craftmatic beth

Mom was wrong: slouching is good for you

2012-01-31T09:00:00.002-06:00

I made a hat! Three times, in fact. The first time, I made it too big, so it kept sliding back off my head. The second time, I accidentally skipped the line in the pattern that went from 80 stitches to 120, so it was way too tight. Time number 3, however, was indeed the charm.

I used the super-cool, super-easy Slouchy Copy Cat Hat from Ravelry. I originally increased the number of stitches to 86, but that was too big. 80 stitches was much better, and the 76 stitches in the original would probably be fine.

I modified the ribbing so that it would be a double thickness (pretty necessary for Minnesota). My modifications were:

CO 80 stitches*. Work in the round in 2x2 rib for 2 inches. Purl one round (turning row). Work 2 more inches of 2x2 rib (I reversed the order, so that the ribs would like up nicely). Turn up the brim at the turning row. Carefully pick up the stitches on the cast on edge with a darning needle and thread. Knit a round of 2x2 rib, joining in the picked up stitches, one by one. This results in a nicely seamed doubled ribbed brim. Then proceed with the pattern as written (and don't forget the K2 M1 round!)

*This probably would have worked even better if I'd used a provisional cast on. If anyone knows of instructions that tell you how to do a brim like this properly, let me know!

Project Bags

2012-01-26T21:51:00.002-06:00

I visited my friend Lucia over New Year's in New York. In between art museums and recovering from the New Year's festivities, we went through a big stash of fabric from her late mom. Lucia's mom could do everything - she was a quilter and seamstress and knitter and embroiderer and goodness knows what else, so there was a lot to go through. Lucia was kind enough to give me some pieces, and one of the first things I made was these bags, to hold my knitting:

Pretty, no? It's hard to see, but the green one has a cool leaf pattern in gold. It's a lot nicer than carrying my knitting around in plastic bags, which had been my habit previously, and it's really cool to have something passed down from Lucia's mom. I also made this one, from a t-shirt I got at the Fringe Festival in Scotland that never fit:

It's one of my first knit projects, and a pretty low-stakes one (on purpose). I just used the ribbing at the neck (which forms a tube) to hold the drawstring, which was easy and works, but looks a little odd. I still need to figure out how best to sew knits - I used a zig-zag, but probably set too wide... or maybe the stitch length was too long. It was sufficient for a little bag like this, but we'll have to see when I try to make a sewn garment using knits.

Hey! Socks!

2012-01-16T17:49:00.001-06:00

Enough with the radio silence! I keep not-blogging, in hopes that I will have cooler, longer, better-photographed posts in the future. Bah! I'm going to try to post weekly about the stuff I'm working on, whether it's done or not, epic or humble.

I've been knitting lots of socks lately. I finally discovered why people knit socks - they're the Everywhere Project. They're so portable and mostly mindless, so you can knit them on the bus, while watching TV, whatever. I've been knitting in seminar and at conferences, which gets me weird looks, but keeps me awake. I went to a conference in Hawaii in November (yes, woe is me) and knitted about 3/4 of a sock while taking a workshop and listening to talks.

These are made from leftover yarn from a pair I made for my mom's birthday. The colorful yarn is hand-dyed from Happy Hands Yarns in Wisconsin and is striped with black. I did a short-row heel for the first time on these because I wanted that commercial contrast-heel look. It was a pain finding instructions, but I finally found them in the Nutkin sock pattern. It also took me 4 tries to get the heel right (mystery accidental yarnovers on my SSSPs! Ack!) but I was victorious eventually. That said, I don't think I'll be doing many short-row heels. They're kind of a pain, and the corners sit funny. We'll see, once I'm wearing them.

I still have to finish the second sock (heel almost done) but with seminar back in session, it shouldn't be too long.

Ever wanted to knit with recycled t-shirts?

2011-07-30T17:13:00.000-05:00

I have such a backlog of projects to describe! A lot of them are left from the winter, which seems odd to write about in July. This one is perhaps least inappropriate, so here we go!

Soon after I moved to Minnesota, I realized living here involves 6 months of bringing gritty, wet boots into the house. For my first year here, I just left them on a rectangle of cardboard by the door, which gradually grew more grimy and water-stained. Classy. Not content with, say, buying a rug (horrors!), I decided to make one.

I decided to use t-shirt "yarn" for it: turns out, if you cut apart a t-shirt in a spiral, it makes surprisingly great knitting material. And here's how!

To begin, hit up the thrift store for some t-shirts to chop up. It's worth it to look for extra-large sizes; you can get up to twice the material from each one. Try to get ones without much printing: the vinyl-y lettering will interfere with the curl of the fabric. Also stay away from t-shirts with spandex: it interferes with the yarn curling to form a pleasant tube.

Fold the shirt almost in half, so that there's about an inch that does not overlap.

Trim off the doubled-over hem of the shirt.

Next, begin making vertical cuts, parallel to the hem. Cut all the way through the top layer, but not the bottom layer. You want to leave all the "slices" hanging onto a backbone of fabric.

Cut the whole shirt this way, up to the armpits. You can discard everything above the armpits (they make good rags for house-cleaning).

Now for the cool part! Lay out the strips as neatly as you can around the "backbone".

Now it's time to cut apart the strips. You want to connect cut 1 with cut 2 to create one continuous strip (not straight across, that will result in a bunch of useless rings).

In this one-off fashion, jon all the cuts. You should now have one long strip that looks like fettucine.

Don't be surprised if it looks awkward for knitting, there's one step left. It's the easiest, and completely magical. Take the "fettucine," a foot at a time, and give it a brisk tug. Once stretched, it will curl in on itself into a nice, smooth tube.

And that's it! I used size 13 needles to make my rug, with a simple pattern of stockinette stitch with a garter stitch border. With that pattern, I got about 65 square inches (about half a square foot) of knitting per t-shirt, depending on size.

Soft, squishy, statistically sound.

2011-06-06T12:34:00.000-05:00

This just in! While Googling some statistical software for work, I came upon this blog post, which revealed that there are soft, plushy stats distributions for sale on Etsy. How cool is that? Check out seller NausicaaDistribution to buy!

Happy, normal curve

Wouldn't you just know that Weibull would have a mustache?

More Odds and Ends

2011-05-25T09:15:00.000-05:00

More little projects! I have a backlog of little things to share, but no huge projects yet. The shirtdress is coming along, as is a bag I’m designing and making. I have 3 dresses I need to alter, and I’m knitting a hat. Yeesh. Someday maybe I’ll even finish something!

