Tag: Shuttle Spindle and Dyepot

Arctic Sky Completed

Yippee!  I finished the jacket.  I am so happy with it.  As a matter of fact, today was a pretty good day, I accomplished a lot.  And this is actually my second blog today.  First the previous blog, with the spinning wheel caper.  While I was in the middle of that, I actually started sorting through all the magazines my textiley friend send the other day, largely because I have a guild meeting on Monday and want to unload all the duplicates, my shelves are starting to bend from the weight!  There weren’t too many, and I did get to put away a whole stack of my own recent acquisitions.  I hadn’t done that in awhile.

jacketclosedSo, I got the lining in.  And it is beautiful.  I love using these sari’s as linings, a gift from my husband’s last couple of trips to India.  I blogged about it in early February.  I sat chatting with a girlfriend yesterday while I started the hours of handwork, a really good friend who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer.  It felt good to just sit and sew and chat, she lives on the west coast, and in this day of 160 character bytes of information, texts, emails, and twitters, an old fashioned hour and a half chat while I sewed in my lining was just the best treat for both of us.

I spent the afternoon (after organizing my magazines and fixing the cracked hub on my spinning wheel) writing an article for Shuttle, Spindle and Dyepot.  Sandra Bowles asked me to do a series of articles for the next three issues of SS&D, publication of the Handweavers Guild of America, on the Challenge Project I’ve been talking about in recent blogs.  So I did a synopsis of Loretta’s and my experience as collaborators and team members, and wrote the article today.  I just have to proof and upload all the images.  Future articles will be about the other two teams.

So after dinner, I chatted simultaneously with my husband in New Hampshire via instant message on my computer, and my girlfriend Dawn via text message on my cell phone, and continued the hand sewing on the jacket.  I will say that was a bit of a juggling act.  I kept having to put the thimble down and answer the two sets of messages, and eventually just gave up in favor of the old fashion chat via speaker phone.  I finished the lining, took some quick photos, and voilá!

jacketopendetail

Special Delivery

I have a really great weaving buddy friend, who has been known on occasion to go through massive clean-outs of areas of her house, and she will throw everything in a box she doesn’t want and ship it to me.  I always love “care” packages from my friend.  She knows whatever is in the box will get some attention from me, and that I have enough contacts to see that everything finds a good home.

magazinesmagazines2So today my daughter was trying to come in the front door after school, and couldn’t get in because of a huge box, full of magazines, weaving journals, and fiber books.  OMG!

What a treasure box this is, there are magazines dating back to the 40’s.  The highlights include a December 1942 Woman’s Day with a lovely article on weaving in it, back issues of Fiber Arts, SS&D, Handweaver and Craftsman and Craft Horizons.  There is a newsletter series from the 50’s-60’s called the Shuttle, I think published by Maysville.  There are two volumns of Handweaving News from the 1930’s from Nellie Sargent Johnson, Detroit.  And my favorite, a bound volume of 1945-46 issues of Osma Gallinger’s Shuttle Service complete with actual woven samples.  All of this was apparently in the storage unit.  This is my lucky day!  There was also a copy of Ann Sutton’s  Structure of Weaving, you’d think I’d already have that one in my library, oddly enough I didn’t.  And I have a huge textile/periodical library!

After I got through that very welcomed distraction, I got down to business, I finished another couple pages on the new website, actually, looking over what’s left, it seems I only have four more pages to create.  The Extras Page will be ongoing, I’ll move over PDF articles and things from my old site, but I hope to add to it, maybe extracting out the parts of the blog that pertain to specific garments and creating an all- in- one article to make it easy to follow the string.  Stuff like that.  I was trying to do a check on the site tonight, make sure everything I uploaded was working, but the site seems to be down.  I’ll check later.

jacketI managed to get the sleeves into the jacket, and I am soooooo happy with it.  It looks fabulous on, so trim and angular, the lime green felt piping just pops right out of the jacket.  The jacket was a dream to sew, there was enough wool content to remind me why I love tailoring wool, and why my mom would haul us down to 4th street in Philadelphia  when we were growing up, to get the best wools for her suits and coats.  Now I’m down to the lining, which should go together quickly, and then hours of handwork.

Tomorrow I have to spend the day making pantaloons for my son’s costume for Cinderella.  I mentioned this in the last blog, but I have a better idea now of what they want, and I rooted through my stash and found enough stuff to pull this off without having to spend any money.  I found a length of a jacquard white on white decorator fabric, which was too white and clean looking for the age and condition of the dublet they gave me.  So I poured the remaining morning coffee and tea into a pot on the stove and “aged” the jacquard fabric to the correct color.  I took measurements of my son’s trim muscular body, and I’ll see if I can whip out a pair of pantaloons!  Stay tuned…