awayuq

in search of the center

What I've been playing with. A few weeks ago I got a very generous fabric package gift and have been longing to use some of the new prints. Finally this weekend I took a few hours to cut some pieces and practice eight-pointed stars. I am hand-piecing these; for some reason I just feel like it.

What do you see in the picture above? Do you see eight points that meet in the middle? I hope so. I think that's what you would think you see if these stars were on a quilt lying on a bed and you were taking in the room at a glance.

But really, those points don't precisely meet.

This is one of the better ones. On some of them the center points are jigged just slightly to one side or the other, and the center isn't a point, more like a region. This bothers me. I feel as if I should be able to do this exactly: my hand stitches are small, I am patient and careful, I'm willing to practice.

Initially I tried following the instructions in Jinny Beyer's book on making quilts by hand. She tells you what direction to sew the seams, and puts four pieces together into two halves, then sews the halves together. My halves are great, but when they get sewn together the centers shift no matter how I try. After several like that, I tried sewing the pieces together one after the other in a big ring. That wasn't so bad, though not appreciably different. Then I tried sewing from an outside edge to the center point and back again, which joins three pieces. Then again, from the outside edge to the center and back out again with one thread, joining one more piece to each side, making a five-wedge piece. I sewed the last three wedges together in the same way as the first three, then inset that piece into the five-wedge one. (This is a rushed description I know). I like the symmetry of this method, but I can't honestly say that it significantly improved the center.

So I'm not sure what to do. Keep practicing, I guess. Meanwhile I am *loving* playing with this fabric and making up different colored stars. If I collect enough of them for, say, a lap quilt, I think I will make this the background

The colors are more subdued than I usually use and a bit more appropriate for fall.

Though I am not thinking about f*ll. Not at all. It's not time for autumn. There are still two more months of summer, right?

recent rosettes

35 completed out of 90+.

I'm getting anxious to join some rosettes together, in part so I can liberate some of the paper pieces instead of cutting more, in part to see how it looks, in part to begin figuring out how much path fabric I need. Because this is a scrap quilt, my original plan was to make all the rosettes first, then lay them out in a pleasingly random way, and then join them all together. If I lay out only a portion of them, will it still be possible to keep balance in the overall quilt? If, for instance, I worked with one quarter at a time, and made a pleasing arrangment, would it still look good when the four quarters are joined? I'm worried that it won't; that there is something about being able to see the whole picture that is critical when arranging scrap pieces. But I don't know. Anyone else have thoughts on this problem? How do you do it?

Meanwhile, progress is slow on the State of the Studio quilt, but I'm starting to understand what quilting adds. There is enough area quilted now that I can begin to tell what the final result will be. I tried to capture it in the picture, but it is subtle so I don't know if it comes through. Maybe you can see the texture in the lighter parts, such as the parallel (kind of) lines in the sashing.

The only things I am marking are the circles in the sashing joins and the occasional diagonal. The rest is done by eye and so far it seems to be working. I've been looking at a lot of quilts recently, on blogs, in magazines, on line, and there is some absolutely mind-boggling work out there. Often when I learn something new I get over-ambitious, and imagine myself becoming an expert in the field. (hah!) Modern quilts are truly inspiring, but I don't think I want to be an expert quilter. I don't mean that I wouldn't take the skills if they came with the wave of a wand--I mean that I don't want to make quilting the focus of my artistic expression. I want to make quilts, and I like using scraps of fabric I have around. I am getting more comfortable with the irregularity of my stitches. They may get better or they may not. I want to make quilts as well as I can, but they don't have to be perfect. This sounds too simple, but it actually takes a great load off my mind. There are too many other things in my life that need to be perfect, or close to. I want to make some quilts but I'd rather spend my perfecting energy on weaving or lace knitting.

Oh, the freedom of aiming for mediocrity. I enjoy the quilting stitch much more now.

Phew! that dress.

Huge sigh of relief. Now that the christening has come and gone, I can post pictures of the dress without fear of spoiling a surprise or somehow jinxing the creation. This was one of the most intense projects I've done in a long while, mostly because of the time pressure, but also because I've never done anything quite like it, so I was improvising most of the way! Of course I didn't want to tell anyone that before it was done. Two days of full time intense sewing, and then a bunch more handwork at my Mom's house. In case you ever want to do something like this, here's what I did, and my suggestions on what notto do:

First I cut rectangles slightly larger than the front yoke and sleeve pieces, and made the tucks and added the insertion. This is the front yoke piece. I did the insertion by stitching it down with very small stitches, then very carefully clipping the fabric behind, turning it back and stitching again. If I do this again, I won't use this technique with insertion this small; it is only 3/8 of an inch wide, leaving very little to turn back and stitch. Would work fine with something 3/4 inch or wider though. The sleeve pieces echo the front ornamentation

After the embellishment, I cut the yoke and sleeve pieces.

The back yoke is plain. the banded pieces on top of the sleeves are beading insertion sewed between entreduex for the cuffs. The same thing is at the bottom of the yoke.

I almost didn't order entreduex and that would have been a big mistake, even though I almost went crazy trying to zigzag into each hole. The entreduex adds daintiness and stability. I used it in all the major seams--yoke to skirt, sleeves to armholes, sleeves to cuffs, neck trim. It helps a lot. Do use entreduex.

