Oranged

Yesterday I went shopping for supplies for my quilt class next week at Mandors, a downtown fabric store, with my good friend Dr JB who is doing the same quilt class as me. It was an interesting shopping experience. Mandors was hosting its quilt group/class and it was quite intimidating. The leader/teacher of the group was shooing us about whilst issuing short, sharp commands at her group/students. I felt rather glad that I signed up elsewhere as I probably would not have taken nicely to someone barking "I have fifteen years of quilting experience and my mother hand-quilted.." at me if I asked a newbie question.

But it was very fun finding fabrics.

Mandors has a large area devoted to quilt cottons which meant we almost had too much to choose from. Dr JB ended up with a gorgeous burgundy/cream/light green combination while I have obviously been inspired by Roobeedoo's current obsession with orange. That art deco-esque cotton just .. yes.

However, again I felt slightly weirded out by Mandors whilst I was choosing my fabrics.

Thanks to my day job (and my other preoccupations) I know I have a good eye for colour. I want a contemporary edge to my quilt so I deliberately stayed far away from flowery fabrics and cuddly teddy bear prints and instead opting for fabric with clean, simple visual design - but I had to do battle with the young sales girl to get away with this (yes I'm serious when I say I don't like blue) and I now regret giving up on a grey-and-orange idea I had going into the store. I wonder what the girl would have made of the Oh, Fransson! quilting aesthetic which I think takes quilting into the 21st century.

Mandors is a good shop with a great selection (and I happen to have friends working there too, so I think some of their staff members are wonderful). I just feel a bit odd about how my aesthetics match up what I ended up buying. The fabric selection is lovely but perhaps a touch more matchy than what I had anticipated..

Questions: how do you choose your supplies, dear crafters/knitters/sewers? Do you have a strong, distinctive style that you do not deviate from? Do you go for "things that go together" in a slightly nebulous way? Do you have an idea in mind before you purchase? Do you look for inspiration in the shop? How much does staff influence your choice? How much advice do you look for?

Clip My Wings

Pause, rewind. Sewing is a different process to knitting. So far I have traced the pattern, worked up a toile (muslin) and discovered that I need to move the bust darts higher as well as doing a FBA. It is sort of a pre-process prior to making the actual garment out of the fancy fabric. Had this been knitting, I would have swatched using the actual yarn and probably be well under way making the actual thing itself.

Different processes. It's interesting.

Anyway. Random selection of linky bits: + The George Hotel, Glasgow. If you like urban decay, faded glamour or Trainspotting (the film, not the activity) + Is Denmark Breaching Human Rights? The other reason why I left Denmark. Even if D has a so-called "correct" skin tone and is an EU citizen, he would still get so much flak. No way would I put him through that. + BBC4 - The Beauty of Books. For a programme series apparently about the materiality of books, it does boast a suspicious amount of textual critics and biblical scholars. I was not impressed but I'm not exactly a layman. You might like it? + 100 Young Adult Books For the Feminist Reader. I spot certain omissions (such as this and this) but everyone's got opinions and it's a handy list. + Are you a knitter of the literary persuasion? Why not give the Beowulf socks a go?

Finally, I've derived great enjoyment from this video tonight.. Enjoy!

Sunday Craft Thoughts

Quite apart from celebrating my ten-year blogging anniversary, I have also been celebrating my thirty-mumble-th birthday this week. Among the many excellent presents, I received The Perfect Fit: A Practical Guide to Adjusting Sewing Patterns and The Sewing Book - both of which sent my heart a-flutter. I was also lucky enough to be given a sweater amount of ruby Kidsilk Haze and a shawl amount of burgundy Faroese wool. My sewing machine also arrived this week which called for a bit of fabric shopping. I feel very consumerist right now. However, my consumerism is linked to a feeling of wanting to become less of a consumerist. My fabric purchases have been very deliberate and are linked to my desire to have an almost self-stitched capsule wardrobe. I've been reading Sewingplum's blog intently and while I'm not yet at a level where I can consider making 6 (let alone 24!) staple wardrobe pieces, I can at least become a much more thoughtful dresser - and crafter.

The photo shows two of the fabrics in my stash. The one on the left is the Liberty cotton lawn which D gave me for Christmas. Right now I feel slightly daunted by this fabric. The fabric on the right is a Joel Dewberry cotton which is earmarked for my first 'proper' sewing project: the Simplicity 2501 blouse. It's a very versatile pattern (check out this very vintage-looking version!) and one I can imagine myself making several times. You might think I am batting above my weight with this pattern. We shall see. After all, I used to be a decent dressmaker back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I'm yet to find an equally versatile pattern for the lower pattern of my body. I'm also trying to decide whether I would ever feel confident enough to wear the Ceylon dress - I'm already pretty sure the Crepe dress will be a go-to pattern: it would look equally nice in neutrals and bold prints (versatility is the key to my heart, it seems).

As I have previously mentioned, I'm going to have a real go at making clothes appropriate for warm(ish) weather which makes knitting and crochet slightly trickier. Fancy is still on my list, but it will probably be the only big knitting project I'll undertake. I'll be looking into making a couple of small shrugs - Veronique ticks my boxes but it's also knitted in KSH and two projects in KSH might be a bit much even for me. Right now, though, I am contrating on a knitted art piece I shall be exhibiting at the Glasgow Tramway art gallery next month (link NSFW due to artistic nudity). I'm behind schedule and need to press on.

