Zen and Sewing

The child had one pair of pants. One. From amongst a pile of too-short, too-tattered relics of the past year emerged the last remaining pair of jeans, still sturdy to the world. This is a challenge, right? I could pop over to Value Village and pick up a $5.99 pair of perfectly serviceable jeans for her, or I could go down to the basement and try out How to make easy kids' pants, which I'd been itching to do for, oh, over a year ;-) Besides, I had the perfect fabric in mind: a soft light blue baby corduroy that I'd been saving for something nice. There would be just enough for a pair of pants.

At the same time as I was getting all adventurous and taking apart an old, nice-fitting pair of Safiya's pants to trace a pattern from (never done that with pants before, so was kind of nervous, but it worked out well), I was also having an argument.

It doesn't matter with who, especially because the person wasn't there. I was not paying attention, just indulging, and what I wish I could say or should have said came pouring out in a fantasy (one-sided) conversation where everything got resolved, and where anger and hurt feelings had free reign. Oh, and of course, where I was right, and vindicated, and all that good stuff ;-)

Now, I hear you saying, how can you do that and sew at the same time?

And of course, the answer is that I can't. I cut the pants out completely backwards and the fabric was not salvageable. Which forced a big sigh, a kick in the brain-pants for me, and a refocus on the project at hand. Ugh. Those thoughts, those arguments, while they seem satisfying in the moment, are ultimately so deceptive and unproductive.

Hands with scissors, on the other hand (ha!), can be quite productive:


I'm discovering that it is very difficult to get a four-year-old to stay still! Especially when fitting things....oh, I take back all that wriggling I did to my Mom when she made me clothes years ago....arg!


The back-up pair did turn out just fine, and I highly recommend this method of making pants; once you get going, you could probably make a pair of pants start to finish in 30 minutes-ish.

I do not, however, recommend sewing angry...imagine what all our clothes would look like!

Also, In Which Lillian Was Generous and so there is a Give-Away with a Package Actually Ready to Give Away

"S" is for swell..


And sweet and sgenerous and sthoughtful....

When I did the Children's Trunk Show, my booth neighbour was the sweet Lillian, who runs Bamboo Lily. Her stuff is adorable and well made and environmentally conscience, so please go and check out what she makes because she is due some awesome karma. She was cleaning out her studio, she had extra fabric, she knew from the show that I use recycled fabric, and next thing you know there's this email asking me if I would like two large garbage bags full of fabric.

My head almost exploded.

And to top it off, she passed on to me some incredible fabrics from her Mom, who had brought them from India in the 60's. That is about the coolest thing I've ever heard, and so to delight your senses, here's a little sampling:


Good quality fabrics; silks, wools, psychedelic polyesters, cottons, just about like falling into fabric heaven.

And I'm really excited about this, which is a ruched chiffon:


Actually, I love the paper in which it is enclosed as well, and my mind is racing, thinking up possibilities...

And to top it all off, some awesome vintage dresses, also from India:


Thanks, Lillian. Generosity like yours is truly kind-hearted. And being the fortunate recipient of such generosity prompts me to pass it on. So, please share a tale of generosity here, in the comments. If not just for the fact that stories like that spread warmth, but for the fact that I've got two identical packages ready to be sent out containing pieces of some of my favourites:


There are some surprise pieces in there as well, and some of that chiffon, just to spread the happiness around.

Now, for the sake of transparency, I have packages from two give-aways....last year, that are still W.I.P. I've been pretty good since then, but if you are someone who is waiting for one of those, do not despair! And please comment again, because these packages are hot to trot and waiting to go :-)

Let's see...leave a story of generosity in the comments for this post by Wednesday, July 30, which is Safiya's birthday (yay!), and we'll randomly draw two numbers and have the packages out by the end of that week.

Thanks Lillian!

Quel Disaster!

That, my friends, is the picture of greed. How so? When I picked it up at the fabric swap, lulled into complacency by its beauty, I knew it was some version of plastic. I also knew that I would wash it in hot water. I tested it when it came home with me; yep, plastic. Huh. It looked a little fragile....but I certainly wouldn't have predicted...

It disintegrated! Poof! Should have left it for someone who would be a little less hard on it, eh?

And I can't even use it for scraps or for stuffing 'cause now it's got a really odd smell.....

Playing with Fire

Before:

After:

He he...that was fun. When I thrift fabric, my rule is if there's no label, I don't buy it unless I really like it and can use it for something that's not going to go next to anyone's skin. Which is fine, except when you go to fabric swaps and places like the "by-the-pound" Goodwill, where bags of donations are just dumped into bins and you have to fight the other vultures for what may or may not be cotton....

