How Time Flies

I’ve been busy sewing up a storm for friends and family, with the occasional crochet project thrown in. Since late last fall I’ve worked on many baby projects including these drool kerchiefs.

I also had a grand time making party favors for a baby shower.

These little filet crochet chicks where wrapped up around three Spangler Candy Company’s Dum Dums and tied with grosgrain ribbon. Everyone had something special to take home from the shower, and the little cloths are actually somewhat functional washcloths. They are made of Gjestal Baby Bomull cotton (roughly equivalent to size 3 crochet thread from Royale, but much softer), and completely washable. Of course I can imagine a real interesting time when tiny little baby fingers get tangled in all those open meshes.

The pattern is quite simple if you are familiar with filet crochet. Here is the chart.

If you aren’t familiar with filet crochet, you can purchase the pattern here. It includes everything you need to know to make these washcloths and to chart your own designs. While I was at it, I made another filet crochet piece for an aunt who loves vintage sewing machines. This one I put into a frame and gave as a Christmas gift.

I also made a couple of baby quilts.

One was for a mom who was not looking for anything “babyish”.

And another for my great nephew’s first birthday

The patterns for both of these quilts are available online at my Etsy.com shop (Soubrette Art).

And then there is the whole Tunisian crochet experiment.  Two scarves and one pillow later I’m really in love with the technique, and can’t wait to do more. It is so simple and yet what fabulous texture. Fruits of the learning process include a couple of scarves and a pillow.

I made this one from Artyarns Silk Rhapsody Glitter is 50% silk and 50% Kid Mohair. It’s not inexpensive, but one skein made the scarf

This pillow was made of Blue Moon Socks That Rock 100% superwash merino heavyweight.

Both the scarf and pillow patterns are in Sharon Hernes Silverman’s book Tunisian Crochet: The Look of Knitting with the East of Crocheting. Find it at Amazon.

Here is a close-up look at the stitch.

And I took a refresher course on knitting and made this bag. 

It’s made from Rowan big wool, which is obviously a very chunky yarn. You can find it online at Knitch, my favorite yarn shop.

Now I’m working on a project pattern so I can lead a “learn to crochet” class there.

I needed a scarf for St. Patrick’s day – since it can be quite chilly here for an outdoor celebration.

This one is made of cotton (KnitPicks® Crayon™) in Lime and Jalapeno – just one skein of each. Crayon is a lightweight and super soft boucle that is perfect for spring.

What about the Lady bags you ask? Well I have designed three new ones, and will write about those after I finished writing up the patterns.

One friend received a yarn bag and an accessory bag made of a bit of tapestry upholstery cloth for her birthday.

Another friend has been promised placemats and napkins for her new kitchen and dining room. The ideas never end. I’m working on writing up all of the original patterns, so stay tuned.

I'm Not a Collector, but...

I have a new treasure. One day on my walk with Lady I noticed a friend had a very old treadle sewing machine sitting on her screen porch. When I asked her about it she told me that she was getting rid of things before they moved to their new house and offered to let me have it. What a find. The cabinet has been painted white and the machine needs lots of TLC (tender loving cleaning), but all of the parts are there and moving.

When I got it home and started researching, I found it is a Singer Model 27 with sphinx decals. This model began production in Singer’s Elizabetheport factory in Elizabeth, New Jersey on April 24, 1906!

In total they made 60,000 of them. This means they were popular and if parts are needed, its possible there may still be some around to scavenge. Better still, I was able to find a manual online, which has been duly ordered. These old singers used a shuttle type of bobbin – very different in appearance from modern sewing machines.

The best news is that no one has tried to do any restoration yet. Often these old machines have had the beautiful decals removed with harsh cleaners, or they have been modified to use modern parts and wired for electricity. This one appears to be pristine except for the normal wear you would see from actual use.  One collector told me to always beware of an old Singer will all decals perfectly intact. It might mean the machine didn’t sew well and wasn’t used as a result.

Based on the bits and pieces (buttons, thread, a few newspaper clippings, etc.) found in the drawers, I would guess that someone used this machine until the 80s and then it just sat. I will have to ask my friend if she has any more information on the history.

Of course, it’s a treadle. Using these treadle machines is an exercise not unlike chewing gum, rubbing your belly, and patting your head all at the same time. I’ve only tried it once, without much success, but I expect with enough practice I can master it. On the other hand, once cleaned up, this machine may be so pretty that I just have to keep it for show. I can’t wait to find out what it looks like once it’s all polished and restored. 

Working with Iron-on Vinyl

If you have ever done a Google search on sewing vinyl, you know that this is one of the great curses of many a seamstress. The stuff bunches up, slips about, and then sticks to the presser foot of your machine. Solutions abound. You can buy a special Teflon presser foot and industrial needle feed machines. Hand sewing is an option, and some suggest using a walking foot for heavy vinyl. Simpler recommendations include sandwiching the vinyl between tissue paper, waxed paper, gift wrapping paper or interfacing. Adding a piece of tape to the bottom of the presser foot (some prefer painter’s tape while others recommend regular gift wrapping tape). I have even heard of applying sewers aid, a silicone thread lubricant directly to the vinyl.

