Design Outside the Lines 2024

I'm feeling grateful and creative, satiated with ideas to try in my sewing room. Yes, I just returned from Diane Ericson's Design Outside the Lines retreat in Taos, New Mexico. This year she invited Paula Kavorik, another stellar and generous textile art teacher. And, did we ever have fun!?!

First, there is Taos, a small town that seems to remain a small town decade after decade. My earliest memories of Taos are skiing with my husband and young children and having breakfast at Michael's. But I am fairly certain my family of origin camped there back in the 50s or 60s. Michael's is still there but I did not have an opportunity to eat there because I was staying at the magical Mabel Dodge Luhan retreat center where breakfast takes center stage.

Mabel Dodge Luhan was a colorful person and a great supporter of the arts. The property continues to this day to have that vibe. It invites creatives and travelers from near and far. This year, in addition to the dozen or so of us with Diane, a group of yogis were passing through following their own retreat. They sang to us each morning before breakfast, not because they are good at singing, but because singing makes them feel good. I am quoting their leader. Truthfully, their voices were lovely. And I definitely felt better for having heard them. 

While we were with them, Hurricane Helene ripped through their home in Ashville NC so their singing was mixed with fear, tears, and still hope. We sent them home with traveling mercies and prayers for their loved ones.

While in the workshop, I focused on Diane's River Tunic pattern. I had made one in a light weight denim, which I like, but I wanted to make another one while there and ask Diane to guide me in new directions with it. She sees it as a blank canvas. After nips, tucks, and finishing, I am pleased with the result and ready to try something more myself.

I made her signature overlap at the neckline, in both the front and the back. It adds interest, brings in the neckline, and produces an interesting pleat.

By folding up the hem in the front, a sweet little pocket was formed. We folded up the back hem to balance the overall silhouette.

A few more tucks were added to the back to add a little shaping, and now, I like it quite a lot.

The fabric came from a unique shop in Taos named Common Thread. They carry household linens, some yardage from India and other places, some cool but plain linen garments, and a plethora of gorgeous scarves. I have a weakness for buying scarves when I travel. Somehow I resisted that.

The household linens are great for garments. Diane always brings some that she has made with their household linens - always artful and inspiring.

I bought the green fabric last year at Common Threads and cut out a basic River Tunic right before coming to DOL this year. It was ideal for this project with Diane because the two sides are identical. 

This year I bought another fabulous piece at Common Thread that will become something and show up in this blog sooner or later. 

Fun fact - my iPhone camera labels this *artwork.*

Paula Kavorik brought something new and wonderful to this year's DOL! She is an artist who draws with her sewing machine. She is also imaginative and a truly gifted, seasoned teacher. If you ever have a chance to study with her, do not miss that opportunity! In the meantime, follow her on IG as yellowbrickroad.

Sometimes I get have to make *something.*

I am sort of addicted to Paula's process right now. I have little control but I am intrigued by what can happen if I just relax and gently move the fabric forward and backward, as well as to the left and to the right. Paula's mantra is "maintain the horizon." It is tempting to move turn the fabric around and around, but I'm gradually seeing the benefit of maintaining the horizon.

Paula encourages the development of this skill with drawing exercises. I do love those and play around with that every evening while watching the news. So satisfying. My eye-hand control with the sewing machine is still a far cry from my eye-hand control with a pen and paper, but practice makes progress. And that is good enough.

Drawing:

Now I am feelling the call of my sewing room.

'Tis the Season

To be frazzled and overwhelmed, yes? I am trying to manage this more deliberately this season by keeping my expectations low. In pursuit of that, I'll start by admitting that a recent project was less than satisfying.

version 2 a.k.a. final version

Diane Ericson's pattern, Fault Lines, has some wonderful details and it's not your everyday ho-hum design. 

As mentioned in several previous blog posts, I am crazy about the sleeves and will most definitely draft that onto the next top I make. By repositioning the underarm seam on the sleeves, and an amazing design for the hemline, the result is elegant. Even though the grainline is similar to most ordinary set-in sleeves, it just seems to hang better.

