Love is love is love

I've been running around like the proverbial poultry sans noggin, trying to keep up with the slings and arrows of life with mixed success.

In short, one of the cars died and I'm playing taxi more than usual. It's exhausting.

I did get this done, though, and it was well-received by the eldest child. I feel pretty good about finishing before she actually went to college and I hope it keeps her warm for many, many years. Now it's her little sister's turn and I've only got a few blocks done. I'm hoping that one doesn't take fifteen years, but I don't think it will. I have a pretty good finishing strategy now that mainly involves actually working on it.

Love is love is love...

I couldn't have said it better.

Next up is a short story I'm working on about a boy and his first crush. My plan is to offer it for a buck or two and send the proceeds to PFLAG because I don't have much to give, but I have art to share. It's being tweaked and edited and I have to figure out how to get it to you, but it's nearly done.

Piecing April: Quarter Square Triangles

So, our dryer broke. We have a clothesline, which is great! And I really enjoy hanging laundry up on the line because I get to be in the sunshine and feel productive at the same time. I like folding and putting away laundry somewhat less than I enjoy hanging it, but it's not a terrible thing. Unfortunately, because Husband is generally the one who takes care of the majority of the laundry duties and those have now fallen to me, that means a serious cut into my blogging and crafting time so that I can make sure everyone has clean shirts.

I did make time for a couple of blocks last week and worked on using the quarter square triangle. Like the HST, you do have to be aware of bias distortion and a walking foot would be very, very useful for avoiding it (alas, I still haven't one). Unlike the HST, the bias is on the right angle and not on the hypotenuse. Confused? Here's a diagram:

I hope that clears up the geometry a bit. This means that the triangles will be right triangles like the HST, but that they will also behave a little differently when you're sewing them.

This week, I did some Ohio Stars:

I'm hoping to do some Isosceles triangles this week, if I don't get buried under the laundry again.

Wish me luck.

Piecing April: Half Square Triangles

Aaaah, the good ol' HST. It's easy to put together into a variety of patterns either by itself or with other shapes. It's a quilting standby and rightly so, being that the right triangle is fine upstanding citizen of the Pythagorean realm. 

I'm doing a quilt for Miss Bu, since her elder sister's is closer to completion and if I don't get started, I won't finish hers before she goes off to college. 

Sure, it seems like I have a lot of time now, but I thought that about Iris' quilt, too. Best get busy on it. 

She's a shining star.

For Iris, I decided on a rainbow quilt. Iris means rainbow, hence rainbow quilt. For Phoebe, which means "bright and shining," I'm doing stars. There's a lot of potential for using different techniques using star-themed blocks and one of the simplest is the HST.

The simplest HST block is the pinwheel, which to me looks like the rays of a sun. It can also be used as a component in other blocks, so I thought I'd get a little practice in on this.

Before I show you the other ones, I feel it's necessary to pause for a public service announcement:

Bias distortion is real. If you or a friend has experienced bias distortion, don't despair. There is a solution. 

When you are cutting HSTs, the sides that form the right angle are often on the grain and the cross-grain. That is to say that those cuts run more or less parallel to the vertical and horizontal threads that compose the fabric. Therefore, the long side will be on the bias. The bias is stretchy and goes all wonky (that's a technical term) when you stitch it, meaning that your squares will go off-square.

What I want to have to solve this problem is a walking foot. I do not have a walking foot. I do, however, have junk mail. A bit of paper under the seam keeps the feed dogs from stretching the fabric out and tears away easily. It's not an ideal solution, but it's better than nothing. Tear-away stabilizer would work fine too, I imagine, but I didn't have any of that, either.

This is the friendship star, which is just a 9-patch using HSTs and plain ol' squares. It has a satisfying star shape and is easy to assemble. The whole square is mean to be 9", finished, so 9 1/2" unfinished. Each of the smaller squares, then, is 3" finished and 3 1/2" unfinished. For the HSTs, make a square that's the desired finished width plus 7/8, and cut it corner to corner to make a triangle the correct size.

You can fancy it up with fabric choice and by changing up what you're doing with the smaller squares. 

I'm fond of the wee little mini-9-patches. This brown one was a practice piece and will become something that is yet to be determined. They might be large potholders or a table runner or something else. The fabrics were a recent gift from a friend (Thanks, Robbie!) and I'm super tickled to start using them with some of my old stash. 