A different approach is to use something called iron-on vinyl by Therm O Web. I recently came across a reference to this stuff in a pattern for baby bibs, and had to investigate. Readily available online, it comes in 17 inch widths and 2 yard packages or 20 yard bolts, and is available in gloss or matte. I have now completed an insulated lunch sack which I designed using iron-on vinyl on the liner, and have started working on the baby bib pattern I originally mentioned. It really is the easy solution.

In both cases I used the fusible vinyl with quilter’s cotton, so I can’t tell you how it would work with heavier fabrics, or with synthetics. This product is quite lightweight, so it might have difficultly holding up to heavy fabrics like denim, and I’m not sure that you can get most synthetic fabrics warm enough to make a good bond, but for the applications I tried, it’s great.

Here are a few tips:

Wash and dry fabric in same manner that you intend to wash the final product so that any shrinkage will occur before the pieces are cut.

Affix the iron-on vinyl to fabric for lining prior to cutting out pattern. Though you may waste a small amount of material this way, it is much easier than trying to line up and bond the two pieces after they are cut out.

The package for the Thermo-web provides detailed directions on how to fuse the vinyl to the face of the fabric, but it is very similar to other fusible products you may have worked with.

Pre-heat the iron and the fabric by running the warm iron over the face. This also makes sure there are no wrinkles in the fabric.

Peel the backing off the vinyl sheet and layer the tacky side to the fabric smoothing it out with your hands.

Use the hot, dry iron (no steam) for several seconds in each spot, moving with an overlapping motion until you have fused the entire piece of fabric.

Allow the fabric to cool and then proceed with cutting out your pattern pieces

Remember that every hole poked in the fabric will show later because of the vinyl. Make sure to place pins in the seam margin both when affixing the pattern to the fabric and to hold pieces together for sewing

Every machine works a bit differently, so experiment with a piece of scrap to get your upper tension set correctly. Some may find that you need a slightly looser tension on the top thread to achieve a good stitch.

Make sure you are using the correct needle size for the added weight of the fabric. Depending on how bulky your project is, you might even consider using a leather needle.

The cute bib pattern I’m using can be purchased here Pattern Play.

My pattern for two sizes of the insulated lunch sack is available for purchase in my Craftsy Pattern Store.

What is Dupioni Silk?

Doupioni [doo-pee-oh-nee] Also spelled douppioni, dupioni [doo-pee-ohn] or dupioni, is a silk fabric. It is so called because two cocoons (or dupions) that are reeled as one. This created a very strong but slubbed, irregular yarn. Silk fabrics called shantung or pongee are also made from doupoini yarn. The plain weave fabric made of this yarn and labeled Doupoini will always exhibit this slubbed texture. It is considered slightly inferior to ordinary raw silk, but is very strong and with slight give. It is used for fine apparel and upholstery.

As you can see from the pictures, there is some variation from one fabric to the next in the amount of texture. Also, the fabric is very prone to raveling - something to consider when choosing it. Imitations are made in rayon and synthetics under different names such as cupioni.

A Fabric Yarn...

When most of us think about crochet, we think of yarn – defined on Dictionary.com as “a thread made of natural or synthetic fibers and used for knitting and weaving”.

It is made by spinning which is further defined as the ‘drawing out, twisting, and winding of fibers”. We differentiate types of yarn based on the fiber – wool, cotton, silk, acrylic, etc. However, we can also crochet with yarn substitutes. A couple of years ago I wrote about recycling plastic grocery bags into "yarn". This idea led me to another project for using up remnants of fabric. I took some of the scrap fabric left from making a quilt, and made a crocheted fabric yarn purse.

Making the fabric couldn't be easier.

Step 1 – cut fabric into narrow strips. I cut mine at ½ inch to make a bulky but manageable yarn. Make sure to cut each strip into the longest length possible. This will reduce the number of joins you need to make, and save time. You can either cut the strips with scissors or a rotary cutter, or if you want a softer look, rip the fabric. To do this, use your scissors to cut small snips the appropriate width about along one selvage edge of your fabric. Then just start ripping the strips. Due to the fact that fabric is not always printed to line up perfectly with the straight of grain, you may find that the first couple of rips are very short. However, this is the best way to square up the fabric, and will yield a stronger yarn.

Step 2 - cut a small slit in the both ends of each strip. Now thread the end of one strip through one end slit of another.

Step 3 – take the other end of strip #2 and thread it through the slit end which has been passed through strip #1

Step 4 – pull the resulting knot tight.

Step 5 – continue to add strips until you have many yards, then roll the “yarn” into a ball ready to crochet. The beauty of this method is that you can always make more yarn – either from contrasting and complementary scraps you have lying around, or by going to the fabric shop to buy something out of their remnant bin.