Tag Archives: sewing

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The Locals

I realized, as I was writing my post about the yarn shops I had found in Ireland, that I had never talked about my local yarn shops.  As I would like them to stay in business, I thought that I would share them with you here. 

InDetail Studio is truly my local yarn shop.  The shop is split between yarn supplies and beading supplies.  It is a small shop, but I have never left empty-handed!  They have a great selection of yarns.  They also offer open knitting sessions and knitting classes; check their website for dates & times.

Marji’s Yarncrafts is incredibly charming.  It has a lot of yarn tucked in two rooms.  Their selection is amazing and really inspiring.  They offer a lot of patterns, a lot of needles, and, if I remember correctly, a lot of finishing pieces such as buttons, etc. 

Creative Fibers is really a mecca of wooly wonder.  This is the largest local yarn shop I have found in central Connecticut.  Really, if they haven’t got it, you don’t need it.  They also offer knitting classes and retreats.  I haven’t attended them yet, but as I learned with quilting, it really pays to learn from an expert.  So I am keeping my eyes open for a great opportunity.

Also I want to give a shout out to my local fabric stores:

My local quilt shop Sew Inspired is amazing.  The staff is friendly and helpful.  Their classes are very informational and educational.  (They literally changed my life.)  It’s a great shop if you’re looking for fabric or anything quilt related.

Osgood’s Textiles is a little bit of a drive for me, but it’s the closest, decent, independent fabric store in the area.  And its selection is exhaustive.  I bought all of the fabric for my Spring Palette Challenge there. 

So that’s my little tour of local shops.  Trust me – they aren’t paying me to say this.  I don’t get any discounts from them or anything.  They don’t even know I have a blog.  I just appreciate that I have these resources in my community.  When I support them, they support my area by creating jobs, providing valuable goods and services, and generally making the world a better place to live. 

Do you have a local shop you love?  Give it a shout out in the comments.

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Fabric Addiction: Part 2

From my post on Tuesday, I left out one fabric.  Because it’s so beautiful that it deserves its own post.

I introduce to you…Modern Floral Chiffon.

Lovely, right?  The drape is amazing.  And it’s sheer.  And the colors are beautiful.

See the drape?  See the sheer-ness?  See the beauty?

The colors are so vibrant and amazing.  It has purple and green, to match my palette, but it “reads” more of a blue/turquoise.  But I think that it’s such a statement fabric that I am not worried about having to coordinate it with the rest of my wardrobe.

Here is the pattern I plan on using:

The Anda dress by Burdastyle is basic yet versatile, and I plan on making a couple of minor changes.  First I want to ruche the shoulder seams, like in this example:

I think that would work well with the light weight chiffon fabric.  Since the fabric is sheer, I need to either sew a simple slip dress or else find a vintage slip second-hand.  I think it would be best in navy.  I would also like to create an obi-style belt to go around the waist.  Maybe turquoise?

While this is technically part of my Spring Palette Challenge 2011, I am planning to wear it to my cousin’s wedding in October.  I imagine that it will be lovely.

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Show & Tell 2-10-2011

**Warning:  This post contains gratuitous use of exclamation points.  You have been warned.**

Here it is!  My first sewn item for the Colette Spring Palette Challenge 2011! 

I am so proud that I made this skirt!  I realize, as I’m looking at the pictures, that it isn’t particularly striking to look at, but I suppose that is the point.  The perfect basic grey wool skirt.

For some reason, darts are easy for me.  There are six darts in this skirt, and I sewed them up in a snap.  The waist band was a little trickier, but I am happy with how it came out.  I sewed the hem at 1.5″ and then trimmed the excess fabric on the inside.  I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to be done, but for this, it worked fine. 

I sewed by hand the two hook and eye closures; I am happy with how that came out.  I basted around the zipper and then sewed by hand the fold of the fabric to the zipper.  It was a lot easier than trying to sew it in perfectly by machine and looks pretty sharp, if I do say so myself.  (Also as you can see, I left this unlined.  I have a half slip that works perfectly underneath this and didn’t want to fuss with a lining.)

