For the textile lovers

I picked up a couple Kuba raffia textiles last weekend at an African market. These textiles are from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and are only 5-6 years old. I have admired the striking designs used to weave these textiles for a few years now, so I'm pleased to be able to admire them from close-up, as much as I want. I chose two that had some really intricate designs and a lovely asymmetry. I'm sure they'll be even more striking when I find a place to display them (i.e. not on my carpeted floor!)


One of the things I particularly love about Kuba weaving is the pile weaving, which I hope you can see here in this detail shot. The contrast between the colors, and the flat and pile woven sections is just great!

If you want to see more impressive Kuba textiles, try here, or here. Enjoy!

Old vintage, new vintage

I picked up a folding knitting basket a couple weeks ago at a thrift store for $3. The original fabric had a certain vintage charm to it, but it was torn and a bit overpowering with its orange and lime green theme. I took it apart, made a game plan for recovering it, and chose to use some of the lovely vintage fabrics I've picked up recently. For the outside, the "Harwood Steiger" linen I bought at a Tucson vintage mall. I just googled his name and learned that he hand screen printed fabric in his Tubac, Arizona studio in the 1970s. For some other examples of his work, click here, here, and here. For the lining, I used some cream colored linen I found at an estate sale.


I'm really happy with how it turned out. It was a little tricky, and did involve some hand stitching. I'm sure it would be easier if the frame were disassembled first!

Priorities

I've spent the past couple days scouring garage sales, estate sales, and second hand stores for furniture for my new place. In typical form, I didn't find anything on my list, but I did find some nice vintage fabric! I think these might all be linen. On the left is a decorator weight vintage print, then some chenille embellished valances, and finally a gorgeous and simple linen with a nice sheen to the surface. They will be the perfect size for small projects.

Thrift score

While perusing the local thrift stores for clothes to bring on my upcoming summer trip, I happened to find two pieces of Kanga fabric from Kenya for 99 cents each! The other wasn't quite my style, with large overlapping red and purple polka dots, but I did buy this green and yellow one. In trying to remember the name of this type of textile, I happened to find some examples of Obama Kanga. Pretty cool.

A good evening

I came home after work to find a surprise 6.5 inch zucchini growing in my garden! They had all been pretty tiny until this one. I promptly cut it off the plant, sauteed it up, and ate my first home-grown zucchini! It sure was good.

What a beaut!

Since I'm starting to think about packing my place up, I took a moment to look through my fabric stash and pick out fabric for my potential second quilt. It's an assortment that includes mostly clothing or scraps left over from making clothing. I've also thrown in two vintage pillow cases and several items of clothing I purchased in India. I'm not sold on including the darkest blue fabric (it's my favorite!) but over all I think this combination of blues, yellows and greens might be nice.

Any thoughts?

I'm currently thinking either of a whirlygig or string quilt. Though I'm open to any awesome pattern suggestions you've seen around lately.

Stencils take two

We tried out the freezer paper stencil idea on knits last week, with success! This time we cut out the stencil using mylar (thin but sturdy plastic material) so that it could be reused. The drawback to mylar is that it won't adhere to the fabric. I used a bit of glue stick to tack it down, and then was as careful as I could be to avoid getting paint under the edges of the stencil. I also learned that you can use scotch tape to add in little details, like the eye on this 'animal.' The lettering and word bubble were hand painted since stenciling thin lines is kind of a pain. Working on knits is not as nice as woven fabric because it tends to warp more with the moisture in the paint, and the paint stiffened the fabric more than the knit. All in all, a fun project and the recipient of the t-shirt was very pleased.

Box bag

I completed my first box bag today. You can make your own by using the tutorial at Dragon[knit]fly, and the helpful suggestions at Twenty acres. It went pretty smoothly, though I managed to break two needles on the zipper (and nearly lost an eye in the process). I also got so caught up that I forgot to follow the directions and accidentally left out the handle. I made mine from a larger rectangle--16" x 20" with squares 2.5" on each side cut from the corners. I wanted to be able to fit my straight knitting needles inside. It's pretty large (11" x 5" x 5"), which would be great for a sweater-in-progress. I might need to make a smaller one for smaller projects too...

The fabric I used is vintage canvas that I found at an estate sale around Washington, DC a couple summers ago.