I framed 2 more pictures for the apartment – this time, Bird Art. By day I’m a wildlife biologist (I study birds) and I have a soft spot for Audubon prints. I’ve had these reproductions for years and finally found the time to frame them up this winter. I used 2 matching frames I found at the thrift store, plus a little stain – they cleaned up nicely, didn’t they? I used to work with Prairie Chickens in New Mexico (I worked with Lessers and Audubon only painted Greaters, but no matter) and I have always had a soft spot for Barn Swallows. There’s a tendency among biologists to let their homes become overwhelmed with wildlife art, so I’ve been cautious in the past. Cross your fingers that this doesn't open the floodgates. I do want to get the duck stamp with a mottled duck on it someday, though. Small doses, Beth, small doses.

In other news, I’ve been making little velcro bags for toiletries and whatnot. My sister admired one I’d made over the holidays, so I whipped up a couple for her and my sister-in-law. They only take an hour and are dead useful. Note the French seams – man, did life get better when I discovered French seams. I also used up some of my multitudinous blue fabric scraps to make them – yay! One of these days I’ll actually have to post about the blue fabric project. One of these days…

Nesting

2011-05-11T12:00:00.002-05:00

See that? It's a leaf. A bunch of them, in fact. And they're green. They're even outdoors, attached to a tree, just outside my building. Finally!

Time to finally unveil a long-term project that kept me out of trouble over our recent long, cold, snowy winter. Along about October, I decided to finally frame some things for my walls, including some vintage sheet music I've had stored for years. It seemed so simple - why pay for brand-new frames when I could buy a bunch of cool frames from Goodwill and paint them? The idea was that the frames would be funky and individual, but the uniform paint color would tie it all together in crafty-arty-goodness.

Of course, it got complicated when my plan to spray paint the frames was confronted with the reality that spray paint doesn't work well when it's 10 degrees out. Delay. Delay. Ponder. Dither. I finally sucked it up and painted them by brush, which was time consuming but effective.

I couldn't find affordable mats that I liked, so I just backed the sheet music with nice acid-free patterned paper from the craft store. Dad clued me in to framing points, or "glaziers window points," which are a handy way to snug the paper up against the glass so it doesn't slip down. And.... Ta-da!

New patterns from Colette

2011-05-10T12:02:00.002-05:00

I am a big fan of Colette Patterns (well, a lurker fan, if that's a thing), so I was super-excited when they announced their new spring patterns a few weeks ago. I have to say, though, the results were a little under-whelming.

Of the last 4 patterns Colette has released, 3 have been so basic that they're not very interesting to someone who has sewn for over a year. Some of their recent blog posts have been super basic too, so I guess they are aiming toward the beginner market big-time. I'm sure this makes good business sense, but what drew me to the company in the first place was their simple but clever designs like the Sencha or Cinnamon; designs I felt like I'd always wanted but could never find. It's not like I was hurting for a-line skirt patterns - every other separates pattern by the big pattern companies includes an a-line.

Ah, well. You can't win them all, and there will probably be some very happy beginners who get into sewing via the Violet, Ginger, and Crepe. I just hope they release something with a little more pizazz next time.

Muslins and so forth

2011-05-09T11:40:00.000-05:00

Many exciting things to report! The shirtdress muslin is well in progress, and this time I'm using Gertie's advice on marking the muslin. Mostly. She thread-traces everything, which seems excessive at this point, though of course in a few weeks I may wish I'd done it.

One of Gertie's neatly marked bodice muslins. So precise!

My usual way of cutting out fabric is much less strict - I traditionally cut out the pattern, pin it to the fabric, cut, and start sewing. It's quick, but it can be darnably inexact - your fabric pieces never exactly match the pattern pieces and the seam line is who-knows-where. This time I didn't cut on the lines of the pattern at all; I just cut apart the pieces roughly, and then used tracing paper and a tracing wheel to transfer all the lines to the muslin. I solidified the lines with a quilting pencil, and drew in the seam lines with a ruler so I know exactly where to sew. (This method also preserves all the different pattern sizes intact, so if I need a different size later, I'm set.) I'm hoping to start sewing everything together soon, so check back!

Other projects:
I'm working on making a purse with cool chevron stripes, from a self-drafted pattern. Make that "pattern". I tend to make up bags more or less as I go along, so we'll see if this one turns out.

I have been thrifting a lot lately (it's finally spring!) so I have several dresses that need "minor" alterations before I can wear them. I'm not letting myself thrift anything else until I get them done, so hopefully that will speed things up. I promise before & after photos!

Shirtdress, it is!

2011-04-22T13:40:00.000-05:00

I finally settled on a project! This spring/summer/whenever I get around to it, I'm tackling the classic shirtdress!

Simple, classy shirtdress from the early 60s.

There are scads of shirtdress patterns from the 1940s to today, so it took a while to pick my pattern. I decided to ignore trimmings and doodads and focused on the basic elements I want: vertical bust darts rather than princess seams, full and fitted skirt options, multiple sleeve options, and a one-piece skirt rather than all buttons. I figured that if I can find and perfect the right pattern, I can play around with trimmings later.

Almost identical to the one above, but 20 years earlier. A classic!

Once I figured all that out, it was pretty easy. I thought about going all-out and buying a 1940s pattern, but I settled on this one instead (Simplicity 4995):

My little birthday present to myself. Check out Sassy by Design on Etsy for more affordable vintage patterns.

Check out those style lines! It's basically the same dress as the 2 above, just styled differently. I like all the options too - if all goes well, I could see making a long-sleeved version for winter, and I definitely want to try both the full and fitted skirts. This is the first time in years I've spent more than a dollar on a pattern, but I think I made a good choice.

Special thanks to Stitchywitch, who clued me in to the potential in modern shirtdress patterns. Undaunted by the awful pattern illustrations, she turned a similar modern pattern into several great dresses. Go check them out!

Stitchywitch with a great fall shirtdress.

Curtainpalooza, part 3

2011-02-06T10:15:00.000-06:00

Oh, we are not done yet. It should not really be a surprise that I might be inclined to fling textiles on every surface I can.

Case in point: linen closet. Super handy, super ugly.

On the off chance that not everyone wants to stare at my mop when they visit, I cobbled together some leftover utilitarian fabric from way back. And....

Improvement!

Curtainpalooza, part 2

2011-02-05T16:20:00.001-06:00

More curtains! More!

