Daryl's Blog

First, I have to say that this was the coolest birthday I’ve ever had.  As much as I grumble at social networking sites, I have to say, it was a blast putting my feet up on my desk, knitting a tank top, and watching all the birthday wishes pop up between Facebook and my blog.  It was like being at your own party and doing none of the work.

Thanks so much to all of you who took the time to wish me a Happy Birthday, both on Facebook and on my blog,  it really meant a lot to me, and I appreciated each and every message.  Know that they were read and treasured.

I’ve left a few threads hanging so to speak, and I need to tidy up loose ends before I head out on the road again.

First, my dishtowels.  I finished them, six in all, I’ll swap three at the guild exchange, and keep three for myself.  For all my griping about not ever having woven a dishtowel in my lengthy career as a weaver, I sort of enjoyed the exercise and am pretty proud of the way they turned out.  I’ll let you know what I get back in return when I return from Oregon and the ANWG conference next week.  Brianna will have to exchange the towels for me since I can’t make the guild meeting.

Speaking of Brianna, this is the time when I smile and say,” shoulda not left this ’till the last minute, just saying…”.  She would then roll her eyes and exclaim, “MOTH-ER…”  Truth is, she did wait until the last minute, the towels are due in one week, she was threaded by last week, had to deal with some crossed threads, and then got sidetracked by a major high school event she got sucked into at the last minute taking up every night last week into the weekend.  Monday morning she woke up really sick.  She has been out of school for three days, and only today crawled out of bed to fix the cross threads and fix the tie-up (you can’t weave plain weave on a five hundred pound loom lifting six of eight shafts when the treadles are all the way on the left of the 45″ loom).  I explained how to  put the plain weave treadles (which is 95% of the towel) in the middle to get the best leverage of the treadle.  After a lot of fiddling, she was finally weaving.

 

OMG!  These are truly adorable, and I’m sooooo disappointed I won’t have one for me.  She only put on enough warp for five towels, forgetting she has to weave 15 samples.  So there will only be four towels, three get traded and I get none…  🙁  The challenge here was to use complementary colors, she loved purple, so the border thread had to be yellow, and of course the sheep are black and white. )

In case you want to weave these towels yourself (which I may have to do…) they are from Best of Handwoven Top Ten Towels on Eight Shafts.  It is an eBook which in itself is pretty much fun.

 

 

 

And my coat/dress, still without a name, is chugging along.  It is 85 degrees in the studio today and hard to touch wool.  I’m sweating all over my keyboard.  Regardless, I’m going to have to put this project on hold for a bit, since I spent the day prepping and packing, I teach all day tomorrow at an elementary school in Morris County, my yearly appearance, where I talk about fiber to all the second grade classes.  I adore these kids, and it is so much fun to share what I do with them.  So I had to pack a loom, a spinning wheel, wash some fleece, etc.  Friday I have to take care of all the bills, balance checkbooks, and take care of the stack of paperwork on my desk, and Saturday I pack.  I’ll try to fit in a few hours on the unnamed coat/dress before I leave Sunday for Oregon and the ANWG conference.

Meanwhile, here are the photos I have so far, this is a pretty in your face piece, should look great on a runway, and I have to say one of the most challenging things I’ve ever sewn.  The underarm gusset was laborious but came out fantastic, and I like the juxtaposition of the grainlines from the front/back to the side insets.  Since they are one with the sleeve, the stripes had to be going in the opposite direction.  It is all coming out swimmingly well, and it fits like a glove.  So far…  The front panels/collar section still have to be added, and some kind of button closure, it is hidden on the pattern but I’m thinking I might want it to show.

Stay tuned…

Today is my 56th birthday.  Hard to imagine I’ve come to this age, which isn’t old, but I’m feeling like I’ve had a life time of experiences and so grateful for each year I can add to them.  I’ve done so many things, traveled so many places, and seen such amazing things.  I’ve spent more than half of my life with a wonderful partner who has shared many of these adventures with me, but today, actually this whole weekend, he isn’t here.  Gone to Saudi Arabia, he can’t be here to help me celebrate, and coincidentally neither one of my children is available either.  My son is at guard duty all weekend, and my daughter happened to have a busy bunch of outside commitments, right now she is at CPR recertification class for lifeguarding.

It is all OK, I had all of my family around me for Mother’s Day.  And truth be told, if I could design my perfect day, it would alone, on my own schedule, eating the things I want, and doing and seeing the things I want to do and see, that no one else in my family, except for Brianna maybe, really cares about.

