Category: sewing

PSA: Support Your Local Sewing Shop — and Get Away From It All

~ CZed ~ Leave a comment

Our cat is ancient — she’ll be 20 this March. Cats, being desert creatures, are uniquely adapted to preserve their bodily fluids. The downside of this parsimonious use of water is that when their kidneys fail, they fail comprehensively and fast. If nothing else gets a cat first, her kidneys will probably be her major point of failure.

Given that Angel is so old, but mostly healthy other than her kidneys (and the fact that she’s clever and getting senile, which is a bad combination), when we heard of a stem-cell study ongoing at Colorado State University, I figured that she would be useful for science. Worst case, we would not be shortening her life; best case, we’d be improving her quality of life. If we can get stem cells working to repair feline kidneys, there’s a good chance we can do the same for human kidneys, and if that’s the case, then dialysis can go away and the need for transplants will drop.

This means that every other week, I get up at OMG It’s Early and shove the cat in her carrier, then drive an hour with her howling to be LET OUT RIGHT THE HELL NOW AND LET ME DRIVE. She spends several hours at the CSU Vet teaching hospital, and I spend those hours working. I can’t take my professional work, but I can sew, and I’m finding that I can sew better when I’m not home.

Typical sewing experience at Mama Said Sew
10:10 a.m.: Arrive, open sewing box, remove current project, scissors, pins, pencil. Turn on iron. Unpack scissors, thread machine. Queue up current audiobook or podcast.
10:15: Get to work. Sew seams, trim, iron, pin. Repeat until finished or time runs out.
Noon: check out new arrivals, pay for my time and anything I can’t live without. Pick up the cat. Drive home with cat trying to chew her way out of the carrier.

Contrast that to typical sewing time at home:
Pick up current project. Turn on iron. Email pings.
Answer email. Shake iron because it has turned itself off. Sew seam.
Shake iron because it has turned itself off. Press.
Phone rings. Check caller ID, ignore or answer.
Shake iron because it has turned itself off. Remember what comes next in garment. Pin. Email pings.
Delete email, get distracted with a Youtube video.
Shake iron because it has turned itself off. Sew seam. Press.
Take off headphones and ask husband to repeat himself. Nod vaguely about World of Warcraft politics or gameplay. Check that he didn’t have anything he actually wanted from me. Shake iron because it has turned itself off.
Remove headphones again because hubs has remembered what it was he actually wanted to ask me about. Have mental indexing fail regarding whereabouts of $MissingItem, look in three possible places and find in fourth.
Shake iron because it has turned itself off.
Figure out what came next.
Email pings.
Delete email.
Cat yowls like her lungs are being pulled out through her nostrils. Go in search of cat.
Find cat, who is sitting on bed, looking innocent. Cat notices attention from servant, mews gently and flops on side, presenting cute belly for rake attack trap. Do mental calculus that cat will not be with us much longer, pet kitty belly, get lightly gnawed on and kicked, make kitty happy for five minutes.
Thank all the drug companies there ever were that I don’t have kids, because if I did, I’d never get any seams sewn, or that iron shaken.

Yes, I could fix this by a) turning off wi-fi, b) turning off phone, c) ignoring attention-seeking behavior of cat and/or d) ignoring hubs, but those are bad precedents to be starting. I could also buy an iron without an auto-shutoff, but then I’d probably burn down the house. Truly, it’s easier to just pack my crap in a box and take it elsewhere for a few hours.

Local Sewing Shops are incredible resources — they have a curated selection of fabrics, machines, notions, and knowledge that the Big Boxes don’t. I NEVER have to worry that what I’ve bought from MSM or Elfride’s is not actually what the label says — they’ve done their research, they know their manufacturers, and they’ve done the burn tests. If Angela or Elfride says fabric is cotton, or linen, or silk, it IS.

This is not true of the Big Box that starts with J or the Big Box that starts with H. More than once, I’ve bought fabric from a bolt labeled 100% cotton, or cotton-linen blend, or wool, and gotten home and found that the fabric melts. That means synthetics — natural fibers don’t melt, blogga. It’s not the fault of the retail clerks — most are not sewists when they start working there. It’s not even the fault of the Big Box corporate buyers — they’re required by the Federal Trade Commission to state content, and they can be fined heavily if their products are other than what is labeled.