The last one (below) is my favorite of the whole batch and I'm infinitely pleased with how it turned out. 

There are more HST blocks to be had, but for next week, I'm going to do some more difficult geometry. There might even be trapezoids; you don't know what could happen!

Embroidery March: Bonus Wrap-up Post!

March has an extra Thursday in it, so I thought I'd look back on this month and see how some of my attitudes and perceptions have changed about embroidery in general and to show you some progress I've made on the various projects for the month.

Freestyle will be my first love as far as embroidery goes. I'm getting better at satin stitch, which I previously hadn't made much use of, and at doing more with fewer colors and stitches, such as with the snowdrops hanky from earlier this month.

I love the freedom of it and the ability to have all the tools of embroidery at my disposal. A++, would go again.

Blackwork is limiting, not only because it's entirely black, but also because it's a counted-stitch method. It's the opposite of my preferred freestyle embroidery, but limiting my toolbox, as it were, allows me to focus on how the weight of the thread and the density of the pattern affects the look of the design. Where freestyle is more like painting, this is pen and ink.

As an extra added bonus, I get to play with repeating geometric designs, for which I have an unnatural fondness.

A++, would go again.


Previously, I thought cross-stitch to be one of the, er... lower forms of embroidery. I sort of have a bias against the creepy large-eyed children and schmoopy sayings that tend to be done up in cross-stitch. Those and the Thomas Kinkade style pictures have never really been the sort of thing I like to do.

My own design based on illustrations from old books? That I can do. I will admit to liking the design process better than the actual stitching, but I like the stitching much more when it's a design that doesn't make me want to barf.
B+, won't ever be my favorite, but I'm enjoying what I'm doing.

Whitework is seriously hard to photograph, but looks pretty bitchin' in person. There's just something about white-on-white that gives me heart palpitations. Because, like blackwork, my embroidery toolbox is much more limited, I can focus on a different element of the whole embroidery picture. In this case, it's the way texture is affected by the structure of the stitch. I suppose this would be more like relief sculpture than anything else because whitework makes use of light and shadow playing off of the three-dimensional stitches. I've opted to go for something more like Mountmellick embroidery first because cutwork makes me feel woozy. When I can manage it without fainting, I'll be able to make use of negative space, too. I'm not there yet, though.
A++, would go again.

Bonus:

I like seed stitch. You could do a whole piece in seeding and it would be like some kind of embroidery version of pointillism.

This piece is giving me fits, though. These shapes between the flower petals and the petals themselves are very uneven. I still haven't decided if I'm just going to roll with it or take it out in a fit of pique. It's having a cool-off period for now.


And so we have come to the end of the first quarter. I'm going to keep working on these (except for the blue thing, which is in time out), but we're going to look at some new stuff in the second quarter as I continue to try to get the da Vinci Disorder under control.

April will be for Quilt Piecing  and I wish it were more alliterative and clever, but hey, whaddya gonna do? We're going to make some quilt blocks is what. I have quilt-based aspirations that need a good swift kick in the pants.

After that, we'll be participating in Me-Made-May, sort of. Not officially. You can do that here. Mostly, I want to do a retrospective to see what I'm actually using of the things I make. It's also an excellent excuse to get caught up on some of the projects I've started in the first quarter. May also tends to be a little wackadoo for us, so I'll need a breather for sure.

Following Me-Made-May in June is the Outfit-a-long, hosted over here by Ms Lladybird. Again, I won't be officially alonging, but I'm going to sew something to wear that I'm actually going to wear, then I'm going to knit something to go with the something I sewed.

See you at Stitches!

February is for Finishing: Tidying Up Loose Ends

To be continued...

Out of 31 projects listed in my notebook at the beginning of the month, two were frogged, ten are still in progress, and seven finished, including the five posted here, a bit of mending I didn't bother to post about, and one project that I'll put up soonish. I have 3 1/2 stars out of the twelve I intend to make and almost 30/81 blocks quilted on Iris' quilt. That leaves twelve in the planning or idea stage, thus making a nice healthy queue for me to work on the rest of the year.

