to an existing wardrobe that woks well together, and to create outfits and play with ideas.  It is somewhat more exhausting when when I don't know how anything goes together, and many of the things I once wore no longer work for who I am now.  Sometimes it feels like this closet belonged to someone else and I am, in some ways, starting from scratch.  It is all exhausting.  It is also very rewarding as I have a much better sense of who I am now and what I want to wear now in this stage of my life.  I am gaining a more focused sense of what I need and what I want.  

For example, one thing I noticed is that the above pants look much better with the pointy toed flats than they did with the ankle-high buckled sandals.  I  discovered that I like a necklace that sits much closer to my collarbone.  The 18" strand of pearls in the top photo is too long and needs to be shortened, probably to somewhere near 16".  Pearls that are never worn because the lengths of the strands are wrong can be restrung.

 

I am developing a catalog of sorts of what works, and series of lists and plans.  I don't want to make, or even spend money buying, something that doesn't work.  Oh one of the things about making is that not everything works, and I am sure I will make many duds, but at least I won't be flying blind. I am not sewing now and yet, finally, I am becoming increasingly focused and excited about the options ahead.

 

Five Dress Patterns

I went to a four day sewing retreat at Papermaple Studio in New Orleans and had a fabulous time.  The studio was beautiful, spacious, well-equipped, and Leisa was incredibly knowledgeable and helpful.  I met some interesting ladies, all of whom were working on really lovely, and sometimes very special projects.  

I however worked on muslins, dress muslins to be specific.  I came home with four muslins, all in the final stages of fit, and I believe manageable for me to finish up on my own.  All of the patterns are for dresses I would make and wear over the summer, wearable shapes that I would probably make repeatedly.    I feel like I am in a good place to jump back into making my own clothes, and I also feel I learned a lot.  Leisa helped me to look at the fitting process in new ways, and I am very excited to move forward.

 

Alas I am traveling most of this month so you will not be seeing immediate progress.

 

I also did some sewing before I went to New Orleans, partially fitting and making up the Closet Core Cielo dress pattern.  

Admittedly I felt a little confused by the entire fitting process.  It had simply been too many years and even though I am more adept at fitting knitting patterns, somehow I just could not wrap my head around the process, so perhaps I was not quite as methodical as I could have been.  I did a quick muslin of the basic pattern, decided I needed to pinch out a pleat on the right side of the dress, from the neckline angled down.  You can see that in the pattern piece above, the green lines, which are all on one side of the center fold only.  

Once I drew that in, and pivoted the pleat out into the dart, it changed the angle of the shoulder and armscye, although it did not change the armscye or sleeve shaping at all.   You can see the repositioning in the blue line above.  I should have made another muslin.  But I did not.  I just went ahead and cut my first dress, rationalizing that I could spend an endless amount of time on muslins and I desperately needed summer clothes.   The final dress was not perfect, but it is wearable, and will get me through the summer.  I suspect I am more aware of the flaws than are most people, except perhaps for my closest and sharpest sewing friends.

Here is a (poor) picture of me in the first dress, a purple 65% linen, 35% cotton blend.  As you can see, I made my dress longer than the pattern illustration.  In fact I had to add about 5 inches in length to the pattern, all below the waist.  I love the shape of this dress, it is exactly the kind of loose, easy, dress that makes hot humid summer dressing tolerable.  

I did note a few problems, but that didn't stop me from making two more dresses.  The second dress is an Australian cotton print, and the third version, my favorite so far, is in a more loosely woven muted green linen check.   I did not go back and perfect the pattern before making these dresses.  As I stated, need trumped perfectionism.  Although I admit that the first time I put them on I was self conscious about my own failings, I promptly forgot that and was simply happy and comfortable. Generally, I hate making things under pressure, which is exactly what I did here.  I needed clothes and I whipped them out.  Now that I have my most basic wardrobe needs covered, I can spend time with my sewing, hopefully learning and improving as I go.  

 

Each project is a learning process, and I don't intend to get so wrapped up in perfectionism that I never wear anything.  I learned a lot about fitting the Cielo dress through making the three copies, more than I did from the muslin.  Then I learned more about fit by working on the four muslins in New Orleans.  Every project is a learning process.  I am sure there will be successes and failures.  If I have an excess of successes, I may grow tired of my three dresses, or I may not.  In the meantime, a part of me feels like a kid again. 

Retrospectoscope

I am sewing.  My projects have been a mixture of successes and near-misses, truthfully some of those misses are fairly widely off the mark, but not unwearable. There have been times when I have grumbled at myself over making "rube" mistakes, at errors that could have been caught earlier because I certainly know better.  Yet none of my efforts have been wadded up and tossed in the trash.  Reconnecting with old skills appears to be a meandering path. 