I originally planned the skirt to echo the bodice, with tucks and rows of insertion

Not shown in this picture is the fact that I panicked when I read the pattern instructions. The pattern as written required a skirt more than 60 inches around! I had no idea so much fabric was needed for a baby dress! Take this as a lesson: procure the pattern first if at all possible, or order more fabric than you think you need. Three yards for a baby dress and slip, really. Improvisation... I decided she'd have to do with just one fabric width, luckily the batiste was 54" wide. I don't think anyone noticed a few inches less around. That wasn't the end of skirt troubles though. For some reason, the first batch of tucks turned out fine, but the second set--ugh! I couldn't believe my sewing was so uneven! I decided to rip them out. The lesson here is to make all your tucks in the same direction. I tried to do one set of four starting at the top and measuring down, then the second set making the bottom tuck first and measuring up. The number of ways in which this can go wrong would be boring to list--just trust me, make all your tucks from one direction.

Avoid ripping if at all possible. The batiste is so fine, this could have been a real disaster. At this juncture, I am almost at the end of day 1 of sewing, still pretty stressed, and though I knew I couldn't rest if I didn't do it right, I was scared that I'd tear the fabric with the seam ripper or make some other dreadful mistake impossible to undo. I was at this point when my sister in law called to see how it was going. I was a bit abstracted, but she is no fool!
"You're stressed, I can tell," she said.
"No, it's really fine," I replied. "It's going ok, really."
"If it's too much, I can totally buy something," she suggested.
"Oh no!" I exclaimed before I could stop myself. "Don't buy something now, after all this work!"
She was very nice about it and didn't push me or anything. Thank you sister in law for being so trusting and patient. I redid the tucks...

But the next morning I still wasn't happy with them. I have no pictures of this part. I was running out of fabric, but the tucks were really, really bothering me. Also the small insertion--remember I said how hard it was to trim between two rows of stitching 3/8" apart? And the beading didn't have entredeux, so it didn't match the yoke and sleeves. Middle of the second day, I decide to do the skirt over. I didn't have enough fabric to start from scratch, so I cut off the part of the skirt I'd embellished, and cut strips for the tucked portions. (Note to self: next time you cut something off, no need to slice right through the lace, it actually might have been saved for another project). After making larger, even tucks on the fabric strips, I joined the skirt together by sewing the original skirt bottom to insertion, then insertion to tucked fabric, to entredeux-edged beading, to another tucked strip, to another strip of insertion and finally to the original skirt top. Phew. Writing it out like this makes me realize what a disaster this could have been. It was a heads down, no room for error moment. Did I mention huge sigh of relief? (the skirt is slightly smaller at the bottom than at the top--don't tell! I don't think anyone will notice!)

After that, things went pretty smoothly. Skirt joined to bodice

starting to look like a garment. The sleeves were so cute!

and tiny! When all joined together, they made a real dress!

By this time I was out of white fabric, but luckily sister in law said it was ok to incorporate pink, so I made the slip out of pink batiste. It is very simple, just an A-line shape. I sewed the side seams with tiny french seams and then carefully packed dress, slip, and all extra fabric, lace and ribbons to take with me. I finished the handwork at my Mom's house in the days before the event. I put white lace and featherstitching on the bottom of the slip

and made tiny rolled hems around the top and armholes of the slip. I finished whipping lace onto the bottom hem of the dress and made buttonholes in the back yoke by hand. The dress turned out to be extremely difficult to photograph, partly because it is white, partly because it is so sheer. Here's the slip

and the dress over the slip

I used pink silk ribbon through the beading insertion on the skirt, sleeve cuffs, and at the bottom of the yoke. The back is plain (I couldn't think of a good way to handle the ribbon at the yoke closure, so I just skipped it).

Mom got an archival storage box and acid-free tissue paper to wrap the gown in. I love wrapping presents, especially when it's something I've made that I'm happy with. In the bottom of the box I put a letter to my neice telling her about the materials and about the dress (printed on acid-free paper). Then several layers of tissue, then the slip carefully folded, and finally the dress itself.

Ahh.

I was still on edge until sister in law opened the box, but the reaction was most gratifying. She loved it. (Or if she didn't, she did a **** good job of faking it). And, much to my delight, she noticed the details--the tucks, the delicate entreduex at the seams, the featherstitching on the slip. She was most appreciative. Here are the proud parents with the baby before the ceremony

and I got to hold her afterwards briefly. By that time she was pretty unhappy at being passed around and doused with various substances, but at least I have this record of me and her and the dress I made.

It's an odd feeling sometimes, to invest significant energy and time in a project and then send it out into the world. I think that my brother and sister in law have every intention of keeping the dress, but I also know that things can happen; once you give something away, there is no guarantee that it will be stored as you would store it, or valued as you would value it. Still I like to imagine that this dress will survive and that it will be rediscovered someday--maybe in twenty years, maybe in two hundred years--and that even if it is discovered by someone unrelated to me, they will look at it and know it was made with great love.

Welcome to the world Lily Jane, I am so glad I could make this dress for you.