One front piece and both back pieces are cut on the bias. The other front piece, and the sleeves are cut on the straight-of-grain. I have had some good success with bias but it is not always predictable.

As posted in a previous post, I made the undershirt version of Fault Lines in a light weight linen. Bottom line, it was really too thin to work effectively without something over it. 

I was quite enamored of the trim on the armholes. Sometimes details catch my eye and trip me up. 

that sleeve, oh my.

The main reason this project was faulty was that the fabric was too thin. After talking a bit with Diane about it, I decided to try to retro-fit it with a silk organza lining, similar to one Diane made. The silk organza, really an interlining on hers, gave the shirt just the right amount of weight to work well as a stand-alone top.

version 1 a.k.a. the wadder

Ultimately I gave that idea up. It took me a while to wad it up and put it away, but I'm so glad I finally did so. And then I pulled out a very similar, but heavier linen and remade it with no lining or interlining. I mostly like it.

version 2

The reason for the failure I think emanates from the fact that so much of this piece is bias-cut. Had I started out with it interlined, it might have worked. Or it might have failed in any case.

version 2 worn with matchy-matchy Capitola pants

As I've learned, woven fabrics have two distinct bias grainlines. Depending on the position of the warp thread, it will drape a little differently. Standard advice is to let a partially finished garment hang a day or so to allow the bias to settle into place. I found that helpful, trying to align the two bias pieces - light weight linen and silk organza - sucked the joy out of the project. After way too many hours, I gave up.

Now that I have one wearable top from all the messing around, I am not completely sold on the style. It is different and I have worn it, but...maybe I just wore myself out.

I have to say that I still rate this pattern quite high, and I'll probably make it again. I think it's particularly lovely with both layers, as you can see in my muslin version.

Now, this double layer might have worked with the too-light linen

Meanwhile I am enjoying the colors of the season and have a new project up my sleeve!

Fault Lines

DH and I visited Taos October, 2022

For a little while now, I've been preparing for a trip out west for Diane Ericson's Design Outside the Lines. 

pre·pare

/prēˈper/

My method of preparing: I started out crazy excited, then briefly wondered if it makes any sense, then realized the money was spent, then worried about how to prepare and what to take, what to mail ahead of time, and now 24 hours before I leave, calmly drinking a cup of tea, knowing the light will come in, no matter what.

Mabel Dodge Luhan House where DOL is held.

DH and I stayed there one night.

Diane Ericson is full of light. And I'm looking forward to meeting and learning from her invited co-teacher Susan Dillon, fiber and mixed media artist. So many possibilities with these two. And then there are the other attendees. Remembering my previous DOL experience in Sisters, Oregon with Diane and Marcy Tilton, I know that the attendees are also likely to be full of light.

Years and years ago I tried Diane's Fault Lines pattern. It contains tissue and instructions for two garments - a cropped jacket and an undershirt. This is a very cool pattern with so, so many design and stitch possibilites. And it has the most elegant sleeve I've ever sewn. 

Behold, the sleeve!

Undershirt with a sleeve

Because my body has changed in the intervening years, I decided to make up a toile of each, using an old cotton bed sheet. The undershit is sleeveless, but the instructions indicate you can fold out the fullness in the sleeve cap and insert it into the undershirt to make that long sleeved.

Undershirt toile

My experience was that the sleeve fit perfectly into both the undershirt and the jacket without any change. 

Toile for undershirt and jacket

The jacket is designed for shoulder pads. I did not want a garment that structured, so I watched a couple of youtubers on how to alter a pattern to remove or reduce the shoulder pad. After that, I simply pinched out the excess on my toile and was happy with the change. Of course, I have not made up the jacket in proper fabric yet, so I may formalized that process a bit. Or not.

Undershirt back. Note the lapped center back seam. Lovely!

Next I cut into some light weight linen from my local wonderful fabric store, Gail K. The color does not photograph well, but it is a yummy medium blue with a tiny touch of black. Opaque but quite light weight. It reminds me of the sky right before a storm. It's been delightful to sew.

