Now Sewing: hand-stitch

Showing posts with label hand-stitch. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

coutures anglaises

So I planned to finish this as my last post of 2024. Oops.

Thank goodness for social media, right? Well, not always. But today I learned that the French call French seams "coutures anglaises." I think that is just lovely - reciprocal appreciation for a beautiful technique. But this post has nothing to do with clothing construction. No, this post is about two challenges that I just finished. They were great fun and I garnered lots of inspiration from each. And they were free!

Kathryn Chambers' Weekly Stitch Journal

This challenge began in December of 2023. Kathryn, or k3n, has a popular channel on Youtube called k3n clothtales. In December she posted some loose instructions for constructing a paper journal that would become the vessel for weekly hand-stitched little pieces of fiber art. Then every Monday, k3n published a video with a theme and some easy techniques.

My journal contains 54 pages for some reason. I skipped one page because it was thick with paint. And now I have one page left. Luckily 2024 has 53 Mondays. k3n will publish something on this last Monday in December, but she has promised (only) a flip-through of her stitch journal.

I expect it will inspire something for my final page. This weekly journal has already influence how I will make fiber art in the future.

I'll post some of my favorite weeks below:

January: Light and Dark

February, obviously

April, eclipse-inspired

Kawandi-inspired in March

kintsugi-inspired

Still crazy, after all these years

The center of this mandala is shiny paper that is reflecting the trees - not actually green

reverse applique - a personal fave technique

imitating nature

Maya Angelou inspiration

Jane Dunnewold - Complex Compositions

This series occurred fairly early in the year and was difficult for me. I still learned a ton, but have few remaining pieces that sing to me. Many who were enrolled had been in a previous class where they had printed lots of paper with acrylic paints - lots of interesting techniques. Anyway they had lots of papers to start with. I did not and so spent my time printing papers. It was fun and I've incorporated the papers into other projects like bookbinding.

Jane Dunnewold - Print Perfection

This was wonderful! We learned how to print on fabric using thickened dyes. I know I'll return to this again and again. Unlike printing fabric with fabric paint, printing with dyes leaves the soft had of the fabric, and so it will make lovely garments. Again I learned a great deal and hope my notes left me with enough breadcrumbs to avoid mistakes I have already learned from!

12mm silk printed with stencils, painting with a brush

Silk noil generates more muted prints, here via one silk screen, and brush strokes

Cotton printed with stencils and a stamp

Cotton printed using a cool technique invented by Jane

Silk charmeuse scarf printed with screens and stencils, then overpainted.

Jane Dunnewold and Zenna James - Presence in Practice

This challenge was a smaller undertaking but still time-consuming and great fun. This mother-daughter team issued a daily challenge for 12 days from Dec 10 until Dec 21. Their challenges came with short audio meditations (so worthwhile!), a place to share with other participants, a theme for each day, and then a list of suggested materials.

I want to do more tone-on-tone stitching in 2025.

I discovered gell printing in 2024 - such instant gratification

Day 12: In 2024 I found out that I enjoy stitching on paper.

Since it was 12 consecutive days, and we did a little bit of holiday travel right in the middle, I was slow to finish. I made day 12 after the challenge was over, and I think it may be my favorite.

I was pushed in some new directions with this challenge, as neither Jane nor Zenna provided any examples of the daily pieces. I actually liked that even more. I used supplies I have on hand and had a great sense of satisfaction and reflection upon completion of each 8" x 8" piece.

2025 - Diamond Jubilee for me

There are so many ideas floating in my imagination and an embarassment of great supplies for making. I'll be carving out lots of time for making. Daily, or weekly, or monthly challenges? Clothes? Art? Journals? And new year's resolutions are futile for me. I will continue to enjoy responding to others' inspiration with my own twist.

Wishing you happy making in the coming year!

Sunday, August 4, 2024

I am still sewing

I am still sewing. And making. Maybe I am making more than sewing. Here it is August, and, for the life of me, I cannot remember if I made anything from start to finish during July. There is no July blog post.

