Kaffe Fassett on the Radio
I was just listening to Kaffe Fassett on Radio 4’s Midweek, talking about colour, fabric, yarn and his exhibition, and how the British climate is perfect for staying indoors and getting on with your craft.
The first piece of fabric I bought for myself, for my first ever project with my new sewing machine (a cushion cover) was a Kaffe Fassett, and I have such a clear memory of it even though it was long worn out by our various elbows, heads and bums. Amazing how colour can imprint itself like that.
If you want to listen again, or subscribe to the programme’s podcast, you can do it from Midweek’s homepage. Although I think midweek is always interesting, you might not, so you can find Kaffe at the end of the show, about 30 minutes in.
You say cording, I say piping
I went out into the tipping rain yesterday for something to make piping from, and gravitated to V V Rouleaux, thinking I would pick up some of their piping tape and save myself a whole heap of trouble. It wouldn’t have been very interesting for you though, would it? Perhaps that’s why there were only four colours available, and none of them any good. So I bought this splendid satin ribbon instead, even though I knew it would be slippery to work with, and to be honest, it’s not bias cut so I’m really asking for trouble later, and may end up having to unpick and do this all again with something more suitable.
The things I do for you…Although it’s my bag, so technically it’s for me. I’ll call it a learning experience.
First thing first, measure out your cord – you need 108” or 3 yards, and fold it inside the ribbon, pinning as you go. This will take longer than you think because of the slippery nature of the ribbon – have a nice song on to hum along to so you won’t get cross.
Attach your zipper foot to your machine, and sew the cord into the ribbon by sewing a single line of straight stitch. You want to sew close enough so that the cord doesn’t start to slide out and can’t move around too much, but don’t sew right up to the cord. You don’t want a tight fit yet – you’ll do that when you attach it to the bag and you don’t want to see any stitching on the finished bag.
And here is the finished result – neat (mostly) and ready to attach. If you’re eager to know how to attach it then see Lisa’s whole and unabridged piping tutorial
In the meantime I’ll just admire how nice this looks next to the fabric, while worrying about possible screw ups when I come to finally sew it on.
The Button Jar Method
First of all, hello to anyone who’s here from U-Handblog – it’s so nice of Lisa to post about my ‘progress’, although in the last couple of days, it’s been hampered by having other work to do.
However daunting the whole bag might be, it gets easier if you break it into little tasks. I have one of those family diaries, with five blocks for each day, and I try to write some small task into each block, like ‘sew handles’ or ‘blog entry’. That way if I tick them off I’ll have made a bit of progress, instead of being overwhelmed because I don’t have six solid hours to sew in.
My next sophia bag task was ‘cut interfacing’. There’s a lot of cutting going on with this bag but interfacing is something you can’t ignore. I don’t have much time today so I turned to my trusty friend the button jar to help me.
I hate pinning and unpinning, and I figure that for interfacing it doesn’t much matter how precise your cutting is. Either you trim the excess, or any wobbles are inside the seams. Hopefully. Unless you wobble a lot. So much swifter to cut four top pieces on the fold this way, once again using the cut bottom edge of one piece as the top of the next.
The next task would be to ‘cut fleece’, and having a quick read through of the instructions I found that you’re meant to have a sandwich that goes ‘exterior fabric, interfacing, fusible fleece’. End. But my fleece is fusible on both sides, so I guess my next task more properly reads ‘cut fleece and more interfacing’, unless I want to fuse the whole thing to my ironing board. I could buy some single sided I suppose but I want to make use of what I have and not shop for the sake of it*.
*This is a lie. I love to shop for the sake of it, but it’s just been Christmas and the credit card must. stay. inside. the purse.
Hopefully your projects are proceeding faster than mine. Any and all time-saving tips are very gratefully received…
Equipment Love
I now own the holy trinity of rotary cutter, cutting mat and huge plastic ruler, the latter courtesy of Mr Joleo, who cunningly wrapped it up with a pair of pinking shears and then wrapped the lot in a towel before wrapping it in paper and putting it under the tree.
I’ll probably get over-excited about the pinking shears another time.