Left side, undershirt

Right side, undershirt

The undershirt is composed of 4 pieces - two distinctive fronts, and two slightly different backs. One of the fronts, and the two backs are cut on the bias, which adds to the fun. After cutting carefully and stitching the shoulder seams, I let it *rest* for 24 hours. 

I'm finished with my first undershirt. The closures are simple sets of ties - one set inside and the other set outside. 

I've added a bit of hand-stitch. 

Now it's time to pack. Stay tuned!

1001001

As I begin a new year around our planet, I am pausing to think about the joy I receive from my hobby of sewing and other making. 

It is no longer all about the fabric. I do love fabric and fabric shopping, and I salivate knowing I am about to enter a fabric store, but it does not drive me to making one garment after another, as I've done in the past. Instead I am looking at existing garments and imagining improvements.

Though I am still enamored of patterns and will always use them - why invent something that others invent for a living - I do not feel the need to constantly try another new-to-me pattern. I have a fairly large collection of unused patterns when that urge strikes.

North rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona

I want to push myself in new directions. In the last few weeks, I have been pulling out Diane Ericson patterns and I love her inspiring videos. Her patterns are unique, I think, in that the instructions are chocked full of ideas and variations on the pattern enclosed. The instructions are different from, say, Cutting Line Deisgn patterns, in that they invite creativity rather than precise results. 

Modified TSW Urban pants + self-drafted pullo-over

Here is my latest make. I am not too sure about wearing these pieces as an outfit. I may find them to be more useful as separates with other pieces. The fabric is light weight cotton pique from Five Eighths Seams in Charleston SC.

The pants are constructed with a slight modification to the Urban Pants pattern from the Sewing Workshop. Instead of tabs and buttons, I threaded a bias tube through a channel in the bottom hem. Then I gathered it slightly to give a little shape. 

The top is constructed from the pants remnants. I created to rectangles, roughly 25" x 25" each. I opened the center fron seam on the front piece enough to create a V neck. The triangles are folded to the inside and top stitched in place. I added a small pleat to each arm cap to bring in the silhouette a bit, but I may remove that and do something different. It is too cutsie right now.

It is not terribly creative but the process is engaging. I'll keep pushing Diane's approach to constructing garments.

A decade ago I spent one week with Diane at Design-Outside-the-Lines in Sisters, Oregon. It was the last one where she partnered with Marcy Tilton. I met some wonderful women and I was overwhelmed with inspiration. Though I was sort-of a deer-in-the-headlights during the workshop, I soaked up a playful attitude shared by all present.

Taos location for upcoming Design Outside the Lines

Now I am excited that I will spend another week with Diane in Taos, New Mexico next month. I am tickled. A space opened up and now I am working on the logistics.

Biking in Zion National Park

Meanwhile I have returned from a wonderful time with family in Las Vegas, NV, and Zion National Park in Utah. What a blast! My legs are still sore. My elbow scrapes are healing, as are the bruises. 

I bought two souvenir T shirts that I am treating as fabric. The price of the shirt does not change as sizes change so I bought the largest shirts I could. I cut open the side seams and began to experiment with some Diane-style ideas. I started with this very inexpensive, very large shirt from the Cirque de Soleil show I saw in Las Vegas.

After some play, I shopped by closet for clothes I made but never wear. This yellow shirt seemed to be ready for a remake. That yellow is cheerful but not good with my skin tone. So I never wear this shirt.

I used the Grainline Studio Lark shirt as my base. I was able to cut two long sleeves from the yellow striped shirt. I slit the front and back of the pink Love shirt with an S curve. Once I had assembled them, placing part of the back on the front and vice versa, I knew I had made a mistake. 

I sort-of wish I had kept the two images as they were in the original shirt and just cut them to fit the Lark pattern. My work-around was to cut some black-and-white striped knit into strips and zigzag onto the seam line. After washing and drying, it curled up and I'm OK with the result.

I hope that this new shirt gets more rotation than that yellow one. In any case, it was great fun to use for my experiment.

Canyoneering in Zion's slot canyons

*My title 1001001 is a palidrome when written in binary. Yep, I'm still a geek.