Category Archives: Sewing

And then there are flowers

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I have this sewing machine that is also capable of embroidery. Over the last two years I have accumulated various assorted items (towels, t-shirts, napkins, placemats, quilt squares) that are all lacking in “that special decorative touch.” To add to my insanity, there are a couple of websites (EmbroideryLibrary and UrbanThreads) that sell professionally digitized designs that stitch out perfectly.

You can see my dilemma, right? Besides the-oh so tempting sales, there is the occasional design that just announces that it perfect for [fill in name].

Which lead this afternoon to knocking unannounced on a Alison’s door with yesterday’s stitching project.  This particular flower has a special meaning for her. And I could happily decrease my stack of towels by two.

This evening I completed the next two projects on my list-

They should be in the mail to Georgia later in the week. After that, I need to plan for my next victim. I have been told this is all “creative procrastination”. Oh, those outstanding papers. Right. 1 August start; expect whining.

And not a flamingo

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Inspecting the invader

The Eldest is amused, but not enthralled by my flamingoes. She has an extensive side garden but has given me the evil eye when ever I have suggested “improvements.” Apparently, our tastes don’t exactly match. She is also the cat mom to Onyx and Ghost. When I saw this particular item while flamingo shopping, I just couldn’t resist.

Passing both the sniff and taste test (Cat Scan), I still don’t think this particular solar beastie will stay in the house.

Otherwise, I added a bit of color to my sewing area while planning my next embroidery projects.

except that it is!

Today it is trains

Holly Doyne Posted on by 4

My mind is blank, or rather, I am drawing a blank when trying to figure out whether or not I accomplished anything todayNo trip into SF.

No knitting. But dishes.

Errands – oh, right – Post Office – mailing out packages to Georgia and Ohio. Picking up pizza and fresh fruit at the grocery store. Driving to Richmond to pick up one son and getting backing fabric for the little girls quilt.

Otherwise? Trains –

the program list on the sewing machine

which

looks like this in progress

and winds up being a series of train cars –

along with the engine

on hand towels for a young man who keeps informing everyone that he “is the engineer.”

Too far to the game

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Since yesterday was a holiday – the waiting room at UCSF was jammed to the gills with both the Friday and Thursday patients. Since there was little to no traffic, the drive in went smoothly, the clinic was running at full speed and we were able to get out of San Francisco before what would normally be Friday afternoon traffic.

I was tired when we got home. Heading upstairs to finish off (finally) the one quilt, I pulled out the stitching and redid the quilting.

all but the binding

 

and then I moved on to this –

another Liberty Puzzle

with a lot of fun pieces

and decided I was just too tired to think about going to a baseball game. Sent off a message to a fellow member of the group that I wouldn’t be making the game. Then I pulled up At Bat (the app) and sent her off a second message. She concurred as well; Seattle was just to far to go in the next 30 minutes….

Monday morning traffic

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Sucks at the best of times. This morning was not one of those. In the future, I think there are two choices – either get on the interstate at University Avenue, work my way over to the left hand HOV lane and drive faster than a crawl. Or.. take the frontage road all the way on the Bay side to Powell Street and get on the freeway there which is just at the start of the maze and just short of where the HOV lane dumps in from the northbound branch of 580. I did the worst – got on in between University and Powell which meant there was no chance at all of getting safely across 5 lanes of traffic and having to spend more than 20 minutes crawling along between two freeway entrances.

The only good thing was that once we were past the start of the congestion we were able to access the right hand HOV lane and literally flew along the right fly-over looking down with sneers at all of those sitting in stopped traffic. HOV here is 3 people in the car which should explain why I had Noah up and about much earlier than his normal routine. Him getting sleep was much less relevant to me than shortening our car ride by an hour or more. Once past the toll plaza, the traffic wasn’t all that great but moving is much better than creeping or standing still.

I have finally figured out UCSF’s parking ramp. Having also appropriated Alex’s old wheelchair from its (final-not) resting place in the garage where it was stored just in case anyone would need it again, we made fast work of getting from the garage to the clinic. Yes, George can walk but he still is having significant foot pain so why would we make him hobble?

Appointment went well. Number of meds is not going to decrease anytime in the near future. OTOH, it is obvious that the stem cell transplant has taken hold.

I managed to finish embroidering the last of the little girls onto the quilt top.=

color gamp 3×6 embroidered

now it is just a matter of the backing, quilting and tossing it over to Shana for the finishing.

 

Butterflys Surrounded

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8/9 plus sashing

Still working on that last square. but have the first six sewn together and sashing prepared for the remaining sections. After looking at the polar fleece I had been planning on using, which was more butterflies, I decided to be sensible and picked up some solid aqua (JoAnn’s seems to always have a sale) .

