Midwest Weavers Conference

In the Heartland, Midwest Weavers Conference, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa

FANTASTIC FITTED VEST (3 Days)

We all have drawers and boxes of bits of treasured fabrics, handwoven, felted, antique, samplers, and quilt fabrics.  Some are scraps from other projects, some are samples from workshops.  Some are finished projects that didn’t work or don’t fit anymore. And then there are all the scarves and placemats…  This is a workshop on taking what you don’t know what to do with, and learning to piece it all together to make a wonderful lined vest, custom fit to you.  Fitting, garment construction, and piecing techniques for all types of fabric will be covered.  Anything goes here, it’s a chance to get really carried away since all you have to lose are a few scraps! The class will include basic fitting and sewing techniques.  Materials Fee

CUSTOM FIT AND FABULOUS: CREATE A SIMPLE UNSTRUCTURED JACKET PATTERN, CUSTOM FIT TO YOU  (1 day)

No more one-size-fits-all, or clothes from rectangles!  Using a time-tested classic unstructured jacket pattern, students will learn to custom fit for their individual figures.  Some simple flat pattern and drafting skills will be taught in this workshop.  Expect to leave with a finished pattern and directions to make a fabulous yet easy jacket from your hand-woven fabric.  Materials Fee

COLOR PLAY AND WARP DESIGN

Through a series of creative exercises, participants will learn to confidently place yarns of different colors and textures together to make beautiful warp combinations. This is a fun, hands-on class, and participants will be asked to bring a bag of assorted odds and ends of yarns to work with and to share with others. In addition, participants will learn to create palettes using Color-aid blocks and photographs.  Based on the Color/Fabric Forecast Column from Handwoven Magazine, participants will experiment with palettes based on mood using photos for inspiration and see illustrations of how to translate them into handwoven fabrics and ultimately a garment.

Preparing for California

bindingI haven’t been on  the road for awhile, so I am sort of not in the traveling mind set.  I leave for the Southern California Handweaving Conference on March 3rd, so about 10 days before I pack and head out, I have to have a final head count of students for each class, and then print the handouts.  Then I have to print some of my monographs as well and of course, plenty of interfacings, and whatever other product I carry that would be appropriate for that particular class.  All of it has to be shipped ahead well enough in advance to ensure it will be waiting when I get there.  It is a two-three day job, depending on how many students, how many classes, and how much product I think I’ll need.  So yesterday I cranked up my beloved HP Laser Color printer with a duplexer for double sided printing, and went through about four reams of paper.  So today, I had the really fun task (she says with a slight degree of sarcasm) of binding all the handouts/monographs with my newest comb binding machine.  I wear them out every couple of years, and I recently had to replace mine, so I splurged and bought an electric. Even with the electric, it is still a tedious task.

interfacingOnce I bound the huge stack of handouts (I printed 18 books  each for the Inkle Weaving class and the Photographing your Work class) and a dozen books for the jacket class, I then started rolling out my industrial bolts of interfacings.  I use two different interfacings for the jackets, both in black and white, a lot depends on the type of fabric students bring, one is the fusible knit tricot, and the other is an inserted texturized weft fusible that I adore, that I had to scour the country to get when HTCW discontinued their Textured Weft Product, and I found it but had to buy 200 yard bolts.  So I lift these babies onto the cutting table and chop off two yards at a time and package them for resale. All of it has to be shipped tomorrow with the bolt of pattern paper, and the Inkle looms, since they don’t fit in the suitcase.

So that was my day.  Tedious, but part of the job.  The highlight was my sushi lunch with my Thursday Philosophy Club.  We have the best Sushi restaurant in NJ within walking distance of my house.  Kim Sushi.  Love it.

And my daughter had an asthma attack at school, I swear it is the air quality there, I brought her inhaler in, and eventually all was well.  And when I picked her up around dinner time from the HS musical rehearsal, I let her drive home.  She has her permit, and I will say, I didn’t have white knuckles this time when we arrived in the driveway.  She is improving…

The Lime Green Piping

muslin5muslin2muslin4muslin3OK, so I sat through the movie, which was excellent, we went to see Doubt, beautifully shot, great angles and juxtapositions through the camera lens that really added dimension to the story, but I was really thinking about whether I wanted to put the lime green felt edge piping around the collar/front edge, or in the princess seams.  So I played around in Photoshop, using the rubber stamp tool, with a photo of the muslin, and a separate photo of a close up of the fabric.  It really gave me an idea of the jacket in the fabric, which I really like, and then I could take a green “pencil”, and sort of simulate the “piping”.  I’m thinking that around the collar and down the front, looks sort of expected, but in the princess seams, there is a real slimming line that occurs, and accents the body shape.  I think it will look especially graphic in the back.  So I’m posting the photos, and will mull this over while I sleep, and revisit it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, at 10:30 tonight, I was given another dress for the musical show, to redesign, ASAP, since the show is next weekend.  So I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow morning…

Arctic Sky Update

fabric1arctic-sky-lr

project5detail1

First, let me refresh everyone’s memories on the Arctic Sky Fabric, which I had been calling Project 5.  It was based on a forecast I did for Handwoven Magazine for the January ’07 issue.  It is a twill variation, using whatever was on my shelf, novelties, Harrisville wools from the late 70’s?  I had some variegated cottons, and this very pretty bright lime green novelty rayon.