Yesterday was so incredibly glorious.  The world didn’t end, and I’m really happy about that, and the sun shone for most of it, after a week of dreary rain, I took advantage and sat on my balcony in the warm sunshine, listening to the birds and profuse wildlife that inhabits my yard, and totally appreciating my life so far.  I watched the breeze carry twirling maple tree helicopters, spinning wildly to the ground like glitter in the sunshine.  I drove out to the other side of the county to pick up some textile equipment an old friend was selling.  I wrote my article for Notions, the publication of the American Sewing Guild.  I was able to retrieve photos from my archives easily with the new computer system, and get everything uploaded by last night.

I played around with gauge for knitting a summer tank top from Noro cotton/silk yarn I got from a friend.  I worked on my coat/dress.  I cooked roasted vegetables over wine simmered tilapia for dinner.  I enjoyed my beautifully tidy house I paid to have someone clean for me on Friday as a birthday present to myself.

And this morning, I woke up early, chatted with my mom on the phone who called to wish me a happy birthday, and left for the city with a textile friend to spend the day in Manhattan seeing an exhibit that was on the top of my bucket list.  Thank God the world didn’t end on Saturday, since I would have been so disappointed to have missed this exhibit.

On the way into NYC, Jenny presented me with a small birthday present, assuring me that it wasn’t something that had to be dusted, that would take up any space at all, and that didn’t have an on /off button to frustrate me, and that required no care at all.  Her husband who is an accomplished woodworker and blacksmith, forged this lovely reed/heddle/orifice hook, I adore it and all it represents.  My perfect type of gift.  Thank you Jenny and to your husband Kevin as well.

Probably my favorite designer of all time, the late Alexander McQueen, is being memorialized in a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in an exhibit titled Savage Beauty.  If you aren’t near NYC and can’t manage to get to see this amazing exhibit before it closes on July 31st, take 10 minutes or so and check out the link and watch the video of the exhibition.  I have to say, this is probably the most spectacular exhibit I have ever seen in any museum, even the Vivienne Westwood retrospective at the V&A in London didn’t come close.  The exhibit is thoughtful, reverent, brilliantly curated, and it has captured the essence of this remarkable designer, who clearly understood cloth and the body.  I am humbled and stand in awe.  It was the perfect birthday present.  My friend Jenny was clearly awestruck as well.  I was glad for her company.

She hadn’t been to the MET recently, and I was happy to take her to some of my favorite spots, and our other goal was to see the Andean Tunic exhibit in the Oceanic arts wing.  I’ve written about this wing before, including many photographs, it is probably my favorite permanent exhibit at the MET, and we quickly found the Tunic exhibit.  I’m not sure which of the two exhibits I saw this morning at the MET were more inspiring…  They were both so exquisite, so different, yet so incredibly similar.  The tunics shown in this exhibit were incredibly well preserved textiles dating back from 400 BCE to about 1400 CE.  The colors were intense, the imagery spectacular, and the fineness of the textiles breathtaking.  It helped that Jenny is a natural dyer among other things, and we had great discussions on which natural dye made which red, cochenille or a cousin of the madder plant.  And how about those greens…

As handspinners, Jenny and I were blown away by how fine the handspun thread was that created these intricate tunics, mostly tapestries, and that most of the fiber used was from camelids.  That would be fibers from the alpaca or llama, or maybe vicuña.  Apparently they held the color better, which makes sense, cotton fibers don’t take well to natural dyes.  We also appreciated not having to fight the crowds, who were all in line to see the McQueen exhibit on the second floor.  Thankfully we got there when the museum opened this morning, and only had to fight our way through a small mob to see everything up close.

Jenny and I had a lovely lunch together in the MET cafeteria, one of my favorite places to dine in NYC, and we headed home.  The day may be gray and drizzly, but the colors and inspiration I absorbed this morning will be with me for a long time.  I’m sorry my family isn’t around this weekend, but I took advantage and had a marvelous birthday in spite of that, and the day is still young.  There is a coat/dress calling me and the rest of the day to work on it.