Somewhere along the line, I began to covet floral prints. Big, elaborate, detailed florals. This is not like me, but somehow they got under my skin. I think it started when Sarai from Colette patterns wrote about the barkcloth fabric she fell in love with. It seemed gaudy to me at the time, but more and more, I could see her point.

I started stalking ebay and fabric sites, but I couldn't find anything I liked for a reasonable price. Real barkcloth is not cheap, and most vintage options are far less than the 4+ yards I'd need. (Also, who knew that Granny's old curtains could be worth real money on ebay?) But then the fabric gods smiled on me and I found some perfect fabric for... well, a dollar.

It's a humble bedsheet, from Salvation Army, but it's perfect. I bought a plain sheet to line it, and now I have curtains that are making every girly bone in my body sing. Total cost: 4 bucks + shoe leather and elbow grease. Yay!

Curtainpalooza, part 1

2011-02-05T11:49:00.003-06:00

I've had grand plans for curtains since I moved in. It's been a marathon rather than a sprint, but my textile-meet-window aspirations are starting to come together.

First, let's go back in time a year. I walked into a Joann Fabric last February and realized they were in the midst of a going-out-of-business sale. It's a minor understatement to say my plans for the day instantly changed. I wound up going back twice more, and all in all I got over $600 worth of fabric, patterns, thread, and notions for $70. Even if you consider that most everything at Joann's is on some sort of sale on any given day, it was still an awesome haul.

One of the best deals I got was about 8 yards of heavyweight home decorating cotton in a pleasant green stripe. It was perfect for my huge living room window, which seemed to need a similarly huge window treatment. It was a beast to iron without letting it drag on the floor or get wrinkly, but tenacity won out.

Once it was finally ironed, I zipped a quick seam along the top, then did my best to artfully drape the fabric up and over the rod.

Success! One thing has been bugging me ever since, though. I just hemmed up the ends of the curtains without measuring, so they're each about a foot too long. One of these days I'm going to have to hem them properly up. Someday.

New Directions

2011-01-25T11:08:00.001-06:00

So I've been a few months without a big sewing project. I've been working on stuff nonstop, but it's all little stuff, and mostly home-decoratey. I admit it - I have sewing ADD; I love to start new projects and I hate how looooooong it can take to finish a sewn garment (at least a good one.) The problem is, this seems to be keeping me from sewing clothes altogether. No good, I tells you.

(I didn't make this guy, but he sums it up well, I think.)

The more I think about it, the more I think the solution lies in maximizing the final product. It's all well and good to make a bridesmaid's dress (and I'm happy I did!) but it's a lot of work for something I will wear only once in a long, long while. So I have new goals for my next big sewing project:

1 - The garment needs to be something I will wear on a regular day; not just on special occasions.
-bonus points for machine-washability
-mega bonus points for practical additions like pockets
2 - The garment should be versatile enough that I want to make multiple versions of it (to capitalize on spending so much time on the muslin).
3 - The garment should be something I don't already own a zillion of (no more spring skirts or knit winter tops, for gods' sakes).

Remember, I am a grad student, so my workaday clothes are not that different from my weekend clothes; I could theoretically live my entire work-life in jeans and a hoodie. I tend to dress slightly better than that on average, but we're still talking jeans or cords and a wool sweater. The gold standard would to be to make something that looks a bit dressier, but is still comfy and practical enough that I actually wear the dang thing. As for multiple versions, it seems like such a time saver - tweak a muslin until it's perfect, and then be able to make a couple versions with different necklines, skirt shapes, detailing, etc.

So. What to make? Items under consideration include:

Winter:
-cowl-necked long-sleeved dress (knit or woven?)

-wool A-line skirt (with pencil skirt alternative?)

Spring:
-the perfect knit blouse or tank-top - office-appropriate, but still comfy casual and not boring.
-the perfect nightie that's comfy, attractive, non-slutty, and non-slobby (does this exist?)
-shirtdress (adaptable for winter too?)

Hmmm. The winter options are attractive because we still have 2-3 long months of winter ahead, and I own exactly one winter skirt, leaving me pants-bound since October. Skirts are tricky in Minnesota winters, but if I opted for them on 25 degree days instead of -10 degree days, they'd be a pleasant way to shake up my wardrobe. Any winter option must be wearable with leggings, knee-length boots, and either a layer underneath or a sweater overtop. This is Minnesota after all, and I don't want something that's too warm for spring but too light for January.

The spring options are attractive, of course, because I could still wear them if this project stretches out until April. It would suck to make the perfect winter dress and not be able to wear it for 6 months. That said, the cowl-necked dress is calling to me, and I still have a deep desire to make something plaid that I haven't been able to satisfy this winter.

Thoughts?

Odds and ends

2011-01-22T12:29:00.001-06:00

Howdy campers! It's cold cold cold here, the kind that makes you afraid to touch metal for fear of being joined to it forever. This is knitting weather if there ever was knitting weather. I've been working on a new project while drinking tea and watching MST3K, which is about a great as dark January afternoons get.

This is also a great time to catch up on utilitarian sewing - all those thousands of jobs you figure you can whip out in 15 minutes, but sit in the To Do bin for months or years. For example: my wool coat has had a tendancy to shed buttons, and I spent at least a year walking around with several missing. Like a hobo. I finally sat down and sewed them all back on - the Right Way, for once.

To start, I undid the lining to get at the wool itself. I backed each button attachment point with a circle of lightweight iron-on interfacing, to give the wool extra strength.

Next, I consulted my favorite resource, my old school Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing (aka, The Brick). They suggest using a button on the back of the fabric to help take the stress off the attachment point, and also give great instructions on how to make a proper shank. Without a shank, the button is held so tightly against the fabric that it's not very useful for buttoning.

Ta-da!

Next up, pants! Like many of you, I bet, I succumbed to the that "seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time" pant trend in the 2000s: flares. Oof. I therefore own a few pairs of well-fitting, comfy pants crowned with embarassingly floppy bell bottoms.

Oy. They're inside out (for fitting) but you get the idea. As an added bonus, they were about 3 inches too long, which led me to that oh-so-classy strategy: wearing them anyway. Anyway, I trimmed down the excess bell, hemmed them properly, and look!

Ah, much better. The last one is just one of those things that seems like it'll take an hour but really takes a month. My friend Brian has recently transitioned into the corporate world, with a whole new wardrobe. I offered to hem some work pants for him, and quickly bcame embarassed when a month rolled by without actually getting it done. Yeesh. So a weekend ago, I sucked it up, polished them off, and here they are!