I also acquired another large WIP. Our dear neighbors right next to us are moving and were about to get rid of a half-finished shed that had been somewhat damaged by wind and weather. Industrious and frugal person that I am asked if we could have it. They kindly trucked it over to our house and in a couple of afternoons, I got so far as putting the roof on. It won't win any prizes for beauty, but mostly I'm just hoping for a dry place to put the lawnmower. I gave them a couple jars of jam from my personal stock as a thank you and farewell gift.

I liked them, their dog, and their cat very much and I shall miss them.

Of course, nineteen soft arts projects and a shed aren't enough from those who suffer from Da Vinci Disorder. All our lives we look away to the future, to the horizon. Never our minds on where we are. Hmm? What we are doing? Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not... these... um, things.

Oh, right. ::blush:: Ummm... I may have gotten carried away there for a minute.

I'm planning a star sampler quilt for wee Bu in blues and yellows, though I may throw in a bit of rainbow fabric from big sister's quilt, just for because.

If I don't get too distracted by quilt block patterns, I'll be working this week on Iris' quilt some more and on some of the projects that are nearer to finished. March is the Month of Embroidery, which is one of my absolute favorite arts to do, so it'll be a real treat for me to share some of that with you all.

February is for Finishing: Love the one you're with

Bentocat is much displeased

My week has been decidedly off-kilter.

The eldest child hasn't been feeling well and had to see the doc today. It's nothing serious, but it was helpful and good to visit the doctor.

But that's neither here nor there, except to say that it was important to put love and attention toward helping her feel better because that's what moms do.

This doesn't look much different, but as of now, I'm at 25/81 blocks quilted, so 30.86% and I feel like I'm picking up speed now that I'm closer to the edge.

I've finished another one of these and started yet another one in the silver yarn. I'm at 3/12 stars, which is 25%.

This week has been about loving the one I'm with. When I'm with the quilt, I try to think about how cozy and warm it is and how Iris is going to feel snuggling under it. I love it because I love her and it's all bright, happy colors.

I'm loving the stars just for the love of knitting and yarn itself. They're fiddly and difficult in places, but they're just so darn cheerful and it's really satisfying to see one finished and stuffed, ready to hang on a tree come December.

I have loved the needled arts since I was small and I wouldn't continue if I didn't still love it. February is for Finishing is an excellent opportunity to help me remember why I love what I've already started, which further feeds a desire to work on those over the shiny new ideas and projects. It's a good opportunity to narrow my focus and love the one I'm with.

Wishing you lots of love this week.

March isn't far off, and we'll be looking at different forms of embroidery. I might even do some cross-stitch, you guys. Brace yerself.

Gratuitous flower picture. These just bloomed today.

February is for Finishing: Just Keep Stitching

This:

is not a small project. As of today, I have 20/81 squares, plus some, quilted and a number of perforations on my left middle and index fingers. I seem to be picking up speed now that I have the use of a quilting hoop (thank you, Bekah) and a good rhythm going. Still, I have three quarters left to quilt, plus the binding and a little over two weeks left in the month. It's probable that I won't finish by March, but I'm going to give it the old college try.

I have a natural inclination toward sticktoitiveness, which is likely an extension of OCD. It's not just that I like to finish things, but rather that whatever malfunction in the brain prevents me from scrubbing my shower without going crazypants also comes up with universe-ending scenarios if things don't get finished. I have to finish.

Well, it's that and no little bit of non-crazypants stubbornness. I've often thought that sometimes the difference between greatness and mediocrity is just the willingness to stick with something to its completion.

Even with all that, I do get overwhelmed by very large projects. If I thought about the entire quilt, I'd feel crushed under the (cozy and warm) enormity of it, so I take it in chunks. What's in the hoop isn't much to do, really, so I do that.

This block, this length of thread, this square, or this stitch are all that I hold in my mind at one time. The rest is irrelevant for now.

Just keep stitching.

Just.

Keep.

Stitching.

And if all else fails, I take a break for a little while. 

February is for Finishing: Taking stock

As you have likely noticed, I've finished a whole whack of neglected projects in the past few days. February is for Finishing is a fine tradition here at House of M and something I've done with my two dearest friends, Bekah and Koren, for some years. Usually, it's knitted things, but this year, I wanted to look very honestly at all my soft arts projects and see if I couldn't get some things out of my sizable pile of projects in progress.

