Category Archives: sewing

- – -✂ – - – a day on the sewing machine – - -✂ – - -

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a day with the machine

I started out by hand-stitching my next batch of patchwork journals, but just had to give it up: funds are very low these days, and my day job place will be closed till March for major renovations. That means no income, however small, for months. *sigh* I have a tendency to overdo the handwork on things, and it can take as many as three days to put one of these journals together. At that rate, I can’t make these fast enough (and there’s no way I could charge three days’ worth of work for one book!)

I finished the rest of the patchwork pieces using a decorative stitch on my vintage sewing machine, hoping that they are still pretty enough. It still takes a long time, but a fraction of what it would if I hand-embroidered every book.

Been wracking my brains for some sort of acceptable compromise between quality handmade things, and a product that makes financial sense. Yes, I love what I do, and I love it when others love my items, too…but at the rate I’ve been going, I’ll never manage to “give up my day job,” the way so many of those amazing ETSY sellers featured on their blog have. I’ve tried before, and ended up living on boiled rice with soy sauce.

On the same note, I wonder if online craft makers like ETSY sellers are pricing their work realistically. Sometimes I suspect they are only charging for material, and not for the time it takes to make the things. I’ve come across journals similar to mine that are within the price range of machined, mass-produced, made in China journals and notebooks. Some are cheaper than Moleskines! It makes it hard for a maker like me to keep up my quality work. It puts me under pressure to find cheaper, quicker, ultimately less special alternatives. Why anyone would underprice their work when they make special, laborious, one-of-a-kind items is beyond me. Is it just to get shop ratings up? Is it to become popular, at any price? Shouldn’t we help raise the standards and public awareness of how time-consuming a handmade item is by setting a realistic price that takes some of our time into account? We all stand to gain from increased value, I think.

Do you have an online shop for your handmade items? Do you charge for your time? Is it working out? Have you been able to “quit your day job”? I’d really love to hear your thoughts on this.

- – -✂ – - — – -✂ – - — – -✂ – - — – -✂ – - -

* photo effects were created on Rollip *

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Mushroom Kitty and 26 dresses

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Mushroom Kitty by Marita Albers
I had a stall at the Happy Yess Market last Sunday, where I fell in love with Mushroom Kitty, a plump, placid, and gentle-looking softie made by the always-amazing painter Marita Albers. Kitty’s face—with Marita’s signature dark, sleepy eyes and brilliant colors—is handpainted canvas, appliquéd onto an oh-so-squeezable fabric body.

Two-kitty Household
I’ve wanted a creation of Marita’s for ages…she makes so many beautiful things, and is one of Darwin’s favorite artists; when I saw the kitty, I knew I had to have her. Amazingly, Marita wanted one of the journals I was selling, so we did a trade. Wohoo! One of those wonderful exchanges where both sides are thrilled with their lot, and each maker feels that she has gotten the better end of the deal. Win-win!

So now SonOfAGun is a two-cat houeshold…though Dude isn’t thrilled about that, and seems determined to snub the new sibling. Which is a good thing: he won’t cover her in cat hair.

Yoshiko Tsukiori's Stylish dress book

Yesterday was something of a shitty day for me. It was unbearably hot in the kitchen where I work, and everyone was grumpy or depressed. There was news on the radio of a grisly collision between a fire truck and a car…the truck driver in critical condition, the couple in the car were dead…and later we learned that we sort of knew them, they used to work in the same arcade at the mall, and buy fresh juices from us once in a while. It cast a sadness over everyone.

Manic Monday: customers were sullen and rude…car drivers were arrogant…even the check-out guy at Woolworth’s was being a sour-faced, sarcastic arsehole. Shortly after I’d knocked off from work my brother rang—family news, never wonderful these days, about our parents’ failing health and rising expenses—and while it wasn’t very bad, it made me feel pressured and impotent. I think I hated the world yesterday.

As I talked on the phone, I wandered aimlessly around the Smith Street Mall; when I hung up I was inside The Bookstore, staring blindly at a shelf full of craft books. Yoshiko Tsukiori’s Stylish dress book: wear with freedom was there, looking muted, elegant, and ethereal among all the candy-loud sewing books. I had seen reviews of the book online, and meant to buy it one of these days. So I took it home with me.
Yoshiko Tsukiori's Stylish dress book

I’m not such a cotton-head that I will now say “buying that book cheered me up right away, and I floated out of the mall and down the hill, dreaming of cute dresses” because it didn’t. I bought it because it gave me something to do with my hands, somewhere to put my feelings. I was going to get a copy anyway, so it made sense to do it then. I bought it, and forgot about it. I went tired home.