So there it is!  I am so happy to have made this skirt.  I know that I will wear it a lot (I tried it on with all of my shirts last night, and it looks great with most of them!), and I made it myself.  I am awesome.  :)

Just a re-cap, here are the two items I have finished for this Challenge:

                                                                             

I can’t wait to get started on the next project!

So, what say you?  What have you been working on?  Please leave a note in the comments.  I would love to hear what you’ve been making.

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Fabric addiction: Part 1

If you’ve been keeping track, you will remember that I was planning to go fabric shopping on Sunday.  Well I did go shopping.  Boy, did I. 

For this challenge I really want to improve my sewing skilz, especially for wardrobe basics.  I know what I like, and I want to be able to have some essential patterns that I can rely on to make my wardrobe staples.  So half of the clothes that I am making for the Spring Palette Challenge will be wardrobe basics.  But I want to have some fun too, so I am also planning a couple of funky, bold pieces too.

This will be a skirt.  A basic, not-quite-knee-length grey skirt.  I have a black skirt that I wear all the time, so I know I would get a lot of mileage out of another skirt.  But I didn’t want another black one.  It’s going to be spring!  I could honestly wear this with almost every shirt I own.  I am excited to get this one all done because I will be able to start wearing it right away.

I am a very tactile person.  I love to touch fabric.  I can’t wait until you can touch things online.  Because you people would love this.  It’s silk knit, and it feels AMAZING.  AMAZING.  I plan on constructing tank tops out of this.  Since these will be close to my skin (and I wear tank tops all the time underneath my shirts), I wanted something soft.  This was love at first touch.  AMAZING.  It was a little pricey, but since the fabric is for tank tops, I didn’t need a lot.  I am so happy I bought this fabric.

Last, but certainly not least, is this beautiful Japan-esque print.  I have been drooling over similar fabrics at the quilting store, but I didn’t have a proper pattern that was worthy of such a fabric.  On Sunday, the stars aligned, and I bought this fabric to make into a tunic top.  

The pink fabric will be the waistband, and the green fabric will be the trim.  I am thrilled to start this project, but I want to give myself plenty of time to focus on it and give it proper attention.  Maybe a nice, snowy Saturday…

You will notice that my colors didn’t quite go as planned.  Here’s the palette I had put together:

I usually wear a lot of purple.  For Winter, I have been wearing the Eggplant color a lot.  For Spring, I was intending to shift that to Lavender.  The Fabric Gods had a different idea.  The pinker fabrics were what I found, and I am ok with that.  There is some purple in the Japan-esque fabric, and the pink and green tank tops will layer nicely with the purple shirts I already have.  So it all worked out in the end.

On Friday, I will share with you the last fabric that I bought.  I can’t wait for you to see it!

What do you think?  Is anyone else doing this Challenge?  How’s it going so far? 

Are you ready for Spring yet?  Because I certainly am!

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Spring Palette Challenge

Do you ever feel like the Universe it trying to tell you something?  That certain ideas are bombarding you in a short period of time?  That you need to do something or else the Universe just won’t leave you alone?

That’s probably a bit dramatic, but honestly, this is out of control.  I won’t bore you with every conversation I’ve had and blog post that I’ve read, but here’s the short version.

Last fall, I began participating in Project 333 (33 items of clothing for 3 months).  I’m currently involved in its second iteration.  Then I joined the Compact in December, which encourages group members to avoid buying anything new - outside of food, medicine, etc.  More recently, I have talked with people who have made their own clothes and read some articles online about the horrible conditions that clothing factory workers suffer to make cheap clothing. 

The culmination of these experiences is that I want to sew my own clothes.

The final straw was when I found this challenge at the Colette Patterns blog: The Spring Palette Challenge.  Brilliant!

Luckily, I have enough clothes right now that I don’t need anything urgently.  This is more an experience to “level up” my sewing skills and fill in some gaps in my wardrobe.