Ikat love

My good friend Sara emailed me this weekend to ask if I knew of any good sources for ikat fabric. Ikat seems to have gained a bit of a following lately. For those of you who aren't familiar, ikat is a type of resist-dyed weaving that originated in Indonesia. The warps and/or wefts are resist dyed with one or more colors prior to warping and weaving. It is quite an advanced weaving technique that can result in the most beautiful fabric.

I was lucky enough to see some ikat weavers in action two summers ago at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC. The picture below shows the resist dyed threads (not sure if these are warps or wefts, I'd guess warps?). I find it staggering to try to imagine how to create a particular pattern this way...


...let alone the skills it must take to get the design to actually line up properly while weaving:


I have no idea how she kept track of all those bobbins.

In my search this weekend I actually found quite a lot of fantastic ikat fabric. I'm sharing it with you so that I can hopefully inspire more of you to make something of ikat fabric, because I'm dying to see all of these in action.

From Batik Tambal, 100% cotton, made in India.

Mmm...madras ikat, from The Cotton Club.

Silk Shoi fabric from Uzbekistan, Uzbek Applied Arts

Cotton ikat, Uzbek Applied Arts (remarkably good price for 10 feet of fabric!)

More Silk Shoi fabric from Uzbekistan, Uzbek Applied Arts

I think I'm getting the hang of this

I've been in a sewing frenzy since returning from my holiday break, and I've made more progress on my sewing skills than the past couple years combined! Isn't it great when all of a sudden you finally start to get something?

This weekend I took a long wrap skirt that I bought in India and turned it into an adorable dress. The wrap skirt was perfectly nice, but I haven't worn it in years, as long skirts aren't really my thing, and wrap skirts make me nervous. It also had a prominent tear on the front that I did a terrible job mending. The fabric is this great handmade, hand printed fabric from a store called FabIndia. If you are ever in India, I'd highly recommend finding on of their stores. The fabric is beautiful, and the clothes they make are catered both to Indian and Western tastes.

The skirt, before.

As I mentioned before, I recently chose New Look 6824 as my 'it' dress. My idea was to really work on this one pattern to find the perfect fit. I started out by doing some pre-cutting work. I measured myself very carefully, then loosened the tape measure at each location to figure out how much ease I liked at each location. I made sure to move around during this process to get a good idea of the minimum ease necessary. I then took the tape measure to the pattern pieces and carefully calculated the finished garment measurements at the bust, waist, and hip for each size in my ballpark. This took a while, but was totally worth it. I ended up having to cobble together three different sizes at four locations, and added 5/8" to the length of the bodice. This clearly demonstrated to me that going by the finished bust measurement just won't cut it. I was a bit unsure of my frankenstein pattern adjustments, but honestly I couldn't be happier with the finished result:

New Look 6824 with straight skirt, no sleeves, and soft small cowl collar.
(Click any image to enlarge)

I think this dress came out so cute--it's very classy, yet has a certain vintage and lively quality to it. Also, I wanted to thank the nice ladies who left comments on my last dress post about invisible zippers. Although I've been using invisible zippers this whole time, I never knew I was installing them wrong. This goes to prove that it's always a good idea to show detailed shots of your shoddy work in public for others to comment on. Perhaps you'll learn something very very useful! I came across this wonderful invisible zipper tutorial, and as a result have the best looking zipper I've ever installed. I also experimented with making a full lining for this dress. It was very experimental, and worked better in some locations than in others, but I'm happy I did it. Perhaps if I read a bit more about linings I'll be able to improve this skill as well.

My sewing confidence is improving dramatically. I'm loving this.

Note to self

Make every future project in a delicious shade of Kaffe Fassett's Shot Cotton (seen above in Grass). The warp and weft are two different colors, which gives the fabric this gorgeous richness and variation. I love love love it. The color above was purchased for an upcoming top secret project. If this is any indication, it will likely be stunning.

More quilt talk

I'm still quilt scheming. Now that I've chosen a pattern, and come up with some general color ideas, now it's time to find the fabric. I'd like to stick with solids, but would like to throw in a few solids that have a very subtle pattern--like tonal stripes, or maybe a solid with different colored warps and wefts to give extra color depth. I'm fairly sure that I won't find much I like at the local box fabric stores, so I'm looking online. It's so hard to compare colors and really understand what you'll be getting. Just now I came up with a little helpful trick to compare colors from online fabrics. If you have a Mac, you probably have a great little application called Grab (I think there is something similar on PCs as well). This allows you to take a screen shot to save as a TIFF or JPEG, and you can also use it to capture a selection or window. I use this frequently when I want to remember a particular image for later inspiration. Today I used Grab to capture a selection of each fabric I was considering so that I could move them around and compare them to see how they might look in person.