Someday I'll get a photo of Brian, in them. Someday.

That's it for now - keep warm out there, crafters!

Bridesmaid's Dress 2: Son of Bridesmaid's Dress

2011-01-16T11:20:00.000-06:00

Hello again, blog world! I admire the bloggers who can keep up a steady stream of updates through the holidays, but boy, I'm not one of them, am I? I was so busy with exams and projects that I didn't get the chance to crank out a single batch of Christmas cookies, much less time to write for fun. (So looking forward to the day when I don't have to care about grades anymore.)

So. Remember that bridesmaid's dress? Like an errant rubber ducky stopping up a tub drain, the bridesmaid's dress update has been standing in the way of writing about anything else I've done. So here goes!

So as I wrote in October, the dress turned out pretty well and I was happy with it. It was definitely an adventure, though, and I learned a lot. So here are Lessons Learned (often the hard way).

Lesson 1: Always prewash. Always.
I've been sewing for 10+ years and I still have to write this? Well yes - because this is only my second time using silk. The first time was with a dry-clean only dupioni, so I avoided prewashing. But for the flimsy silk, I needed to use a stiffener, which meant I needed to wash the stiffener out. So to avoid shrinking, I needed to prewash. So I did. Er, after I'd already cut out the pieces.

Oops. See how much the dark and light green fabrics differ fron the white muslin? Yeah, that's because the dark green silk shrank a lot, enough that I had to cut all new pieces. I had just enough fabric. Whew.

Lesson 2: Working without a dressform is tricky.
Like a lot of amatuer seamstresses, I've never shelled out for a proper dress dummy, so all my fittings are performed on, well, me. See the seam below? (Sorry it's wrinkly, I skipped pressing before the photo.)

That vertical seam should be continuous, with the horizontal seams intersecting like a plus sign. Except that fitting on oneself requires a lot of twisting and contorting, which can result in dreaded Seam Creep. I figured this out in the silk version (and was running out of the top fabric) so I just had to make it work. I don't think it was noticable to anyone who doesn't sew, but it made for some weird and delicate handsewing to make the seams join. Oy.

Lesson 3: Get all your changes made in the muslin!
So I put everything together, donned the silk dress, and...? The bust was gaping badly. Why didn't it fit? Perhaps it was the last minute full-bust adjustment I made without trying on the adjusted muslin? Uh, yeah. That. I had to take in a new bust dart on the nearly- completed dress, which was a pain in the ass. It looked good at the end, but remember - resew the dang muslin after making changes, just to make sure they work. It takes time, but so does fixing problems in the final product (and only one of those risks messing up said final product).

Lesson 4: Experience can get you out of some of the messes you get yourself in.

If all the above seems nitpicky, remember that I was really happy with the result. I have a good enough understanding of the architecture of garments that I can usually make things work, even through obstacles. So woot!

And that's it! I have many many more things to write about - what little spare time I've had over the last few months has largely been spent craftifying. Stay tuned!

Bad blogger!

2010-12-09T09:27:00.000-06:00

Sorry for my absence, folks. I have been meaning to write up some more details about the bridesmaid dress, and I will, but apparently not yet. Keep the faith, and maybe I will finally do it this weekend.

In the meantime, Merry Vintage Christmas! (from the always excellent Monkey Pants)

And? And? AND?

2010-10-17T18:15:00.001-05:00

Right, right, the bridesmaid's dress! I managed to go the entire wedding without asking someone specifically to take a photo for me, so the photographic evidence is a little light. Many of the pics were therefore taken in my living room, some at ridiculous hours of the early morning. Whoops. I need to step up my photo shoots a little.

Anyway, the dress!

The top photo is before I pressed it properly, so the bust wonkiness you may see mostly worked itself out.

But isn't it pretty!? I really like the final product. It had a lot of issues along the way, but a combination of know-how and stick-to-itiveness got me through. Soon I will post lessons learned and "what went wrong", but for now:

What Went Right

The back. I made big modifications to the back and shoulders, added a swayback adjustment and raised the skirt to accomodate the swayback, and it really paid off. I love how well it fits in the back, and I must say, it's pretty flattering.
The silk. Man, what a lovely, forgiving fabric. The drape is great and it will hold a crease, but only if you really convince it to - it doesn't wrinkle!
The Best Press was a life-saver. I would like to try the Sullivan's (Best Press is a tad wimpy) but using fabric stabilizer for this kind of silk is crucial.
The pattern worked out quite well, no? Like a lot of non-flat-tummied ladies, I've lead a life afraid of slim-fitting dresses, but I'm learning they can be very flattering. I just had to get the side seams right so that the dress skimmed rather than clung.

Bridesmaid Action Shot! We were very concerned with keeping Lucia's train off the pavement, which she mostly seemed to find amusing. (Also, check out Lucia's amazing custom wedding dress! Hand-beaded, people. It was love-er-ly.) Phtoto my my friend David, who rocks.

Backtrack

2010-09-24T11:06:00.003-05:00

OK, the sewing gods clearly are in tune with my project and want it to succeed. They are, however, being sticklers for doing things the right way instead of the speedy way. Case in point: Sarai, over at the Colette Patterns blog, posted yesterday about Fabric Stabilizer, which stiffens flimsy fabrics and makes them easier to work with. My brain, hitherto daunted by the prospect of sewing my many flimsy silks, immediately screamed "I NEED THIS PRODUCT".

Sarai does mention that you need to preshrink before you use it. D'oh. I was kind of hoping to skip that step and remain fearfully in Dry Cleaning Land, mostly worried that water might somehow ruin the silks. But once again, Doing Things Right trumped Doing Things Fast. Pre-washing went fine - some dye came out of the dark green georgette, but nothing worth worrying about. I now also have the benefit of knowing that I can hand-wash the dress when it's complete.

Finding Fabric Stabilizer, however, is a slightly different matter. Even "what is Fabric Stabilizer?" is a tricky subject. I *think* it's the same thing my mom calls "sizing". She used it as a mild starch for ironing shirts, but I had never thought to use it to stabilize tricky fabrics while sewing. I called around to various fabric shops looking for the Sullivan's product that Sarai mentioned, with no luck. The best I found was "Best Press", a mysterious liquid with the least informative instructions ever:

Spray on fabric, then iron.

