Roadtrip fabric – FL

Jackson and I are currently in Florida and enjoying the warmth and the sunshine. After four months of days below 5C and countless days of seeing snow we’re finally able to wear t-shirts without jumpers! And shorts! Shorts!!! My legs are pretty hairy at the moment (well, the lower half of my calf is the bit that gets the most obviously hairy) but I’m trying to embrace it/defy gendered beauty standards for a while. Hey, hair is natural, my leg hair is not dirty or smelly, and even Jackson has said he doesn’t notice it unless his face is really close to my legs. Anyway, TMI? Maybe :)

So we’re in the Titusville/Cape Canaveral part of Florida and I thought I’d see what fabric stores were near us. Uh… none. Damn. We went for a drive trying to reach a gunsmith to get some work done on Jackson’s rifle; the gunsmith had no contact number so we drove out to his workshop, found he was on lunch and were told to return in an hour or so. “What should we do for an hour?” Jackson asked me. “Well,” I answered, “there’s a fabric store 25 km away…”. And that’s how I came to be shopping at The Sewing Studio Fabric Superstore in Maitland, FL. (And unfortunately the gunsmith couldn’t help us in the end anyway.)

Other fabric purchased during the trip can be seen in the fabric tag. For other tales from the road, check out my my roadtrip blog.

Roadtrip fabric – DC

Trena (The Slapdash Sewist) blogged about Scrap-DC, “a local non-profit thrift store with a unique focus: it’s a thrift store exclusively for craft supplies” in Washington, DC (store’s site here). Lucky for me she wrote this blog post while I was visiting Washington so I wanted to check it out.

Jackson and I had spent a long day wandering around the National Mall, checking out a lot of iconic monuments and memorials. We parted ways in the afternoon; he headed home and I headed to Scrap-DC. And what did I find? A little bit of fabric and some embroidery floss!

Other fabric purchased during the trip can be seen in the fabric tag. For other tales from the road, check out my my roadtrip blog.

Why babies?

Most wedding magazines and websites would have you believe that all women grow up dreaming of their wedding, fantasising about how perfect The Big Day will be, and planning it all down to what colour boutonniere the groom (who is just another decoration) will wear. Every time I read an article saying something along the lines of, “You’ve been dreaming of this day since you were a little girl,” I rolled my eyes; it’s a good thing I was already an Advanced Eye Roller otherwise I would have suffered serious eye strain during my three year engagement.

With that generalisation stated, I hope I’m not being too presumptuous to say I think that many women grow up assuming they’ll have children one day. There are plenty of people who have known for a long time, maybe even since a young age, that they did not want to be parents. There are also plenty of people who have always felt like children were definitely something they wanted and were meant to have. But me? Hmm, I just figured I’d have kids. My parents had kids after all, and I couldn’t name any adults from my upbringing who were without children, so it just seemed like the thing to do when I got older. But should it be?

Make it snappy!

Press studs. Snaps. Poppers. Whatever you call them, I’ve never had much luck with them. But it’s not you, press studs, it’s me; I didn’t know how to treat you right.

I didn’t know that you’re meant to interface the fabric before installing press studs. Turns out ignorance isn’t always bliss… just hole-y fabric. My failed attempts at studs (and no desire to make garments that strictly required studs) caused me to stay away from them and never really consider them as viable closure option.

That was until I came across these pearlescent beauties in a little store called Marti’s Fabric Studio in Jesup, Georgia.

At only 50c per item in the sale box, and with clear instructions on the back of the packaging, how could I pass these up? Their attractive appearance will make me strive to install them properly!

A total of 8 small purple snaps, 12 small black snaps (they’re totally opaque and not very pearlescent), and 4 large white snaps. Pretty good for $2.

I imagine using the smaller ones in place of buttons on a shirt, or maybe just use the top shiny part as decoration on a sleeve or a shoulder or ooh maybe on the points of a collar! That could make ironing a tad difficult but a little bit of bling, like a shirt piercing, could be cute.

