Awesome New Purse

Okay, so I haven't posted in so long, they've totally gone and changed the interface on me. On the odd chance that I might still have a reader or two (you know, besides my mom and my husband who always tells me that I haven't updated my blog in over a year), I thought I'd post pictures of this awesome new purse that I just finished making yesterday. It's the "Bag" from The BurdaStyle Sewing Handbook. I did the variation with the bow. I don't know whether you can see or not, but there are nice roomy pockets on either side. I put similar pockets on the inside. Inside there are also other pockets on the front and back linings.

I love the lining fabric. You can click either photo to "embiggen". It took me about three days of work, off and on, to cut it all out and get it all sewn. I am very happy with it and absolutely love it. It seems comfortable to carry though I haven't had the chance to carry it around for a couple of hours at a time yet. We'll see how comfortable it is then :-) But I love the color and the material was easy to work with. Oh, the purple material is a faux suede and the color in the first picture is fairly accurate (purples are sadly hard to really capture accurately with a digital camera); it is a bit on the redder side of royal purple. The lining is cotton. It's all washable, which is wonderful for someone who carries a bag around until it falls apart :-)

Although, I had so much fun doing this one, I may have to make another bag of some sort very soon. I do plan on making little cosmetic bags to organize all my stuff inside the purse that doesn't quite fit into the pockets. Maybe a vinyl lined one to carry a fountain pen or two (so accidental leaking won't destroy my beloved bag).

Long Time

Yeah, I'm not even going to pretend that I'm going to start back posting regularly. Honestly, life gets in the way, but I'd like to show some things I've finished. And this isn't everything, so who knows, maybe I'll get around to showing the rest of it soon.

I have absolutely no knitted objects to show today, though I did finish a lovely merino and angora Sahara back during the winter. Hopefully, I'll get some pictures of that soon. (But that involves getting the dressmaker's dummy out, so I'll save that for some sewing pictures as well. I have a skirt and a couple of tees to show.) I haven't done much knitting since, but quite a bit of weaving and sewing.

Today is all weaving. After having the loom for nearly three years, I finally convinced my husband that it really needed to be upstairs instead of in the basement. I absolutely love having it upstairs. It takes up half the library, but I've gotten so much more use out of it, and there is a ton of natural light, especially in the afternoon/evenings.

So, let's see if I can remember how to post some pictures :-)

I did a set of towels. The pattern is from Weaver's Craft Issue 17. (Weaver's Craft is a wonderful magazine put out by Jean Scorgie. Lots of wonderful information for weavers in there and absolutely no advertisements!) The towels have twill stripes, and the white background is in basketweave. I used shades of earthtones for the wider stripes and mauve/rose for the narrower ones.

I've also done some snack mats, patter in Weaver's Craft Issue 11. They are done similarly to doubleweave; they're double thick and make nice little mini-placemats.

I used the lightest of the earthtones and the mauve for the warp (vertical threads) and different colors for the wefts (horizontal threads) - starting at the upper left and going clockwise, I used natural/white, the medium brown, the mauve and the same light brown in the warp.

Two Scarves and Some Towels

I know, original title. I've been weaving a bit more and have finished a couple more scarves. There are actually two scarves here, from the same lovely variegated warp, so they do look very similar at first glance.
The one on the right, being modeled by Brownie, has a blue weft, and the one on the left has a pink weft. It is a plainweave, using the "No Hassle Rayon Slub Scarves" pattern from Yarn Barn of Kansas. These scarves were washed by hand, mostly air dried, then tossed in the dryer for a few minutes, and they came out of the dryer so very soft and drapey.

See, they are two separate scarves:


Before I did the scarves, I'd finished some lovely red and white towels:

These towels were all done on the same red and white striped warp. The top towel is in plainweave with a red weft. The second towel is done in a basketweave with white weft, the third towel is white weft and plainweave and the bottom towel is plainweave with stripes of red and white weft.

I promise I'll get to some knitting someday. I do have a knitting project underway that I hope to finish before winter. But today, I'm warping for a bamboo/wool scarf.

Scarf

I may have spoken too soon about not liking the scarf. It came off the loom yesterday and it's much better than I had hoped. It's not perfect by any means, the selvedges are wonky (quite a bit in some places) and it's a bit wavy in places, but overall it is actually quite lovely and I'm happier with it than I'd anticipated (making me really glad I didn't cut it off the loom before I'd finished).

The colors are quite beautiful and the pictures do not do the colors justice at all. I played with lots of pictures and I tried color editing them, but they still aren't great. Pinks and purples are apparently really hard to get right with a digital camera (a real shame since probably 90% of what I do are in those colors). Maybe someday I'll discover how to use the editing tools more effectively. The colors are pink, magenta (dahlia), and eggplant in alpaca silk from Webs. I made my Icarus from the pink and my Hexagon Spider Shawl from the eggplant.