But the Big Boxes get buffaloed by their suppliers. Raw cotton has been running around .80 USD per pound, but polyester fiber runs about .04 USD per pound. An unscrupulous supplier need not and cannot substitute all of the cotton with poly, but 35-50% is hard to detect without a burn test of every bolt. That’s completely impractical when daily imports are in the tons. The chances of getting caught are so low and the potential profits so high compared to the potential fines that it’s a good way to increase income. It doesn’t even have to be dishonesty — if a supplier is weaving ten thousand tons of fabric a year, there will be mistakes. The Big Box suppliers will also make mistakes because that’s the nature of volume.

Local sewing shops also offer respite from distraction that is precious in this world. The best part of the pre-free wifi at Starbucks was having to think hard about whether I wanted to be connected. (I’ve never been a Starbucks coffee fan. I like their teas, though.) The best thing about Peet’s is still the absence of wifi, but I can’t take a sewing machine there.

Half of the reason I do almost everything on my iPad now is because it makes me focus — I can only have one application open at a time. There are ten thousand things demanding my very precious attention at any moment, and the mental spoons to curate that is demanding. A Local Sewing Shop that provides that distraction-free space is worth every cent I spend there.

Thread-banging, Head-banging Entropy

~ CZed ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been quietly working (okay, reality is I’ve been roundly cursing, but let’s try for a modicum of dignity) on several projects as time permits. I’m nearly finished with the first chemise (about a foot more stitching on the neckline casing, then the hems) and have a workaround for underarm gussets I’m planning to document on the next go-round. I’ve run several dye experiments, on both cotton yarn and an incredible linen-cotton blend fabric that I found at Mama Said Sew in Fort Collins the last time I took the cat-child for her medical experiment. (More on that when I have time to write it up.) I altered the glove pattern and built a pair on the altered pattern out of a lovely, soft wool, and I have built a muff base (following on Katherine’s muff base) that is stuffed with silk batting.

I’ve also woven some of that same dyed cotton on my rigid heddle loom, but truly, that was a practice piece that is not at all ready for prime-time, or even day-time UHF (what is the equivalent now? Daytime basic cable? Having gone to TV by interwebz in about 2000, and having been without cable since I was 16, I’ve kinda forgotten or never knew.) I’ve managed to forget to snap pictures during daylight every time, despite having cameras on practically every device I own (and a pretty good digital) because seriously, I’m GenX. For me, pictures were expensive, between the film and the developing, and there were books that I needed a lot more than more scraps of paper to be packed or tossed whenever we moved. By the time I remember to take a pic, the light is gone, and my other half is home, and he’s as camera-shy as the Amish. Also, he’s happier in the dark.

And in between all of this, and work, and just dealing with the fact that the country as a whole seems to be one missed dose of thorazine from a full psychotic break, and goofing off on the Intertubez and reading and the other forms of cat-vacuuming known as sustaining life and fending off local entropy, I’ve been winding various hanks of spun fiber into useable balls or onto spools. A couple years ago, I managed to score ten hanks each of Araucania Ulmo cotton yarn in the most gorgeous violet and red. I had intentions of crocheting it, but my crochet projects have to be short attention span theater. Weaving turns out to be just active enough that I don’t get bored, while crochet is just too slow for me. (I cannot knit. Yes, I’ve tried. No, it doesn’t work for me. I’m glad you do, and I’ll admire your efforts, but no, I can’t be taught.) This stuff is soft and delicate and small vat dyed, so it has this incredible, subtle marbling. It is going to weave into beautiful fabric. It’s also the most consistently tangled skein of yarn I have ever encountered. I can wind a ball of Cascade or Simply Caron in about 10 minutes (no swift, no winder) but every skein of Ulmo takes at least a half hour, despite being stretched on warping pegs and carefully handled. All knots, all the time.

Tonight, I’m winding floche, which is fancy-schmancy embroidery thread. (Ah, the exciting life of a pure geek.) It’s not stranded, like regular DMC floss, and it’s a little more delicate than either perle cotton or floss, but it’s the stuff for period embroidery. It’s soft and smooth and gorgeous long-staple cotton. I expect it to be brilliant to work with. And I know now why it’s rare and nobody uses it anymore. It tangles. OMGWTFBBQ does it tangle, despite warping pegs and careful handling.

