Dressform Saturday!

It was Dressform Saturday today for my Sewing Guild, the Fashion Focus Group! Ten of us got wrapped in packing tape to make customized dress forms exactly matching our figures. It was illuminating to say the least. Let's just say that none of us had seen 3-D representations of our bodies before. Miss Shirely, who headed up the festivities, asked us at the end of the day, "Ladies, did you learn anything today?" And Paula spoke for all of us when she answered, "Yeah. I can no longer be in denial."

We used these instructions by Jan Bones:

And we used paper packing tape that you wet with water. In groups of threes, one person got wrapped while the other two did the wrapping. The good news is that we got faster with each wrapee. The bad news is that the room at the church where we met was freezing. Okay, not freezing. But it was 55 degrees when we showed up this morning.

Here's a shot of my big ole pile of packing tape prior to use:


A sense of honor keeps me from displaying photos of those being wrapped, as well as a healthy dose of self-preservation. And there isn't a chance in hell I'll post any photo of me gettting wrapped! But here you can see the ladies taping the body double together after it had been cut off the wrapee:


Here you can see Audrey (in red) helping out. Audrey, Shirely, and Chris all came in to teach us how to do it and instruct us in the all important wrapping technique.And here is Miss Shirely, who certainly did a fine job getting everyone cut out of their paper tape prisons:

Here is my final dressform when I got it home:


Here's the back. I've never seen the back of myself in 3-D before. I can see there is some sort of weird left hip action going on there:


Last shot since this is all I can stand.

My first thought was, "This isn't the body I had in college." And my second thought was how obvious it was that my body wasn't symmetrical. We always assume that it is. That left hip is up a bit. My right shoulder slopes down a bit. That stomach can't possibly be mine.

Audrey advised us to measure the dressform at the bust, waist and hip, and compare these measurements to our body measurements. I found that the dressform was consistently 1/2 inch larger than my real body, which Audrey assured us we could compensate for when fitting garments to the dressform.

I'm pretty impressed with how this turned out! I plan on reinforcing the dressform, and probably hanging it on a hanger. It is eerie, though. Right now, it is sitting on my kitchen counter and when I went in to make a cup of tea, I did a double take - because there I am! I'm taken aback by encountering my own body as I enter a room. I think I'll have to put clothes on it!

Parting shot: My sewing guild with their clothes on. Thanks to everyone, especially Paula, Nina, and Linda who wrapped me!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to all! Waking up to such an auspicious day as a single woman, I felt the need for friendly support, so the first thing I did was put on the tie-dyed t-shirt VickiW made me last fall. On a day like today, I like to be surrounded by the support of my friends and/or their gifts!

I started the day at Sewing Guild, where Audrey brought in her muslin and finished blouse she blogged about here. Seeing the two versions in person, along with the pattern alterations she performed was amazing, and I realized I need more classes in the subject of fitting. I have several books, but I'm thinking pattern alteration and fit is something someone has to show you to really get it down.

I wanted to stay and ask Audrey some questions (when she made the dart wider to take the blouse in and make it more fitted, how did she know how much to add to the sides?), but I was off to Glen and Tammy's to help them bury a St. Joseph statue to help them sell their house. They are moving to Chicago as soon as their house sells, and it is going slowly; they were advised by several people (one of them may have been me!) to get a St. Joseph's statue, and in this market, they are willing to try anything. They were concerned about whether it would "take" since they aren't Catholic, and I assured them all they needed was faith, but they still wanted me there for the installation of St. Joe. So I read the prayer that came with it and added an extemporaneous prayer to the Lord asking for blessings on Glen and Tammy as they move, and also for blessings on the new family that buys their house. There, we've done all we can do: it is up to heaven now.

I worked on the placemats this afternoon (and Tammy ran my sewing machine for the first time, helping me) and I worked on the DWRQ quilt blocks. Nothing finished, but as I was sewing this showed up at my door:

BEAUTIFUL roses from Eileen! Really lovely. I was gobsmacked by such a generous gift. As a single person, I wasn't expecting any flowers this Valentine's. This was a real treat because I am one of those women that starts to crave flowers this time of year inasmuch as winter has been going on for months, and no flowers are in sight for another couple of months. In the middle of February, I want flowers like heroin. Thank you, Miss Eileen.

And Mother sent me this Valentine:

It is one of those pop-up cards she loves (and I love too). She signed Daddy's name to it, but she has assured me that Daddy sent a gift of his own, separately, so I'll have to wait to see what arrives in the mail.