 

It also takes rookie mistakes sometimes to remind oneself of why things are done the way the are done.  There is something about saying "I didn't think it mattered in this case" and admitting that you were wrong, that it did indeed matter. There is something also to be said about moving forward anyway, about living with your mistakes, and accepting that it is all a process.  Perfection doesn't come down like a lightening strike from the hands of God, however much we might wish that it did.   I told myself initially that I would start simple, that I would wear what I made, mistakes and all, if possible, and that I should remember my younger, beginner, self.  Even though I have skills, some of them are quite rusty, and others seem to have retreated into deep hiding.  I am a begin-againer. 

 

I am sewing for myself now, but what I actually want to look at today is some sewing I did earlier in the spring.  Sewing that was not for myself, was not particularly difficult sewing, but which nonetheless rekindled that love of making things, and reminded me of some of the why's and wherefore's of my path.

This past Sunday was Pentecost.  My church was filled with joy and balloons and people wearing red. I had never been to a church filled with balloons on Pentecost before I moved and found this church, but it is a thing of joy.   But this post is not about Pentecost, or about church except insofar as it references sewing for church.

 

The color of Pentecost is red and the church is draped in red.  There are two ecclesiastical reds in the Episcopal church however, Pentecost red which is bright and vibrant and a deeper red, a Holy Week red.   There are in fact many shades in between given the variations in the way fabrics take dyes, but that is not the point of this post either.   My church only has one set of red hangings for the altar, and this is not unusual.  Our hangings are actually Holy Week red, but I doubt very few people care about this minor point.  I like ritual, and I like knowing that there are colors associated with seasons and saints and all kinds of what-have-you; but that is my inner medievalist, medievalist and lover of ritual. I doubt most people even notice the difference. I am not thinking we need to buy (or make!) more.  Rather, in thinking about shades of red I am also reminded of the direct connection between reds, between the somber red of Holy Week, and the vibrant red of Pentecost, between blood and fire, between despair and joy.  We cannot have the balloons and the flames and the joy without also having some acquaintance with the dark side.   Our joy can only burst forth after we have been dipped in despair.

 

But the red hangings also reminded me of a spring sewing project, specifically a Holy Week project, a project about which I did not blog, partially because it was "too simple" but also because I was once again under the weather  and struggling with heart rhythm issues and I didn't have the energy or wherewithal to write.

 

But now, even as we embrace the future, the retrospectoscope has been opened.

 

Back in April I wrote about making a cover, or dress, for a small cross.  I also made covers for all the processional crosses in the church, and another dress for the standing cross, this time in red for Holy Week.  Our church had not, at least in my memory, used red for Holy Week beyond Palm Sunday, and we did not have the appropriate covers for the processional crosses.  And so I made some. 

 

It was a fun project.  First I had to find a red fabric that was as close to the red fabric already in use as possible.   Then I had to measure the crosses and draft patterns for the covers.  They were pretty simple geometric shapes, but I did have to think about such things as proportion, or where to place the channels for the drawstring ties in order to create an attractive balance.  Because I had to measure the crosses and create the patterns and figure out how the drawstrings would work.  None of this is as complicated as an actual dress, but it was still a good way to restart the process of thinking about making things, about sewing, and about sewing math.

 

It was also a good refresher course in technique.  I figured out pretty quickly that sewing the rather tight curves at the top of the cross cover was a tad tricky, and that I much preferred using hand-stitching to gather fabric where necessary, and basting curves in place by hand rather than by machine.  Handwork may be slightly slower, but it offers much more control.  Or perhaps this is just a temperamental thing. It seems I am far less interested in speed than I am in the process and the idea of doing something well.   Making the cross covers reminded me of this and allowed me to practice skills which continue to come to be useful.

 

 

I made three cross covers for processional crosses.  I neglected to take pictures of them in use, but I admit to feeling absurdly happy when I saw them in church during the church service.

 

I also made a second dress for the small chapel cross, this one in red.  The second dress had deeper pleats than the first dress, the result of actually thinking about the pattern and the shape and the way volume and shape influence each other.  But this dress was also made out of a fabric with more drape, a fabric that handled volume in a different way, and that contributed to the dress as well.    Even the same dress, on the same figure, in different fabrics can be entirely different.

Learning

I haven't been quite as absent from the sewing studio as I have been from this blog, but I can't say that I've been making earth shattering progress either.  