The big basket bags I make are, somewhat unsurprisingly, made from large pieces of fabric, and right up until fifteen minutes ago it’s always been such a faff to cut out, because I only had a 12” ruler. The list of big pieces that need to be cut is long (fabric for the shell, and for the lining, several kinds of interfacing) and I often find myself putting it off as long as I possibly can. Well, I did. But now my ruler is so big I don’t even need the pattern piece.
I can measure on the cutting mat and whizz right along with the cutter.
I’m so excited by it I actually want to cut something else out, which is unheard of. The right equipment really does make a difference – who knew?
Bonus question: what’s your favourite ‘can’t live without it now I’ve got it’ tool?
Less Mess
Is that a fabric stash I see? Neatly folded and inside a cupboard? all the sewing books lined up neatly too?
I must have fallen into the wrong life when I woke up this morning, because this one is definitely more tidy than my usual life. In my usual life cupboard doors are there to hide the mess I’ve hastily scraped off the floor because the vicar is coming.
(Or whoever, because the vicar never comes. I don’t even know if vicars do house calls anymore. Are there any vicars left?)
But this new arrangement of opening a cupboard and not having to catch what falls out is very pleasing. I might try it in the kitchen. While I’m there I may even cull the spice rack for out of date spices.
Wooo.
(The saddest part is that I really like organising stuff, even if I can’t be bothered to keep it that way. I honestly think I’m untidy so that I can tidy. I’m sick.)
In other housekeeping realms I decided I would add a link to my flickr page and in doing so managed to delete my links – never do geek stuff when you’ve had too much wine – and so they’re back but I cannot for the life of me get them to look any better right now, so please accept my apologies. (Yes, I know..typepad, I should have… I know…but I’ve got the domain and it’s all set up and I will not give in to technology.)
Also for people who subscribe with bloglines I’m experimenting with using an excerpt, because it doesn’t display my first image for silly reasons, but if it’s annoying to click through let me know and I’ll stop. I’ve recently started clicking through to real blogs again, because I like seeing how people present themselves and, as Florence said once, it is a shame not to see all the colours and all the little extras. I was feeling homogenised by the starkness of the interface, and I don’t think crafters’ blogs really fit into the category ‘stark’.
Enjoy the last day of the year tomorrow folks!
Handmade is Always Best
Husbands are great. I can say that with confidence, despite only having had one for all of three weeks.
Before Christmas he insisted I leave the house for a few hours so that he could prepare my presents. That’s the sort of request I have no problem with. What I didn’t understand was that he was making my present, with his own hands. Not only that, but he was making something I’d shown him six months earlier and then forgotten about: a thread holder for the wall.
I love it.
It has forty nails in it, each one carefully placed, hammered in and bent to the right angle. It’s edged with some left over batten from when we repaired all of our sash windows. And best of all, he backed it with a terrible shirt he owns that I’ve always hated. Two gifts in one ;)
I was reading Manda’s post about giving handmade this morning and realised that Isaac had the same anxiety as he gave it to me. But there was really no need – I can feel every ounce of thought and love that went into it. I feel very lucky indeed.
She hums along again
Ah, my bialetti. Sweet little pot of darkest brown liquid joy. I think I can do anything as long as I have coffee. Back in the summer my friend gave me an old Krups espresso machine and it became something of a morning ritual to heat up the milk, fill up the tank and have lovely espresso punched out into a cup in mere seconds. Then it broke and so did my heart. I’ve had to use the stove top pot ever since but it’s not quite the same, nor, crucially, as fast.
But it doesn’t matter so much when it’s Sunday. I cranked myself out of bed this morning and set to with my cutting implements until i had this lovely pile of stuff. Fabric and interlinings ahoy, enough for three Tinas. (That’s the name of the bag I’m making, and also my friend, and yes the two are connected. Her mum is Finnish and chose the name Tina because apparently in Finland it’s a very classy name, but she says that she hadn’t realised that in England it’s a name only given to ‘barmaids and dogs’. Not a classification I would have made but Tina’s mum is very decided about it. I’ve digressed.)