Now, everything thrifted goes into hot water wash and dry, because, well.....ick. Nothing personal, but I don't know what kind of environment any of those pieces have come from. However, I had got some fabric from a fabric swap at The Workroom (where there is a decidedly un-ick atmosphere ;-) and from the Goodwill that I wasn't sure about, fibre-content-wise. So, using info I found, I did my first real burn test this morning:


Here are my guesses, left to right, top to bottom (I wrote them down first) and the results:

blue and white gingham: mostly polyester :: mostly cotton
green: linen :: linen
lt. blue/pink flower print: mostly polyester :: mostly polyester
cream: cotton :: cotton
red/orange/pink flower print: cotton :: cotton
cream and red baroque print: no idea, probably man-made :: man-made
orange/white print: mostly cotton :: mostly polyester
stripes: mostly polyester :: mostly cotton
baby pink flowered stripes: mostly cotton :: mostly polyester
pink flannel: cotton :: mostly cotton
blue and white: cotton/linen :: some polyester
yellow/red/blue flowers: cotton :: cotton
nubby cream: i hope it's linen/silk :: linen (some polyester? - have to retest)
purple/red print: cotton :: cotton

Some other things I learned:

• blow out your match before becoming mesmerised by how the fabric is burning
• when they say well-ventilated area, they mean it - ack!
• whoah - cotton burns fast!
• make sure your last piece is extinguished before starting the next one - interesting fireballs may result if this advice is not heeded
• have a glass of water handy.....
  

Also, this confirmed my gut feeling about polyester. Why, oh why, would anyone want to wear something whose true (un)nature is revealed like this:


Do you see that melted edge? That's plastic. Gross.
There was a pleasant surprise, though. We have a huge curtain over the closet in our bedroom that I picked up at a thrift store probably a decade ago. It's a large bedspread, I think, and on each corner is woven this:

I was hoping it would be silk, and from the burn test, it looks like it is! It's beautiful regardless, but somehow it's just nice to know :-) I wish I could find out more info on it...

That, and see that sun? The last two days it's been raining, so I'm really doing a happy dance today!

Falling in Love

I'm running out of flannel, and it's hard to find 100% cotton flannel when out thrifting, especially in white or light colours that don't show through when I use it as batting in blankets. So I think I'm going to bite the bullet and order some from NearSea Naturals. I like that a lot of their cotton is not only organically grown in North America, but most of it's also milled in the States. Have to support our friends' economy in times of trouble, right? 'Cause no matter what, we don't want the organic fabric businesses to vanish - that would be a tragedy.

And as I was browsing around:


Ooooooooo! Organic? Awesome. It's from mod green pod.

And I may have fallen in love with this flannel:


It's oh-too-easy to fall in love when everything about them is right, eh? :-)

Something to Do on the Subway

There was a lot of shuffling about this week, cleaning, rearranging...not much doing. Except for the hyperbolic crochet class last Sunday. During which this was created:


It was great fun, Becky is a patient teacher, and although at home Mr. S. had a cold and Safiya proceeded to run a fever while I was crocheting away, I only felt the teensiest bit guilty....well, not very much, actually. I really needed to get out :-) When I presented Safiya with the above, she immediately proclaimed it a sea-slug and asked where its baby was.....

After the workshop there was a fabric swap at The Workroom, so Becky kindly gave me and my suitcase of fabric a lift. There was some chomping at the bit and good natured nervous laughter at the sight of a mountain of fabric on the table in front of us, and we dove in politely as the reserved Canadians we are (I had heard that fabric swaps could get nasty, but of course not with these gals :-). Got a few sweet pieces, including this:


"Now when you bring that home," said my friend Johanna (who had the self-restraint of a saint and was only an onlooker in the melee of fabric), "you feel like you've accomplished something!...It's like...bringing home a wheel of cheese!" Which is exactly what Mr. S. meant, I am sure, when he said "What are you going to do with that?" upon beholding my spoils of the day.

It doesn't matter; it's marked "organic" and "cotton". Done and done.

Oh, and why does anyone take a hyperbolic crochet workshop? If for no other reason so that on the way home on the subway when someone asks "What are you crocheting?" you can smile and answer "I am crocheting hyperbolic space!"

Positively Giddy

I went to bed at midnight last night. Why? Because Becky came over for a visit, and so she is indirectly the reason of the insane-late-nightness. I say indirectly for as much as I could have probably kept talking until midnight (oh, so sweet adult conversation), Safiya was delirious at having a new person to gambol around, and would not even consider going to sleep until Becky was safely on her way. At which point Safiya promptly fell asleep, mid-late-night-bowl-of-oatmeal-snack mouthful. sigh.

