I once heard a sermon from a pastor that used the analogy of a piece of embroidery to help us understand difficult times. On the backside of things, the piece of art being created looks incredibly messy, unplanned, jarring, all over the place, and unintentional. The colors are mixed up, there are random pieces off to the side and overlapping, and the string looks awful. However, if you flip it over, you can see how a design has been created from all of those seemingly haphazard stitches and the beauty of the finished work to be displayed. This image has been coming to me a lot over the past few weeks, and particularly this Easter Sunday as we walk through a very uncertain and messy season in the world. It brings me hope, and I hope it brings you hope too.
May we trust that the finished piece of art, this life, will be worth all of the confusion in the end. Happy Easter all, and to my friends who are celebrating, He is Risen!
Total personal post today, but I just love these two so incredibly much. It was such an honor to be a part of their wedding celebration yesterday, a private ceremony in a beautiful backyard on an even more beautiful day complete with face masks, tacos, and a car parade of friends who loved them so. I am so glad that they found each other, and that now they are man & wife. I love you so much K&C!
I said my goals out loud and started a daily blog habit that I am loving.
I made a large batch of French onion soup and loved eating it all week.
I watched the pink shadows outside my frosted bathroom window become vibrantly pink with the giant azalea blooms outside.
I didn’t do a great job of getting up and moving my body, but I got a lot of work done.
I finished a big project for a tiny human.
I made two cakes, including a wedding cake.
We mulched our front yard and welcomed spring weather.
I cooked a delicious hash for breakfast.
I got ready to love on some dear friends who will host a private ceremony today for their wedding in lieu of the party they had planned.
I ripped out a few inches on my Wool & Honey sweater when I saw a mistake I knew I’d never be able to let go of, and felt good about it.
I hung out with my husband and cats a lot.
It feels as though we have been living in our home in self-quarantine forever, but really it’s only been about a month. It’s weird thinking of all of the things I used to take for granted as so normal that now I miss so much. Going to the library. Getting a coffee downtown. Eating at a restaurant. Popping into my local yarn store. Not wondering whether a business is going to be open this weekend that I randomly need to visit. Going for a swim at the Y. Not wearing a mask outside. I know we’re getting through this, and in some ways have settled into a routine, but in others it just continues to be hard and I want to acknowledge and be OK in that space too. Happy weekend friends. May it be full of health and goodness and love for you!
I’ve been doing a good bit of sewing this winter, but only some of it has actually made it to my Instagram. Last year I started ordering PDF patterns online and having them printed in large sheets through PDF Plotting and it has been an absolute game. changer. No more fussy tissue paper patterns, no more spending hours tracing a size, then cutting the pattern pieces: instead I cut the pattern pieces out on sturdy printed stock and start cutting my fabric. I’ll usually order a few patterns at once to save on shipping and for patterns with multiple variations, I’ll spend the extra $4 to print two copies so I don’t have to re-trace or modify or reorder later, I just have a second copy ready to be cut differently the next time.
With this new system, I can cut and sew whole patterns in an afternoon. It feels AMAZING. So far this winter I’ve made the Ebony Dress, Wiksten Shift Dress, Wiksten Haori, two Gypsum skirts, and a self-drafted maxi skirt based loosely on this tutorial I found on Pinterest (it turned out so cute). If I’m not trying to do a marathon sewing session, I’ll cut out the pattern pieces and fabric one day, and construct it the next. Next month is Me Made May and I am really happy with the options I’ll have to participate based on the sewing I’ve gotten to do in recent months. And, it is motivating me to work on a few more pieces I would love to wear during the challenge.
In addition to all of the garments I’ve sewn, I’ve also totally caught the quilt bug. Going from garments to quilting has been such a fun and different type of construction and I have at least three quilted projects either in process or planned in my head right now, including a queen-sized quilt to use every day in our master bedroom. Here’s what is in progress this month:
Quilty Table Runner
I had a plan for a quilt top I wanted to construct last fall using some fabrics from Elizabeth Hartman’s fabric collection for her quilt pattern “Norm and Nanette”. It’s the perfect combination of bright, but sweet, and homey. Unfortunately for me, I ran out of the background chambray fabric I was using to construct these blocks of quilt stars and of course, I didn’t write the fabric label down, so I am abandoning my original plan for a lap quilt and turning it into a table runner instead. I still need to purchase the backing fabric (or figure out how to use the quilt block fabric for the back) and purchase batting for this project but if I am able to I think I can finish this up this month!