That's it. No indication on whether it washes out (it does) or what kind of fabrics it works on (silk, apparently). Thanks, Best Press.
Luckily, it does seem to work. I sprayed it onto some newly-washed (precut, oy) pieces of the bodice. The effect is subtle, but it takes away the flutteriness of the silk that makes it such a pain to line up and keep straight. It also seems to wash out readily, so I feel confident that the end product will be as fluttery as possible.

So! Things may seem to be tight, time-wise, but I really do think it'll work. Hiking this weekend has been postponed in favor of sewing - I have 2 full days to sew with very little else planned. I am pleased with the muslin at this point, only making 2 tweaks since I wore it (pinched out a swayback adjustment and added a tiny full bust adjustment to the lining only).

Go Team!

Ding!

2010-09-22T12:09:00.001-05:00

You know, every once in a while, the sewing gods bless you with Timely Information. Gertie is leading a sew-along of Colette Patterns' Lady Grey coat, and today she mentioned that many sewers-along have shown a clear need for a swayback adjustment in their muslins. For example:

And what do these muslins remind me of?

DUN-Dun-DUH!

Holy pants, we have the same problem! This is all telling me that perhaps I made a mistake in assuming the lower back issues in my muslin were due to monkeying around with the pattern ahead of time. I may very well have to so a swayback adjustment on my own dress. Somewhat unfortunately, I already dismantled the muslin to use it as a pattern for cutting the silk. So I can now
1) Monkey with the silk directly, hoping I don't cause too much damage if I need to attach, remove, attach, remove the lower back section
2) Make some sort of silk-muslin hybrid so I can play around once the silk bodice is assembled
3) High-tail it to Mexico until this all blows over

Hmm. INteresting.

Muslin Photos

2010-09-16T22:06:00.012-05:00

The muslin for the bridesmaid's dress is pretty much done! In fact, I think it's at the "tear it all apart and use it as a pattern" stage! Woo hoo!

I had originally planned to make the skirt fuller and swirlier, but it turned out that high waist + full skirt = when's the baby due? Straight skirt, it is!

I know the lower back looks funky. I put a wedge of extra fabric in the lower back panel when it was bodice-only, which turned out to be totally unnecessary. I believe those wrinkles will disappear when I take out the wedge. And even if they don't, the lower back panel is the easiest to replace.

There was also some debate about the way the shoulders should sit. I redid one, to see if it could be improved, and I think the answer is resoundingly "yes". The original (below, viewer's right) is wider, almost off the shoulder. I guess it's meant to be a Look, but it bunches unflatteringly and I don't think it would translate well to the silk. My alteration (below, viewer's left) is narrower, a more classic dress shape (probably classic for a reason.)

Now is that a DMV photo, or what?

Much better!

Left side: Original Shoulder Right side: New, improved shoulder.

I have to admit, I think this is going to look niiiiiiiiice. Will that jinx it? Sure hope not. The shoulders fit like a dream, and I can't wait to see the pleating in the silk. Cutting begins Saturday!

Yay!

Small Steps

2010-09-09T20:45:00.007-05:00

Oh man. The time I get the most projects done is DEFINITELY when I'm avoiding another project.

The bridesmaid's dress is progressing, but slowly. I'm trying to work on it daily, and I have faith it will be done in plenty of time (right? Right.) But there's lots of time to discuss it later (muslin pictures within a week, promise!)

The bridesmaid's dress is, most unfortunately, completely unportable, so I needed a project to haul with me to my biweekly craft night at Crafty Planet (quite possibly the coolest craft store on the planet). I turned to a purple cotton skirt that I have been working on for, no joke, 7 years. I started it in college, and it was supposed to be a quick, breezy skirt that I'd make in an afternoon. Right.
In reality, I cut it out that day, sewed the seams, and then realized the no-waistband design was completely uncomfortable. Into the bin for at least 3 years. Sometime in Texas, I hauled it out, added a custom waistband, and chopped a foot off the hem (why, oh, why did I think floor-length skirts were appropriate in college?). But without anyone around to mark the hem for me, I let it sit for another few years. Finally, though, Tia at Crafty Planet marked my hem, and it only took a comparatively lightning-fast 2 weeks to hem the damn thing. CHECK.

The next one is a bit of a departure into the woodworking world. My apartment is notable in its sizeable kitchen with unsizeable counterspace. This is what it looked like on a typical morning last week:

That, friends, is a sad cup of tea in the midst of an unadulterated mess. I asked my dad if there was a way we could add some shelves to the wall, but all the wiring for the fuse box (yep, fuses!) runs up it in unpredictable paths. After 8 months of this, I finally came up with a plan.

I hit the hardware store for materials (and even managed to convince the clerks to saw my boards for free - sometimes it pays to be the only woman in the store at 9pm.) I slapped on some shelf brackets, a couple coats of festive blue paint, and voila!

My soy sauces, fish sauce, and teas now hover elegantly above the fray! Dad helped me hang it when he and mom came to visit last week. I am particularly proud of the way it hangs - to avoid drilling holes in the sides of my retro metal cabinets, we drilled 2 holes in the top and hung it from angle brackets. Hopefully, the landlord will never notice the holes, and I have shelf space! Ta-da!Now isn't that civilized?

Sack Dress to Kentucky Derby in 1 week

2010-08-31T12:52:00.002-05:00

One of the dangers of thrift shopping is feeling sorry for the clothes. I have long since given myself the rule that I am not allowed to buy clothes that need major alterations, because they invariably sit in my "to sew" pile, quietly mocking me for being overly ambitious. But every once in a while, I cave.

Case in point. I was at the Goodwill outlet last October: a strange place, but one I've grown to kind of love. Everything is sold by the pound and there are no hangers, no displays. Bins slide down a series of roller conveyors and (upon the signal from the harried employees) everyone pounces. You have to be in the right mood to enjoy the outlet, and you definitely can't be searching for just one thing. I've had some great finds there (more on that later) but it's very hit or miss.

Anyway. It was my first day at the outlet and I was a little overwhelmed. But peeking out of a bin, lost, lonely, wanting a home, was this dress. It was a departure from my normal style (I don't think most people think "big pink flowers" when they think of me) but it triggered something in my head. I figured hey, if nothing else, it's 100% silk, I'll make a scarf or something from it.

I tried it on when I got home, just for kicks, and found it to be more or less a shapeless sack. Ah, the floor-length sack dress. Thanks, 1990s. True to form, it sat in my "to sew" pile for months. I finally got some motivation to play around with it when my friend Ginny's wedding started approaching on the calendar. Ginny was getting married in Virginia in August, which seemed like the perfect venue for a big pink floral - kind of Kentucky Derby meets afternoon croquet party.