Strangely, although I hate the cutting out, I love the ironing part, and I detest ironing at all other times. It was when I realised that you can do an awful lot of your sewing with the iron and make things sooo much easier for yourself with some sharp creases that it began to become pleasurable, so today I took a good couple of hours over it. Nothing to do with the fact that I had put Northanger Abbey on the TV while I did it. No, nothing to do with that.
Which leads us to this. Which is a wip. And it’s been so long since this place had a wip you must have decided that I did not intend to have one ever again. But there it is. Shell complete, tab complete, clippy line complete, pocket almost there. I decided to stop at this point because I was tired and if I try to put it together when I’m tired the seam ripper becomes my best friend, and that would have been altogether too much for a Sunday evening. So it’s to bed with me and back to this in the morning. Nice to have the old girl humming along at last.
Really Excellent Swearing
Would you believe I’m ill again? I know – it’s so unfair. I spent yesterday in bed mostly, sleeping fitfully and doing what my mother calls ‘sweating it out’, which is as horrendous as it sounds. My throat is swollen to the point of not being able to swallow so I can’t even medicate with cake. That’s really unfair.
<room left here …
…for your own favourite swearing>
Consequently I didn’t get any cutting out done, let alone any sewing. And Christmas advances. Is it time for mad panicked laughter? I think so.
hahahaHAHAHAHA
haha
ha
hooo.
In the meantime why not amuse yourself, as I have been, with other people’s photos on Square America. I especially enjoyed some of the very sinister St Nicks, and this lady’s fabulous hair, which is almost taller than her dainty tree.
Fabric from Purl
Maybe it was a shame that I only got to visit one fabric shop in New York, but to be fair that wasn’t really why we were there. But I made sure we made it to Purl Patchwork, which is on a lovely, lovely street in Soho, with a great sandwich shop and bakery just a few doors down – I had the most delicious chicken sandwich from there and the two shops combined make Sullivan Street a must go destination next time I go. (Oh yes, I’ll be back.) One of the nicest things was seeing the colour-wheel quilt from Last-minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts
Isaac turned out to be an excellent companion for fabric shopping (who knew?), tirelessly pulling down fabric after fabric, and saying ‘what about this one?’. He loved it, which is just as well, since it was his wallet getting an airing. I think that in the end I was quite restrained, don’t you? I could easily have come back with twice this amount, especially considering the exchange rate and the just general ‘cheaper than the UK’ vibe.
I have to take some of it out today for someone to choose fabric for a bag, and I have an inkling they will choose this lovely red fabric on the top here. If that’s the case I might have to order another half yard for myself because I love it. In fact I love the whole bundle as it is, tied up with string so it’s going to be difficult to take it out at all.
My plan is to pre-wash the lot (!) and then do more detailed photos as I put it away, but it looked too delicious piled up in a rainbow not to take a photo.
P.S. Thank you all for your kind wishes and congratulations – we were both very touched that you took the time to say so.
Like a new pack of felt tip pens
Silk dupion is one of my favourite fabrics. I love the slight roughness in its texture, how it is allowed to be less than perfectly smooth, unpolished. Human. And I love linen too, how unforgiving it is and what a memory it has for creases, and at the same time how soft it is and how it flows over your skin like water.
My love for lining up fabric in different piles and combinations makes me think of getting a new pack of felt tip pens. I loved to take them out and mess them around, putting yellows next to purples, and purples next to oranges. But then when I put them back in the pack I had to grade them by colour. It just looked better that way.
Fabric adds the element of texture to colour, and so it’s even more fun to take it out of your stash every now and then and mess it around. Is it any wonder we can’t put it down? Or stop looking for it on the internet?
I found a UK source for Freshcut, the line from Heather Bailey. (We all know Heather, I’m sure.) I’d only seen it as Fat Quarters on eBay until now, and while I do like the odd fat quarter there isn’t enough to satisfy a bag maker.
I also found, in a search for a Kona Bay fabric I love, this Lovely Swiss shop (at least I think it’s Swiss). Lots and lots and lots of fabric, some of which I’ve only ever seen in US shops, but if you want to order from closer to home then this might be the one for you. (But no, they didn’t have the fabric I was searching for, sadly…
