My "New" Toy or Anthropologie Catalog here I come!

Recently, I asked for a new toy.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  Like all interesting ideas it was quite expensive and hard to come by.  A good deal of arranging had to take place but my dear husband always seems to come through.  Now all this talk of gifts, you may think this was a birthday gift...but alas, this treasure has been sitting on my desk unused since Christmas.

Perhaps it doesn't look like much to you but this, Dear Reader, is a ruffler foot and not just any ruffler. This is a ruffler for my serger.

I have had my serger for a good many years.  (I bought it in DC....yeah, a good many!) I don't really end up using it all that much.  The edge is too wide, too bulky, too too too....for boxpleat doll work.  (In general...I have been trying to use it more lately to good effect as it really is quite a good machine and more versatile than I give it credit for. :)

So while this little "thing" isn't going to change the world, it certainly has facilitated some fun.

Here is what I spent the day Friday making:

The fabric is a very soft shirting weight..... chambray maybe?  It is 100% cotton, a pleasing color and I got an extra 1/2 a yard for free because there was a spot I thought would wash out.  (It did!)

With the ruffler foot on the serger this went from strips of fabric to skirt in a remarkably short time.  You see, this foot gathers what it finds on the bottom and leaves the top smooth....so really all I did was hold the fabric lightly and sew straight lines.

Well okay, it was a little trickier than that.  In fact, I think it will probably benefit from some practice.  It is a little tricky to hold the fabric in place without putting any real tension on it.  If you put any traction on the bottom layer it doesn't feed at a regular rate and you end up with straight patches instead of even ruffles.  In some sections the serged edge is not fully over the edge of both fabrics...but like I said, I think both of those problems are easily addressed now that I know what to watch for in my technique.

The one tricky thing I still am not quite sure how to solve is the problem of estimating the tiers.  When making a skirt like this the traditional way...with lots of pins and gathering stitches...you just take your two very differently shaped pieces and pin the centers, divide and pin again and again until you can pull the gathering threads and have nice even gathers that make it all the way around.  When I worked on this skirt I ended up having to add another piece to the bottom ruffle because, as much as I had, it was simply not enough to get to the end.  (That will be partially solved by decreasing the differential feed....ie the ratio of bottom gathering for every smooth stitch on top.)  I am sure there is a way to do this with math + patience but I haven't quite figured it out yet.

Once the ruffled tiers were put together... (Oh, I used the high tech measuring system of holding the first tier around my hips, adding a bit and there you go!) I plain serged the top and bottom edge.  The elastic is a half inch wide and reminds me of the kind of elastic stretchy belts were made of in the 80s!  It is fairly firm and will stand up to a lot of stretch while maintaining its  shape.  The top of the skirt is just rolled over the elastic (edge of elastic and serged edge line up.)  I put 4 rows of stitching over the top (sewing while it was stretched of course) and I will never have to worry about the irritating twist in the elastic that haunts all my casings. hehehehe  You will note that this skirt has a boxpleat tag in it.  This is the first full sized piece of clothing to bear my label.  Not that I haven't made anything for myself before....just that I always thought of boxpleat as my "Doll Business" but really it is just me and if I made it, it should have my tag. 

I chose a "fancy" stitch for the top stitching and hem.  I wanted to do it for the waist also, but I chickened out because the decorative stitches move so much back and forth I figured it would be too hard to maintain the tension in the elastic without pulling the stitch our of shape.  The fancy stitch took FOREVER!  I had forgotten that one of the reasons it is nice to do doll sewing is that you never have to do the same thing for too long.  I like the way it turned out...and that is what made me think of the catalogs of my college days.  The thread is a variegated rayon in blue gray and white, so the color progresses as you follow the stitching.

Once the skirt was finished I threw it in the washing machine.  I was perhaps a little zealous, not knowing what to expect from my little toy and the skirt was BIG....like Square Dance big.  After a wash, I twisted the skirt and then left it to dry.  The resulting shape appears neither too full, nor will ever have to be ironed...in fact, it really shouldn't be. hehehe (You know you like the sound of that.)