Happy Birthday to me…

Well I made the first cut, there is no turning back at this point, I’m committed to this project.  And I’m loving it so far, every step of the way.  OK, to be fair, I didn’t like crawling on the floor cutting this puppy out for a couple of hours.  My age is creeping up on me, and I can’t crawl around on the floor like I use to.  Bummer…

Let me back up…

First, I had to take my lovely six yards of handdyed/handwoven fabric and lay it out across the floor in its entirety so I could see what I was working with.  This was no small task.  I had to push everything in the studio out of the way, so I could get an uninterrupted 36″ wide x 6 yards of fabric.   Those looms are heavy.  I carefully laid out my fabric, which is yet unnamed, I’m working on a title, and then placed the pattern pieces so I’d get an idea of where the colorations would occur.  I moved things around, tried different layouts, and worked pretty much all night.

When I was satisfied with what I had, I pinned everything on, and then I cut…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I always layout handwoven fabric singly; it is really important I know what every single warp and weft is doing at all times.  With singly cut fabric, the tailor’s tacks are a breeze, just in and out, and the markings are all transferred.

Course, the fabric isn’t technically wide enough.  I wanted the fronts next to each other for color consistency, and the backs next to each other, etc.  But the pattern pieces are so wide, they didn’t actually fit.  So I decided to do my special technique called Selvedge Abutment.  Basically I look for another selvedge that looks similar in coloration and I cut a hunk and pin it next to the existing selvedge of the fabric, and then I sew the two selvedges together carefully by hand, butting them together.  It works like a charm, when the fabric is steamed, the join is really invisible, and since it is near the hem, or other inconspicuous place, no one will be the wiser.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next stop while I’m spending hours stitching all the selvedges together, is thinking about how I’m going to construct the seams.  If you scroll down to my previous post, you’ll see that I talked about the seam finish designed by Issey Miyake in this garment, which called for cutting off the seam allowance on one of the pieces, and placing the cut edge on the seamline of the adjacent piece.  Then zig-zag.  I think not…

I did a stash root, my favorite thing to do, and I found the most spectacular piece of dupioni silk in an irridescent color, fading from gold to purple.  It doesn’t get any better than that.  I played around with bias strips, binding off the edges of the piece where I cut off the seam allowance.  I think I have something that will work and define the beautiful design lines of this coat/dress.  Stay tuned…

See I have this list of stuff to do, posted on a virtual to do list on my new computer screen, surrounded by pretty purple virtual post it notes of things I have to remember, notes to myself so to speak, and every time I look at them, or the list I glance over to my sewing machine, which is in my peripheral vision as I type, calling loudly to me like my dog does when he wants me to pay attention to him.

I have a couple of articles to write, and they are emergency, “can you have this in the next couple of weeks” kind of articles, and about a half dozen new workshops I have to formally put up on my website.  And I have to finish the dishtowels, I’ve woven five, the last with an alternate treadling which I love.  And I have to pick up my organic produce basket and go grocery shopping.  I gave up on cleaning my house and hired someone, at least for this week.

And still my sewing machine calls me.

So, what could I do, but listen…  I succumbed…

 

 

 

I dug out the last fabric I wove, the orange and purple fabric that I barely pulled off the loom last December and immediately shipped it out to Handwoven to be photographed for the magazine for my last article in the current issue, and it only came back to me about a month or so ago.  It is screaming at me to make something out of it.  I long to dig my teeth into another challenging sewing project, course I’m heading out on the road in about a week and a half, but when did that ever stop me…

I have this Issey Miyake pattern from Vogue, 1069, still in print oddly enough, that I’ve been mulling over for awhile.  I love his patterns.  They are challenging to engineer for handwoven, and just in how they go together, as the pattern pieces, there are only four, are sort of unrecognizable as traditional pattern pieces go.  This dress/coat, I’m not sure exactly what it is, is lined, but the outer seam construction is all overlapped, zigzagged, raw edges showing, for the seam finish, and I’m certainly not going to do that with handwoven, but there are all kinds of alternatives and my mind is a whirl.

So I stayed up late last night, and jumped into the studio this morning, to get the preliminary fitting done, I like the way it fits, and I can’t wait to see how this really odd all in one collar works out in real fabric.  I can’t do a lot of the easing and stretching in pattern paper, but handwoven will make it a breeze.  I also did a preliminary layout since I need so much fabric and I want specific color washes in certain places.  I think I can do it with some creative selvedge abutment.  These are huge sweeping pattern pieces for a very long coat/dress.  If I can pull this off it will be smashing.  I need a new runway piece or two, so the timing is good.