Yoshiko Tsukiori's Stylish dress book

In the light of a beautiful morning, surrounded by water and the sound of wind through mangrove boughs, I remembered the book, and can better appreciate it, now that my heart and I have had some rest. I like most of the dresses, though they wouldn’t look as lovely on me as they do on these doll-faced, delicate Japanese models, of course.

They’re simple, almost plain, dresses—almost as though they were made of flat pieces of paper—but look so comfortable and cool, seem easy to make (well, we shall see!), and I love to wear things like this at home, while I paint, read, clean, or stitch, though I can’t see myself going out in one of these, worn as a dress. I might wear some of them over jeans. I do not rock the frock. Never did. Even as a 6-year-old, I was a jeans (bell-bottoms, actually) person. Still am, in my heart of hearts. The tomboy who never grew up. :)

The clothes themselves are so basic that they could easily transcend fashion and fads, though the photographs have ‘hipster,’ written in crocheted-doily-ink, all over them—especially the recipe for cookies in the middle of the book. Luckily, I don’t like cookies, and I’m too fat to be a hipster *laugh* so I am safe from the slippery slopes of that sticky-sweet pit…

cookie recipe in Yoshiko Tsukiori's Stylish dress book

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The finished wren softie

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nutmeg done2
Put the wings on this morning. Nutmeg is done.

Did I say something about the wings being “the easy part”? Hah. I was cursing and swearing, and nearly ruined the embroidered wings when I tried to turn them right-side-out. You can see the rough patches on the front of wings, where the machine stitching came undone (all that pushing and stretching opened it up) and there were no seam allowances left to stitch back up after I’d gone and clipped them with pinking shears (Doh!)

For a while there I really thought I would have to embroider the wings all over again. But I managed to whip-stitch the openings, and he looks a bit ruffled, but still cheeky.

And this is just the prototype! Now I have to go back to the start and make up the real one. *sigh*…when the only thing I’d truly like to make at this moment is a martini…)

nutmeg done3

nutmeg done1

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sewing : : Reinventing the wheel

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I spent this entire day designing a little bird softie from scratch. While it’s true that there are quite a lot of patterns for bird softies, plushies, stuffies, and more on the internet, I couldn’t quite find the one I wanted. Besides, there are copyright issues, patterns that you aren’t allowed to sell the finished products from, and so on and on. So I set out to design my very own pattern. I wanted a small bird…delicate and mouse-like, something that could make a nest in a dainty teacup. I wanted a wren, with their short bodies and long tails sticking straight up in the air like flags.

Probably a good thing that I have never designed a pattern for a 3D object, before…I had no idea what I was getting into. Compound curves like crazy! My back hurts from sitting hunched over this little guy for such a long time.

These are the prototypes…a felt one, above (he has a plastic spoon handle for a tail), and a bare-essentials flannel one, below.

Happy with the work, so far, and proud that he’s a homegrown softie—based on nothing more than an Australian bird identification guide—and not a mutant of craft book and internet patterns. Mine, he’s mine…and I am in love with the little fella, all ready. :)

The Dough has Risen! Praise The Lard…

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mmmm doughnut ...

mmmm doughnut...by bunchofpants

Mmm…mmm…sacrelicious!

It’s The Day of The Donut! Rejoice!

I like The Day of The Donut (even though they misspelled doughnut) because it’s neither religious nor patriotic, the dogma is simple to digest, the subject is a fairly lovable character that is nice to smell and pretty to look at (though I wouldn’t really eat more than one doughnut per year—on The Day of Donut, of course—because it is such a noxious little bundle of trans fats, refined low GI carbohydrates,  and artificial thises, E-number thatses).

Anyway, they remind me of being 16, and of summer remedial classes (because I had flunked Chemistry) at the notorious St. Joseph’s College on España Avenue. I lived on Coke, doughnuts and Marlboros that summer. Remarkably, I was a skinny, sassy, defiant thing. *sigh* AND I came to love Chemistry.

I was inspired by these memories to commemorate the doughnut in a calorie-free felt version. In fact, I made two.

I rushed the first one in a flurry of excitement (impulsive, really) and since I didn’t quite know what I wanted, made an insipid doughnut. Vanilla and strawberry? AckArghOhGods! Not a pantywaist?!

The next one, I made with a stronger, clearer vision (i.e. chocolate) and with more intent (to document the steps for a quick tutorial, which you’ll find on from Hell to Breakfast.)