Wren Dress
I’m excited about the easiness of wearing more knit fabrics this spring and summer, and the Wren Dress is next on my make list for a knit dress. I have two potential knit fabrics that I’d like to make a Wren out of, and think that I will start with the pink floral that I purchased at JoAnn’s before diving into my beautiful Birch Organics blue floral knit (This weird cloudy day photo does not do it justice). I’ll definitely do the version with sleeves and may even try to make it maxi-length if I can finagle the patterning and have enough fabric to do so.
Coasters!
I have not historically been really interested in home decor sewing, but being at home for days on end has made me much more aware of all of the little projects that might be nice to have around while I work. The wood finish on my desk is rather delicate and between a coffee mug, water glass, occasional smoothie, and afternoon tea, I definitely need some more quality coasters in my life. I love this tutorial, and am also considering doing something in the log cabin style. I have a lot of small fabric pieces I could pull together for this which is great.
Queen Quilt planning
This may or may not actually count, since I’m not planning on actually starting to sew this quilt in April, but I would love to figure out how much additional fabric I’m going to need to assemble my eventual queen-size quilt. The plan for the last year has been to slowly collect tiny floral prints that I love to create a patchwork of florals on a plain background. My original thought was sawtooth stars, but I have recently also fallen in love with some simple nine-patch patterns that I think would be gorgeous too. I think finding a more specific pattern with guidelines on fabric would help, or just crunching the numbers on block size vs. finished size of quilt. Laying out all of the fabrics together was also helpful in seeing what additional colors I may want to add to make it feel more “rounded” and complete.
The start of a new season also makes me want to clear out a lot of the mending and re-fashion projects I have sitting waiting to be addressed, and I’d love to build in more time this month to get those off of the shelves and back into my wardrobe. For the amount of time that those projects have been patiently waiting to be attended to, it will almost feel like a new project getting done and new pieces getting added to my wardrobe. I also have the fabric all picked out and ready to go for a Roscoe dress and Hinterland dress but just realistically am not sure I’ll get to them this month.
What are you planning on sewing in April? Any plans for Me Made May? I’d love to know!
All of that creative energy I’ve been feeling recently, while awesome, has resulted in a lot of projects happening at the same time. I try to be a semi-monogamous knitter but I’m not feeling the pressure to just work on one thing at a time right now and that feels good! Here’s what I’m currently working on this month.
I’ve been working slowly on this project ever since last August. A year ago B took a trip to New York City and brought me back this amazing Cattail Silk from a detour he took over to Purl Soho (he loves me). It is 100% silk, and super gorgeous but not so shiny or smooth. I had originally started knitting the Rue Shawl with this yarn, but the intricate lace was really hard on my hands since the fiber content of this yarn has almost no give or stretch. I frogged it, and started instead with this simple pattern that was paired with Cattail Silk from Purl Soho, and it’s great. The yarn is already starting to bias in the pattern creating a slanted edge that I love. I’m maybe halfway through my first of two skeins and have a feeling I’ll get more and more into this as the weather warms. Hilariously, this would be the perfect wrap for a summer wedding and this is the first summer in years that we have no weddings on the books between May and August. C’est la vie, it will still be lovely. This also gives me hope that maybe someday I’ll be interested in knitting summer tees in linen or cotton yarn, which up to this point I have had absolutely no interest in.
I started this sweater almost immediately after finishing B’s Riddari in February and knit the entire first skein in maybe three days. The combination of squishy, beautiful Brooklyn Tweed Loft and interesting pattern growing on my needles resulted in being completely obsessed from the get-go. I separated the sleeves and started the body just in time to go see our last movie in theaters before self-quarantine started (although, we didn’t know that would be true at the time). I took a break from it the past few weeks to finish up my new nephew’s baby blanket (more on that later) but I am excited to start working on it again despite the complete impracticality of knitting a wooly sweater in April. I’m thinking I will add some length to the body if I have enough yarn to do so, and that this will become an instant classic for me. The colorway here is called “Fossil”.
