Little Pieces of Me

With February just about over, it is appropriate that I have finally (finally!) finished my February Blues project. And it has been a long time coming. I'll cut to the chase. Here it is, an Alabama Chanin inspired skirt. This is a self drafted 4 panel A-line boot length skirt made in French Terry for winter warmth. The surface design was stencilled onto the same fabric, cut out, arranged and painstakingly hand stitched in place. And that's where all the wintery days of the past month have gone. The hem is finished with dyed-to-match cotton lace - that I did not crochet myself. This work is very different for me. Not only is it far more labour intensive that most of my projects, it is also by far the most decorative work I have ever done. I don't usually even wear patterns, but the idea for this outfit popped into my head pretty much fully formed. So what could I do but make it? I had to get it out of my head somehow. I am pleased with the finished skirt...

I've started to put some of those painted and stamped elements from earlier this month into use. My first application has been a partial fail. This infinity scarf (made from a recycled t shirt) with painted motifs appliqued looks nice and is quite comfortable to wear, but it is a fail in terms of the stiffness of the motifs. The jersey absorbed too much of the fabric paint and therefore the 'hand' of these appliqued elements is much stiffer than the main body of the scarf. It's not a  total  fail. It looks OK, the colours are good and it's actually quite nice to wear. I like the obvious hand stitching around the appliqued pieces. It's just that stiffness. Sigh. I need to go back to the printing and painting station in the basement and have another go - this time with a lighter approach when working on this kind of fabric. On the bright side: One thing is clear here... how much better, more consistent,  my hand sewing has become. I'm inspir...

Here's the thing about being on sabbatical. Sometimes you can just say yes to a slightly ridiculous notion and run with it. I woke up one morning in December with the idea of making some little felt birds. 3D, fully hand sewn tiny birds.  I've no idea where the notion really came from, but the form of them was pretty clearly worked out in my mind before I even got out of bed. The first one I made was roughly the right shape but way too big. Which is a strange thing to say when you consider that I had no idea what I was making the bird for in the first place. The second one was much (much!) smaller, but too fat and a bit lumpy. The third one, like porridge for bears, was just about right. Patten refined and with tail options,  and with the correct stuffing medium in hand, I started sewing little birds. And sewed, and sewed, and sewed. About  a dozen birds later I had a nice little flock rolling around on the kitchen table. They were colourful. They were funny. ...

Following on from my previous post, I have also been working on some samples of the appliqué methods shown in the lovely book Alabama Studio Sewing + Design: A Guide to Hand-Sewing an Alabama Chanin Wardrobe by Natalie Chanin. Reverse Appliqué I have a little experience with reverse appliqué - which is when you have two layers of fabric, a stitched pattern and then cut away some of the top layer to reveal the bottom layer. I remember doing some sweatshirts with this, way back in the 80's. Yes, that was in the previous century. So for that reason I didn't do an Alabama Studio style sample of this technique. At right is an example from the Alabama Chanin web site which shows it very well. Essentially, the process is the same as I was discussing earlier, but in this case you cut out some of the stencilled design. Changing how much you remove, how you have done the outline stitching and the colour of the two layers creates many variations that make the pattern be sub...

This past week I've been quite absorbed by a new book - Alabama Studio Sewing + Design: A Guide to Hand-Sewing an Alabama Chanin Wardrobe by Natalie Chanin. Maybe absorbed isn't quite the right word. Possibly obsessed. Natalie is the founder of the clothing line Alabama Chanin. You can check out the company site here , but you'll actually see a lot more images if you just use Google Images. The clothing is quite remarkable. Although the actual garment designs are relatively simple, they are all completely hand sewn by women in Alabama, made from organic locally grown cotton, and feature a range of embellishments that are stunningly labour intensive. Here's a montage to give you an idea of what the surfaces look like. And these lovely things are every bit as expensive as you would imagine. But in an interesting turn, Chanin has made the clothing potentially available to a wider market by not only selling completely customizable sew-it-yourself kits and supplie...

I'm guessing that it's the cooler weather that is suddenly making everyone think about scarves and other cosy clothing. The most "repinned" pin on my Pinterest boards is for a scarf made out of a T shirt. The activity around this topic has been especially heavy lately, with 15 people repinning or liking this pin in just 2 days. So I thought I should make up a few samples. My first scarf turned out very well. Really, it is all a matter of finding the right kind of T shirt to start with. This sample is made from a good quality XL shirt which rendered up loops almost a metre long. As a result, it can be worn wrapped twice or thrice, or looped through it self. It's made from 17 tubes so it has a nice bulk, but is very light and soft. The tubes are held together with a simple wrap made from a short length of tube cut from the sleeve. The T shirt used for this example had long sleeves. So I had the potential for a lot of short tubes that were not closed loops. ...