My only real disappointment with it is the hem.  After the wash, there is a bit of cupping....I think because the rayon thread may have shrunk.  Not sure how I would get around that in the future.  It isn't really a visual problem on this skirt with all the crinkles, but something to wonder about.  Anyone out there have any ideas?  I probably needed to have some stabilizer in the hem....sigh!

So go make something.  It will make you happy (even if you hide it in the back of your closet and no one else ever sees it. ;) k.

Mastery

It is an interesting thing to watch children pursue mastery...but I should say that it is also fun to watch (or be) an adult in the pursuit of it as well.

For my birthday I bought myself some quilt books...all filled with spiky things. Quilt Mavens and Mariner's Compass.

So this is what I have been playing at the last day or so. The fabrics are from my friend's "Quilts of Valor" challenge for Cursed Quilt (which really is cursed by the way....I was supposed to go fabric shopping with a member and my son announced that he was going to be sick. Hasn't yet, but I am not going ANYWHERE in the car. ;)

 In order to use this book you have to either know how to do foundation piecing (paper piecing) or be a bold adventurer.  Either way she has some great designs in here and...even better...some good instructions on how to make your own!  You can see my sketch here with the book.  Not super complex or even as spiky as I am inclined to be, but it is my first effort.

As this was for the challenge I actually drafted this twice.... the foundation in the picture is only 8 1/2 inches.  Since the blocks are supposed to be 12 1/2 I realized that I had better just draw it again and not be lazy. hehehe

The trickiest part of this whole process is figuring out how to divide the design and decide which section has to be done first.  I could see there were several ways to do it, but everyone was going to require one of my shapes to be split.  Here you can see it as it is so far...

I like the look of the circle in the center of compass designs but I am not so sure I really want to do any applique' hehehe.  (I also am not sure I know what color it should be when I do it...) The fabrics for the Challenge are the two dark prints.

As for my Mavens Book...this block makes me feel cool.  Yes I know I am a terrible quilt geek...and that it may not go with all the rest of my blocks that I designed for the challenge quilt.  But I LIKE it.  (Note: this is a pattern from the CD that comes with the book....and it was 9 inches, thus the borders...but I even like those.  The inner fading border is from a  fabric I got for my "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" which is still just a top in my work box.
Yeah, I know.  Quilt Geek.  You can't have any idea how I agonized over getting the lines of little dots in the middle of that spike.  Surprisingly hard.  But worth it I think. heh.

This style of block is sometimes called a "New York City Beauty" and other variations on the theme.  That appears to mean that it is a spiky 1/4 circular pattern.  That is actually how I found the books I bought....searching for that type of Art Deco block with the arcs in it.  The books I ended up with are better than any of the ones purporting to be about actual "New York City Beauty" blocks.

Do something that makes you happy today.  It doesn't even have to be spiky! k.

And Another Kind of Work

As you may be aware, the boy loves trains in all their many forms.  For his birthday he got trains, of course.....and so nearly every day I have a new kind of work.

The picture on the top is today's creation. I like the spiral levels but we simply don't have enough corners. hehehe (You can see the wimp out raw edges in the center of the pic.)

The second picture is actually from several weeks ago when I meant to write this entry. I was particularly pleased with this one as there are no raw edges to be found and I believe all track can be traversed in a single loop.

For the record these are GeoTrax and the best price I have found is actually from the FisherPrice website!

The trouble with making fun train tracks is that i doesn't get that I don't actually want to PLAY trains. He is only moderately interested in the building process and I am not so interested in making things go around and around and around...

In addition to the fact that he will regularly state that he just doesn't like this one...I have somewhat mixed feelings about this new work of mine. (He also regularly tells everyone that his dad bought him all these trains, despite the fact that all but the very first small set have been acquired by me. hehehe N is lucky he has such a great assistant to make sure gifts get ordered, make travel arrangements and do the laundry. hah!) In any case the work continues....