Matching Pegs

Apparently (in English speaking countries) it rhymes with oil.

So, I’m fairly pleased with myself – 2 garments completed from the same pattern, without an iota of help from anyone else.  What feels particularly miraculous to me is that they turned out just as I wanted – comfy, light and relatively flattering.  The pattern in question is “New Look 6983” View B.

This red one was my first attempt, made up with some lightweight 100% cotton (dobby spot) I picked up from Spotlight .  I fiddled a little with the seam allowance – taking it in slightly to give a hint more shape at the waist, but made no other alterations.

This second one was made up in “Anna Maria Horner – Little Folks” Voile that I have been hanging onto for ages.  Even thought it is also 100% cotton, it feels quite silky to touch.  On this one I lengthened the slit at the centre of the neck .  I felt it was too high, proportionally, on the pattern, but as it is narrow, it does not gape scandalously open at the longer length.  I also gave the waist a little more shape than the pattern called for.

There was one huge departure that I made from the pattern instructions, one that my Mother taught me many years ago.  The instructions call for the side seams on the body to be sewn up, way back in step 2.  They likewise call for the side seams on the sleeves to be sewn together prior to sewing the sleeves to the body.

I ignored this order of assembly, in favour of sewing in the sleeves when the body and sleeves are still flat.  Much easier!

This method allows you to better distribute the fabric ease in the sleeves (i.e. fiddle with the slight gathers you make in the seam allowance, to make the sleeve rounded over the shoulder).  It is much easier to match the notches.

Of course, pinning the heck out of it helps as well!  After sewing the sleeve to the body, you simply sew the side seams of the body and sleeve together on one go, pivoting when you reach the intersection.

Look – no puckers!  Can you tell I impressed myself.

So the verdict – “New Look 6983″ is a lovely, simple pattern, and I will probably make it over and over again.  I still have another colour-way of the lovely voile, waiting to be cut out.  Expect to see me wearing these a lot this summer.

PS. That strangely posed photo at the top was one that Luke unexpectedly snapped when I was sweeping my hair out of the way of the neckline.  I kind of like it.  He was pretty accommodating to follow me round taking photos to my specifications in the first place.

Do you have a favourite pattern?

This weekend Michaela was determined to get a turn on the sewing machine, her mission, to make a quilt for “baby”.  I let her loose on the purple and pink piles of my fabric stash, (she had no interest in any other colour) and cut some strips from each of her chosen fabrics.

As I had done with Amelia, I set her up with some foundation fabric to piece the strips onto.  This seems to work really well for beginners, as there is ample fabric to hold onto, well clear of the needle.  I set the stitch speed to extremely-slow, and pinned the fabric well clear of where the needle was to go, so that Michaela could sew without worrying about removing pins as she went.

This method is great because when stitches go awry, they can be re-sewn, often without the need to unpick.  Ironing the strips open, as you attach them, covers a multitude of mistakes, as you can see below…

Michaela got about half way with her blocks before she decided to give it a rest.  I think she can be pretty proud of her first go on a sewing machine, especially as she is only 6 years old.

The sewing may have held her interest for longer, if this was not going on in the next room.

Cubby houses, made of quilts, are just too much fun to miss out on, and it is important to get in early enough to nab a piece of lounge room real-estate for yourself.

How young were you when you first used a sewing machine?  What did you make?

This past weekend saw me playing sewing teacher and assistant to my elder daughter, Amelia, who has started on a project, to make a new bag for swimming lessons.  The sewing machine that she won way back in 2007, has just returned from being fixed.  We found out the hard way that if you do not use a sewing machine for a few years, it will seize up, so we are making sure that it gets regular use.  When she was younger, it was easier to let her have a go on my machine, but she is old enough to sew with less supervision now.

A trip to Spotlight resulted in this great bargain – the cyclamen coloured cotton fabric was only $1 a metre!  It was perfect to use as a base for string pieced blocks, using scraps from a previous project of mine.  I just ruled some lines across the fabric squares, with my magic disappearing pen, for Amelia to align her first strips of fabric, and I let her at it.

Here are two of her finished blocks, ready to be sewn up into her new bag.  We are going to line it with fabric from a shower curtain to make it waterproof.

The same trip to Spotlight yielded these lovely fabrics.  The bottom two were heavily reduced, and even though the top one was not, I thought it was so lovely that it had to come home with me.  The middle fabric is a lightweight cotton, almost a voile, that is going to become a Kaftan style top.  It is going to be my test garment, before using some other precious fabric I have.  I have high hopes for New Look 6983.  All I have to do is clear my cutting table, which currently has months worth of sewing related clutter all over it.

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While I was writing this post my husband made a comment that shows how well he knows me, even if he was only joking…”You can’t post those photos – the colours don’t go with your blog!”.

The cyclamen in particular is not in my usual palette, and is a bit jarring with the dusty green background, but I have pushed on regardless.  Are you impressed?

This week I have been playing with these very bright diamonds, working out a pattern for the next ring on my Wheel of Fortune Quilt.  I have just completed a ring of purple squares, like the background in this photo.  In real life the pinks are possibly brighter than they appear on your screen.