The first thing to do is to tidy up.

To the left and below are what my crafting areas looked like a couple of weeks ago. I don't generally like to show my messes, but these are the result of rampant creativity.

I have lots of ideas, lots of inspiration, and it all just kind of physically accumulates in these two spots.

Before February began, I made a concerted effort, not only to clean up, but to list every project in these piles so that I know what, exactly, I have going on.

I found my end table.

I've also discovered that I can actually put my coffee there and I can put my computer there when I want to use my sewing machine (off camera to the right is my desk where both computer and sewing machine sit).

My other desk is a fold-up number, which is super handy for a small space, but not when it's so full of stuff that you can't actually fold it up. 

Once that was done, I had a complete list of every project I'd started or gathered the materials for and ended up with thirty-one. The greater majority of those are only in the planning stage, but I'd gotten as far as collecting the materials for the job. One or two were only in the idea stage. 

Four, as you've likely seen, have been finished since the beginning of the month and two pairs of socks have been frogged to reclaim the needles and to start again at a later date. That leaves me with twenty-five total projects on the pile, approximately half of which are in progress. Following the tradition of the Annual Airing of the WiPs, they are as follows:

1. A 9-patch pastel quilt that has several blocks sewn, but not enough. 
2. Stjarna, by Karolina Eckerdal. My goal is an even dozen stars for purposes of Yule ornaments and I have two finished.
3. Laurelhurst by NW Foraged. This is the second hat in this pattern that I've made, the first was for 25000 tuques and this one is for me. I'm just to the bottom of the color work pattern.
4. The art jeans. You've seen me work on these off and on. I don't expect to finish any time soon. 
5. Ballet Bear's steeked cardi. This is an experiment that is no skin off my nose if it fails. It might take a couple of days to finish. I haven't steeked before and a tiny cardigan for a bear seems like the way to go for experimentation. It isn't wool, though, and may be doomed to failure.
6. Crocheted Bed Scarf, inspired by the architecture of Chicago. I've done a goodly stack of blocks, but have a fair amount of yarn that I want to put into still yet to go. I might make some progress this month, but don't plan to finish.
7. TARDIS bag, which is a lot of fiddly stitching, but will probably look awesome if I ever finish it. I probably won't get to it this month.
8. Blackwork Bird Pillow that I started last month during the Month of Mending. I'm well into the snowflake border and the center is sketched out
9. Two small blackwork samplers, which were started at the same time as the pillow. One is nearly done, the other sketched out.
10. White silk spinning. All but about an ounce has been spun up into singles. This has a high likelihood of getting finished since I like to spin a little just before bed if I have time.

That's not too bad of a list, really, and some of that is certainly to be worked on this month. I may even finish a couple of those things, but there is one final project that will be the focus of my efforts:

11. Iris' quilt. "I'll finish before she goes to college" is less funny when the child in question is in high school. As it stands, I have 16/81 blocks quilted, which works out to about 20%. 

It was deeply satisfying to knock off several FOs early in the month, but now that I've started back on this behemoth, that's going to slow down considerably. It's harder to take this one to work on during dance class, though, so several of the smaller projects have hope of getting finished before the month is out.

Good luck in your finishing endeavors this month, my fellow makers. By next week, I hope to have whittled down the list of WiPs even more and I'll share some pictoral updates on my progress. 

Month of Mending: Sashiko patches

Blackwork is really great for reinforcing fabric, but not so great for repairing holes. One of my favorite ways of doing that is with sashiko, a Japanese mending technique that's alternately referred to as embroidery and quilting. Unlike blackwork, sashiko was an art of impoverished people, developed from necessity. A poor farmer or fisherman's wife would recycle old clothes that had been worn to rags by cutting patches from the least worn parts and stitching them to worn parts of newer clothes. This was slow fashion before slow fashion was cool. In the Edo Period, sashiko was used to make protective coats for firemen and on Sado Island during WWII, some pretty hardcore ladies made sashiko coats to protect them as they carried logs down mountains on their backs¹.

Sashiko means "little stabs" and is usually done with light thread on dark fabric, generally indigo dyed cotton-- you know, like your jeans.

It really looks complicated, but it's only running stitch. There are a few rules about turning corners², but the mechanics of sashiko are really not at all difficult.

For these patches, I've used a fabric with a square pattern woven in so that I could "cheat" and make my lines and stitches even and on patterns that I've seen, each stitch is charted out for you. Honestly, I don't have time for all that and, I'd wager, neither did the mothers and wives in Japan. Neater stitches are, of course, more desirable, but that comes with practice.

Here's a pair of little Bu jeans that was torn after a fall on concrete. She had a scraped knee and some tears, but was otherwise fine. Her jeans were not so fine. The hole is about two inches wide and about an inch tall. The fabric on the other knee was week, so I decided to do matching knee patches.

She picked Spider-Man fabric for the patches, so I fussy-cut a couple of patches and found patterns that I thought would work well: Amime (net) and Higaki (cypress fence)³.

Designs were transferred to the patches, then pinned over the holes.

The knee with the hole got a smaller design and the knee with only weak fabric got the larger design, the rule of thumb being that more stitches means more reinforcement. I did my best to follow the rules for tidy corners and since the wrong side wouldn't be seen, I didn't worry about carrying the thread across the back. I worked from the middle to the edge as best as I could.

Instead of turning the edges under as I did with the jeans above, I decided to blanket stitch around the raw edge to keep it from raveling. I don't know how it's usually done, so this is experimental.


I used some bright blue DMC stranded cotton out of my stash and a regular embroidery needle. Sashiko needles are a thing, as is sashiko thread, but in the interest of economy (with a nod to those thrifty Japanese ladies), I used what I had.

The result seems sturdy so far, but we'll see how it holds up after some small person action and a wash or two. If my jeans are any indication, I think they'll be fine.

The best part of this repair was when Bu gasped and said, "You fixed them! Thanks, mom!" The whole operation was the work of two days (not constantly) and a happy girl made every minute worthwhile.

Next week will be darning and I've discovered some super fancy techniques that I haven't tried yet.

1. A little history on sashiko here
2. How to turn neat corners
3. A short tutorial and some patterns

Practicing Patience and Persistence

With the cleaning and painting of the eldest's room finally done, I've moved on to other things and those other things have mostly been quilting. There's really not much to see here, though I've quilted 14 blocks out of 81. That's 17.28% of the quilting done (nevermind the binding and finishing), but it's a fair bit more than I'd had done at the beginning of the year.

Like Iris' room, this is an exercise in patience and persistence. I've written a master's thesis and it was a daunting project that went very slowly at times, but I did finish. Certainly, I can finish a quilt.

Really, it's just a whole lot of the same thing over and over again, but the journey between here and arête oft traverses tedium. Slow progress is still progress, right?

It's getting to be too hot to quilt now, so it's time to move on to smaller projects for a few months. After having picked up quilting again I've already learned (or re-learned) that thimbles are not for the weak and that quilting hoops might be useful.

A couple random asides for this week:

• On Monday, I was on a local radio station with our interfaith group. It went surprisingly well.
• The eldest has once again expressed an interest to learn how to sew, but I remain skeptical. I mentioned that she wants to have learned how to sew and she seemed to think that sounded accurate.
• I started Couch to 5k again this week. So far, so good.
• My family is adorable and I'm keeping them. On Tuesday, Bu put a napkin on her head and said "I'M GOING TO SPAAAAAAAACE!" There was much silliness on Tuesday and everyone played along. 

I was going to find a quilting video for this week's technique, but I couldn't find a good one, so that will have to wait. This week is for practicing patience and persistence (and other virtues that start with the letter "P" like "punctuality").

I've also worked on:

• Leto in Knit Picks' Shadow and Misti Alpaca Lace 
• Easy Ribbed Legwarmers in Opal Polarlichter
• Brickless in Alisha Goes Around Tracks of Bison

A Passel of FOs

Gratuitous photo of spring flowers. 

I had almost forgotten what day it was and nearly put myself to bed without posting. It's been that kind of week and it's not been a bad week, just a busy and productive one. You see, it's spring break and I told Miss Fluffalo that I'd help her paint/organize/clean her room. This has been a long time coming and there has been a fair bit more angst about it than I really want to get into just now. When we got down to it, the actual painting and cleaning hasn't been that bad as far as cooperating with a teenager goes. Fluffalo has been diligent and hard-working, so she's been rewarded with frozen yogurt and will be with a trip to Goodwill later-- both to drop off stuff she no longer wants or needs and to look at fancy dresses just because.

I'm painting her sulking corner. I swear it was her idea.
(If I am very still, no one will see me.)

Her room still looks like a mess, but it's the mess of an organization project that's still underway. We'll get there and hopefully by the end of the day after this posts tomorrow (Thursday). Disney songs and a fair bit of mindfulness are the only thing getting me through this. I'll get to that in a little bit.

Last week, I had some FOs that I didn't post, so here they are:

This is Summer's Hanky, a commission work. I still need to pack it up and mail it out, but it's been washed and pressed and is now pretty much ready to go. This is hand-embroidered with various cotton and metallic threads on what was once one of my husband's work shirts. The 1/4" seams are also hand-sewn.
What I could have improved upon: I would have liked to have used a different stitch for the middle of the wing because the double herringbone made me go cross-eyed. I'd also liked to have done both wings at once instead of one and then the other. If I had to do it again, I'd try to make it more symmetrical.
What I did well: The hems are very neat and I'm very pleased with the color choices and the stitch choices overall. I like that the color isn't flat and how pairing different threads gave each layer of feathers a different look. Also, Miss Summer is happy with what she's seen so far and that's the biggest thing that matters to me. Overall, I like it and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

I've also finished a Paisley Fabulous Project Bag for Project Make that matches the DPN roll from late February. I'm very happy with this one, though I want to add a line of stitching through the middle of the casing at the top so that it looks nicer and closes more neatly.

It's actually reversible, but there's a big wide pocket that will just do better as an inside pocket than an outside pocket.

I loved using every single scrap of stash fabrics and I am absolutely in love with the red drawstrings and how they pick up on the red in the paisley. Because the green twill has a nap, the patchwork picks up light in different ways, depending on the direction of the fabric and which way you're looking at it. You can't really see that in the photo, but it really is very cool.

For this bag, I looked at some tote bags I really loved and figured out how the bottom was constructed. The lining tucks all the seams neatly away so that nothing is visible and the bottom of the bag is such that it will stand up with a couple skeins of yarn in it, though not completely on its own. This project was more about refining skills I already have than about learning new ones, but this particular construction is not one I've tried before.

And the Sheep of Unknown Provenance is finally finished! The left was dyed with privet berries and a few leaves and twigs. That's 4 skeins and 7.7oz of fingering weight, fractal spun using the natural colors of the fleece and then dyed. In person, the color is a rich bronze with a bit more warmth than the photo can convey. The right is 4 skeins and 8 oz of fingering weight, gradient spun. This one was too pretty to dye and so I've left it the color the Gods made it.

Because this one is also for Project Make, the making of it has taught me quite a bit: mordanting, dyeing, gradient spinning, fractal spinning, using a drum carder, patience, and persistence.

I'm also working on:

• Leto in Knit Picks' Shadow and Misti Alpaca Lace
• Genevieve's Tube Socks in Crystal Palace Maizy Print
• Iris' rainbow quilt
• A little something in TARDIS blue silk

Before I go, I want to leave you with This Week's Technique:

• Mindfulness of emotions.
  It's really hard for me to manage my emotions around cleaning and organization. There have been occasions, this week actually, where I have a complete and total meltdown about something that isn't clean or organized, particularly when it's a recurring or very large mess that I am not in control of. I have OCD and this is how it shows its face. I'm not "a little bit OCD" in the colloquial sense where I'm really neat and organized (I'm not, actually). I have to be very careful how I clean so that I don't binge-clean until I cause myself physical harm.
  
  That's a long set-up to say that anxiety feeds the compulsion and if I can manage the anxiety, I can manage the compulsions. The audio that follows is part of an introduction to meditation series from Audio Dharma and it's over an hour long, but this sort of thing has been very helpful to me and is worth a listen. This is the way I've been able to re-wire my brain so that I can keep my cool and prevent myself from tumbling into a full-on binge clean or meltdown. I don't always do a great job of it, but my emotions are no longer the boss of me 90% of the time and I've been able to keep the OCD under control. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.