NYC sewing meetup

Last weekend in NYC I met many wonderful sewists thanks to a meetup that Lauren (Lladybird) organised. Here we all are in Mood! In this pic I’m hiding up the back as I wasn’t wearing any “me made” clothing… only a few things I sewed made it into my luggage for the USA & Canada roadtrip (which you can read about on a separate blog), and none of them are cold-weather/outdoors friendly.

^{(Pic from Mood’s twitter)}

Lauren wrote in January that she was headed to the Big Apple in March and thinking of doing a meetup; at that point I was travelling through Ontario and thought that there was a chance I’d be in the right place at the right time. Jackson and I managed to make our way through Ontario, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in such a way that we were in fact in the NYC area on March 9! Woohoo!

It almost goes without saying that I had a very fun day meeting Lauren, Carly, Lee, Charlotte, Devra, Cindy, Janice, Allie, Lisette, Kim, Meredith, Kayleigh, Sonja, Oona, Rosie, Wanett, Shelley and Christine. We spent an hour or two in Mood, everyone oohing and aahing over the hundreds of bolts of fabric, touching everything, trying to pull bolts out from the bottom of the tightly packed shelves, and chatting away. I had already visited the Fabric District on Monday (as Jackson and I had been in the area since March 2) and I ended up not buying anything; there were lots of beautiful things to see but nothing really screamed, “Take me home with you!”. We also visited Pacific Trimming, Chic Fabrics and Fabrics for Less; again, some nice things there but nothing that quite fit the bill for me. I was happy enough hanging out with new people and being part of the excitement!

After 3.5 hours of fabric hunting it was time for food, glorious food. I had mentioned to Charlotte earlier that on Monday I saw a silky grey fabric with a walrus (or seal??) print, and a different one with tumbling zebras (zee-bras for Americans, zeh-bras for Australians) and she seemed interested in this ridiculous and cute fabric. Unfortunately I couldn’t remember the name of the store, but as we all walked towards our afternoon tea destination I saw it! I ran up to Charlotte, interrupted her conversation tapped her on the shoulder and excitedly mentioned that we had just passed the walrus/seal and zebra fabric store. We popped in, took a quick look, declined the salesperson’s attempt to get us to buy it (“I never do half yards, but for you, I’ll do a half yard”), and then went back to the street to find all 14 of our companions had disappeared.

What?

We knew everyone was headed to Stitch so we made our way there, figuring we’d catch up pretty quickly. But then we found that Stitch opens at 5pm; it was only 4:30pm, so where was everyone?

We swore to eachother that we had been in that fabric store for nor more than 2 minutes. How do 14 people just vanish into thin air? Unfortunately neither of us had anyone’s mobile number; Charlotte tweeted at Oona to find out where everyone had gone, I tweeted at Lauren to ask the same thing, and all the while we traversed up, down and around three blocks trying to find people. We looked through the window of every fabric store we passed, craned our necks over the bustling crowds, but to no avail.

After at least 10 minutes on the street I opened up my email on my phone figuring that I would just email everyone who was on the original email chain, hoping that someone would have their emails set to be ‘pushed’ to their phone. Just as I was writing the subject line (“Help!!!”) my phone said I had a new email. “Hmm, I’d better check it just in case,” I thought. What was it but Lauren emailing everyone to say that the gang were all at the Houndstooth pub! Damnit; we had passed that pub at the start, it was almost opposite Stitch, and I had even thought “Maybe they went to Houndstooth after seeing Stitch was closed? I mean, it’s a very fabric-y name”.

At last we were reunited with our sewist companions. Meals were had, stories were told, laughter abounded. All in all it was a wonderful day. I didn’t buy any fabric but I did meet a bunch of cool people, so I’ll call that a success. Thanks to all the fantastic ladies who made it possible :) !

Roadtrip fabric – MI, MA

The following fabric has been added to my growing pile of USA & Canada roadtrip fabrics, and I’m quite pleased!

Other fabric purchased during the trip can be seen in the fabric tag. For other tales from the road, check out my my roadtrip blog.