Ah, the hexipuffs. These are without a doubt my longest-running project I have ever worked on, going on at least four years of very intermittent knitting on and off. Each puff is extremely adorable, easy to memorize, and takes maybe 30 minutes to knit, but I still cannot seem to get traction with this project even after a month of knitting them every day.
My lack of motivation, upon reflection, I think comes from two things: 1) while each puff is beautiful on its own, I have no idea how these colors are going to work together in the overall blanket, especially considering the mini skeins and sock yarns that I have to add to them. 2) I have no idea what final size I want this quilt to be, and no idea if I even want to use it in my home. These colors are so bright, happy, neon, crazy and are a great little pick-me-up when I actually knit them, but looking around I see no place where these puffs would reasonably live. The process is good, but the final result is not that motivating for me right now.
I almost want to give up on these puffs, I think, to open up new creative energy for other mini-skein projects. I would definitely be open to working on this project again in the future, as I love the pattern and LOVE the finished look of the original design, and I think that truly does come down to the colors. If I ever made this pattern again, I think I would go at it from the angle of choosing the palette ahead of time and purchasing all of the yarn together to make sure it’s cohesive. If you’re interested in adopting this project and the yarn I have devoted to go with it, shoot me an email in my contact form.
I have been following Elise Blaha Cripe for many years now and have seen over the years how she has taken on a lot of different goal-setting challenges and they are always incredibly inspiring. I also read her book on goal-setting a few months ago, and then read it again recently (I’m kind of a fan girl, it appears.) One of my favorite projects she has done over the years has been her #100DayChallenge projects. They come in the spring when inspiration is high but there’s no “real reason” to tackle anything (it’s not January, or the start of a new school year, for example) - but it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you stick to something for 3+ months.
I’ve known this whole spring that I wanted to participate in this challenge and set some new goals for myself, but wasn’t sure exactly what I would do. I thought about 100 videos, 100 swatches, 100 quilt squares, 100 mending projects (only mostly kidding on that one, looking at my mending pile right now), 100 days to finish my level one master knitter project, 100 more hexipuffs, but they all seemed too involved in one specific area. I am loving having some extra creative energy right now and want to be able to bounce around between sewing, stitching, knitting, dyeing, quilting, cooking, and more over the next 100 days and while we are still self-quarantining, without guilt or feeling like I am “supposed” to be doing something else.
Blogging more regularly is something I’ve wanted to find a rhythm for a long time, and blogging every day for 100 days? It seems big enough to be a little afraid to commit to, but manageable enough that I don’t need any additional supplies, materials, or training to do it. It won’t take me hours every day, and is something I can do at home. And, it will encourage me again in my photography, which I have realized recently I have really been missing since I sold my DSLR camera a few year ago. I’m not planning any particular content right now that would break the mold of what I’ve already been writing here, but I am open to new ideas and inspiration as this progresses. If you have seen any other cool blog projects or 100 day projects related to what I’m working on, I’d love to see them!
I’m really excited to see how these next 100 days will go and what I will have learned when I write my last post of the challenge on July 16. I hope reading this blog will become a loved daily ritual for you also as you follow along!
My work-from-home office is also the space where all of my crafts live: my yarn cabinet, fabric storage, sewing machines, tea materials, spinning wheel, etc. My schedule before a few weeks ago was to mainly only use this space on the weekends while sewing or starting new projects, and one of the unexpected small happinesses from being home has been how I’ve paid attention to and used the spaces in my home differently than I previously ever had. Being surrounded by these materials has been super inspiring and has led to a cacophony of new ideas and things to work on. As a part of my effort to stash down, however, I’m trying to remain focused and purposeful in my crafting, with allowances for random new ideas and energy. First on my projects list was a new Wiksten Haori jacket for the spring.