The layout will be particularly tricky, so I decided to trace a second set of patterns for the left side so I can lay everything out at once and not worry about flipping.

OK, I do need to go get my produce basket and pick up groceries, but I’m pushing the looms aside and going to start figuring all this out just as soon as I get back.

Stay tuned…

For those of you who don’t speak German, literally “Storm and Urge”, although usually translated as “Storm and Stress”.  Friday was moving day, that is, my newly built computer, with Windows 7 was officially installed, and it of course didn’t go in effortlessly.  My husband, who is the most brilliant and indispensable techie on the planet (yeah, I know, that’s the same guy that sent me the anniversary flowers in Virginia…) spent part of the two weeks he has been home from Saudi building me a new system, fast, efficient, and with Windows 7.  He did a great job, but as with all things involving technology, nothing goes in smoothly.  We were able to load all the major software and have all my data files backed up to the network for as seamless a transition as possible.

And this is where I’m sure my husband’s patience with me runs thin.  See, because he can, I don’t try to see if I can.  That’s not completely true, I do try to see if I can get things to work, but the first sign of something I don’t know, I panic and call him.  Poor guy, all day Friday and much of Saturday morning I called him in about every 15 minutes.  “There’s a window I don’t understand…”  He got little else done.  Most of the data had been moved over and all was running as well as could be expected, then there was the literal Sturm und Drang, a powerful thunderstorm Saturday night that took out our router, and then all hell broke loose.  My poor guy worked on trying to hook up another unit he happened to have, and get all the IP addresses of the prolific amount of computer systems in the house back up and running along with all the network printers, etc. not a task for the faint of heart.  If he hadn’t have been here I’d have been completely sunk.  It is one of my fears with him traveling.  To hire someone, they’d have no idea how this house is wired let alone all the systems throughout the house that are networked together.  I shudder at the thought.

Once the router was back up, I thought I’d take a much needed break and catch up on Desperate Housewives ( I know, I’ve watched it since the beginning, it is my one weakness and I was a couple episodes behind from traveling).  It was with extreme trepidation that I went meekly in to find my husband to tell him about the latest dialogue box that popped up, apparently abc.com decided my computer was not in the United States and would only stream videos to locations in the United States.  I guess NJ must have seceded from the union and I hadn’t heard about it.  🙂

You can’t make this stuff up.  My husband looked at me like I had three heads, and did one of those private eye rolls, “she has got to be one of the stupidest females on the planet when it comes to electronics” and off he went.  I curled up in bed to watch the DVR version of the last couple episodes.  Later he came in to tell me that all of the computers had the same message that apparently it had something to do with the router he had installed.  He reprogrammed the geo-position of the computers, or something like that, and picked up a new state of the art router at Staples tonight.  It ain’t over and he leaves on Wednesday for another month in Saudi.  I’m trying to just stay calm and not panic until there is something to panic about.  I think the computer gods are just waiting for the right moment….

Meanwhile, I spent the day on my new computer, what a joy.  I love Windows 7, the sticky notes app allows me to clean all the little post-it reminders off my desk.  I love the interface, and so far, all of my data seems to be there and accessible.  We missed moving over my email contacts, we can go back into the old computer and retrieve them, but actually I am rather liking starting fresh, retrieving information for contacts from the 12,000 sent messages in my sent box, and knowing that what’s in there is current and accurate and tidy.

I had three goals this week, one was to get the new system up and running, and it looks like that has been accomplished.  She says with extreme wariness…  Another goal was to move through the Guild Exchange Dishtowels, due in a couple of weeks.  I’ve woven four so far, I think there is enough warp for a couple more, but I only needed four for the actual exchange, the rest is samples and more towels for me…

The other goal was to print more than 120 books for handouts for the ANWG conference in Oregon at the end of the month, and get them shipped out along with other materials, since there is no way I can get everything I need there in two 50 pound suitcases.  There are thirty something and forty something in two of my lectures alone.  I need to pick up another flat rate priority box from the post office tomorrow before I can pack the third box.  I’ve been printing and binding all week, wanting to get everything printed before I made the computer switch since all my printer shortcut settings would be lost.

So for the moment, all is good, and I love my new system.  I’m trying to be kind to the computer gods, I know they don’t really like me, but I’m determined to introduce them to the sewing machine gods, who really really like me and hopefully they will see I’m not at all as stupid as I appear when faced with technology…

Stay tuned…