I originally set this warp up on my 8 shaft, 24″ floor loom, not because it needed to be, but when I have sticky wool warps, I find that by spreading them over eight shafts instead of four, I get less skipped sticky warp issues.

I have about 6 yards of 21″ wide fabric, not a huge amount, but enough I think for a short jacket, and I have a beautiful silk Sari from my husband’s gift stash in the perfect teal.    And I have this odd little sash/narrow scarf that I felted with a friend, in that fabulous lime green color.  I can see using the natural edge of the felt as a narrow accent down the princess seams, almost like piping.

muslinSo when last we left off, I was tracing the Burda pattern onto the tracing medium, and then of course, the next step is a muslin.  I know this doesn’t look like a muslin, but I use whatever junk is on my shelf, I have this huge hunk of decorator fabric which someone gave me, which in the picture is actually appealing, but trust me, it isn’t.  So instead of wasting perfectly good muslin, I made up the jacket in this.  The upper collar/facing was left out, you get the general idea without going to all that trouble, and I put the cuff on only one sleeve.  The sleeves are too long, I always have to shorten Burda sleeves, an easy fix, and the jacket itself, although cute, and well fitting, is way too short waisted.  By about 2 inches (see blue line in photo).  The buttons look compressed, and the torso looks squished.  The lime green edge of the felt piping would come down the princess seams, or, now that I look at the photo, maybe I could run it down the edge of the collar/front.  There will be a welt pocket in the side front, and a belt in the center back.

Once I make these changes, I’m good to start cutting.  But I wanted to give you an update on the pattern tracing medium issue.  I was waiting for a sample or bolt, which ever got to me first, from Pellon, showing me the version of Red Dot Tracer they picked up from HTCW.  Their Tru-Grid product, which was their original pattern tracing medium, is very soft like cloth, and though I like the grid, and the re-engineered product that is now stable in all directions, the pencil marks that I make that copy the pattern onto the medium tend to rub off on your hands, and slowly disappear.  Not good for long term patterns.  I really miss Red Dot Tracer, which was more paper like, though it was a polyester composite cloth, and it really held the color, and the marks.  You couldn’t get them off if you wanted to.

Well, today I got a bolt of the new Red Dot Tracer from Pellon, and oddly enough, and sadly enough, it is the same product as their Tru-Grid, except it has a 1″ grid of red dots instead of blue squares.  Bummer.  I’m not sure why they need both.  And I’m really sad that I can’t get the HTCW version of Red Dot.  All of my master patterns I use for teaching are made from Red Dot from HTCW, and they hold the color and the marks for years.  I don’t see that happening with Tru-Grid/Red Dot from Pellon.

In the total scheme of things, what with everything that’s happening in the world, this is really a minor thing.  It is just frustrating because the things I use for garment making seem to disappear since most of the sewing world is ruled by the quilters.  My complete admiration for the quilters of the world, for they have single-handedly kept the sewing industry alive, but us garment makers have to struggle to make do with what the manufacturers  provide.  There aren’t enough of us to have a voice.

We are going to the movies tonight, free at any Claridge Cinema on Tuesday nights with the Optimum Rewards Card.  That’s a perk from my cable company that also provides my phone and internet service.  Free movies once in awhile is a nice perk.

Success!

Well, I did it, I got my sister’s website up and running.  I still have a lot of work to do on the project profiles page, there are many subpages to be built under there, but after much hair pulling and gnashing of teeth, I actually managed to create the site, have it all work, and make the “client” happy.  I will say that my sister, the architect designed the actual site.  She knew exactly what she wanted, text and imagery was what she sketched out on what else, “graph paper”.  My job was to get it all to work.  There is no better feeling than to have pushed harder than you thought you could do, and reached higher than you thought you could go, doing something you thought was way beyond you, and to have succeeded.  I still have a lot of work to do, like I said, but my poor sister, who still has to put up with dial-up service in northern rural Maryland, at least has a website for her business.  Now of course, mine is really embarrassing…  That is what prompted all this, I sorely need a redesign on mine, and so does my other weaving guild (the Frances Irwin Handweavers), so those are next once I fine tune and finish up with my sister’s.  Actually, the Jockey Hollow Weaver’s Website could use a makeover as well, but my daughter maintains that one, and once I figure all this out, she will be pretty amenable to redoing that one, I’m sure.

If you are interested in checking it out, my sister’s firm is Ebeling Noe Associates.  She is a great architect, and if you know me, she has my same sense of organization and work ethic.

I met tonight with the rest of the programming team for the Jockey Hollow Weavers Guild, to map out programs for 2009-2010.  We had some great feedback from the members, and we are sketching out the year, using some panel discussions, some presentations from our own talented members, and we are looking to book a couple of out of town speakers with workshops.  So now I get to surf the web, looking at all the suggestions, and see what other teachers offer  on their websites.  So this is a win win situation for me.  Stay tuned…