It's not only a birthday present, it's an affirmation that self-care is crucial lol
My daughter looks forward to her quiet weekend mornings, just sipping coffee and watching the world roll by - hopefully, a lap quilt will stretch "porch season" just a little bit further for her :)
As promised, the finished polar bear quilt photos. I'll just share a few photos with this post, and then I'll share a link to the online gallery that has most of the photos I took during the creation.
Album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/AxAzevxcj9qtBa5a7 #Quilting#PolarBears
Finally finished on the #CrossStitch portion of the two copies of #PraiseHim#PrayerCloth! WHOO HOO!!! Now the easy part-- #CrossQuilting! As you can see, I already started around the central circle on the Sun, so the backs aren't very impressive yet. When I'm finished, I'll be correcting the pattern, posting it to Ko-Fi (emailing an updated, CORRECTED copy to those with the unproofed version), and then on to much a much less complicated project! #ThankGod for #LightAtTheEndOfTheTunnel! 😄🥳🎉🥳🎉
Ladies and gentlemen, it is quilt week here at my art business, this is the latest one my mom e-mailed me photos of last week, really vibrant and colorful, this one is titled 'Caribbean Waters' and is made with batik fabrics from Indonesia, it measures 54 x 54 in (137 x 137 cm), this one is available, lots of great energy in this one; if anyone is interested, please let me know! ~ #art#quilts#quilting#quilter#quilters#artmarket#artforsale#artists#artist#handmade#crafts#artwork#folk
At my sewing machine, first thing this morning. ☕️
4 seams away from finishing the center of my newest quilt.
Then borders & it’ll be complete. 😁👏
New quilt pattern coming soon… 💛💙
I've got something really special to present to all of u out there, get a nice look at this one below. My mom just sent me an e-mail w/some photos of available #quilts, this amazing one below measures 52 x 72 in (133 x 183 cm), it is nice and large and'll cover a large bed nicely. It's affordable + easy for her to send to u so please contact me if u can envision taking a very stylish nap under this one! ❤️🤍🩷 #quilt#quilting#quilter#quilters#artist#artists#handmade#artforsale#artmarket
I took a day to do some sewing, which I haven’t done in a while. I fixed a beanie full of holes, took up some curtains for a friend and make these cat mug rugs with cutoffs from a quilt I made a few years ago #quilting#sewing
Got started with cutting the fabrics for the Cat Quilt yesterday. There were four different cats on the panel, and while they're all good cats, this is perhaps my favourite cat!
Also, when you've really calculated how much fabric you can get away with, and then they cut it on the wonk in the shop? Displeasing!
Am also quilting, now that my machine came back from the repair shop. Finally landed on this simple but very efficient pattern of top-stitching, it catches all the weak points and runs from one seam to the next in a pleasant enough way.
I figure it must also be traditional, because this feels like something that would have been feasible enough with the earliest sewing machines!
My grandmother taught me to sew. Or at least, she felt strongly that it was something that I (a girl child) ought to know how to do. She taught me hand sewing techniques, replacing buttons, repairing seams, re-binding buttonholes, and applying patches to the knees of my trousers (which, due to my disappointingly unfeminine inclination to spend most of my playground time on my knees playing marbles, never stayed intact very long). She taught me basic embroidery stitches – chain stitch and silk stitch and ladder stitch and blanket stitch, all of which genuinely would come in useful, though I resented them at the time, when I learned how to suture as a veterinary student and realised I knew all of these patterns already. (A word to the wise medical or veterinary student in training – when someone is mid-way through a tortured explanation of how to create a Ford Interlocking Suture pattern, exclaiming loudly “Oh! It’s just blanket stitch!” isn’t necessarily going to make you best friends with the demonstrating surgeon…)
What she did only grudgingly, for very short periods and under extremely close supervision, was allow me to sit at her precious sewing machine. I got as far as understanding how to wind a bobbin, and thread the machine, and do basic straight and zigzag seams, but never really got the chance to make anything complicated enough to start to learn from my experience. Grandma died when I was in my first year at university, and sadly I don’t know what became of her sewing machine in the resulting house clearance. It was a couple of years after I graduated, in desperation at the dismal choices and ridiculous prices of pre-made curtains, that I bought the first machine of my own.
What I really should have done, in the absence of Grandma to teach me properly, is taken some lessons – and if you’re at around this point in your sewing machine journey, I heartily recommend this approach to you. I know there are video tutorials of everything on YouTube but – personally at least – I find them almost useless for sewing things. I can just never see what I need to see, you can’t get a sense of feel at all, and frankly the people demonstrating them talk at about a third of the speed of a normal intelligent human and the whole thing just makes me want to scream. What I did was buy a good book (you should definitely do this too, and the good book you should buy first is the Readers Digest Complete Guide to Sewing, second hand, in absolutely any edition you can get your hands on cheaply and conveniently) and started experimenting. Things with nice easy straight lines and right angles first – curtains, cushion covers, tote bags, and later, with a little more confidence, roman blinds. And eventually (not least because I was very much by this point buying beautiful fabrics at a much faster rate than I had any plan to use them) I decided to try my hand at dressmaking.
In over ten years of making my own clothes, on and off, obviously I’ve got better at the technical stuff – though actually, if you follow the instructions carefully in a modern pattern the chances of getting a new technique right first time are pretty high. I used to describe myself as a rubbish seamstress but actually I’m just a slow one – the results of my dressmaking efforts in terms of finish are pretty good (better than most retail garments, more of which later), it just takes me a whole weekend to make something that the competitors on the Sewing Bee manage to make up in less than half a day.