They’re quick to do (good lap project for a few hours in the afternoon), can be tarted up and decorated to look as patisserie-fancy as you please, and felt (yes, even acrylic felt) is a beauty to stitch with…it hides all your stitches in fluff. It doesn’t fray. You don’t need to leave seam margins, sew things inside-out, clip the seams and turns…none of that. And it stretches a bit when you stuff it, so those puckers and wrinkles you accidentally made vanish.

Day of the Donut 4: "We DEMAND it!"Now get out there, and show those doughnuts some love today!

Brown paper (mystery) packages tied up with string…

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I made this for Wee Willow…she’s a little dumpling of a girl, not quite 1 year old yet, with a blog of her own and a crafty, creative mama.  A year ago Willow’s mum asked each of her friends to make a creative, displayable letter or number for Willow’s wall…both a great way to decorate a nursery, and teach the baby her letters and numbers at the same time.

I chose the letter Q, but then I also suggested some punctuation marks…the ampersand and the question mark being my personal favorites. Naturally I forgot all about the project until February rolled around, and I had just a month left to make the letter and punctuations I promised. Well, I’ve run out of time to make the ampersand (I’ll be out of town for a month starting Tuesday) but here’s the ‘?’

I was aiming for a “brown-paper-packages-tied-up-with-string” look…because what better way to illustrate the power of the question mark…of asking, wondering, imagining, but not knowing…than a parcel with your name on it, that you aren’t allowed to open? (Well, if she does open it, she’ll find the empty box that my external hard drive came in…)

I wrapped the box in high-loft quilt batting, holding things in place with a few tacking stitches. Then I covered it in brown linen, hand-stitching all the seams and hems. Folded the ends the way you would a paper-covered parcel, and stitched the flaps down.

I wrapped the hempen string around the parcel, pulling tight to make the parcel bulge a little around the string. Stitched the hemp string down in several places with linen thread, front and back, to discourage Willow from slipping the strings off and trying to get into the parcel.

Made a postage stamp with a piece of painted artist’s canvas, blanket stitched to a piece of white felt that I later trimmed with pinking shears. Stitched the stamp down to the parcel with little tacking stitches, and used a permanent marker to draw the cancellation stamp and wavy lines.

Cut a felt question mark and stitched this down the same way, using tiny stitches in toning thread. Admiteddly got sloppy in the end and wrote “Handle With Curiosity” by hand, when I really should have made a proper cut stencil using a good, industrial-looking font, and screen-printed or stenciled it on. I was pressed for time. Next time I do something like this I’ll take more care with such details.

Finally, wrote Willow’s name on the front of the parcel in gold dimensional paint…still wet in these pictures, I had to snap the photos on the same day because today I had to take it over to Christine’s place.

So much fun to do, and just one afternoon’s worth of work (faster if you use a sewing machine, and don’t dawdle and boogie around the room to 80s music and drink gallons of black coffee, like I did when I made this)

The ampersand will have to wait till I get back to Darwin in April…

Committing to 15 Projects

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This picks up where the last post, Michael Nobbs Takes 20 Minutes a Day, left off. The simple idea is to:

….Pick something you’d like to achieve and publicly commit to doing it.

Then regularly (everyday if possible, but at least three or four times a week) work on your project for twenty minutes.

—Michael Nobbs | Sustainably Creative » Take the 20 minutes a day challenge.

Deciding to take this challenge up, I made a (rather long) list of things I’d like to work on, make, achieve, experience, do…and picked the first (or the most pressing) fifteen items on that list. I’m going to try and give each of these items 20 minutes,at least 3 or 4 days a week, and see if I can bring them all closer to the finish line at a roughly even rate, without neglecting any one of them.

15 Projects I am publicly commiting to doing...

1. Fill a sketchbook with drawings

2. Join a group and complete a 365 photo challenge

3. grow a lovely veggie and flower garden on the boat

4. “Random Acts of Crewelty” : Have An Exhibit in 2011

5. The Phat Quarter Swap: Movies!

6. Sew a Spool Bird: “Red Brocade Bird”

7. Sew at least one item with each of the patterns in my collection

8. Make a group of 15 journals using the Allium flower technique

9. Framed, embroidered pendants and jewelry

10. Read 10 books before the end of the year

11. Use up all my small canvases…paint lots of small paintings!

12. Write 4 poems

13. Craft a series of patchworked journals and mini quilts (20)

14. Craft 12 Bijou (miniature) books using existing materials

15. Complete the August Challenge on 750Words.com

Most of these projects are part of a bigger project, with its own blog, called From Hell to Breakfast…