Tuesday, June 19, 2012

In the brain room

Instead of spending time weaving last weekend, as was my intent Friday, the onus of my kitchen that drastically needed paint, etc. overcame me and I spent the weekend on that.  Just pain would have been a smallish thing, but the popcorn ceiling finish had to be removed, plus a wallpaper border, and the residue of glue under it.  I spent the whole day Saturday with prep, made 2 trips to Lowes.  It was a hellishly long day.  Sunday I painted.  It's all done now except the trim, and I'll wait a couple days to do the trim.  Right now I'm painting a microwave cabinet that suddenly looked really ghetto in that newly painted kitchen.

So, I didn't even touch the warp chains for my next project, which are lying over the back of the couch, and only stepped foot into the loom room to open windows for upstairs ventilation.  I did, however, spend time in the brain room.  I want to dye several warps this summer, and it always takes me a lot of thought time about what colors to use.  That means visualizing and then picking out dye colors.  I spend about as much time with this planning phase as I do with the painting phase.

So, I may get my new warp partially threaded this week.  I may not.  I'm in the brain room.


Sunday, June 10, 2012

The object of the past week's obsession


Although I have been weaving at least one tea towel a day, for the most part, my free hours have been taken up with this jacket.





As noted earlier, this is for my youngest son.  He's a musician and has a Reggae band in Denver, CO, and requested a neon green jacket for a big gig this summer.  You can probably tell just from that statement, and the above photo, that he is not bound by common fashion requirements.  I hope he'll be happy with it.  It's the bulk of his birthday gift.  (I'm pretty sure he doesn't read this blog).   I plan to ship it off this week.

It was supposed to have buttons, but any button I held up really cheapened it (I mean, really, it did, although it's not quite a high-end couture fabric, etc), so I decided to do away with buttons.  I can't tell you how glad I am to be done with it.  I feel like I can get back to concentrating on weaving!

I have ordered some 8/2 tencel.  I tried to find 10/2, but it appears to have gone out of existence.  I did reach one person on the East Coast who has some that he called defective because of weak spots and, if he can ever find it in the warehouse, I'll have a few pounds coming to me.  It's cheap and I need to see for myself if it's unsuitable for warps.  I thought I probably should go ahead and get some 8/2, though, so I can forge ahead on dye plans.

I want to paint another shawl warp, and probably a scarf warp, too.  I'll just have to sett the 8/2 so it will take 10/2 weft, since I still have a lot of colors in 10/2 tencel.  My goal is to resist buying more colors and get some of my stash woven up.  It's a shame 10/2 has gone by the wayside.  It's such a nice size for wearables. 

I'm nearly done with the blue striped tea towel warp.  That should be finished up early this week, and I'm planning another tea towel warp, this time in a miniature overshot pattern.  It will be my extensive sample warp for another blanket, if I end up liking the pattern enough.

And one more word on sewing, although I'm very glad to be done with the jacket project, I did learn an important thing.  I haven't done much sewing the past 10 years because a) it's slow and a time-eater b) my neck hurts if I go at it like I used to (few breaks).  I found that keeping the sessions at the machine to an hour or slightly over, then doing something else kept my neck pain free.  Yes, it's even slower,  but I'm not on a time line like when I was production weaving, and I could see the progress, and the pain free thing is huge.  So, I found a pattern for a tiered skirt online.  I'll have to see where that goes.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Thursday, June 7, 2012

And now, for something completely different

(to quote Monty Python.)  Although I am still weaving at least one tea towel a day on the blue striped warp, I am also sewing a jacket for my son.  He's a musician and has a big gig coming up the end of July.  He wants to look uber cool on stage and asked me to make him a neon green jacket.  As you may imagine, pure neon green isn't just jumping off the shelves in fabric stores, but I did find a batik type piece of quilt fabric that is neon green with little tan squiggly looking things on it. 

So, that's what I've been doing this week - sewing the neon jacket.  I'm a little over half way finished.  It's a very loose fitting jacket, since this is the only jacket pattern I have left, so I interfaced the cotton with an iron-on interfacing, and am also lining it with a cotton drapery lining fabric, which I happened to have already.  I made the shoulder pads.

I'll be happy when it's done, and it's not taxing my patience as much as I thought it would.  I sew for a couple hours and put it down - go pull weeds or something, and weave when I can.

I'm glad I still had this one pattern.  I've found it's getting difficult to find a pattern for things like a men's jacket.  The patterns I find are quite simplified skirts, dresses, blouses.  I wish I had kept more of my patterns. 

My mom talked about when she was growing up and how patterns were so rare.  She said if anyone in the community somehow got a pattern, it would make the rounds and everyone made a copy.   I hope it won't get to that again, but I'm not sure.  It's a shame to lose the art of sewing your own clothes. 

I'm still looking at overshot patterns, and thinking, and thinking.