Ever since my last Wiksten Haori (gosh, I cannot believe that was 2 years ago) I have wanted to make another one of these useful, simple, beautiful jackets. I have been eyeing this beautiful cross-stitched fabric (like this, but I purchased mine at Freeman’s Creative). I believe that I purchased 2.5 yards, since I knew I would shorten it and I wanted to make an unlined version using Jenny’s tutorial on her blog.
I made a size M again using the original pattern from Making volume 4 “Lines” and only shortened it by about 2” to make it a little longer than my last cropped version. I also lengthened the sleeve by about 4” and then did a double cuffed sleeve to make it feel a little more polished. I followed all of the modifications for the unlined version until I got to the collar. I didn’t have quite enough fabric to cut out four full pieces for the collar so I had to improvise a little. It worked out great, though, and would totally do this again. Here’s basically what I did:
Sewed the two pieces together at short ends to make one super long strip (as directed)
Folded over both long ends 3/8” towards the wrong side on both sides
Lined up one long side with the collar seam at the center back neck and pinned one long, folded side to the raw edge of the collar and sewed at together.
Like a quilt binding or like a folded skirt waistband, I brought the other long folded edge around to the inside of the jacket and overlapped the 3/8” fold over the seam I just made by securing the collar to the raw edge, pinning into place. Now the seam is enclosed behind my nice fold!
From the outside of the jacket, stitched in the ditch slowly to not break any pins all the way the length of the collar and secure the inside folded edge. Took out the pins and ironed a nice edge for the collar.
I finished sewing and basically didn’t take it off for two days. It’s so comfy and perfect for layering inside my chilly house for hours on end. Looking forward to styling it with some dresses and jeans soon as well.
Natural dyeing as meditation, and home-based crafting
The title of this post feels a little dramatic, but then again, so does the past two weeks. While I was still checking in on the Australian wildfires, it seemed, I began to hear and connect with the fact that some new virus was spreading like crazy abroad. Watching the images come out of Wuhan and Italy has been nothing short of shocking. And then, suddenly, our plans went from, “Hey, we should maybe think about this,” to, “We have to do something about this right now.”
I’m working from home, which is an incredible luxury. B is a resident physician and had to go into the hospital for the first part of this week. Each day I disinfected our living spaces and door handles in the morning after he left. My house is definitely cleaner than its been since we moved in two and a half years ago. Luckily, he’s been working (furiously) from home trying to make sure patients have everything they need outside of an imminent infection and it has been humbling to see the most organized and systematic processes at his work have to be completely re-made and adapted for telehealth and virtual meetings at the forefront of care.
I’m sure that many will resonate with the fact that one of the hardest things about this time for me is the uncertainty. No one knows when the worst of this will be over. In China, only half of the cases have resolved in over a month, although it looks like containment might actually be working. We have no idea what events we may or may not be able to have in April, May, and beyond, and if it gets better over the summer (as some predict), whether it will return in the fall. My dad is immunocompromised and every day I am nervous I will wake up to hear he had to be hospitalized, or worse. My sister-in-law and brother are expecting their first baby and all plans to shower them have been completely cancelled, and my best friend’s early April wedding as well. It feels impossible.
My faith is the anchor of my hope, and it is being surely tested. Crafting helps. Putting together new routines helps. Making small lists of specific things I can accomplish each day helps. Dreaming of new projects and looking forward to creating new things really helps. My library’s virtual resources help. Family group chats help. Watching a comforting TV show helps. Going on a nature walk helps. Stretching helps. Praying helps.
Hold on to what is helping you in this season. Give yourself and those around you grace as things ram to a halt. Call in the order for that yarn that you’ve been wanting or buy yourself a gift card to your local craft store and favorite restaurant to treat yourself when the social distancing ends and you can celebrate life in a way that you didn’t before. Take this chance to clean out and un-busy your life and see the good in that. Look at the generosity of strangers and small businesses offering free resources for those who are home-bound and know that we are all in this together and that we will get through it one day at a time. I am trying to do this, and it is helping. Little by little, we’re moving forward.