Rockin' the details

I went to a great concert last night. It was at a very small venue, where you can easily stand right up at the stage, if that's what you're into. Plus, it is only 10 minutes from my new place, and parking is readily available. This sure beats driving to Philly!


Speaking of Philly, Dr. Dog is a great Philly band. They had a ton of energy last night. They're sound is modern indie rock with hints of Beatles harmonies and soul.


Delta Spirit was one of the opening acts. I didn't recognize their name, but I actually had heard this one song before. They were really good! I would definitely go to see them again.

I have this huge collection of scarves, shawls, sashes, etc. but very rarely do I ever use them. Yesterday, I tried on this blue button down shirt, which I bought because I loved the texture of the fabric. The fit made me feel a bit shlumpy though--it's on the baggy side. I was pretty proud of myself when I got the idea of using this sash from a dress I had made in Cameroon as a belt for this top. It gave my outfit a new point of interest, and also gave the shirt some waist definition. Here's a close-up of the faux batik African wax print fabric.

Convincing results

I think I've had a change of heart on this whole shawl business. I finished my Matilda shawl the other day, and I really like it! I used Filatura di Crosa Centolavaggi yarn held doubled on US 3 needles. It was a very easy pattern to follow, though ripping back to an occasional mistake was no fun at all. Lifeline yarns would be a good idea, but who has time to stop and put one in? I'd rather live fast and dangerously. [Ravelry link]


I'm back in the US after a summer of traveling, and have been settling into my new home in the Southwest. This week has involved a bit of unpacking, and a whole lot of weeding. Apparently the weeds in the desert can grow to 6-foot-tall thorny bushes in a matter of weeks. I've never had a garden before, but have always dreamed of growing vegetables. If I have any energy left after clearing the weeds I'd like to make that dream a reality! Luckily, it seems that it will be hot enough here to grow veggies year-round. I'm hoping to attend a workshop at a local farm next week on planting a winter garden--that should be a good start.


Among the things I unpacked were my fabric finds from Thailand and Australia. I bought a lovely plain-woven cotton and silk fabric (green), some very cheap cotton gingham, a black and white cotton canvas print (I thought this might be nice for some little pouches or something), a vintage fulled wool (perhaps a small purse?) and this great indigo-dyed resist printed hemp fabric from Thailand.


The hemp fabric is very skinny and very very long. It is made by the Hmong women, who would fold it into fine pleats and sew it to the bottom of their skirts:


I bought the green silk/cotton fabric after seeing this Kate Spade ad. I just love that ruffled neckline:


In other exciting news, I just bought cheap tickets to see a bunch of great music in the next two weeks: My Morning Jacket, Okkervil River, Dr. Dog, and Sea Wolf. There are a few others coming through town soon as well. It feels like I'm packing my entire summer into a few short weeks, since I missed most of it while in the Southern Hemisphere!

Resist dyed fabric

Oi! It's been a very long time since my last post. For those of you still in school, or who remember those days, you'll understand that the time between Thanksgiving and the Winter holidays is difficult. Luckily, the end is in sight! I finished my independent study on resist dyeing techniques, and have been putting my project binder together. It includes 55 pages filled with fabric swatches and library research on resist dyeing in Africa, India, Japan, and Indonesia. Last weekend I set up an indigo vat by myself for the first time. It took a little trial and error, but in the end I got good results for my starch resists. I found a very detailed indigo vat tutorial online here, for those of you who might like to try this someday. I would suggest setting it up outside or perhaps in a basement or garage. It's messy, and not something you want near anything you care about or might eat.

Here are a few images of some of the textiles I made:

Board clamped resist

Starch resisted king

Starch resisted elephant

I hope to make a triumphant return to sewing in January. I have this Burda dress on queue, as well as this Burda skirt. My Demi sweater is now almost half finished, and looking great!

Mmmm....fabric!

I just got this lovely fabric in the mail from Sheree! She really has an eye for fabric combinations. Check out her new store--especially if you live in Europe and like to support individuals rather than big fabric stores.

As for me, I've been terribly busy with school work--it's getting to that stressful time of year where many large projects are due. I haven't had any time for sewing--despite the several projects that are ready to be cut. Demi is progressing at the rate of several rows a day. I'm almost up to the arm shaping on the back piece. Perhaps I'll finish in February or so...

