A Miscellany

I've been tackling little projects here and there, all of them fun. Want to see?

#1. Barb's squares

These are the leftovers from the giant dye sample project. I plan to give them to my friend and fellow Fiber Jedi, Barb. She creates amazing art from 1" squares. Unless she calls and tells me her house is stuffed to the brim and she can't find her cats in an avalanche of fabric. What fiber geek in her right mind would ever say such a thing?!? None that I could think of....they'd lie about the cats and take the fabric!

#2. 'Batik' T shirts

This is a group of homeschool kids (and their moms) studying Indonesia. They wanted to do a batik project in 2 hours. We settled on corn dextrin dried with a heat gun. I ran into all kinds of technical problems with this project starting with the high demand for yellow dye. We began to thin the thickened dyes until everyone had enough to saturate their shirts. Then, error two, I brought the shirts home to batch in my cold basement. The thinned yellow came out so light that there was very little contrast between the resisted areas and the dyed areas. And the blue I was using turned out to be a mix containing much turquois dye--a notorious heat lover. For several shirts, I ended up resisting their designs again and re-painting. But! That's ancient history and don't they look happy?

And yes, I homeschool 3 kids. Why? Because I'm a goof ball...and maybe a masochist. And I have too much free time Yeah, that's it.

No, actually, my eldest (the one-hair-per-armpit teenager) is an 'alternative thinker' of the highest order. Gee....wonder where he gets it? I know he'll have to face the real world soon and I want his self esteem and confidence to be completely intact before he meets some prof or boss who tries to tell him how to think. Ask me how I know this. This is the kid who hated sewing until I showed him how to free-motion embroider. Now he has his own thread collection. And he's become a fine tie dyer.

Whoa! Back on track here.....

#3. My Denim Wong-Singh-Jones Buddha Baby Skirt

It's been a while since I've done garment sewing for myself. A new company called Hot Patterns inspired me to make this. So far, I can say that I love their patterns! The designs are fashion forward, well drafted, and the instructions were helpful without being insulting to my skills or my brain.

The skirt closes with vintage brass buttons from my Grandma's stash:


And most of the internal seams were mock felled. The facing and skirt flange were serged and topstitched:


The sample garment:

Made from some fabric that took a left turn in the dye pots. It probably wasn't mercerized and is not worth overdying. I could've used muslin, but then what nut would waste perfectly undyed muslin on a test garment?