 

I finally got around to finishing up the sloper that my friend Liana helped me start the beginning of March, and which I transferred from film wrap to paper the beginning of April.  It is what, the end of May now?  I am certain that a little more timeliness would have helped the project, but at least I am slowly inching forward.

 

I used that first paper draft of my sloper to make a pattern draft for a cardigan I was knitting, a cardigan meant to be rather boxy and knit with positive ease.  I wanted something a little less boxy, with better shape around the shoulders, so I plunged ahead, even though I had not yet made any attempt to fit that muslin.  Yes, fools rush in.  But there will be more about that on the knitting blog.  There would be more already but I have suffered from a great failure to take photographs of progress along the way.  

 

Anyway, although it seems incongruous, playing  with shaping through knitting has been instructive mostly because of the scale.  I don't have to cut an entire garment, I can play with shaping incrementally, ripping and reknitting as needed.  It may sound painfully slow but it has also been an instrumental process in helping me clarify my thoughts.

 

Eventually I decided I needed to fit the muslin.  

It went pretty well, and mostly was spot on.  The seams ended up where they were supposed to be. The neck and the armscyes were mostly ok.  The bust however was problematic.  Whether we compressed my breast tissue too much with the plastic wrap, or I componed the problem by allowing the plastic to relax somewhat I will never know.  You can see that I don't have enough width in the bust in the photo above, and the pulling is also pulling the armscye out of alignment -- that pucker.  It needed more work.  

 

Actually, in this photo I have actually captured one of the few times in my life where I have felt busty, or accepted that I might actually need a full bust adjustment.  Oh I knew it in my head, and although I gained volume post menopause, I also accepted retroactively that I had probably needed larger cups sizes when I was young and skinny and thought of myself as "dartless", a moniker coined by my mother and which I apparently struggled to outgrow, despite all evidence to the contrary.  In all likelihood I simply needed a smaller band size, and bigger cup size than I could find in my local JC Penny.  Add that to my own, also probably culturally-informed issues with my scoliosis, and let's just say that I wasn't helping myself in the fitting department.  

 

But this is not the time root out the past; rather it is time to dress me, now.

 

It seems this meandering path toward fitting and sewing has been a process of reaching some understanding.  My full bust is slightly over 5 inches larger than my high bust.  Obviously then I need full bust adjustment and I need darts. I wear a fairly small band size, slightly larger since breast-cancer surgery for comfort reasons, but that is neither here nor there.  I am also not only asymmetrical but tallish (5'9") and have a long torso, both of which serves deemphasize the bust, which can be to my benefit. Except when it is not, when it keeps me from fully realizing my own options.

 

Still I learned some things.  I did need more width at the bust, but not a lot, and mostly on the right rather than on the left.  There goes that old asymmetry thing again.  And I needed more length on the left than on the right.   

 

I didn't take another photo, post pattern-correction, and I was not absolutely meticulous about every little detail.  My plan for this muslin was that it offer fitting help and give me an idea of how to work with patterns and my own three-dimensional shape, not be a perfect model for drafting future patterns.  In fact, I am still having trouble wrapping my head around patterns, and how this muslin translates to other shapes.  That is part of the process I am sure.  Hopefully long forgotten muscle memory will be activated as I progress and I will not spend all my times floundering in the weeds.  

Here are the front pieces.  As you can see the asymmetrically is not is markedly noticeable here, at least not as much as in the back, see previous post for that.  I haven't gone to the trouble to give you a photo that highlights scale or the actual differences or sizes of anything here.  That is not the point for me at this moment.  Right now, this exercise is as much conceptual as it is practical. My immediate sewing needs are for summer garments.  Heat and humidity are not compatible with closely fitted garments in my experience.    I could probably spend my life playing with perfecting something that is supposed to be an abstract guideline.  And then I would have nothing to wear.

 

I don't think I want to think about any of it at all right now.  But I will.  I assume I will have to.

 

Addressing the Pattern Stash

It seems I continue to work in a rather roundabout fashion, working toward goals but not getting directly to the point.  

This past week I cataloged and organized sewing patterns.  It was admittedly something that needed to be done as they were in no particular order, which was proving difficult when searching either for a particular design or even for ideas.   The search for patterns was not what prompted this fit of organizational mania however, although perhaps it should have been, as I went out and bought a duplicate of a pattern I already owned simply because I could not find the original.  Now I have them both.  Silliness, silliness.  We must be kind to ourselves over our various sillinesses.