In the mean time, I'm still working on resist dyeing techniques. I haven't photographed much of my shibori yet (some came out quite nicely). But here is the starch resist pattern I was printing this weekend. It's a Nigerian king taken from a lovely book on African Textiles. I hope to get an indigo vat going next weekend.

Laboratory refashion and other creative outlets

Things have been getting pretty busy around here, but I have managed to do a few creative things in the past couple weeks. Between clothing projects, I decided to do a little refashion for my workspace. In the lab where I work, we have these fume extraction vents at our benches, so we don't have to breathe in solvents while we work. They are covered when not in use. Formerly, they had been using ratty old pieces of mat board as covers:


I was pretty tired of looking at these every day, so I made a fancy prototype for new fabric covers. There is a piece of mat board inside, so it is sturdy and acts as a good cover, but I hope you'll agree that this is much nicer to look at:


I used some African fabric from my stash in a bright orange, printed 'batik' pattern. I'm hoping to make a whole bunch of these covers so that everyone in the lab can have them.

I've been doing an independent study on resist dyeing methods, and recently tried my hand a batik. I turned my entire dining room table into a lightbox, which saved me some tracing time:


I haven't been successful yet with the batik--I need to figure out how to get the wax to penetrate the fabric well, without running all over the place. As another aspect of this project, I have been experimenting with starch resists. This type of resist is used in Nigeria, as well as Japan--and probably some other places as well. I bought a product called Inkodye from Dharma Trading Company, which said it was a cassava starch paste resist--which is what they would have used in Nigeria. I cut stencils from sheets of Mylar based on some Nigerian designs. Here are a couple elephants:


Unfortunately, I managed to kill the elephants by using this method with a synthetic dye (Procion). The starch is semi-water soluble, so it can't withstand long soaks. The directions say to apply the dye, rather than immersing it. However, I'm thinking that this might work in an indigo dye bath, since that involves repeated dipping, rather than soaking. This would have likely been the process used in Nigeria. Stay tuned for updates on how that goes!

Finally, at the request of a friend, I attempted to make fudge for the first time:


Being ambitious in the kitchen, I decided to make it totally from scratch, thermometer and all! I used a recipe from Alton Brown, but something went wrong and it ended up soft and grainy. I then tried again using a simple recipe from the Joy of Baking website (which has excellent recipes). The recipe I used called for sweetened condensed milk, chocolate, butter, and vanilla. It was easy as could be, and came out delicious and creamy. Keep it in mind for a hostess or holiday gift.

Preview of Fall Projects

I've been living in Washington, DC for the summer--away from most of my belongings, including my sewing machine. However, this has not stopped me from planning all of the things I would like to make when I return to my apartment in a few weeks. At the beginning of my summer, I spent a couple of weeks in Chicago, where I picked up some of my stash of fabrics from Africa and Asia. Mostly they are clothes I purchased or had made for me while traveling that don't quite fit into my American wardrobe. I still love the fabrics though, and I'm hopeful that I will be able to use them in a more Western fashion so that they can become a part of my everyday wear.


Indian cottons--most purchased at FabIndia in Chennai. I love block printed Indian fabrics. Perhaps I'll teach myself how to make something similar.


Pagne purchased in Cameroon, Africa. The top and bottom are Dutch Wax prints--considered to be the highest quality available in Cameroon. The one in the middle is a Kaba (a very very large dress) sent to me as a gift from one of my host mothers. I love the little embracing people. There are large medallions featuring some building in Cameroon.

D.C. is also an excellent place to search through estate sales. They are often listed on Craigslist or the Washington Post classifieds. It can be hit or miss, but sometimes they tell you that the homeowner was a seamstress and has fabrics for sale. I've been to about a dozen estate sales this summer. I picked up a couple of pieces of fabric, as well as some curtains, pillow cases, a bed skirt, and a bed spread that I hope to refashion.

Estate purchases.


My current favorite estate find were a pair of pale yellow/gold curtains that will give me 2-3 yards of fabric for under $2. It's clearly a very synthetic material, but I like the color and feel of the fabric.


I'm thinking of making a dress inspired by this Milly dress, seen at Nordstrom's for $355. I like the simple lines and the pairing of a velvety toned black fabric with the lighter, textured creamy fabric. Now I just need to find the perfect pattern!