The things I’ve really learned though, aren’t about choosing the right stitch length or tension or even about the absolutely bastardingly-technical 3-D curve matching problem that is sleeve insertion.
I’ve learned that dress sizes are meaningless – and that more importantly, the ‘right’ size for a garment, the one that will flatter you and you will enjoy wearing most, isn’t the smallest one you can get the zip done up on without a fight. Clothing patterns are designed with two sorts of ‘ease’ (that’s to say fabric allowances in excess of the body dimensions you’re expecting to put the garment on). The first (and most obvious) is ‘wearing ease’, the extra space in the back of shirts, for example, that mean you can move your arms forwards, and the extra puff in a sleeve-head that means you can move your arms at all. It’s what makes something a wearable piece of clothing, and not a straightjacket. The other is ‘pattern ease’, the thing that actually defines the shape of the garment – it’s where the difference lies between a body-skimming design and a garment designed to float loosely over the wearer’s form.
This ‘ease’ means most people can actually zip themselves into garments one or even two sizes smaller than the one that would fit them best. And many people (especially women, who are socialised to invest a ridiculous amount of their self-worth into the size on a garment label) are wearing clothes too small for them for exactly this reason. It’s time to get over hangups about label sizes. If you try something on and it’s not quite right somehow, try the next size up. If the number on the label upsets you that much, cut it out!
I’ve learned the sheer amount of labour that goes into making even the simplest piece of clothing. With the exception of machine knitting (and even machine knits need their seams finished by hand) every single garment you buy has been assembled by hand by someone sitting at a sewing machine just like I do. Statistically, probably a woman, probably earning pitiful piece-work pay in awful, loud, dusty, miserable working conditions somewhere in the developing world. This can still be true of expensive garments of course, but (ignoring the other awful costs in terms of waste and pollution and so on, which we shouldn’t ignore either) the ‘fast fashion’ phenomenon is entirely built on the exploitation of garment industry workers.
It’s no surprise then that most retail garments are just plain badly made. Pick up something you own and turn it inside out; look at the seams, see how many trailing threads you can find. Compare (precisely) the lengths of the sleeves, and the diameter of the trouser legs. Look at how the buttons are attached. Look for seam reinforcements, particularly in the crotch of trousers (a rare thing to find these days). All this will make the garment fit less well, wash less well, and wear out faster. None of these things matter to fashion retailers of course, you bought this one, after all, and shortly (sooner than you think) you’ll no doubt be along to buy another.
I have learned not to skip processes (but definitely to cut corners). Garment making isn’t a process that starts with cutting out and ends with hemming. It’s a process that starts with washing, drying and ironing your uncut fabric – absolutely essential if you ever expect to need to wash the item once it’s made (yes, this includes curtains and blinds and cushion covers). I buy some unusual fabrics (particularly West African wax resist prints) and washing these vividly-dyed cottons fills me with fear every single time. One of these days I will find a fabric that I will ruin completely in a 40C machine wash – but when I do, however sad it will be, it will be better than having spent several days making a dress out of it and then ruining that the first time I wash it. Most new fabrics (particularly natural fibres like cottons and linens) will shrink between 10-15% the first time you wash and iron them.
The other process that sewists tend to be tempted to neglect is seam finishing. The first few garments I made, I settled for cutting the raw edges of my seams with pinking shears. This zig-zag cut finish gives some resistance to fraying but the fabric will start to unravel eventually. A proper seam finish either requires making encased seams like french seams where the raw edges are completely hidden, or finishing the cut edges with a zigzag stitch, by hand overcasting, or if you’re one of those sorts of wizards, using an overlocker. In all of these cases (except if you’re a serious overlocker user and brave enough to use it for all-in-one work like commercial garment makers generally do – at the risk of making mistakes that cannot be corrected by unpicking), properly finishing your edges means running each seam through the sewing machine at least once if not twice or three times more (for instance, if you’re making a solid trouser seam you might want to zig-zag the cut edge, then press the seam over and topstitch it down twice (have a look at the seam on a pair of jeans, many of which use this approach). It adds time, and you’re working slowly already, and you just want the garment finished so you can wear it… I know, I know. You will be very grateful that you took the time when you have something that withstands wearing and washing well enough to justify the time you spent making it.
(As for cutting corners… don’t neglect seam clipping. It can seem scary, but the corners on your collars and plackets will never look right if you aren’t brave about this.)
I keep my clothes forever now. Not just the ones I’ve made, but the ones I buy, too (which is very few). I wear them until the fabric wears thin and the cuffs fray, and then I keep wearing them. I patch and repair and reinforce seams as they show signs of unraveling. There is nothing in this world more comfortable and comforting to wear than a pair of jeans or a sweatshirt worn soft with age and love and use, which has conformed itself perfectly over the years to the form of you.
I’ve never understood fashion, really. But I do love my clothes – the bright, beautiful, sometimes over the top patterns and colours and textures that just make me smile – and what I learned at my sewing machine was, I guess, to let them love me back.
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I pieced this #quilt top about 4 years ago and finally took it in to the local quilt shop to be quilted in January. I put the binding on last night and think it turned out very pretty. I can definitely see the progress I’ve made in the quality of my piecing work in the last 4 years.
IN OTHER NEWS
to this day i still do not understand what "paper piecing" means in #quilting.
does anybody have a good recommend for a video on the subject matter. none of the books i have read show and tell with pictures; so i have no idea what am supposed to see in my mind's eye (and i am one of those weirdos that thinks in images, not in words).
Got my Luminous BOM quilt back from the long quilters. I put the binding on last weekend and I love how it turned out. It is larger than I anticipated and will fit a King size bed, it’s huge!