been spending the last several days (read: the weekend to now) making pinwheel patchwork blocks, using some beige twill i thrifted ages ago (so long ago i can’t remember when or where i found it), and scraps of silks, cottons, cords and blends. found the instructions for this block in a great patchwork-making book i snagged at purl at some point last year, 501 rotary-cut quilt blocks by judy hopkins.

each block is about 12.5 inches square, and i’ve got about 16 of them, so i’m probably going to gather them up together and make some kind of 4 x 4 foot square wall-hanging thing. never mind that i have no more free wall space on which to hang such a hanging…

i’ve found myself wanting to do a lot of quilting of late, or patchwork, really. wanting to play with fabric, color, design using patchwork as my medium. but not always wanting to go to the trouble of making a bed-sized behemoth. so i’m only committing myself to small-ish wall-hangings (like this one), and i’m having a lot of fun…

another finished object! really? wow!

(truth be told, i have a lot of finished (sewn, knit, or crocheted) objects lingering around, i’ve just been incredibly lax about cataloging (and sharing) them!)

anyhow, this here’s a fairly simple kimono style robe. the pattern is from the 1970s, this pattern to be exact. fabric is patchwork i made myself, from various and sundry scraps i had in my scrap fabric stash. it’s a pretty equal mix of vintage and new fabrics. the edging and belt are made from newly acquired bits of fabric, as is the unseen solid red-orange lining.

the impetus?
most ready-to-wear robes are abysmal, and lack personality (perhaps i’ve been looking in the wrong places? hah!). anyway, i never could find a fun (or sturdy!) robe in the usual mass market retail venues, and haven’t found a thrifted robe that’s up to my own quirky, personal snuff. so i felt i had to take matters into my own hands, as it were. i wanted something really 70s and fun…i think i succeeded.

yes, it’s like wearing a quilt, but that was sort of the point.

ages ago (read: many, many months ago), i mentioned i was working on making a bunch of liberated log cabin style quilt blocks, done in the vein of quilter gwen marston. the method i used is detailed in marston’s book, liberated quiltmaking II.

anyway, i made over one hundred of said log cabin blocks, with the intention of making a wall hanging of some sort, as well as a queen-size quilt, and then using the remainder for experimentation (table runners? potholders? pillows? art? something else??). all the blocks are made using solid-colored scraps of silk, cotton, cotton corduroy, and cotton/poly that were languishing in my stash.

the first of those intentions to be realized was the wall hanging, which is shown above. it’s roughly 3 feet x 3 feet, dimentions-wise. the back has a sleeve for hanging; i’m in the process of finding a nice rod with which to hang it from. i jerry-rigged this up on to the wall of my studio with masking tape in order to snap a photo.

the quilt is merely machine stitched-in-the-ditch; when it comes to quilting in a more complicated manner than that, i’m (currently) pretty lost. so i’m keeping it simple. it’s pretty much straight-line quilting for me at this juncture (this being, like, my 3rd finished quilt-like project ever). i’d love to learn how to stipple and have it look nice! just need to get more practice, probably…?

overall, i’m pretty darn happy with it. making the liberated quilt blocks is tremendously easy, and wickedly addictive. making each little block feels like one is making a little piece of art. putting them all together is a nice exercise in and of itself; one gets to fiddle around with and observe the interplay/balance of colors featured within. it was easy to just let go and let the piece come together intuitively.

(if you’re so inclined, you can peep at some close-ups of the quilt here, here and here.)

how did almost another month slip by without me posting anything?

whoopsie.

oh well!

i’ve been busy…amongst other things, i have mostly rabidly working on what you see above:

-a granny square blanket using scraps from my yarn stash (will probably go on our bed, we shall see), edged with white…

-a garter patch throw blanket, also using yarn from my stash (i have a LOT of scraps, ok? it’s pretty extreme!)…

-and seen in the center, a liberated “log cabin” (very loosely defined!) quilt, a la gwen marston, using all solids.

the patchwork work mostly gets done during the day (to take advantage of the daylight coming into my studio), and the knitting and crocheting fills many of my nights. i may start doing more patchwork stuff at night, as i now have a wonderful set of powerful tracklights in the studio, thanks to a local electrician.

i’ve been checking into the interwebs daily, but mostly, i’m just continuing to take a rest and i’m going through a period where i am mostly observing, rather than doing much contributing. i want to come back, but at the same time, i feel like i still need and want this time to step back, to just be in the background for a while, whilst i figure everything out.