So I went at the dress. I added vertical darts in the front and shoulder darts in the back to give it some shape. Then I re-did the neckline to get something a little less homely. Finally, I chopped a foot or two off the bottom and hemmed that puppy. Who knew seeing one's legs could make such a massive difference in garment?

Here it is!
Nitty Gritty:
-My first hand-rolled hem! It's a little tricky, and it might be helpful to press it as you go to help figure out the right tension. It pulled a little tight at the back, which makes it a bit wonky, but it's not super noticeable.
-All the bloggers I read are all about seam tape lately, so I employed some to stabilize the neckline. I used about 1/3" strip cut from the selvage of some lining fabric I had lying around. It seemed to work more or less.
-The silk didn't slide around as much as I'd feared, but it was tricky to make the darts line up when adding them to a finished garment. I guess there's a reason we put darts in before anything else, huh?
-I do feel some pride in getting a perfectly respectable dress for about $0.45 + elbow grease. Go me!

Fabric Obtained!

2010-08-13T11:55:00.004-05:00

Searching for silks in the twin cities turned out to be a quicker process than I'd expected: there don't seem to be many options. I tried out SR Harris, a warehouse discounter out in the suburbs, who have a tidy collection of silk remnants and bolts upon bolts of polyester wannabes. I managed to find precisely the right color fabric - in a super-lightweight, slightly sheer, silk georgette. Yeep!

That's the fabric, resting next to the ribbon Lucia gave me as a color reference. Spot-on, right? Elegantly drapey, right? Yay!

That said, I am nervous about sewing a dress from such lightweight material. I have horror images of fabric shifting when being cut, shifting at the armholes, shifting when being pressed, globbing up against sticky feed-dogs. The solution (or so I have convinced myself) is to read all the advice I can. I also got the chance to practice on a dress I modified for another friends (Ginny's!) wedding this weekend. That dress was also made of sheer drapey silk, so I at least got some practice fiddling with it. (Photos soon!).

From what I've gathered, underlining the main fabric will help give it structure, so I got a flesh-toned lining silk for that, plus more green silk for lining. (I gotta say, Harris is pretty affordable - I bought almost 8 yards of silk and it only set me back as much as a weekly trip to the grocery store.) Gertie has also convinced me of the importance of stay tape or seam interfacing to prevent sagging seams. In fact, she's working on a tricky dress herself at the moment, and just posted a note about underlining, so I'm thinking of it almost as a sew along.

Once I get back from Ginny's wedding, it's go-time for the green dress. Excelsior!

Brides-made

2010-07-24T09:15:00.004-05:00

So my good friend Lucia is getting married in October to Tim, and thus I am preparing for that age-old rite of passage - I get to be a bridesmaid. Lucia has taste, though, and my life is not a Katherine Heigl movie, so I will not be encased anything frilly, pink, or (god forbid) strapless. Lucia is letting us find our own dresses, provided they are of the same color family and generally "go" together. Me, being me, saw this as an opportunity to make a dress - so I am! Here's the pattern (Butterick 5385):Cute, no? Their theme is Art Deco and I wanted something classy, but interesting to sew. I've never done pleating detail like that, so it should be a bit of an adventure. My plan is to make the skirt a bit fuller, something closer to an A-line than the current pencil skirt. I'm thinking silk crepe for the final fabric, something with a bit of drape to make the pleats lay nicely. They've picked a nice green for the color, slightly on the yellow side, more or less this shade:

I cut out the pattern Thursday night and I'm hoping to start in on the muslin this weekend. If all goes well (oh, I hope!), then I get to look for fabric. I haven't investigated the silk market in the twin cities, but it will be a good chance to do so. If nothing else, I'm going to visit my sister in LA in a few weeks - do I hear "Hollywood Fabric District"?

Yogurt Cheese!

2010-06-30T21:42:00.007-05:00

It's been a while, no? I've been on the road for the last six weeks or so, and I haven't had time for any sewing. Whoops. I'd like to get back in the habit of posting, though, so here you are!

My sister-in-law has been exploring entry-level cheesemaking and has had great success, which made me curious. I stumbled across a recipe for yogurt cheese im Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian and I immediately knew this was the cheese recipe for me. Why? There's one ingredient and one step.

Ingredients:
Yogurt

Directions:
1) Pour yogurt into cheesecloth bag. Wait 6-8 hours. Consume.

One step! Like magic! Could it really be so easy? Well, yeah. I used a tea towel the first time, but zipped out a quick cheesecloth bag for future use.

Just line a strainer, pour in the yogurt, and toss it in the fridge overnight. In the morning you get creamy white goodness approximately the consistency of cream cheese, but tangy. Think of it like goat cheese alternative (a hell of a lot cheaper, and I'm going out on a limb and calling it healthier.) I even made it when Alex was in town, and she took to it like a cat to, um, cat food. I like spreading it on toast with jam, she goes for mixing in jalepenos or onions.

That's it! Enjoy!

RSS-Ready-Set-Go!

2010-04-29T09:24:00.004-05:00

RSS Feed added! Let the mass subscribing begin!

Also - teaser photos for the pillowcase dress. I've been stealing apple blossoms and lilacs from around the neighborhood to adorn my dining / sewing table. It makes staying inside on a rainy spring day so much nicer!

Spring on the Mind

2010-04-28T12:02:00.013-05:00

Craftmatic Beth has had its first comment! Huzzah! Thanks to Ali for breaking ground, and with a little luck, maybe I'll attract more interest as time goes on. It's nice to know someone out there is reading, and yes - I will try to get an RSS feed up soon!

Spring is exploding all over Minnesota, and I've been stealing sprigs of lilac and apple blossoms from the University's landscaping to brighten my windowless cubicle. Take that, graduate office space. Spring also has me thinking of spring clothes. The pillowcase dress is about 80% done (thanks to a long rainy Sewing Saturday) and I can't wait to wear it. I'll refrain from declaring victory until it's totally done, but I have very high hopes.

I'm so excited about spring that my brain is also already skipping ahead to summer, and that oh-so-summery fabric: white cotton eyelet. There's such an iconic aura to eyelet that can be devastatingly lovely, but it strikes me as tricky - it can easily cross over to look fussy.

I recently thrifted an eyelet scarf with an embroidered, lacy edge that I'm still trying to figure out how to style. I love the idea (a scarf, but summery!) but again, tricky. It looks best if carelessly tossed over your shoulder, but if you're too careless and tuck the lace edge underneath, it looks like you have a bandage around your neck.

