Tentative Art Coat Plan

This is my first tentative plan for my Evening Art Coat. I have several things I'm still deciding. Input welcome.

1) Wool coating or wool flannel or twill: Wool coating is more practical here in Alaska, but would the appliques be a nightmare on such a heavy fabric.

2)How much embellishment: Should I do the collar? Should the border turn the corner and extend up the front opening?

3)What fabric for the appliques: Batiks? Wool Felt? Funky, brightly patterned prints?

4)What is the best way to apply the velvet edging to reduce bulk?

5)I have a brightly patterned plaid poly taffeta I'd like to use for the lining strictly from a design point of view, but am worried about its sewability and the rustling noise. Should I stick with flannel backed satin which eliminates the need for interlining?

6)Hem length: Debating between just above the knee (longer than the pattern) or long, almost cloak length?

What One Does When One's Machine Is In The Shop, Final Episode

One finishes a quilt top (well, almost finished)...



Perfect timing too! My sewing machine is ready to be picked up. I will finish the handwork on the quilt top in the car on the way to town to retrieve my Pfaff. I only have some hand-stitching on the leaves and flowers left to do. Evidently Pfaffs get priority attention since the repair shop is also the local Pfaff dealer. I only had to wait 4 days instead of two weeks. Not so bad. Makes me feel guilty for whining. :)

So I have two quilt tops ready for sandwiching and basting. That is my least favorite part of the quilting process. But I'll suck it up and get them both ready to go. My free-motion foot will not be coming in for awhile yet. The quilts will have to wait a couple of weeks before I can finish them up.

When they are completed, the lavender quilt is headed to Nana's House. The flannel quilt below is overdue. I started it about a year ago for a 5 yo girl whose baby sister had unexpectedly died of a sudden respiratory illness. A group of us had made a memory quilt for the family, but I was working on one for the little sis as well. I finished the quilt top and then went on a trip. When I got back from the trip the quilt got buried with another dozen or so UFOs. That's what one gets for juggling far too many projects at the same time. Inevitably a ball gets dropped. So...once that one is quilted, it will be sent on to little Melody a year after the fact. But I hope the love and comfort intended will still be felt. It's just a simple patch square, but the flannels are super soft and have little baby animals on them.



So...I survived my week without my sewing machine. I got all my planting done, a closet made over, some nicer-than-usual meals cooked and a quilt top finished. Next up will be finishing the two quilts. But after that? This is what I'm thinking:

**Finish planning and shopping for Art Coat

**Cut out Karess Harvest Dress. See the appliqued girl's dress in the sidebar? That one sold when I had my children's design business, But I promised one to my little model who attends our church. She just adored that dress and just smiled ear to ear the whole time she modeled it for photos. So she needs one, KWIM? The applique takes a long time so I thought if I start it now, it'd be ready by Fall! LOL!

**Cut out a couple of quick summer tops for myself. The summer weather has hit here and suddenly I have nothing to wear. I am not a summer-kind of girl. I love the Fall with its wool and sweaters and layers and jackets. So I am constantly caught off-guard by the warmer weather. I need something fast!

And I'm off to town to pick up my machine....

Charity

The Joy of An Unexpected Free Day

I was planning on helping Casey's school librarian inventory out her books today. It was going to be a long, dusty, numbers-focused (NOT my strong point) day. She called this morning to say that her computer is not working and not to come in. So I have a free day suddenly dumped in my lap. Oh joy! I was happy to help her and feel badly about her frustrating techno-glitch, but there is nothing like an unexpected bonus day! And my men are out golfing so I have the whole house to myself!! What shall I do? Work on the quilt? Clean house? Bake? Papercraft?

Bliss.

Charity - Off to slap on and crank up my Sondre Lerche CD....

What One Does When One's Machine Is In The Shop, Day Three

One resorts to cleaning out closets...



Day Three of The Machine Fast. I may not be Ghandi, but it still hurts. Since my Pfaff is in the shop, I resorted to Spring cleaning and serger sewing. I culled, cleaned, reorganized and decorated my bathroom closet. I made little slipcases for each sheet set, using a different print to designate bed sizes. I used fabrics from my stash so the cost was nil-and-none. And I significantly busted some stash. Baskets hold household supplies. Papercrafted labels with rag ties make contents known. Wire racks on the back of the door make every bit of space count. Finally, I added some rose-scented sachets. So now it not only looks pretty, but it smells nice as well. :)

What One Does When One's Machine Is In The Shop, Part Two

One plants flowers...




You can see that we're needing to paint. To the right there are strips of colors I was considering. And I had painted the dark green trim as an experiment. Was thinking the door would go scarlet and the house body a mushroom color. Since we got a beautiful new gray/black roof, I've changed my mind. I am going to go with a pale gray on the house, black trim and stay with the scarlet door. Actually, we're getting a new, much nicer door. I wish DH would let me ditch the cedar front. I hate orange tones. But he loves it, so it stays.

What One Does When One's Machine Is In The Shop

One resorts to hand-sewing...