And last, but certainly not least, Aimee gave me this for Valentines:

This little tome, "Porn for Women" has made the rounds on the internet, but basically it is full of photos of men doing housework and saying things like, "As long as I have legs, you will never take out the garbage" and other things women really want to hear.

So my prayer for the support of friends this Valentine's was answered and I thank everyone for their thoughts and gifts and cards. Y'all have made this a Valentine's to remember!

Still Want More Sewing, Less Work

My friend and co-worker, Glen, lamented my lack of posts since February 6. Which is weird because a) he knows I have had no free time because we are so busy at work, and b) he doesn't sew. Or know how to sew. But if he wants to read about sewing, who am I to deprive him of such fascinating details?

I don't know if I had the perfect day last Saturday, but it was Pretty Good, I can tell you that. The temperatures were in the mid to upper sixties in February and it was beautiful. And I made three more blocks for the DWRQ:



I haven't sewn them together but you can see three new ones laid out as they will be joined. My goal is to make 2 blocks each weekend, just so that this project doesn't get impossibly drawn out.

And after the Christmas placemat extravaganza, I am trying to make myself some placemats. I have nothing to show right now, except everything all pinned together, waiting for a free moment and some energy:

And I took the Asian Strip Gift Quilt to the machine quilter's today, having found the perfect backing material last week:

Susan Caldwell at Quilting Around the Block expects to complete the quilting in 2 weeks, so in the meantime I will try to get the binding made from this fabric, which is the same as the inner border on the quilt:

So not much to show, just a lot of works in progress. But I know several bloggers are doing posts on how they began sewing and I'd like to share with you my family history leading to my hobby. I have already told the story of my great-grandmother, Daisy Snell Payne, and her quilt. I have several of her quilts, and I would love to recreate more of them. Daisy died twenty years before I was born, so I never knew her. She had five sons, and no daughters, but the wife of her oldest son was my grandmother, Zadie Payne. Nanny, as we called her. Nanny didn't quilt, but she did embroider, and she taught me embroidery somewhere around 10 years old. I still have several pillow cases and table toppers that she embroidered, along with some I did under her supervision.

The real sewer in my family though was my other grandmother, on my mother's side, Florence Bagley. Here is a photo of her and my grandfather in Belgium in 1961:
I suspect she may have made the suit she is wearing. Here's a photo of her probably taken in the 1950's that I shamelessly pilfered from the Baha'i website (hey, she's my grandma, so I feel entitled):

She was actually half Norweigan, and I don't think she really began sewing seriously until she was married with children. She made most of her family's clothes while my mother and her sister and brother were growing up, and I know she created all of my mother's formal dresses. She sewed clothes for me when I was small - I remember a pink dress with a white appliqued cat on it. And she made all my dresses with pockets, because I loved pockets. I remember a cowboy outfit she made for my brother for Christmas when he was about 7 years old, complete with a vest and chaps with fringe.

The one thing I have that she made was a vest she sewed for my mother in the late 1950s or early 1960s. It was made from fabric given to her by a Persian who was a Hand of the Cause in the Baha'i Faith (as I remember, my mother needs to correct me if I am wrong). I believe she made a vest for my mother, for herself, and for my mother's sister. I have the one she made my mother:


The photos don't really do the vest justice; the satin lining is more of a fushia color than red. You can see here that the button holes are machine worked, but are triangular:

You can see that she handstitched the lining on the bottom of the vest:


And the buttonhole side has a facing:

But the side with the buttons has no facing and the satin lining is handstitched right up to the edge:

The armholes:

And here is the back of the vest; there is seam down the middle:

I think Mother gave me this vest when I left for law school, so I have been wearing it on and off for about 23 years. I don't wear it often, but I love it, and it fits beautifully - there are four darts - two in front and two in back. It feels luxurious with the satin lining. Bringing this vest out to photograph has made me realize I haven't worn it in a while. And tomorrow has been declared a jeans day at work - I'm thinking I'll wear this vest with a pair of jeans and white blouse!

