A new finish

 Hello, everyone.

Today's post is a new finish, but it's also a stash item. And a rough-draft of a future garment.

This is a cardigan from a prior year's Burda Style (July 2019, number 103) with a shorter length--the design original length looked a lot like "commune clothes" when tried out--and with the sleeve enlarged to accommodate my non-stick-figure arms. 

I guess the way to keep a long, long cardigan from looking like that is to use the shown metallic knit in the magazine photos. Or to be 5'10 or over, weigh 107 pounds and combine it with skinny pants and high heels. The cardigan's more usable at this length because like most people I go places in cars while wearing sweaters or jackets. 😉 And at this length a person isn't constrained to wear spike heels and leggings with it.

Detail of the new sleeve. I tried to keep the wider lower sleeve from the design as much as possible, while opening up the upper arm. I kept the armhole seam length from changing by following the directions in one of my fitting/alterations books to open a cross shaped cut inside the seam line and pull it apart until the needed width was achieved. This was a first time for me!

The fabric is an ice-blue poly or rayon with spandex knit that has been lying around the place for a while. I am thrilled to have used up some of it.

For the seams I used the canned "stretch" slanted-zigzag on my sewing machine. It's a useful stitch, but it works a LOT better if it's sewn on a more stabilized knit--I interfaced the sewn bits all over the place with a knit type interfacing.

This was a test drive for using the beautiful piece of gray knit I got from EmmaOneSock to make a cardigan with. 

Thanks to DD2 for making phone photos for me!

The tee shirt is my spiffy Montana merino one from Duckworth. 

Stash busting (fall season)

 Hello, everyone.

It's been finishing-projects time around the place, and as always stash busting is the first thought.

This is part of a set being made. There is some new fabric in this, and some old. 

The placemat is quilted on the seam lines with purple decorative stitching (vines) and in the wide pieces with the triple zigzag line in variegated green thread. Three of the face fabrics are from stash, plus the backing. (I'm calling the binding a face fabric here.)

More Christmas stuff (Updated)

Hello, everyone.

Having finished a gift for DS2, looked around and didn't like any of the on-hand options for wrapping. Aha! says I. There's all this fabric in the house!

 Decorating the gift bag with an embroidered Nativity tree in silver and green.

Owing to the troubles experienced when making the owl pillow, also embroidered on Kona cotton muslin, I followed the suggestion of my friend Diane, an experienced machine embroiderer, to float the fabric instead of trying to hoop it. This worked out well.

After embroidery,  the bag was sewn and the bottom corners boxed. Then it was soaked to get the wash away Sulky Sticky Solvy out, drip dried, pressed, and had its ribbon ties added.

Update: the finished bag

Embroidery for Christmas season

 Hello, everyone.

It's been months now and still there are new things to learn with my Janome embroidery machine. There are so many different things that can be done with machine embroidery!

These are free-standing lace ornaments.The top left is the same pattern as the bottom left, but it has Mylar gift wrap sewn into the design. (This is the shiny stuff people use to fluff the tops of paper gift bags. It's actually thin shiny-coated plastic.)

The Mylar gets enclosed between two pieces of tulle...gosh, a way to use up some of the oceans of tulle around here!...and laid onto the wash away stabilizer. Painter's tape or embroidery tape is used to stick the edges down to keep them flat. And I like to use the automatic tack down box in my machine as well. At the end of the stitching, the ornament is carefully clipped out of the hoop and the remaining bits of stabilizer are soaked away. I like to finish off with a bit of Fray Check too prevent any untoward happenings later on.

I think the hearts and angels, being in the 2 to 5 inch range of sizing, could be added to a wreath as well as being hung on the Christmas tree. They all fit into my 5x5 hoop.

The Stabilizer Holder in action

 Hello, everyone.

I hung up the stabilizer holder and loaded it up! (Used a more utilitarian hanging method than the pattern, it doesn't bother me to see a naked dowel.)

The round "cans" of stabilizer rolls fit (almost) perfectly. Only one or two of the thick ones need to be eased into their pocket. The shadows on the right are from the thread spool racks on the adjacent area. 

This freed up part of the tiny shelf where the stabilizers were previously stuffed. Though I do need to scrounge around the house for an unclaimed basket for loose bits of things that are still there so nothing falls out the open back of the kit shelf.

On another note, last fall the sewing club had an iron-on applique project and I didn't finish it at the time. Things were just busy that month. It sat in the closet in its project bag for lo these many moons and recently was pulled out and finished.

Very fall-y, don't y'all think? It's spending its days on the kitchen table between meals for a little while, then it will go into storage until next year. 

For the interested readers, there is outline quilting around the pumpkin pieces, done with the walking foot, not freestyle. The pumpkin segments were outlined with a decorative stitch on the sewing machine in orange thread. And the binding is a straight grain strip cut from another orange blend and sewed on by machine. The runner was a project featured by the Heat n Bond people. 

Return to Bentsen Park

 Hello, everyone.

We're returning to walking on a schedule (yay!) and this week we went back to Bentsen Park. It was lovely walking, not crowded, and we saw something I'd not seen down here before.

I think these are two wasp nests on the same tree. They were flat but looking through the phone camera lens it appeared there were cells, one layer deep only, and there were lots of brown bugs on them looking down at us. Paper wasp? 

I was surprised not only to see this type of wasp--definitely not the more usual yellow jackets!--and to see them so close together. Wouldn't the wasps fight to keep apart?

This tree is on the main road between the group picnic area and the volunteer hut at the entrance. We only saw the nests on our return route, because of the way the morning light hit them.

More Christmas fun

 Hello, everyone.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a class on making Christmas things. We learned to make the little decorated embroidery-hoop ornaments and some other things.

This was at the end of class; final touches were to be added at home. This was my first experience working with hot fix gems.

At home, hot glued another gem into the center, added the bow, and added the rickrack on the outside.

Posing in the kitchen. 

This was fun! And the package of Kimberbell 3.5" hoops had two in it, so I can make another one.