Wait! I did make something. Printed pants. But I have not worn them and I need to figure out why. Oh, yeah, they make me look fat. Yes, I know that is a cliche. I will pull them out and see if I can *fix* them.

The pattern was my tried-and-true fitted pants pattern, the Eureka, from Fit for Art. It still fits me in the challenging places. And it is easy to adjust for weight fluctuations.

The fabric I chose is a firm cotton Japanese print from deep stash. It has a pretty selvedge so of course I tried to incorporate that. I may have to rethink that, as I believe one of the issues with this piece is the hem length. I was going for a cropped length, but perhaps this is just awkward.

I will make it work, if only because I love the fabric so much. It is a deep navy with a muted print. It is solid navy on the other side - no bleed through of the print creating an ugly and wrong side.

These are definitely comfortable, so what gives? Maybe it needs pockets.

In other sewing/making news, I have taken two classes. One is the Sashiko Summer Slip-ons class, an online class offered by Tatter Blue and taught by Sanae Ishida in two sessions. There was an optional kit that I ordered.

Sanae Ishida is delightful and the folks at Tatter are lovely to work with.

That class concluded a week or two ago. Yesterday I finally finished a second slip-on, completing a wonky pair.

They feel insubstantial. So I added a pair of arch supports which makes them stay on, more or less.

I have enough supply from the kit to make another pair. But, I am not sure if I will. The first one I made was entirely (well, exceipt for one mistake) like the provided instructions. That is, it was made entirely by hand. The sole is faux leather. Sewing it to the shoe top is definitely the only challenging part of the whole process, especially around the heel. My hands hurt when I finished.

So, now, several weeks later, my hands have heeled. I have completed the other shoe in the pair, this time, by machine. Using the machine definitely saved my hands, but it was still quite difficult to attach the tricky heel portion. I definitely should have added some stay-stitching and clipping there before trying to sew it.

The machine saved my hands, but it is quite difficult to control all the layers with a machine. If done by hand, it is easy to see if the layers are shifting and move them back into place.

So, if I make a second pair, it will be hybrid. I will make it by machine up to and including some important stay-stitching and clipping around the heel. But I'll sew the heel by hand. Maybe. We'll see. I am beginning to itch to make a garment. It has been too long for my mental well-being.

Meanwhile, my second class is another wonderful online class with the magnificent Jane Dunnewold. The title is Complex Compositions. I have been wanting a way to learn more about artistic composition. The principles apply to all sorts of arts and crafts.

This class with Jane, like previous ones, lasts several months with lots of videos, hand-outs, Q&A's, as well as an online community for sharing work and questions. It also includes a good deal of homework. It is not required but, knowing how I learn, I keep up with it for the most part. It really does help me remember stuff and then integrate it into future projects.

The Jane Dunnewold course is not sewing but it sure is fun and definitely challenging.

So that is what happened to July!

Friday, June 28, 2024

Weekly Slow Stitch Projects with k3n - halfway!

Back in December 2023, I decided to subscribe to k3n clothtales on youtube. She is a prolific, generous and inspiring artist, specializing is slow stitch. She announced that she would be posting every Monday a smallish hand-stitched project. She suggested that we create a stitch journal with 52 pages - one for each week.

For my stitch journal, I pulled out some old jeans I had thrifted and created a book cover. I bound the 52 pages to it. I chose to machine stitch the cover after remembering that it is not fun to hand-stitch jeans denim. In my supplies, I had an eco-dyed piece of wool already cut in the primitive shape of a bird. I hand-stitched that to the cover. The cording was created using k3n's method of twisting strips of fabric.

On Monday Jan 1, k3n posted the first little project. Each week has a theme. Since we are now halfway through 2024, I thought I might go ahead and post each of my tiny pieces with the theme for that week. My pieces tend to be about 5" x 5.5" in order to fit into my book. One of my first lessons was how fun it is to stitch a finished piece to a piece of paper in my stitch journal!