Right now, I am planning the following items:

1) a skirt

2) a dress

3) a tunic top

4) a tank top

5) a knitted shrug

Here is the color palette that I have chosen:

I am planning a big shopping trip on Sunday to buy fabric, and hopefully I’ll have something done before I leave for Ireland.  I am so excited!  This makes me very happy.  I will be updating my progress as I work on this project.  The deadline is March 31.  I can’t wait to see how much I get done.

Are you participating in any challenges?  How are you leveling up your mad skilz?

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Holiday Cheer

The holidays are coming.  (Technically, Hanukkah ended yesterday!)  

Are you ready??

This year I was planning ahead.  I actually started knitting presents in July.  I made menus, grocery lists, present lists, budgets, etc.  Now that Christmas is two weeks away (Yikes!!), I generally feel prepared [although I haven't really started decorating yet]. 

I am using the plan from the FlyLady.  She pretends that she is going on vacation – a cruise – and needs to have everything ready for the holidays by December 1st.  And she helps her readers “cruise” right along with her.

Because of her system, I have put together a decorating station (so all of my wrapping paper, bows, ribbon, cards, etc. are in one place), I have made lists of presents to buy and make, I have reviewed my notes and recipes from our Christmas Eve party from last year in preparation for this year’s festivities, and I have bought all of the non-perishable food that I need for cooking and baking.  She has a small task for every day, and they definitely add up over time – kind of like a cleaning & organizing advent calendar.  I highly recommend her website to anyone who is scatter-brained, cluttered, and unorganized like me.  Although I didn’t finish EVERYTHING by December 1, I am already having a much calmer, less stressful holiday season because of her plan. 

One of her major themes is to give clutter-free gifts (she has lists of them on her website), because so many of us already own too much Stuff.  Since I planned ahead, I was able to make many of the gifts on my list.  For example, I am knitting a scarf for my father-in-law for when he has to shovel the driveway.  I built my mother-in-law a bird house because she loves birds and gardening and will hopefully enjoy it all summer long while she’s working in her garden.  My budget was $10 per person, and I was able to come in under budget on many of the gifts by making things using supplies I already had on hand, such as a scrappy, quilted stocking for my niece. 

This holiday organization plan was especially helpful since we visited my family in Wisconsin over Thanksgiving.  I finished their gifts and brought them with us so I didn’t have to ship them.  Plus bringing things in my suitcases to leave in Wisconsin made room to bring back some of my Stuff from my parents’ basement.  Which is perhaps the best (clutter-free!) gift of all, as far as they are concerned.

So, to anyone who may be reading this, what are you doing to get ready for the holidays?

P.S.  I also love this article by Leo Babauta about what’s important at Christmas time(ie spending time with people you love) and what’s not important (ie shopping). 

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Show & Tell 12/9/2010

I have been scheming about the best way to show off all of the stuff that I make.  Rather than just slap my stuff up here, I thought we could all share the things that we have created.  So here it is – my first ever weekly Show & Tell.

I decided to make my 10-month old niece a quilted Christmas stocking.  I hope it will become a treasured keepsake for her, knowing that her loving aunt toiled tirelessly to make it beautiful and amazing.  But who knows.  Regardless, I had fun making it.

Here is the tutorial that I followed.  I was smitten the moment that I saw it.  Luckily I had some scraps on hand and was able to beg, borrow, and steal enough the finish the mini-quilt for the front.  In the end, I only had to pay for fabric for the back.  All in, it cost me $2.75.

Here’s what the mini-quilt looked like before I cut it:  (BTW those were 1.5″ inch squares sewn together – so finished size = 1″ each.  PITA!  But totally worth it.)

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of it before I gave it to my niece, but I will try to get my lovely SIL to snag a photo for me.  I will let you guys know when this post gets updated.

So what have you guys been creating lately?  Any beautiful gifts for loved ones?  Or party gear for yourself?  Written anything amazing?  Knitting anything warm for the long winter ahead?  Please include your links in the comments!