Finally: thank you for all your comments recently. I'll try to get back to each and every one of you!

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

Today I wore my February Lady Sweater for the first time in months and I was reminded of a recent conversation with knitting friends. Last I went to my regular knitting group, most of us were working on cardigans or sweaters/jumpers knitted flat. This gave us pause for thought because the past few years we have all been very busy knitting top-down cardigans and jumpers/sweaters these past few years. So why have many of us suddenly gone back to the dreaded seamed cardigans where you cannot try on the garment as you are knitting and there is so much post-knitting finishing to do?

My February Lady Sweater has not aged well. I knitted it out of New Lanark Aran which is a sturdy no-frills yarn with good memory, but even the yarn's good memory has not preventing the cardigan from sagging under its own weight. The garterstitch yoke has stretched which means baggy underarms and a cardigan that is too long in the body. Yes, my FLS has been washed and dried (several times) but the yoke does not spring back into shape.

Out of curiosity I then tried on my other top-down garments. My red cardigan also suffers from the 'saggy yoke leads to sad cardigan' syndrome as does my beloved handspun garterstitch yoke cardigan although I have not worn it as often as either my grey or red cardigan and so it still maintains some shape. I've worn Liesl maybe five times so it still looks brand new, but Milbrook looks a bit tired even if the yarn itself is very light-weight. My only top-down garment which still looks fit for fight? Forecast. Maybe the cables keep it in shape?

Question: how has your seamless, top-down cardigan or jumper/sweater weathered being used over, say, one or two years? Has your project kept its general shape or has it turned into a sad, saggy unflattering lump like my once much-loved FLS? I'm particularly curious about the cardigans that were all the rage maybe one or two years ago - the 'three buttons at the top' cardigans. You know, FLS, Moch cardigan, Amelia, Tea Leaves, Tappan Zee etc.

Maybe I have been unlucky and maybe my knitting friends have been unlucky - or maybe top-down seamless knitting needs to be thought about more carefully?What's your take on seams vs no-seams?

In other crafty news, I have finally made a decision on which sewing machine to purchase. I have gone for JL300C which is a re-branded Janome. Essentially it is the Janome DC3050 without the 20 decorative stitches I didn't want or need - and it's £30 less too. I'm getting it next week and I am ridiculously excited. I should probably send D. into town to pick it up or I may be tempted into buying some of the new Joel Dewberry cottons: some of his prints are quite Art Noveau, others rather Art Deco, and I'm weak in the presence of references to early 20th C visual design.

I'm currently knitting: nothing! It's true! I need to cast on for an art piece I'm exhibiting next month. I just need to shake off this lethargy of mine. I'm currently reading: Zadie Smith - On Beauty. Again with the lethargy, though, as I'm only twenty pages into a book I ought to be flying through..

Pssst.. title.

Decisions Of Various Kinds

After some research and a lot of deliberation, I went to two sewing machine demonstrations this past week. I tried four different machines:

• Elna 2800. I tried this one at The Life Craft. I quickly felt comfortable using it and it was easy to use. It is just a smidgen too basic for my needs.
• Elna 3210. I tried this one and the following two at John Lewis. Weirdly enough, I knew immediately this was not the machine for me. I did not like the placement of the reverse key, and I found choosing a stitch more hassle than it ought to have been.
• Janome Excel II 5024. I like this machine a lot. It is sturdy, intuitive to use, and it comes with a good selection of feet.
• Janome Dec0r 3050. The only computerised machine I tried. It was easy to use, is very versatile, and comes with a good selection of feet.

I kept the two samplers I made just so I could compare stitch quality between the 5024 and the 3050.

If I knew I were to become a control freak quilter who needed absolute even stitching, I would go for the 3050 in a heartbeat. The 5024 has even stitching, don't get me wrong, but the 3050 has that computerised evenness down pat. I'm just not cut out (boom!) to be a control freak quilter.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I'm willing to pay £100 more to get super-even stitching, three buttonhole options, and a whole lot of decorative stitches that I will probably never use. The 5024 is the best mechanical machine I've tried, it does the basics plus a bit more, and it does its thing very well. It is a real workhorse of a machine, and I enjoyed working with it.

I just really like that keyhole buttonhole that the 3050 has to offer, dammit. And the machine is just, well, prettier than the 5024.

Decisions, decisions.

Meanwhile I have been really inspired by all your comments about a Spring-Summer wardrobe. I have also kept a close eye on the Colette Patterns Spring Palette challenge in which people have defined their sewing goals for Spring 2011. I haven't made it that far yet - for obvious reasons outlined above - but I have actually begun to think about cohesive wardrobes and deliberate colour palettes for the first time in my entire life (bar my university years: black with a dash of black for that intellectual look).

I created a palette at ColourLovers which helped me identify five colours that will form the basis of my Spring-Summer crafting this year: Citrus colours balanced and anchored by two neutrals (I particularly like the cool brown). Crazy as it may sound, I already have yarn and fabric that reflect this palette but it wasn't until I sat down to play with colours that I realised this. I think having this palette in mind will also help my buying habits.

Colourlovers is a great site, actually. Not only does it let you create a palette of your own choice (or find suitable colours created by someone else), but it lets you create a pattern based upon your chosen colours , and then you can transport that pattern to Spoonflower where they'll print your very own fabric. If I were rich, I'd totally design my own freaking wardrobe down to every last detail.

I may not be a control freak quilter, but I can still get a tad obsessive at times.