But when eyelet works, it's clean, crisp, feminine, and elegant. I love love love this blouse made by Cecili over at Sewing and S o On. I don't think I could bear a neckline that high in hot weather, but it could be adapted in so many ways.

The folks over at What Would Emma Pillsbury Wear seem to have been thinking along similar lines too (well, 6 months ago) - these pintucks are lovely, but imagine adapting it to use eyelet instead.
Wow, did I just link to something by Juicy Couture? Wonders never cease.

I think eyelet looks its best when used in patterns with straight, crisp lines - anything ruffled or deeply gathered looks too precious. It's perfect for blouses and well suited to brighten the spartan lines of 1940s and 50s shirtwaists. I'm swooning over these dresses at Etsy - if they were anywhere near my size, I might have to raid the paypal account!
Gathers can also be carefully (ahem) attempted - this dress shows ideal restraint. (If, like me, you balk at the 24" waist on this specimen, you could make a great version of this dress using Parfait over at Collette Patterns!)

I have a decent stash of eyelet now, currently languishing as a more-or-less failed sewing project from high school. I made a tank top and straight, ankle-length skirt for my graduation (the girls wore white gowns, so it behooved one to wear white beneath it), but neither was a great example of fit or style. There's probably enough fabric there to salvage for a nice blouse. Hmmm.

O. M. G.

2010-04-22T12:04:00.014-05:00

That is not an abbreviation I use lightly. But I had an experience yesterday that was game-changing. On the level of "Mr. Singer invented a machine that sews?" or "You say there's a purl stitch too?"

It all started at the library (as so many tales of awesomeness do). Our fine University happens to have a design department, and thus a tidy collection of sewing books. I had my ideal pillowcase dress pattern in mind, as well as an existing pattern that I wanted to use as a base - a basic single-darted, natural-waisted bodice tacked onto a single-darted skirt. I was looking for pattern drafting books, hoping for one that might describe the exact gathered look I was searching for. What I got was way more exciting.

I started with "How to Draft Basic Patterns" - judging by the half-dozen reprints on the shelf, it looked like the go-to starting book. When "How to Draft" says basic, they mean basic - the book is all about "slopers" - tightly-fitted model patterns that all other patterns are based on. You'd never actually wear a sloper, but it's a foundation to build a more stylish or complex garment. You can make them yourself using the book (and "How to Draft" has 'em all - caftan sloper anyone?), or buy them from the major pattern companies as "fitting shells." The advantage of a fitting shell is that you can see how your individual measurements differ from their ideal size 14, or so forth. I've meant to make one for a while (said to be a useful exercise, especially if you sew for yourself a lot), but that was regarding issues of fit, rather than design.

Above: Fitting Shell for Vogue patterns

So slopers, check. Next up was a cute little book called "Basic Pattern Skills for Fashion Design." I paged through, and it detailed how to create shape, and that darts, tucks, and gathers are all essentially equivalent when it comes to design. Then it showed how to take a sloper and modify it. And that is when the lightning struck, the lightbulb went off, and the band started playing. Take a pattern. Modify it. Not just make it roomier at the armpits or cut the neckline differently, change the structure of it. Move a dart from the bottom of a bodice to the side. Or the top. That's exactly what I wanted to do - take my bodice pattern and move its dart from the bottom to the top, then just gather it instead of making the dart. That was it, that was the magic solution, and oh my god, not only was it going to work, but I could now make a zillion different bodices out of this one bodice pattern.

Pattern-making.com also has a short tutorial, but I really recommend "Basic Pattern Skills" for its clear illustrations and simple instructions. It's pricey, but there are some used copies out there, and maybe your library has one too!

I can't even put into words how exciting this is. I whipped up a muslin of the bodice, and I'm on the right track. I think I'm also going to modify the skirt pattern, taking out the darts to make it a bit fuller. I've made plenty of changes to patterns before, but they've all been incidental - hem length, adjustments for size, adding or subtracting sleeves. If this all works, it will be the first time I've fundamentally changed the design elements of a pattern. Wahoo!

Postscript - my overly ambitious idea of wearing my pillowcase dress to the farmers' market this weekend has proved to be (surprise!) overly ambitious. It's also supposed to be in the 50s and rainy on Saturday, so the new goal is to wear it to the second week of the market. Let's hear it for redefining success in the face of obstacles!

Spring Fever

2010-04-21T12:07:00.005-05:00

I was struck by inspiration yesterday in an unusual place (no, not the kidneys) - the gym. I just got an e-mail from a professor saying the due date for our huge end-of-year project was postponed by 3 whole weeks, and was ecstatic at the idea that I didn't have to work 26 hours a day for the next three days trying to finish it. Huzzah! What better way to celebrate and use up my newly free evening than with a sewing project? Even better, what better time to start a new, impractical project - a project that ignores all the unfinished projects I have AND is something I wouldn't wear on a daily basis? Yes, dear reader, it's spring, it's lovely outside, and I wanted to make a sundress.

Inspired by Casey's amazing pillowcase dress, I picked up some pillowcases of my own at the Goodwill last week. I knew they might languish forever in the stash, but hey, they were 100% cotton, practically free, the print was cute, and it's spring for gods' sakes! So my new plan, hatched on the elliptical, was to whip out a cute pillowcase sundress and have it ready for the opening of the farmers' market this Saturday. Ambitious, yes, slightly mad, heck yes. Exciting, though - you betcha.

(not the exact fabrics, but you get the idea)

And then came the moment that I've had so many times before. I had the pattern in my head - a gently gathered bodice, simple a-line skirt. Almost like a dress I made years ago, but not quite. Such a classic pattern, and I have zillions of patterns at this point, so just head over the the pattern shelf and...

Hold it. How can I not own this pattern?

I found the very pattern that was in my head here, at good old New Look, your friend and mine for the cheap, classic (sometimes boring) dress pattern.
View D there - that's the one. Add a cute pocket or two a-la Collete patterns and that's my pillowcase sundress. Piece of cake, IF I owned it. Now I own (as I said) about a zillion patterns at this point. I need to buy a new pattern like I need a hole in my head (remember rule 2 - thrift is a virtue!) so I'm going to do it (ominous organ music)... on my own.

That's the plan - tonight, we draft that bodice. The gathers should make it forgiving, right? And in the words of every seamstress at the beginning of a nutty, surely ill-fated sewing adventure "Come on, how hard can it be?"