I decided to do some needle-turn applique on my lavender quilt since my Pfaff has gone under the knife and won't be out of recovery for a week or so. I usually do my applique the quick-and-easy way (fuse, then machine satin or blanket stitch). But I hate my back-up machine and since DH picked up SPACE, a wonderful sci-fi TV series (NOT!), I thought I would redeem the time with a little old-fashioned hand-sewing while wittily mocking said series. Hopefully I can finish the applique on this quilt top before my machine returns. Sadly, the free-motion foot I needed (mine had broke from constant hard use) to finish this quilt was not in stock. It had to be special ordered and who knows how long that will take. I have another quilt waiting to be stippled as well. So things are backing up in the quilt department. Guess I'll get good at this hand-sewing thing.

For those interested in Needle-turn Applique, I suggest these tutorials.

Easy Needle Turn Applique 101
Learning to Quilt, Lesson 4, Applique
How to Needle Turn with Freezer Paper
Applique and Hand Sewing Lessons
Applique Basics
Quilt Applique Techniques and Tips
Quiltmaking Fundamentals
Heirloom Quilts, Lesson 3, Hand Applique

Machine Service Blues

Setting: A smoky, slightly seedy jazz cafe. A low platform with a solitary mike is dimly lit by one lonely spotlight. An overweight, middle-aged redhead approaches the mike, fidgets with her home-sewn dress and mournfully begins to sing...

Machine Service Blues (sung to the tune of I Left My Heart in San Francisco)

I left my sewing machine at J.B.'s Sew and Vac.
What will I do without it here?
Now I no longer sew
that quilting UFO,
My sewing room is oh so bare, I don't care
My Pfaff waits there at J.B.'s Sew and Vac
Until next week, it waits for me
When it comes home to me from J.B.'s Sew and Vac (big breath for the big finale....)
My UFOs I'll sew again.

The singer exits the stage revealing a slightly wonky invisible zipper.

Finish Emily's Cape - CHECK!

Don'cha love it when you get to mark something off your to-do list. I just wish this one had been marked off a little sooner. But that was out of my control and Miss Em will be able to put this away in her closet for hopefully many more dress-up events to come!

Overall, McCalls 3033 ended up being a keeper. It went together quickly and the end result was very cute. I'd like to make one in black velvet with beaded trim on the hem. The only thing I would suggest is being sure to interface that two-piece bias-cut under collar. Without that, I think it would be difficult to stabilize the bias cut edge. There would be too much ease for a nice match up with the capelet's neck edge.

I was finally able to get some narrow cord made from the Chinese brocade and with that a decent Chinese ball button. This is not the best fabric for making narrow fabric tubes, but with a lot of patience and several trial runs, I was happy with the end result. Here are the pics...




Next up will be the applique work on my lavender quilt.

Chinese Ball Buttons and Frogs

I'm still on a mission to finish this capelet for Miss Emily. I have constructed the shell, attached the small shawl collar and constructed the lining. Before I can bag the lining, I need to baste the button loop into place at the base of the collar. I wanted to use a button loop made from a fabric tube of the capelet fabric. However, I had a horrible time creating cord for the loop. I used instructions from these websites:

http://www.savvyseams.com/techniques/cording.php
shttp://www.ca.uky.edu/hes/fcs/FACTSHTS/HF-LRA.079.PDF
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Sewing-3237/Spaghetti-straps.htm
http://www.sewnews.com/library/sewnews/library/aatips28.htm
http://besewstylish.taunton.com/n/blogs/blog.aspx?webtag=besewstylish&entry=245

There was nothing wrong with these instructions. I'm pretty sure the chinese brocade was the problem. It wanted to fray something terrible and it was too stiff to turn in on itself. Since I was short on time, I didn't have the luxury of a steep learning curve. So I went out and bought rattail cording. I just finished my first Chinese Ball Button using this cord and these online instructions:


Making Chinese Frogs and Ball Buttons

This resulted in this button. Too small and not really very ball-like. Definitely no where close to workable.



Back to the drawing board. Next I used these instructions...

How to Sew A Chinese Frog

This was the resulting button. By this time I could see that a thicker cord was going to be needed. I decided to try my hand at making my own again. Before I had used a very narrow strip of fabric. If a bigger cord was needed to make a bigger button, than I might as well try to make it myself. I would probably be able to successfully turn a larger fabric tube. So back to my original idea of a chinese ball button from the capelet fabric itself.



I'll update later. Hopefully with a successful Chinese Ball button. If anyone has had success with these, please feel free to sing out!

Computer Transfer In Progress

DH gave me a new computer with TWO flat screen monitors for my birthday. My computer was about six years old. Which I guess is prehistoric in techno time. I will be slowly transferring over data to the new computer. I don't expect there to be any blip in my blog, but ya never now. So if I cease to be my overly chatty self and the posts dry up, chalk it up to a temporary computer glitch. But if I do this right, there shouldn't even be a hiccup...