If Mainland Australia represented the colours that I am most comfortable with, then these bright babies would be Tasmania, just a little beyond my usual palette and comfort zone.  I like it.

I have assembled the colour for the next couple of rings as well.  Soft peachy colours for the next ring of squares, and cocoa-powder browns for the following ring of diamonds.  These are softer than the chocolate brown of a recent ring, and more like the diamonds in the centre of the quilt.

I fell in love with the very bright pinks of the pink, peach, purple and green of this grape fabric by Martha Negley.  I have used it in two projects on the go, with fairly similar colour schemes – this is my quilt in progress, which features large “bubbles” of fabric on it.

I am gradually hand stitching down the bubbles, which are mostly just basted in place.

So lately it has all been about handwork, with very little sewing machine action.  I think I will probably be revving it up for Christmas though.

How about you – handwork or machine work lately?

As I mentioned in my last post, the guild that I belong to held our biennial quilt show this weekend.  Part of the show was a “mystery challenge” which members entered anonymously, and this year the theme was “pincushions”.  This was my entry, a little house pincushion.

I was inspired by the wonderful teacup pincushions made by Mimi Kirchner, a fibre artist with a blog called “doll”.   She calls her pincushions “Tiny Worlds”.  Her little houses look like storybook cottages, with high peaked roofs, (as well as the occasional lighthouse) but I wanted mine to look more like a typically Australian house.  This tiny house is based on our first home, a very suburban, triple-fronted brick-veneer.  Australian suburbs are full of them.  I added some eucalypts (which surround our current home) made with needle trunks.

This is a photo of our first home which was used on the sales brochure when we sold it (the real-estate agent added the photoshopped blue sky).

The hill of the pincushion is made of an upturned peanut butter jar-lid, covered in felt and stuffed with poly-fill.  The rest is made of felt, and embroidery thread.  The trees and bushes are simply shapes cut out of thick felt, with old needles through the middle, as trunks to fix them in place.  All the felt is 100% wool from Winterwood.

I am looking forward to using this as my pincushion, until now it has been a secret project, hidden away.  Some of the other entries in the challenge were fruits, a sewing machine, a hamburger, a turtle, an elephant and various patch-worked shapes.  The winner was a wonderful witch, stirring a cauldron, with pins stuck in her ample backside.  Do you have any elaborate pincushions?

During these school holidays, (last week and this week) I have spent lots of time with my kids, and very little time on my computer.  I have not blogged, and my feed reader has filled with posts that I will probably not get around to reading.

In other words, all is as it should be.  I would rather be a bad blogger than a bad mother.

The other afternoon we spent 2 hours playing a game we made abut 4 years ago, with nothing more than some coloured paper and cardboard, and some imagination.  We call it “Good Luck, Bad Luck”.

Long, long ago, we came up with examples of good luck and bad luck to put on the cards, and assigned them moves, eg.”Your read your favourite book, (Tonka) move forward 3 spaces” or “It rained on the way to school go back 2 spaces”, or my personal favourite “Your baby learns to talk, go forward 3 spaces”.

We all enjoyed laughing about who had come up with the different pieces of luck, and how funny some of them were – “Peanut butter for dinner, go forward 2 spaces” was definitely Rory!  We kept telling Michaela that the baby mentioned on the cards was really her (When she was actually a small toddler).  It was wonderful to have that baby reading her own cards (with a little help – my handwriting didn’t make it easy).

Yesterday we took off for the hills and visited the Tesselaar Tulip Festival with some friends.  I am so glad I took the camera.

The weather was perfect – overcast, (which kept crowd numbers down) but not cold or wet (until we left).

The tulips were beautiful – these very dark purple ones were Rory’s favourite, (because they were almost black).

Some of the tulips, that were starting to “turn” and were past their prime, looked almost as interesting as the ones at their peak.

As much as I enjoyed the Tulips, I was actually much more taken with the mass plantings of the Ranunculus.

I just love them in all their colours.  Speaking of colours (not a very skilled segue, I know) if you are anywhere near Eltham this weekend, and would like to see all the lovely colours in many quilts on display, please come to our Biennial Quilt Show.

The North of the Yarra Quilt Guild Exhibition is held at the Eltham Community Centre,
801 Main Road, Eltham, (Melways 21 J6) between 10am and 4pm on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th (this weekend).  Admission is $8 – Children under 14 are free.

Come and say hello, I might be a bad blogger lately, but I am always happy to have  chat in person!

I was driving through the backstreets of my suburb earlier this week, when I saw these chairs sitting forlornly on the nature strip* – a clear indication that they were there for the taking.  They were still there an hour later, when I returned the same way, so I liberated them from the impending doom of hard rubbish collection.

The chairs are very similar to the The no. 14 bentwood chairs by Thonet. Like the more famous chairs, these seem to have been made with woven cane seats, which have been replaced crudely with board, nailed in place and covered with the tattered remains of upholstery.