Once I have that last square finishing, it will be a simple matter to run the quilt lines. Then it looks like the Eldest will finish the binding. Seems like she has a friend who had a lovely girl child end of March …. everything does find the proper home, doesn’t it?

Butterfly Quilt

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I have kept thinking that there had to be a way to incorporate machine embroidery in quilt making. Rather than spend hours putting little pieces of cloth together in order to make squares. Instead, I should be able to spend hours changing threads on the sewing machine in order to embroider on a square.

Ok, it made more sense when I first started thinking about it.

butterfly

 

and I found all these lovely butterfly patterns. Plus, bright colored flannel with butterfly for sashing.

7/9 squares complete

and, of course, the three butterfly ballerinas. I wish I could say that the last two butterflies went as smoothly as the rest of the squares, but no. Which is why they aren’t yet completed.

Doilies

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#50 cotton multi-color purple thread

yes, I can embroider a doily with the machine. Stitched on wash-a-way stabilizer, each takes about an hour (+/-) with the bobbin filled with matching thread since obviously both sides of the doily will be visible. No clue what I am going to do with them, but a whole lot faster than crocheting or knitting…..

Embroidering

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Probably I should have spent more time today studying than I did. But I had signed up for a software class (embroidery) a couple of weeks ago. First I had purchased the software. Ravelry is dangerous. People give you all sorts of good ideas, many of which wind up being money out of the pocket. In this case, it was an excellent idea. Several days later I received a class list from Dublin Sewing Center. My new software had a class listed for today.

There is always a challenge, teaching a class on software. First you have to hope that everyone in the class understands how to do the basics on the computer they brought. Sadly, if you have 15 people, there are going to be some in the group who don’t. In this case we had about five. This included some with challenges involving inserting, opening and copying files from a flash drive.

The class was still worth it. There were a lot of things I probably could have figured out on my own (if I had thought about them, or read the manual rather than just looking a few things up).

Since I have been home –

dish towel

t-shirt

and flour sack towel

The flour sack dish towels are easy, the t-shirt is black and I will replace the photo when I have a picture in daylight.

but it is 2030 and time to get ready for the morning….

Close your eyes

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Don’t watch. Seriously, you don’t want to see this.

Cal was at Stanford today for the second of their two games. The first, Thursday, was at Haas Pavilion with Cal pulling out a win on Asha Thomas’ buzzer beating last basket. Today the favor was returned in spades. No clue what was going on, but baskets were missed, passes easily intercepted, literally a dozen opportunities lost. Stanford had its act together. It wasn’t pretty.

Then there was the heartbreaker of the Blackhawks beating the Wild 4-3 in overtime (Hockey, for those who don’t recognize the teams).

Otherwise, I spent a small amount of time on homework, but mostly worked on various embroidery projects. All told, six items completed. The cutest –

x two. reversed colors

were a pair of flour sack towels. The purple is called Orchid – that orange? Allegedly it is Devil Red.

She likes unicorns

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Besides schematics on a lot of flour sack towels, I have been trying various designs on terry towels. It was a while ago, but there was Felix and Felicia (bib and towels). I messed around with a couple of other patterns and dumped them on Daughter #2 who always has a need for towels. Two dogs, one a golden retriever who loves water and mud.

And then I have a friend in Alabama. She wound up there secondary to job, family, and retirement from military fun and frolic.

Her daughter loves unicorns especially those from My Little Pony. I remember My Little Pony. That set/series/whatever has been around since my daughters were young. Until I looked, I had no idea that there was more than one unicorn involved. I just remembers a white unicorn which made sense. I mean really, who isn’t familiar with Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn? The movie by that name post dates the book. I will always vote book over movie. In this case, both book cover and animated movie had white as the color of the unicorn’s coat.

So I took one large unicorn design – mostly head, horn and a couple of flowers added for accent and fought my way through the design. Not the best, but it went out in the mail. Then I tried a different design on a hand towel. I still have a couple more patterns that I might want to try.

for the love of unicorns

and it is always fun to send things when they aren’t expected.

Q Cafe

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on an apron

UC Hastings College of Law has two buildings on McAllister in San Francisco. They lie across an intersection from each other. In the Admin building, besides offices, the second floor boasts a cafeteria called the Law Cafe which is open from 0700 and provides basic food options for students, faculty, and staff. Across the street is the classroom building. On the first floor, which in the US is the entry level, there is a small coffee stand which features coffees, various snack items and a cooler of yogurt, sandwiches, beverages, and wraps. There is some relation between the cafe and Peet’s Coffee. Q Cafe is staffed by trainers and trainees, the later of which seem to be making a transition from jobless/homeless to having a simply employment skill which can gain them a job and get them back on their feet.