Getting Ready for the Weekend

Somewhere on the internet this week I read a blog where the author noted that most people's notion of a "perfect day" is perfectly doable. Apparently for most people the perfect day does not consist of winning a Nobel Prize, but is more like puttering around the house, working in the garden, and cooking dinner for friends. My idea of the perfect day is waking up when I am no longer sleepy, and not a minute before. Having hot tea in bed. Wandering downstairs to begin my sewing day. Having lunch out, and then returning home to sew all afternoon. I admit this isn't the same as "reach the summit of Mount Everest"; my perfect day is seemingly within my control, and I had one last Saturday. So the blogger asked, if perfect days are completely obtainable, why don't we have them more often?

And I immediately knew the answer: because there is just so much that needs doing. I'm not talking about the "shoulds": I can completely ignore the "shoulds". I should clean the baseboards this weekend, but that isn't going to happen, and I don't feel the least bit bad about it. I'm talking about the "needs". There are people in your life that need things from you and they have to be done. Those of you with children know what I am talking about. And there are other needs. I need to fill up the car with gas. This isn't a "should" it is a "need". If I don't fill it up, I'll run out, and I'll end up on the side of the road. But you can be plenty sure that "fill up the car with gas" doesn't exist on my perfect day.

Another "need": I need to exercise. (And this isn't a "should".) I can do it on Saturday mornings, but again, working out does not make it into my perfect day. Which means it has to be done on Friday evening. Among other things. To make the perfect day happen, you have to do a heap of work to get the "needs" done first. If not, and you ignore them and do what you want to do, the "needs" will hang over your head like 8th grade homework. And your perfect day is no longer perfect because you are instead worried about what you aren't getting done.

The blogger's post made me realize that the perfect day takes a great deal of planning and effort to make it happen. So I spent a good portion of the week doing all the "needs", and even some of the "shoulds", so I can enjoy tomorrow guilt-free. The car has gas, I exercised after work, the laundry is in the dryer, and all the "need" work at my place of employment got done before I walked out the door. It will all make tomorrow's play a little sweeter. And hopefully result in the perfect day.

Hope everyone reading this gets to create something this weekend.

Crowded Head, Crowded Room

January has been an incredibly busy and stressful time at work. Those Christmas holidays were so long ago. And everything that I am trying to think about at once manifests themselves on my desk, my dining room table, the kitchen counter, and the floor of my bedroom. The more stressed I am, the messier my outer environs. Bottom line: you can tell what is going on in my brain by what my office or home looks like. This is what I was looking at this morning:

At last count, I ended up with nearly 20 fabrics for the black/white/red Double Wedding Ring Quilt. I only need 8. These are the six I picked for the arcs:

The DWRQ is a traditional pattern, but the color scheme I'm working with isn't traditional. And I wanted non-traditional black/white prints. I loved the one with the women dancing with the musical notes. And the rest I like because of their geometrical shapes. This is what they looked like once I cut them in strips:

For the corner squares, I wanted red and a tone-on-tone black. I had several reds to pick from as well; VickiW donated to the cause, as did Eileen. But in the end I went for this one, with a cool geometrical shape on it:

I needed 60 squares of this fabric, and I found the tea box VickiW gave me was perfect for storing 10 squares in each of the six compartments. Next, I chose my black, which I already had in my stash. It is tone-on-tone paisely print that I used in my mother's quilt:

I cut 60 of these squares and added them to the red ones in the tea box. Now they can't escape during this project!

With work being out of control, I decided I needed a day of sewing to help me get back in my meditative groove. After picking out my fabrics, I was ready to play with my new 18 inch templates from John Flynn for the DWRQ and make a test block. You may remember that I made my first block with the 15 inch templates and decided the 18 inch must be easier. I was right.

I made my first arc:

And then I made another three for the first block:

Only 94 more to go! Here are my first "footballs" as John Flynn calls them:

And here is the first block:

Here you can see the difference between the 15 inch block and the 18 inch I did today:

I can testify to the fact that the 18 inch is infinitely easier for a beginner like myself. My 45 mm rotary cutter was able to handle the curves on the templates MUCH better. Sewing the curves was WAY easier, and overall, it was a happier experience. I love the result. I love my red fabric. One block down, only 19 more to go.

Things I learned today:

1. The 38 mm rotary cutter I bought for this project is the brand I don't like. I need to remember that and not buy another one and give this one away.

2. I need smaller, finer pins for pinning these curves. The long quilting pins I have just aren't getting the job done. I think what I am looking for are applique pins.

3. I tried an experiment in making the "footballs": I used both the walking foot and my regular quarter inch foot in sewing the arcs to the curved middles of the footballs. Hands down, the regular quarter inch foot was better, easier to handle, and resulted in a smoother football which laid flat.