-you can’t mail a sewing machine (or iron) halfway across the country, and expect it to be in perfect condition when it arrives. especially if it’s handled by UPS and not mailed in it’s original box. they might (and did!) drop-kick it in transit…and it may never be the same. and you’ll be sad when you’ve realized what happened…and it might be too late to do much about it except spend more moolah, scrambling to get it fixed and/or find a permanent/temporary replacement. which is, of course, a hassle. because you might find yourself driving out to the chicago suburbs on a sunday to do so…in traffic, with an antsy 14 month old. which is, of course, a bit stressful. and so on.

-there is (generally) a HUGE difference between the expensive sewing machine (or iron, or even, camera, to extend this further, if you wish) and the cheaper one. the more expensive one FEELS different to sew on than the cheaper one, it’s been engineered more carefully and is (generally) made out of better, higher quality materials. using a better machine is akin to driving a REALLY, REALLY nice car, like, say, a bmw or mercedes, while sewing with a cheaper machine is perhaps more like driving a budget mobile, like, uh, a toyota camry. they both get you where you have to go, but the nicer one feels COMPLETELY different to handle and probably has more bells and whistles.

-but it almost goes without saying: using a more expensive sewing machine (iron, camera, car, etc.) does NOT make you a better sewer (ironer, photographer, driver, etc.). it can definitely make things easier for you as you go along but all the extras mean nothing if you don’t know how to use them, and definitely don’t mean anything if your base skills aren’t up to snuff.

-continuing the sentiment from that last note and the note above it, just because you have the fancy-dancy machine, doesn’t mean you need all it’s fancy features. some of that stuff they offer can really make your sewing (etc.) life easier, but some of it is probably just superfluous stuff you’ll never really use or get around to using in a million years. it’s marketing hype that’s there to convince you, via your sewing machine dealer, to buy something at a higher price point (regardless of whether you are really realistically apt to use any of it). sure, the embroidery attachment is really COOL, but do you need it?? or the pages and pages of decorative stitches? maybe not. but you could use the powerful motor, a nice selection of buttonholes, a wide assortment of useful, every day sort of stitches, things of that nature. it’s never bad to be a little pragmatic when buying something like a sewing machine (camera, car, etc.). the best you can afford without going overboard and all that.

-always have a back-up machine. even the nice machines go down (in flames, sometimes!)…you don’t have to spend a lot of money on the second one. you could buy used, or buy cheap. on the subject of the latter, don’t expect it to be like your everyday, workhorse machine, because at that (LOW LOW!) price point, it just ain’t. and never will be. but it works *just good enough* to get you by in the interim. and that’s okay.

and as a bonus adage for those who might need it:

here’s a (sewing applicable) life lesson that i learned from one of my professors at parsons, that i still remember, heed, and toss out a lot to other people (probably multiple times on this here blog, too, over the years!). it is this:

the long way is the short way.

(do it right the first time and you won’t spend time later doing it over again. or, there are really no shortcuts. take your time and do it right.)

the front was rather plain, so i gave it a bib, edged with bias. and used bias to edge the square neckline, hem, cap sleeves, and zipper placket on the back. the reason for the placket? well, it was a hair too small, as i said, so i opened out the button plackets for more room, and the new placket covers up the button holes and gives the back some interest. the buttons on the front are covered with a little of the fabric i cut off the hem before attaching the bias. btw, all the extra contrasting fabric is a herringbone weave chambray type fabric i had in my stash already.

it’s not perfect, but it’s a lot more fun than it was before. and it fits!

i love this kind of work…taking something that’s not quite right and making it more so. and if it doesn’t work out, fine. but when it does…so wonderful, so satisfying.