Over this academic year, I have taken the opportunity at quiet times to speak with various workers. All seem to maintain a sense of humor and the student body seems to reciprocate. Coffee being such an essential portion of a student’s daily diet. Along with the other schematics I found, there was this one of a complex espresso machine. Adding it to an apron front just seemed like a natural idea. Besides, I have a couple of apron blanks.

Of course I do. It is part of my bad habit to want to be stocked on those items which I might need. When the kids were young I had a shelf in my closet that housed various items which could, on no notice, becomes presents for an event that they remembered on the way out the door. So why wouldn’t I have supplies on hand? Because I might never use them? Ok, I will grant you that. I have yarn, fiber, fabric, patterns that I probably will never use.

But anyway, I will drop off the apron in the morning.

Microscope as schematic

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flour sack towels

Everyone can always use dishtowels, right? I mean seriously. No matter how inventive dish-washer manufactures are, there are simply a number of items that don’t fit. Much less that favorite coffee mug or tea cup that is just right in your hand. Or various kitchen items that have been handed down in the family and are just too fragile to trust to modern standards of time and temperature. And, speaking of temperature – not all (or I really think most) plastics are truly dish-washer safe.

Growing up in the 1950s – we didn’t have a dishwasher. In fact, we didn’t have one in the 1960s either. Nor in the 1970s when I lived in various apartments during University, Med School or Residency. I washed dishes, I air dried dishes and occasionally used a dish towel if I needed a particular item NOW.

As I think back, I am not sure when a dishwasher became a standard appliance in my kitchen. Perhaps the 1990s? Thinking back that many living places and decades puts a strain on my memory. But there are some realities, even if you live in a location with enough resources to have one in your kitchen. If there are not several people in your household, you may run out of dishes before it is reasonable to run the dishwasher since you probably don’t use all that many items every day. It really isn’t particularly sanitary to leave items unwashed for days and days. It uses more water to rise/prewash dishes followed by a dishwasher cycle than it would to just wash the dishes in the first place.

All of these thoughts lead me to dishtowels. Everyone needs a few. Flour sack dishtowels, bought in bulk, are inexpensive and provide a wonderful blank canvas on which to test out machine embroidery. If it doesn’t look great – hey, it is a dishtowel. If it does? Hey, presto! I have just created a nice present.

Which leads me to the photo which started this particular discussion. If I am going to practice machine embroidery, the item should reflect the interests of the victim recipient, right? College guy is headed out for spring quarter. He is a science/engineering type. Since I haven’t found a schematic of a laser yet, he will have to settle for the microscope.

Avoiding assignments

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in spite of all my good intentions, I am heading to bed without completing an assignment due at 1420 tomorrow. On the surface, it seems to be an incredibly simple thing: take a list and turn it into an outline/table of contents. What turns out to be tricky is deciding what goes where, and why.

No problem – I can just take my favorite Army regulation and use that as a pattern – right? Except that civilian lawyers, especially those who have worked for various international organizations and NGOs just don’t think the same way as those of us who are steeped in the tradition of admin regulations.

And, as it turns out, the military is one of those exceptions to the APA (Administrative Procedures Act, 1946) so some of the standards which all of those who are US law school trained just don’t apply. One of the other students in this 8 person seminar has spent time related to military regulation drafting, he understands my point of view. But, being a law student, his attitudes are probably a bit more flexible than mine.

The upshot is that I knit four more rows on my Wild Swan – starting from here –

End of Chart F

Unlike a number of those in the KAL, I am not going to run out of beads. I have lots and lots of beads. Some of them are the wrong size or color, but I have the 250 that I will need to finish the shawl.

Yarn? That is another question. I think I have enough for maybe two more rows + the bind-off. The problem is that there are eight rows plus the bind off. I thought this might happen, so contacted Fierce Fibers two weeks ago and have a bit more on order in the darkest color. But it isn’t here yet…..

And then there was the embroidery tonight. Got through the pattern in spite repeated thread breakage (but no needle challenges) and bobbin snarls only to find that the last two colors shifted themselves right from where they belonged by about a cm. It is obvious. Really, really obvious since those two colors complete a frame around the main pattern. I am just glad it happened on a napkin. Not that expensive, I can try it again. But first – I need to figure out if it is the embroidery, the machine or me. Not inclined to repeat the same mistake.

And, oh, gee – it is too late to finish that outline. Or wire diagram. Or whatever the H it is.

Morning?

Machine Embroidery

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We will skip that portion of the day which has to do with adding coolant to the car, finding the line at Acme Bakery more than 2 blocks long and quick stops at both Safeway’s Community Market (nee Andronico’s) for a few items and Peet’s for some much needed coffee.

Months ago I accumulated a variety of clothing and other blanks on which I was going to experiment. Adding embellishments and otherwise embarrassing the recipients with my largess. Because, of course, it would be what I wanted to make.