4. I need more Saturdays like this; sewing at will, baking bread, shopping for grocerys, and watching golf, to make me feel more composed during the week when work threatens to consume all my attention. Yay for the DWRQ!

No Parting Shot tonight; I wore myself out uploading these photos!

New England Weekend

Eileen's "learning by doing" weekend did not disappoint. Loy and I had many opportunities to learn by doing, i.e. functioning as Eileen's labor force in piecing crib size baby quilts. Eileen has a tradition of giving each neice and nephew in her family a hand quilted baby quilt when he/she is born. This is no small feat, given that Eileen is the youngest of 5, and her husband, Larry, is the oldest of 14. That is fourteen. That isn't a typo. And yes, they are Irish Catholic.

This is the quilt top I spent my time on. It is an Irish Chain quilt, for a nephew whose name I can't remember: Brian, Patrick, Kevin, something like that. I love it:

Loy designed it, placing the colors, and I pieced it. Eileen supplied the fabric and the inspiration! The center fabric is a really cool map fabric that both Eileen and I bought at Joyce's Quilting Adventures several years ago:

The other baby quilt was made using a "All Things Bright and Beautiful" panel with Loy adding the borders:

I have "homework" on this one; I was sent home with fabric to make the binding!

Other activities included taking photos while playing in the snow! Eileen's house in her hometown, Mass:

And this is one of my favorites, reminding me of Robert Frost's poem where he speaks of the snowy woods as "lovely, dark, and deep":

On Saturday, I decided it would do us good to take a "bracing" walk near the harbor water. It was 19 degrees out, so clearly I was not in my right mind. The sun was shining, but when the wind blew off the ocean, I felt parts of myself stinging with the cold. I believe that was the coldest walk of my life.

As a reward for not freezing to death, we took a trip to a LQS, mostly because I was on the hunt for black and white fabrics for the double wedding ring quilt. My test block last week made me decide that I needed more light to medium fabrics for the arcs of the rings, rather than dark fabric. My test also convinced me, along with Summerset's advice, that I should do 18 inch rings, rather than the 15 inch that I had ordered. I had planned to order the 18 inch templates off the internet, but held off in the faint hope that I might find them in a quilt shop. And I did! Shortly after I walked in, I saw John Flynn's template for the double ring quilt. In an 18 inch size! Score! It was the only one. Providence, sure 'nuff:



And then I found and bought several black and white fabrics. By the time I start this project, I'll probably have so many, I'll need input to weed them down to just six fabrics for the arcs. But here's what I bought:


And I saw some kitty cat Christmas fabric that was on sale that was just too cute not to get:


All in all, it was a fabulous weekend, with great friends. Loy and Eileen spent a great deal of the time knitting. Eileen is knitting a sweater for me (see? she does projects for us too), and Loy is knitting a sweater for herself with wool she bought in the Shetland Islands on our last trip to Scotland last May. I'll show you photos of the sweater Eileen is making for me when it gets done, but I am really annoyed with myself for not taking a photo of Loy's sweater. The yarns she got in Scotland (a myriad of greens) are beautiful and it is going to be one fantastic sweater.

Finally, as the Parting Shot: Loy made me a cermanic bowl. Not only does she knit, sew, make lace, make jewlery, and blow glass, but she throws pottery. She is the Craft Queen:

This is what a miracle looks like

When I flew home from Boston, Mass today, not only did Tammy's husband, Glen, pick me up from the airport, but Tammy cleaned my house. When I left on Friday, the kitchen sink pictured above was full of dirty dishes. Why? Because I have been so busy at work the last two weeks that I haven't had time to empty the dishwasher.

So not only did Glen take a couple of hours out of his day (and leave work) to pick me up at the airport, but Tammy cleaned my kitchen and straightened up the living room. This miracle is amazing. Especially because last week Jennifer at Conversion Diary told everyone about a special friend of hers who came over and cleaned her house. And in the comments section of Jennifer's blog I wrote "How can this miracle happen at my house?" And lo, and behold, it occurred! This a spontanteous gift from Tammy because I am pretty sure Tammy doesn't read Jennifer's blog, much less the comments section.

How do you get friends like these?? Where do you buy them? I don't know. They are clearly a gift from God.

More on the trip, and the quilting, later. But here is the Parting Shot: Snow in New England. Really beautiful: