Use color – Daily Fiber

F.O. Friday – Sewing

Posted on September 3, 2021 by Laura Kate

This week I got all ambitious to make some pants for L.L. I haven’t sewn clothes in years and years. But I wanted to respond to my daughter’s righteous indignation on the options provided by the clothing industry for little girls shorts. She complained that every pair she found were tight and very short – effectively sexualizing toddler girls. “Boy and girl shapes at this age all identical, yet the boy shorts are loose, comfortable and several inches longer than the girls.

She ended up purchasing boy shorts for her daughter.

So I wanted to make a fun, colorful garment that I knew LL would enjoy wearing.

As a maker, I also had the goal of using materials that I have on hand.

In the end, I did purchase a pattern, since I don’t have knowledge or skill in pattern-making.

I chose this one, because. along with the pants, it provided patterns for tops and dresses and sizes up to 4 – leaving the door open for me to make additional items of clothing in the near future.

Here’s the crazy fabric I chose.

It is a sturdy 100% cotton, leftover from a valance I made for my laundry room window. How about those zig-zags!

To challenge myself, I decided to match the zig-zag lines in the hems.

Here they are, all finished this morning.

Construction details I added were faced hems and a cotton jersey casing for the elastic at the waist.

I was happy that the fabric includes some of Lu’s favorite colors: blue, pink and green. I’ll bet that she already has several T-shirts to match.

quilting

Yesterday’s Work

Posted on December 11, 2020December 11, 2020 by Laura Kate

In this post, I am continuing work on the Animal Friends quilt project. Yesterday afternoon was occupied with sewing together many strips that I have cut. They were sewn into two groups:

I also made another block. This one features a cat sitting in the hayloft of a barn.

For the weekend, I will continue making blocks by grabbing an animal square and a strip set randomly, then doing my best to make blocks that amuse me.

I think this will be a good activity for what may be a cold and (possibly) snowy weekend.

quilting, sewing

Springtime and Sorting

Posted on April 28, 2020 by Laura Kate

It’s been heart-breakingly beautiful outside over the past several days. The weather forecast for today predicts extreme thunderstorms. So I thought I would memorialize some of the garden’s spring perennials. They are so lovely, and their day in the sun is so short every year. Here are a select few.

Columbines
Peonies in front of Lorapetelum
Solomon’s Seal

Yesterday I finished sewing the last of three quilted buckets. This project is meant to yield a system for organizing and storing fabrics. While my stash is not large, it is somewhat unweildy for its size.

**Three buckets holding fat quarter to one yard sized pieces.**

That leaves the scraps. After a year of working with fiber, I have a much better idea of how I tend to use fabric in my projects. I particularly like using scraps in little strips to make small art quilts. Consequently I have become very reluctant to throw any of them away. Resulting in this:

Sorted by color family, they are even more beautiful and precious to me. Like the colorful spring growth only more enduring.

So I still don’t have a useable system for keeping this hoard in order, under control, and yet easily accessible. Reluctantly, I will be putting these gems back into the shoeboxes. Suggestions are encouraged. How do you keep your stash sorted?

weaving

Another Friday, Another Finished Object

Posted on April 17, 2020 by Laura Kate

This is the little weaving that I had started as an example for my fiber arts students. A few weeks ago, I was cataloging a list of my unfinished objects. Spying it lying around, I realized that I needed to count it as one of the dirty dozen UFOs.

https://dailyfiberfun.wordpress.com/2020/04/02/omg-ufoooooooossss/

Today I can announce that this weaving has moved to the finished pile. After working to the top of the warp, I cut off the yarn and worked the loose ends into the back of the weaving. There was still a lot of looseness on all four edges of the piece. I decided to machine stitch around the sides. After that, I slipped the top and bottom loops onto a pair of knitting needles and considered it done.

I call it Blue-Orange Duet.

**Image showing machine finished edges.**

Mulling about what to do with it…….. Hm, I noticed that the weaving’s colors worked very nicely with my origami installation piece on the east wall of the studio.

https://dailyfiberfun.wordpress.com/2019/05/18/paper-week-finale/

So up it went. It looks quite at home amid the pinwheels and the birds. Sort of like a punctuation point, a period at the end of a sentence.

Welcome to the studio, Blue-Orange Duet. Make yourself at home.

knitting

Weaver’s Square Vest Reveal

Posted on March 17, 2020March 22, 2020 by Laura Kate

Completing the front of the vest didn’t take very long. I chose to use a 1 by 2 rib which matched the edge rib of the vest back. The front hem carries on the same stitch and colors of the back hem – brown with a purple stripe – to provide more unity to the garment. The neckline is a wide V and the button placket is garter stitch. The only hiccup I encountered was that the garter rows proved to be tighter than the rib rows, (naturally) and I had to throw in a few short rows to compensate. Here are the front pieces on the blocking mats.