Then I peeked around the door into my studio space and observed chaos. There was no way that I was going to be able to get anything accomplished unless I spent some serious time cleaning up and organizing.

2 hours later, 3 bags of trash and some sorting done, I was ready to start. But for one small issue. My sewing machine informed me that there was a firmware update. Oh, joy. Restart the machine and watch as it downloads, and downloads, and downloads.

But wait! I can still play while it is doing its thing. As I found out, most of the designs on the machine were too large to place on small bibs, so I had to go with bagels and bunnies). For the piece de la resistance, I was going to do a unicorn (see yesterday) for Dani. It is not a small file, nor a few stitches. Rather than place it on a shirt that would not be wanted or appreciated, I took one of the hand towels and decided that would make a good test run.

One long list (26 color changes and an insane amount of converting from Madera threads to the Isacord colors that I have), 39k worth of stitches and it was finished. Good thing that I did the test. She was fine with the towel but didn’t want a shirt or sweatshirt. Not even if I changed the pinks to purples.

But I had a fine time testing out everything.

Now I just have to clean up the mess…. again!

Quilts and a side of As

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Ok, you have managed to avoid having to listen to me discussing baseball for, oh let us say at least a day. So first I will mention that the As are doing fine – in spite of a couple of the relief pitchers. Essentially they rock. A goodly number of my fellow Right Field Die Hards are in Anaheim this weekend expressly for the purpose of watching the As walk all over the Angels. Well? 2 out of 3 ain’t bad as the old country song goes.

Otherwise, I have put a bit of time into quilts that different daughters were making for friends babies.

To be clear – my daughters are not having children, but have several friends that are doing same.

The Eldest finished all but the machine quilting and just wasn’t up to it at the moment so

top

and I took it over to her today.

Meanwhile, the quilt and bibs that Daughter #2 sent off in the mail have arrived –

the model, quilt, bib towel

and just to make sure

One game, three loads of laundry

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Not sure which is of the higher positivity – managing to arrive at the stadium and slide into our seats less than five minutes before the opening pitch – or doing three loads of laundry after we got home.

The As won.

Now that is out of the way… no wait. We had a rep from Foxx News-Detroit in the stands with us for about four innings. Apparently some Tigers fan got upset yesterday and Tweeted (!) about the drum noise. Unlike some of those who use social media without checking their facts, this particular individual, suit and all, decided to stop in. End result? He seemed to have a good time and asked questions about the group origin, rationale behind the various beats and the general upbeat nature of the group. Decided that one reply on the previous day “they can’t be controlled but can be contained” was probably correct.

Then there was laundry.

But the most fun (ack) of the day was finishing the machine quilting for a project of the Eldest.

at least I don’t have to do the binding….

Thread

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Isacord – 40w poly. 423 colors

Let me take you back in history: a long, long time ago when I lived in Germany I bought a Pffaf sewing machine and brought it back with me the first time I lived in the DC area circa 1984. Carmen and her husband picked us up at the airport (me, Shana, a ton of luggage which included the sewing machine) and dropped us off at our new but empty house in Kensington. There was a small embroidery attachment and I had great dreams about “doing stuff.”

Over the years I added machines which included increased machine embroidery capability but never quite got the hang of it. I did accumulate a bit of thread (Sulky, Isacord, Maderia, plus a couple of other brands) which meant that I never quite had the colors or combinations that I needed and continued to add thread one spool at a time.

This past Dec I had to change sewing machine manufactures. Pfaff is no longer made in Germany but China and all the attachments weren’t going to fit anymore. I bought a Viking (which is European made) and went for the relatively high end. It can do all sorts of things including embroider. I had a variety of stabilizers, I had the software. What I didn’t have was a thread set. When I did this for Alex

On the back of a jacket

I had to pull from five different thread lines to come up with the colors. It is not that it wasn’t appreciated –

the kids, the dog, the jacket

But I really wanted to avoid the hunt and color substitution agony that was involved.

Poly is not quite as shiny as rayon, but it is very washable and color fast which is why I bought what I did. I sorted through and found I already had about 20 colors. Even so, buying the set saved a chunk over individual spools, especially since the storage boxes were included.

FYI – Casilla managed to lose a winning game in the 9th by giving up two runs to Tampa Bay

It isn’t so much that

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the As keep trying to lose. It is more a matter of fouling up a good thing. For example, an error by the shortstop in the first inning turned a routine out into a two base grab. Said runner later scored. And then there were the 2-3 innings including one with bases loaded that the As at bat managed to strike out, pop out or land themselves in a a double play instead of scoring a go ahead run.

Go figure – I can’t.

Meanwhile I am still playing with machine embroidery, working on a cross stitch and just finished Graphic Audio’s Mike Oberon – Hallow Point.