 

In fact, I started unpacking, sorting and cataloging patterns last weekend because I felt unsteady doing anything else.  I had been through another episode of atrial flutter and had an ablation last Friday.  On Saturday I was somewhat tired, and someone slow in terms of focus despite only having "light" anesthesia.  It seemed unwise to cut patterns, sew, or perhaps even man a hot iron -- the potential for errors was too high.  The patterns were there, completely disorganized and apparently overflowing the allotted space, waiting to be unpacked and organized.  

 

It proved to be the perfect activity, not completely mindless, but not requiring attention either.  Sorting through the pattern stash filled my mind as I imagined the things I dreamed of making, remembered sewing projects and outfits of the past, and not least also indulged my penchant for organization orderliness, lists, and organization. 

I used Pinterest to catalog the patterns, primarily because of its visual orientation, but partly also because many patterns had already been uploaded, which made it easy to add them to my own boards.  By using Pinterest, I can sort patterns into categories and I have the option of putting one pattern in as many categories as makes sense to me.  Then the actual patterns can be filed in a very straight-forward and orderly fashion.

There were of course, too many patterns.  There may be some patterns I am not fully convinced I still want to make, but I am also not convinced that I am ready to give up on them either.  For example there are two dress patterns I bought because I wanted to knock off a particular dress, and each pattern offered some of the necessary components.  I don't remember exactly what effect I was going for, only that these patterns seemed like a good starting point.  Maybe I can work with that; perhaps I am no longer interested in the outcome.  I don't know yet.

There is also this collection of patterns.  I was entranced with them when I was at JoAnn fabrics with my mom early in the spring of 2021, before I knew I had breast cancer.  I knew I needed summer clothes, and thought they would be a good starting point, giving me some good, simple, options to kick off my summer sewing.  All of these garments would be suitable for a hot humid summer, and would give me clothing options while I worked on other fitting issues.  Then my plans changed and I didn't sew.  I still have the patterns.  For the most part I still like them and see their use.  One is questionable.   But I will never really know what I think until I sew them up.

 

There is also much apparent duplication in he pattern stash, in some categories more than others.  I am OK with that, although it is something I intend to address.  There is no rush because, once organized, all the patterns fit in the space I had allotted to them.  This was something of a happy surprise, made possible because I also found a use for five baskets I had purchased for another purpose, but found they did not work as well in that application as anticipated.  Win-Win.

 

That doesn't mean I don't intend to deal with duplicates.  Although I am basically attracted to sewing clothing because of my love of wearing clothes,  there is another side of my sewing life as well.  I am also subject to a certain nerdy, process-oriented, curiosity and a tendency toward comparison.  

 

I can't just say to myself "pick this tee pattern and work from there".  If I did so, I would always feel I had potentially missed out on something. I actually look forward to the process of comparison, of taking the six or so tee patterns I have, laying them out, comparing them, figuring what works and why.  This is the same reason I occasionally buy a pattern because of a single detail that fascinates me. It is the same instinct that makes me have sets of knitting needles in different materials despite the fact that I have one favorite -- there are always instances where my favorite is not the best choice.  This is the same instinct that makes me want to take on, or at least be highly attracted to, projects where other knitters, sewers, cooks, etc had trouble making something work.  This is not because I think I can do it better, it is more a curiosity as to why something fails, what it takes to make it work, if possible, and what I can learn from the process.

 

I will need some basic tees and turtlenecks come fall.  I am not desperate, although it is possible I may be before I finish playing. I have some materials for experimentation and perhaps opportunities for learning.  I suppose life could be easier, but as I spent time the last week sorting through sewing patterns, I actually grew more excited by the possibilities for not making life easier.

 

There are some of us who just seem to be wired that way.

 

 

 

 

Cross-Dressing

Silliness. Yes.  I love stupid cross-references and playing with words.  I don't feel particularly embarrassed or shy about my love of such silliness, even if my references and jokes make sense to no one but myself.  In fact, it may be the pure ridiculousness that makes me happy.

More than two, no three, weeks after my episode of silliness, I remain giddy with glee at the memory.  If I am thrilled with the sewing, even simple sewing, perhaps I should blog. I may be slow, but that is no reason to be apologetic or to hold back.

 

But what was all this bubbling silliness about?  I made a small, baby-doll sized, dress.  Except it was for a cross. And yes, once I thought about dresses for crosses, inappropriate puns did come to mind. I have no regrets.

 

All that needs saying is that something was damaged and needed replacing.  And so it was done.  Finding the right shade of fabric took more time than the making; I couldn't find quite the right purple locally and so something had to be ordered.  That something ended up being slightly too stiff for the size of the cross and the tightness of the necessary curves, but I managed.