Inspirations of Spring

2010-04-12T10:21:00.004-05:00

A common thread (ha!) among sewing blogs is "inspiration" posts, where the author raves about beautiful things he/she has seen in the last week, and how much he/she wants to make things just like them. I often think of these as "oh, I want that!" posts more than actual inspiration posts, but I understand the impulse all the same. Here are a couple things that have caught my eye recently:

-This dupioni silk (a new color from Silk Baron is exactly the color I've had on the brain lately. I would love to hop on the Mad Men train and make tight-fitting, structured cocktail dress out of it. Now if I just had use for a classy silk cocktail dress...

-Casey made yet another impeccable dress, this time using a Collete pattern (mmm!) and (wait for it) pillowcases. Oo. It pains me, the loveliness of this dress and its humble beginnings. I even bought 2 floral pillowcases at goodwill this weekend (pale orange flowers on cream) with intentions of duplicating her idea. Inspired? Idea-thieving? Maybe both, but if I get a dress half so lovely, it'll be worth it.

New Apartment, New Life?

2010-03-21T12:50:00.005-05:00

It’s been a busy winter. Last fall I accepted a graduate position in Minnesota, so after some well-deserved loafing, some self-indulgent traveling, and a whole lot of cleaning out my childhood bedroom, I packed up my car in January and headed to the Midwest. You might think moving to Minnesota in January was a dumb move (and I’m not 100% sure you’d be wrong) but the weather was surprisingly tolerable, and the whole experience has been decidedly good.

Some background: I study birds, particularly birds with conservation issues. The thing about studying birds is that you often have to live where the birds are. For the last 5 years, this has meant living more-or-less in the boondocks, in parts of the country I never planned on. It was great in a lot of ways (scarfing down crayfish and beer with a bunch of friends is a lovely way to spend an April evening in Texas), and very trying in a lot of ways (when you live alone on a wildlife refuge and work alone all day, you tend to talk to yourself a lot).

My move in January pretty much put an end to that. Instead of a remote refuge, I now live in a biggish city. Instead of driving at least half an hour to town to buy groceries, I can now walk. Instead of moving every 6 months, I expect to be here for at least 3 years. Everything is a lot different, but I think these are good changes for where I am in my life.

Blah, blah, what does this have to do with anything? Well, any move means figuring out where to put the crafty crap. I’ve been trolling craigslist with a vengeance for the last few months, including figuring out my sewing situation. It may not be my permanent solution, but my current setup of a sewing desk and a fabric storage dealie is extremely civilized.

Doesn’t that make you want to pull up a chair and sew something? (If you’re not impressed, imagine setting up a sewing area and ironing board in an RV. I can attest, it can be done!)

Even more importantly, for the first time since I left for college, all my crafty stuff is in one place. With a few exceptions, I have all my fabric, all my yarn, all my notions and gizmos under one roof. You can imagine how many times I’ve been working on a project and went to pull out my grommet punch or some safety pins or that piece of blue fabric with the flowers on it and realized it was hundreds of miles away. No more! And as you can imagine yet again, I have a mighty backlog of unfinished projects that have been neglected, hastily stashed away, or outright forgotten.

Case in point. In high school, when I was just learning to sew, I found some funny red calico fabric with cows on it. Perfect for an apron, no? And so it was. I sewed it up (even finishing the seams nicely for that point in my skills), covered the edges nicely in bias tape… then stuffed it away without ties for the next 12 years.

I uncovered this a few weeks ago in the Great Organization, made 2 quick ties from spare black broadcloth, and sewed those puppies on. Additional sewing time: 20 minutes. Interlude time: 12 years+. I’m pretty sure it’s not the kind of fabric I’d pick out today, but it is done and useful. Thumbs up indeed!

Craftmatic Manifesto

2010-03-21T12:47:00.003-05:00

My name is Beth, and I like to make stuff.

[chorus] Hi Beth!

Hello, everyone, and welcome to my blog. I’ve been thinking about this blog for about 6 months now, which seems like way too much thought and too little action. It’s also a decent metaphor for my problem – I think about projects more than I actually work on them. So here’s a blog that is supposed to do 2 things: help me make stuff, and document both the stuff and the process. If it also entertains you, dear unknown and perhaps figmentary reader, so much the better!

So here’s the deal. I sew, I knit, I cook, I occasionally dabble in other crafty nonsense. I have at least a hundred “to-do” projects in my head, and at least a dozen “half-done” projects on the shelf. I want to complete more projects, I want to create better and more useful projects. I also don’t want to go nuts in the process. As a chronic list-maker, I even wrote a manifesto:

1) Making stuff should be enjoyable. In other avenues of my life, I am a very busy graduate student, stuffing my head ever more compactly with biology and statistics. As much as I like it, making stuff is my hobby, not my occupation. So even thought I dearly love to read sewing or knitting blogs whose authors gush forth with 7 couture projects a week, I don’t want to beat myself up for not matching their production level.

2) Making stuff should be thrifty. I’m a grad student, which means I’m poor. I’m an environmentalist, which means I hate waste. I want to use up materials I have before I buy more and I don’t mind raiding thrift shops for materials either.

3) Focus on skills. For both sewing and knitting, I essentially learned the bare basics from my mom or a friend, then insisted I didn’t need any more help and taught myself from there. My knowledge, therefore, has some rather gaping holes, and I often do things the quick and dirty way rather than the proper way (sewing especially). I want to learn more “proper” techniques, or at least try them out to see if they have good results and/or are worth the time.

4) Focus on quality. Another result of doing things the quick and dirty way is sometimes turning out poorly made (though usable) projects. I want not only to make stuff, but make it well. (There’s a slight caveat here: due to rule #1, I am allowed to decide that a finished project is better than a perfect project).

5) Focus on utility. The paradox of sewing in particular is that my most common garments (jeans, t-shirts) are decidedly not the easiest sewing projects. Consequently, at least 95% of my wardrobe is bought, not self-made. I want to make more things that I will use on a regular basis.

6) Focus on completion. My mom calls them UFOs – unfinished objects. Whether they’re neatly organized or wadded up in a shopping bag of shame, every crafty person I know has a stash of half-done projects. I hardly imagine I’m going to become Ms. Finishes What She Starts overnight, but this is a manifesto, isn’t it? I want to finish stuff!

So that’s it. I want this blog to help me make stuff, make it well, and have fun doing it. Enough manifesto – let’s go make something!