Charity

We Now Return To Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

Okay, that's over. This is a sewing/craft blog and not my own personal therapy couch, so back to the topic at hand! Thanks for your kind words. Craig is sore but fine this morning and we are dusting ourselves off and returning to life as usual.

On the sewing front...

***DH was wanting to buy me a buttonhole machine for my birthday. I was sure I had heard such a thing mentioned on Pattern Review. I thought I had read a thread there that you could buy one for $400 or so. I mentioned it to Craig because we had had such problems with my buttonhole function on my machine being iffy. So as my birthday approached he secretly did online research and visited sewing stores in Anchorage to find out more about this. He turned up no such animal. The only thing he found was a $10,000 machine intended for factory use. Obviously, we are NOT going that route. If anyone has heard of a home buttonhole machine at a home user price, please let me know!

***During DH's research he was told by a store owner that the machine I have (A Pfaff Tiptronic) is actually considered an excellent machine. It got 5 stars at an online review site. But the gentleman knew exactly why my buttonholer had started to fail after 8 years hard use (I'm ashamed to admit I have NEVER had the thing serviced in all those years). So, Craig says part of my birthday present is to get my machine refurbished. The owner recommended staying with the machine as it's a good one. But I will be getting new cords/pedal (my cords are shot at the plug ins and held together with Craig's soldering job and electrical tape), a new free-motion quilting foot (mine broke and I use it a lot) and then the refurbish. The cords alone cost close to $200! But it's still cheaper than a new machine. And the gentleman said he can get my buttonholer working like new. Big sigh of relief!

***Emily's cape - If you read the posts below, you know that this project didn't get done in time for the big night. I still want to finish it, however. I don't know if she'll have occasion to wear her dress again, but a girl can always use a pretty evening wrap in her wardrobe. Her family loves music and perhaps they'll attend some symphonies or some such thing.

***This week's sewing plans are to make serious progress on the applique of the lavender quilt top, to finish collecting everything I need for the Coat Sew Along, to finish Emily's cape and to sandwich and baste a child' flannel quilt that I've had for eons.

Warning...Doting Mother Moment

BuckeyeSue left a comment below to please post pics of the kids on their big night. Well, that's all the excuse I needed. So if you're looking for hard core sewing info and not endless pics of my adorable child and his even more adorable childhood friend, then you'll want to skip this post. You've been warned. Excessive amounts of photos to follow....

This is The Princess in Pink. The sweet and lovely Miss Emily. This is about as close to a daughter as I'll ever get (along with her big sis, Sarah) - thanks to Pam's generousity in loaning out her wonderful girls when I get an itch to do girly things for a change!


Our baby...Sigh.


Caleb, our eldest, who was our rock during our day in ER. He took point for us, got Casey to the ball and played chauffeur for the kids.


Good friends since toddlerhood!




On their way!


The kids with our beautiful valley in the background


Okay...I'll stop now. Be grateful. I have LOTS more pics! :) :)

Charity

Bad Stuff Happens

Yesterday was A Very Bad Day. Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. And yesterday we were pitched a particularly nasty one. We attended the Walkathon as planned. DH started to not feel well, but he attributed it to eating too much watermelon for breakfast. We had taken two cars to the event so I could go home and finish the cape while he and Casey went on to the Biker Blessing. I left the parking lot before them and headed to JoAnn's to pick up some rattail cord to make the Chinese ball button for the capelet. My efforts to make cording from the Chinese brocade were disastrous. It frayed. The seams pulled loose. It was too stiff to turn in on itself when attempting to turn the tube. Just a mess. I was at JoAnn's when I got a panicked call from my son that something was wrong with Craig. He was in a lot of pain and retching. They were headed home. I dropped everything and headed home as fast as I could. When I got home DH was in agony. I took one look at him and knew something serious was going on. I told him it was either ER or I call 911. We raced off for ER with me on the phone to 911 urging them to tell the hospital to be ready. Even so...we got there and waited FORTY-FIVE minute while DH was literally on his knees on the floor groaning in agony. I was furious. The wait was so ridiculous that the ER Doctor later told us to please file a complaint. He said if it had been heart-related (which should have been a considered option with that pain level), the wait could have had disastrous results.

Will spare you the nightmare 8 hours that followed. But Dh was finally released that night. Kidney stones. About a half dozen of them. With blockage. But they finally passed. I have never seen anyone in that much pain. The doctor gave his pain a 9 on the pain scale. Far worse than I remember my childbirth being. There are no words to describe how helpless you feel when someone you love so much is in so much torment and there is nothing you can do.

And we missed all those wonderful first formal event memories. :( :( My eldest son rushed home from college to help his little brother get dressed, take photos and do the chauffeuring. And my dear friend, Pam (Emily's mother), had pics in my mailbox before we even got home. But it's not the same as being there and between groans even Craig was expressing his dismay at missing Casey and Emily's big night.

And no...I wasn't able to get her capelet done for her. :( :( :(

And...it was my birthday. But, my big present for the day was taking my husband home alive. It could have been worse.

Charity