We have been searching all over the Internet to try and find out more about them, especially as the label under the chair seems to indicate they may have been made in Austria, like the Thonet chairs were – Weisskirchen is a place name in several countries.

The coat of arms on the left looks almost identical to one we found connected with Austrian and German Infantry- it looks to be an imperial, Double-Headed Eagle.

None of this tells us how much work is required to fix them up.  We are contemplating what we will do with them.

Yesterday was such a lovely day, that we all went walking down by the nearby pond.  There were two sets of ducklings to admire.  These older ducklings above, and seen below, these fluffier, younger ones.

We were careful not to get too close to them – it was my camera that allowed me to “get closer”.  The kids spent quite a bit of time throwing stale breadcrumbs to the ducks, from their vantage point on the footbridge.

I just love the way the lone, white duck stands out amongst all the brown ones.  We can always see him/her as we drive past the park, from quite a long distance away.

Have you seen/picked up any treasures by the side of the road lately?

*nature strip – an Australian term for the narrow strip of grass between the street and the footpath

So I have switched the squares in the second ring on my quilt – replacing the yellow ones with the pale-peachy ones.  I am really happy with the result.

It is getting much harder to photograph this quilt in it’s entirety, as it grows.  I am not quite finished with the 7th ring, of green diamonds, but I am itching to get started on the next ring, which will most likely be lavender squares (a bit more blueish than the third ring).

You have to go around quite a way before you can see the effect each ring has on the whole of the quilt.  In a few more rings I will need to have another very dark brown one, I think, for balance.  I have some pretty hot-coral pinks waiting to make an appearance too, and I think they will be as punchy as the orange ring.

The back of the quilt poses quite a pressing challenge.  When I say pressing, I don’t mean urgent, I mean pressing with an iron!  There are many intersections that are made up on 6 seams.

I have pressed all the intersections like this in a circular direction, but not the ones on the edge of the quilt, because I still need the stitching lines, which disappear with the heat of the iron.  These lines are marked with a “frixion pen”, which I picked up at Officeworks.

You may not find talking about pressing seams very interesting.  Well for you I have an interesting article, titled “The secret to success is failure” from the New York Times.  The title is much more simplistic than the article, (as titles tend to be).  It is 9 pages long, but well worth a read – make a cuppa first.  It discusses how people that tend to achieve things in life often have particular character traits that are quite separate from their intelligence, and it ponders how to teach or encourage these traits in children.  Can you teach kids optimism, persistence, self control?

It will get you thinking.  Enjoy.

This week I visited the National Gallery of Victoria for the wonderful “Vienna – Art and Design” exhibition.  Luckily it wasn’t too crowded, so I was able to have a really close look at the exhibits, but I still wanted to be able to pore over them at my leisure, so I bought the exhibition catalogue.

This cutlery service, designed by Josef Hoffmann (for Fritz and Lili Warndorfer), is a great example of the things that really appealed to me – understated elegance and simplicity bestowed upon ordinary household objects.  Blow is a Tea and Coffee service designed by Jutta Sika.

Many of the paintings in the exhibition were really lovely, but I was much more drawn to the design of everyday objects, because they relate directly to my degree in Industrial Design (which could be summed up loosely as the design of products and furniture – mostly).  Anything that is useful and still manages to be elegant and proportionally pleasing, really makes my heart sing.

I was also very taken with the surface design works of Koloman Moser for textiles, and wallpapers.  The one above is called “Silvanus”,

and this one is called “Arlette”, for use on silk.  It was my favourite.

Lastly, this was a piece of furniture that I was, quite unexpectedly, really enchanted by; a writing desk designed by Dagobert Peche.  This was at the end of the exhibition, and taken from a period where there was much more ornamentation and surface decoration.  While the piece itself looks to me to be slightly unbalanced on the whole, the individual decorative elements are quite charming.  They are very graphic representations of different vegetation.  Looking at them closely gave me an urge to pick up a pencil and get sketching.

This exhibition is on at the Nation Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, until the 9th of October.

Have you been?  What did you think?

I have been steadily adding to my Wheel of Fortune Quilt, currently half-way around with green diamonds.

It is quite fun coming up with the patterns for each ring, and I love playing with dusty apple green fabrics.

One thing that has been bothering me has been the 2nd ring – the yellow squares.

The fabric I used was not the best quality, a bit too thin and too loosely woven, and  I have not been 100% sold on the colour.

I am not quite at the point of unpicking, but I am certainly getting closer.  I have been auditioning alternative fabrics.  These are three different pale peachy fabrics I am considering.

This is the effect I am closest to settling on.  As usual, a photo doesn’t quite capture the subtleties of colour, and the overcast conditions are making the colours of this quilt look more blah then they are in person.

If I do unpick, it will be a big step, because I have ironed away the stitching lines.  I will have to redraw them on and hope for the best, a prospect that makes me nervous.  I might just decide that the yellow is good enough, even though it is a little more see-through, a coarse than all the other fabrics.

Are you happy to unpick work that you did ages ago, just because you have changed your mind?