If you’ve come to this post via googling on tangled thread, here’s the advice:

1. If you’re hand-sewing, make sure your thread is no more than 18 inches long. Yes, you’ll be rethreading the needle a lot, but shorter threads tangle less, are less likely to break under pressure, and shorter thread makes for better control of smaller and neater stitches.
2. Though it’s tempting to double the thread and knot both ends together, don’t. This will cause more tangles as the two halves of the thread try to double-helix around each other, plus the eye of the needle will wear a weak spot in the thread. Knot one end, if you must, and slowly adjust the tail end so that you’re always sewing with about 3 inches of single thread.
3. Lubricate the thread. Traditionally, this is done by running the thread over a block of beeswax, but in a pinch, you can use a dab of beeswax based clear lip balm on your fingers, or a hand or body lotion. Just use a very, very light touch and try to stay away from the petroleum based balms and lotions. Yes, Chapstick works. No, I don’t recommend it, because it does make oily stains. If that’s not an issue, have at.
4. For embroidery floss, take the two tubes of paper off the ends and stretch out the skein between your hands so the skein is flat and unkinked. If you have a handy comrade you trust with sharp objects, have your comrade make one cut with sharp scissors through all of the threads in the skein. (If not, lay the skein on a table and do the snip yourself. If you don’t trust yourself with sharp objects, please call your doctor or your local mental health emergency help line. End PSA.) This will produce about a gazillion 18 inch lengths of 6 strand floss (assuming DMC or equivalent), which is the right size for needlework and hand-sewing. Loosely slip knot the strands around something so they both stay together and don’t tangle up. The something can be anything from a pencil to a spare embroidery hoop to a set of disused circular knitting needles.

Sewing tools: Thimbles

~ CZed ~ Leave a comment

Home Economics was not a reality when I was in school. I’m pretty sure there were home ec classes in all of my schools, but I had other stuff to fill those seven classes a day. Most school years, I didn’t have time for all the stuff I wanted to do, much less classes the teenage aspiring astronaut/doctor/senator/lawyer me would ever need.

This means I’m mostly self-taught in all sorts of crafty stuff. One great-grandmother did give me a basic 9 block when I was about four (she made gorgeous quilts), and another put a ginormous crochet hook and the nastiest 1970’s era acrylic yarn in my hands (and made me wary of yarn for years) and my mother taught me the basics of running a sewing machine at some point, but I’m GenX. We really didn’t get instruction — we got instruction manuals. I’ve been RTFMing since I could read.

I never learned to use a thimble. I know what they are, and I’ve used a lot of makeshift ones over the years (a never-to-be-used credit card makes a great needle pusher; teeth can be used as needle pliers in a real pinch, but the former will ruin the card, and the latter will send a dentist’s kid to Berkeley) but I’ve never figured out how they’re supposed to work.

Some people push the needle with a fingertip, but I use the side of my middle finger, between the first and second knuckle. When I do handwork, I usually use a back-stitch or a chain stitch, not a running stitch. My stitch length won’t win awards and running stitches get bunchy on me.

For a thimble, I start with a square of leather about 3″ x 3″. I’ve used junk purses, Dritz leather elbow patches, upholstery scrap and chamois from the automotive shop. I personally like upholstery scrap, since it’s a good weight, usually cheap, and flexible. The only thing that doesn’t work well is garment suede. Garment suede will wear through in about three weeks of heavy use. The small pieces from Michael’s work fine if that’s what you’ve got, but you’re better off buying a thrift-store purse and cutting it down. Vegans, I’m sorry, but pleather does not work. The needles will puncture it. If you’re entirely opposed to using leather, I suggest figuring out how to use a metal thimble.

You’ll also need
heavy thread or two rivets (my preference for speed and not having to shove a needle through leather without a thimble)
an awl
a small hammer
something you can pound on (anvil, scrap wood, sibling skull — something thick, not easily damaged, resilient)
scissors (not the fabric scissors)
chalk or a crayon

Wrap the leather around the finger you want to protect, with one edge near the palm knuckle and the other near the nail. You want this to be tight but not cut off circulation — leather will stretch over time. Use your chalk to mark your first and second knuckles, and mark the length. You want about 1/4 to 1/2 inch (.5 to 1 cm) overlap.

Your fingers probably taper a little, so the first shape you’ll cut in the leather is a trapezoid. (Do this fitting with paper or a scrap of fabric if leather is hard to get.)

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A: length of finger between first and third knuckle
B: circumference of finger at third knuckle plus 1/2 inch
C: circumference of finger at first knuckle plus 1/2 inch

Cut a couple half circles from each side of the trapezoid and one from the center — this is so your finger can bend. Don’t cut too deep, and use your chalk marks as a guide.

Now use the awl to poke holes in the corners — where the blue dots are in my drawing. If you’re sewing the thimble together, you’ll need six or eight on each tab, about 1/8 inch apart. Rivets only need one hole. Rivets are cheap (usually $3 for a pack of fifty) and they’re right next to the leather at the craft shop.

Check the fit, sew up or smash the rivets, and get to sewing. For me, that means an audiobook or some season of television.