Birthday present – sloth

A friend of mine absolutely love sloths, so I made this embroidery piece as a birthday present for her. It’s approximately 12 cm high. I really like how it came out!

Click the image to see it larger:

• Body: 2 strands DMC 644 (Beige Gray – MED) + 2 strands DMC 169 (Pewter Gray)
• Eyes/face stripes: 3 strands DMC black
• Face: 3 strands DMC 644 (Beige Gray – MED)
• Tree: 2 strands DMC 779 (Brown) + Sullivan 45461
• 2013: 2 strands DMC 644 (Beige Gray – MED) + 2 strands DMC 169 (Pewter Gray)

Basically all of it done in stem stitch.

This was the inspiration piece:

Birthday present – cat

A friend of mine has two lovely cats, who are just about identical, so I made this embroidery piece as a birthday present for her. Only doing one cat may seem like a bit of a cop-out but I’d never be able to do two identical pieces so this seemed like a good solution. It’s approximately 12 cm high. I really like how it came out!

Click the image to see it larger:

• Body: 3 strands DMC B5200 (White) with some tiny dots of DMC 168 (Silver Gray) to make a shadow separating the left front leg from the body, and for a little bit of definition under the tail
• Ears: 3 strands DMC 151 (Pink)
• Wooden floor boards: 2 strands DMC 779 (Brown) + 2 strands DMC 167 (Khaki Brown)
• 2013: 2 strands DMC 779 (Brown) + 2 strands DMC 167 (Khaki Brown)

Basically all of it done in stem stitch… some of it really elongated stem stitch.
This was the inspiration piece. The cats actually have really long hair and are super fluffy (check out the poof-balls at the end of their tails!), but they received a haircut before this picture was taken. I used the image to get the pose and then my imagination for how to represent their natural long-haired state:

Easter present – egg people

Can you guess what happens when the following things are combined?

• Being on the opposite side of the world from home
• Wanting to make some kind of Easter present for my parents (Mum loves decorating the house at Easter and at Christmas)
• Looking at the adorable egg embroidery from Wild Olive
• A flash of inspiration.

Answer: an eggy representation (a “repres-egg-tation”, even) of each member of my family! My parents, siblings, sister-in-law, me, my husband, and our cats.

Weird? Perhaps. Adorable? Heck yes!

I wanted the clothing to be as stereotypical “that person” as I could find, so that when Mum and Dad see the eggs they can hopefully guess who’s who. I grabbed pictures from Facebook accounts so I could mimic everyone’s clothing. Each egg is approximately 2″ high, including the backing fabric (see the end of this post for a pic of eggs next to my hand).

So without further ado, I present to you: my family in egg form.

Craft It Forward – jellyfish

It all started so innocently with this Facebook post by a friend:

How could I resist? I responded, “Heck, count me in!”.

This friend was a friend I had only made recently (like… 2 weeks before her Craft It Forward post) so I was unsure of what to make. And I’m travelling, tens of thousands of kilometers away from my home and craft room, so that added another challenge. I did some digging through her online presence to find some inspiration (only digging through stuff she had made publicly and easily available, not so much digging that she’d be freaked out by whatever I gifted her).

My conclusion: she likes jellyfish. Not an all-out, over-the-moon obsession, but it seemed that at one point she liked jellyfish. I mean, they’re easy to like, I myself have been mesmerised by jellyfish at the aquarium and off piers. So a jellyfish it would be!

I made a number of sketches trying to figure out what kind of jellyfish. A cute cartoony one? A more realistic one? With or without bubbles? What colour(s)? I wanted it to have a sea-like background so I cut off a bit of the dark blue cotton sateen I’d bought in Illinois.

The 3″ hoop is part of the gift, with a little loop of thread at the top as a hanging option.

• Body: 2 strands DMC 156 (Blue – MED) + 2 strands DMC 157 (Blue – LT). Stem stitch.

I know that the floss colours are so very, very close but I wanted the gentlest of colour variation happening. Though it’s difficult to see on the pictures, [I like to imagine that] it subtly enhances the image in real life.