A pattern was drafted and everything was cut out.  I naively thought I could do the whole thing in the roughly two and a half to three hours between the early church service and the end of the second.  Ha!  And then I discovered that half the electric circuits in my sewing studio had blown out in a recent storm.  I couldn't get them all to come back on, so there was much running around and clucking, much moving of things hither and thither  -- even then I was sure I could do it.  I almost succeeded.

 

But, as I was heading over to the pressing table, I held the almost-finished cover up and decided it looked like a party dress.  And I burst into delicious giggles.  I couldn't stop dancing around my studio like a fool thinking about tiny little dresses for crosses.  Absurd, no?  And then, because I was thinking of dresses, and because I wasn't quite sure how the hem should lie to best accommodate the stand at the base of the cross, I decided that a fitting session was absolutely necessary.  

So I ran over to the church to meet my client, my client the cross, for a little fitting. What party dress does not need a proper fitting after all?  The cross might not have cared.  But apparently I cared deeply.  Nothing is pressed in the photo above but at least the hem is pinned, and it did not end up being in the position I would have placed it without the fitting.  Isn't he/she/it/they going to be lovely?  Is lovely even a word that applies to crosses?

 

None of this was complicated sewing, or complicated pattern drafting for that matter.  And I've made another since, in another color, for Holy Week.  The second version was in a more appropriate fabric.  Not surprisingly, I forgot to take photos.  

 

Getting back to sewing, no getting back to blogging about sewing:  blogging, about anything really, has too many moving parts in need of coordination.  And yet today the whole process makes me happy.  This is what I always wanted a blog to be, back when I started these blogs, when I naively knew nothing about blogging.  I don't care about marketing, or branding, or even expectation.  I think all I cared about, all I still care about, is the joy in the making, in the seeing, in the living, in the entire process of saying "I made this", or, perhaps more importantly, "I am part of this process called life".  Blogging has been about the sharing, but also the recording, not as acclamation or acknowledgement, but because of the way that writing brings my thoughts full circle.  I don't really know what I think until I write it down.  

 

Apparently I cannot help myself.  Maybe if I want to resume blogging I have to stop worrying about what I should be blogging about, and just remember joy, or sadness, the gains and the losses, and the feelings that come with it all.  In the seventeen some-odd years since I started this blog, the blogging world has become more polished, more professional, more focused, has become something I actually never actually wanted.  I have tried to evolve, but it has been a struggle.  

 

All I wanted was a place to explore my own distractions: successes, failures, and silly puns included. All I wanted was a place to keep it all together.  All I want is place that is not a piece of paper that I am more than likely to toss in some future clutter-focused state of pique. 

 

Perhaps tiny purple party dresses for crosses have something to teach us after all.

Sloper beginnings

A little late here despite my best intentions.

Beginnings of a sloper.  This is what scoliosis does, rendered in two dimensions.  And I am extremely grateful for it.  The alternatives, in my case, had I never had surgery, would be far far worse.

 

When Liana was here at the beginning of March, we made a cling wrap sloper.  We were both a little out of practice, and I could have purchased something more clingy, but it was a good start. I had every intention of transferring the fragile plastic to paper and then making a muslin immediately.

 

Life took a different turn.

 

This is not a surprise.  I made one of these before, when I lived in New York, and it was phenomenally helpful with fitting and pattern alterations.  I knew already that I was not symmetrical.  And yet looking at a flat paper version of oneself is somehow still disconcerting.  None of us are perfectly symmetrical.  None of us are without flaws.  None of us is truly comfortable seeing any part of ourselves as we truly are.

 

A certain balance will be achieved when I trace off the fronts.  This means that if the left back is smaller than the right back, the left front will be larger than the right front.  As I said I already knew this.  I haven't cut pattern pieces double, or even on a fold, for years.  In terms of ready to wear, it explains why separates, and simple, loosely fitting garments are easier for me to wear, than more fitted options.

Here is another picture.

You can see not only the difference in size, but also the difference in torque or angle.  I find this rather exciting and I am looking forward to the process of exploration and discovery that is about to begin.

 

Alas April and May are phenomenally busy and I have some non-clothing sewing that must be done in the immediate future.  Although I am pretty desperate for summer clothing, I am also not interested in rushing.  I am hoping that as I can get to sewing, I can also start with simple, less fitted garments, which may be my preference once the heat and humidity arrive, and expand my options as time and energy allow. Whereas my younger self would have found this frustrating, now I am patiently content.  Time and energy may not be in great supply at the moment, but that too will change, and anticipation is, in and of itself a gift.