Anyway, here's the best I could seem to get (though the colors in the picture are pretty, the picture just doesn't capture the depth and richness of the colors):

The closeup:


It's a simple 2/2 twill that reverses in the center of the scarf as well as after every three block rows, creating a diamond pattern. The warp colors blocks of pink, magenta and eggplant, and I did the blocks in rows of the same colors. I love the way the colors work so well together and can see myself playing more in the future with colors in weaving. I have tons of scraps of yarn from lace and socks; I can see making some things out of that. I enjoyed working on this scarf and it went much quicker than I thought once I actually sat at the loom for a while. I'm working on twisting fringe and I'll wash it after that. My next weaving project - simple plainweave towels. I've already wound the warp and might do a small sample to make sure my settings are good.

Too Ambitious

I've been working on the loom all week to finish a scarf that's been on there for quite a while. I've realized I'm not going to be happy with it. I should have waited a while.

I'm not saying one shouldn't be ambitious. I've been pretty ambitious in my knitting, but only after laying the proper foundations. I didn't exactly start out with complicated colorwork or lace. And when I did begin laceknitting, I didn't go straight for Frost Flowers and Leaves or Magickal Earth(even though Gathering of Lace was the first lace book I bought). I patiently knit other shawls that appealed to me. And when I was confident enough, I tackled both Frost Flowers and Leaves and Magickal Earth.

As for my weaving, I knew I wasn't ready for a pretty scarf. I knew I had tension issues with the warp and serious uneven selvedge issues. But I was impatient and hadn't addressed my problems; I ignored that little voice and went ahead and did it anyway. So now I have a scarf on the loom with lopsided edges and I'm a bit unhappy with it.

So lesson learned. I'm going to finish it (pictures then because I can't seem to get any decent color ones on the loom) and see if it's any better off the loom (I'm not expecting it to be). And I'll be weaving a set of simple towels next. When I'm ready I'll do something else.

Finished sock picts later in the week.

Wardrobe Re-Fashion

Recently, I came across a neat blog called Wardrobe Re-Fashion. The rules are not to buy any new clothing for a certain amount of time. You choose whether you want to sign up for 2, 4, 6 months or life. Thrift stores are fine and undies, special needs clothing (for employment, sports or school), and shoes are exempt. Handmade items from somewhere like Etsy are also exempted. You get one "Get out of Jail Free" card per each 2 month period (just in case you see something you just have to have). The overall idea of the blog is to recycle, refashion and renovate items that have been pre-owned, whether from your closet or the thrift store. Or to craft items yourself.

Now having recently made a similar personal pledge to myself to make most of my own clothing, I signed up for six months. I got sick of things not fitting properly. T-shirts for instance. If ever I found ones in my size that I liked, they were mostly too short for me. (I'm a mom, not some twenty-ish stick model who likes to show off her belly button.) Since I hate to shop for clothing, 6 months just doesn't seem like a lot for me.

I still plan to show the t-shirts I've made in a later post. (I never remember to get pictures when I have them on for some reason.)

The Pledge

I, Alison, pledge that I shall abstain from the purchase of "new" manufactured items of clothing, for the period of 6 months. I pledge that I shall refashion, renovate, recycle preloved items for myself with my own hands in fabric, yarn or other medium for the term of my contract. I pledge that I will share the love and post a photo of my refashioned, renovoted, recycled, crafted or created item of clothing on the Wardrobe Refashion blog, so that others may share the joy that thy thriftiness brings! Signed, Alison

Wow, three months

I seem to be going for a record here of how long I can go without posting. I have actually been knitting and have an actual finished object to show very soon. I've also dug out another overdue project in time for winter. It involves a very nice merino/angora yarn. I'll show that soon, too.

So, what have I been working on instead of knitting and blogging? I've been sewing quite a bit. I have some finished t-shirts that I'll show eventually as well as a pretty denim skirt. I've also been working on some handkerchiefs. In the interest of trying to save a few trees, I've decided to try using handkerchiefs instead of tissues:

The left one, I know you can't really see all that well, but I did some drawnwork on it. Basically, I pulled out about five threads from the hanky on each side and it created a nice geometrical pattern. (Just google "drawnwork" for some pretty examples.) It's very faint. The other two hankies, I used a scalloped edging on my sewing machine for, then cut next to the stitching. I'm currently working on some tatted edging for another.

Before anyone comments that hankies are less hygienic than disposable tissues (there seems to be a debate about that issue in several places online), think about this. How many times have you seen someone (or done it yourself) toss a used wet tissue into their pocket, up their sleeve, or in their purse because they weren't right next to a trash can? And how often have you seen someone else's used tissues on the ground because they couldn't be bothered to throw it away?

For hygiene's sake, you're supposed to carry around more than one handkerchief and throw any used ones in the wash at the end of the day. Put used ones in a pocket that's not going to be touching other stuff (like a wallet or coins) and as with tissues, wash your hands after use. They are certainly easier on the nose than paper, and they're not going to add that much to your laundry. They're also super easy to make if, like me, you have lots of cotton and/or linen scraps from previous projects around. And a lot prettier.