So, indirectly, then. Becky brought with her goodies in the form of a garbage-bag full of scraps, part of a stash that she had recently come by. Read again. A garbage-bag full. I traded her for some of my wonky yarn and a little fabric, but I still think I got the better end of the deal. So it was sitting down there in my craft space....do I go down? If I do, I won't come back up again for a while...do I, don't I?

Of course I did.

Alexander Henry, Moda, Kaufmann...fabrics a thrift-store-second-hand gal like me can only dream of (and I do :-) Mr. S. found me down there again this morning:


"What is all that?"

me: holding it up in my hands like treasure: "fabric!"

"Yeah, but it's just scraps, what can you do with scraps?"

me: eyebrows raised at this insult to the fabric gods, at which Mr. S. beats a hasty retreat....


What can I do with scraps? HA! And to top it all off, I'm attending Becky's hyperbolic crochet class at The Knit Cafe tomorrow, and immediately after there is a fabric swap at The Workroom....

What a glorious weekend...

p.s. Becky's great to have over....she finds her own sugar for tea, stirs oatmeal upon request, and spins a good yarn...good stuff.

Beautiful on the Inside

My Mom's latest visit here was especially fun. Mr. S and Safiya went to a Blue Jays baseball game and Mom and I went to Holt Refrew, or Holt's as the well-heeled would say, I suppose. We lunched with the ladies who lunch and then went to look at designer clothes.

Now, perusing designer clothes with a woman like my mother is probably not a typical experience. We both love fabric, we both love clothes. But what my Mom loves the most and which I enjoy as a spectator sport is trying to figure out how the clothes are made. So there we were, handling Dolce & Gabbana and Stella McCartney and ahhhhh, Alexander McQueen without even the remotest intention of trying them on. (The next line is with reference to a designer which will remain unnamed, and there was more than one.)

"Ugh, they would never have made seams like that twenty years ago!"

And that is my mother. Looking at the inside of the clothes. They may be beautiful on the outside, but how they are made will reflect on the outside, even if it's not immediately obvious.

Taking apart a thrifted cotton pillowcase the other day, this is what I found on the inside:


Some day my seams will look like that.

The Best Laid Plans...

It wasn't meant to turn out this way. I said I wanted to reduce the piles of fabric around here to manageable levels, but I don't think I really knew what that meant. It means that your fabric gets used up! Gone! Just little itty bitty pieces left. This is not good.

When a piece comes home, it is because it is loved. There are very few strictly utilitarian fabrics around here. Somebody at one time put a lot of thought into the pattern, the colours, the effect of each of these pieces, and I really do regard them as a kind of art collection. The swatches above are some of the last bits of favourites of mine, and so I'm starting an ark. A fabric ark of squares. I just can't bear to part with them.

Maybe I'll make an ark quilt someday. What do you do with your favourites?

A Conundrum

This could be one of the most intriguing fabric thrift finds to find a home here:


Isn't it beautiful? I've never seen rabbits rendered in such a non-cloying manner before. More Watership Down than D!#ney, thank goodness...


So, do I cut it? Yea or nay?

Stash Happens

Poor, poor Violet. She posted a question on whipup recently about advice on how to start a fabric stash. Alright. Here are a couple of tips:

1. You have a new interest! It's something vintage and potentially collectible. That this interest is vintage aprons or tablecloths or curtains from obscure French restaurants from the 40's has nothing to do with your fabric stash.
2. Rekindle your friendship with your Great-Aunt who, now in her 90's, sips tea in her genteel way under towers of fabric teetering in what once was her dining room. Express concern for her safety.
3. Your clothing donation bag has become too heavy to carry. The load needs to be lightened, if only you could think of a way...
4. In the middle of looking for a mid-century credenza on ebay, mistakenly hit the "crafts" category....and then mistakenly hit the "fabric" category...
5. Frequent thrift shops to look for that last missing piece of your Mom's china set, which is in the housewares section. Unfortunately, the only way to the housewares section is through the assorted textiles section.
   

And last, but not least:

If you see a fabric sale, no matter how enticing, run in the opposite direction: run woman! don't walk!

And no matter how hard you try, no matter how well you steel yourself against temptation and follow these rules, somehow, somehow, your house will still be over-run with fabric.

Violet, I wish you luck...

Mini Hemp Field Trip

After I wrote the hemp post, I realised that I had made a major omission: you can't talk about hemp in Toronto without talking about the Toronto Hemp Company! So, having never been, Safiya and I went on a field trip.

It was only a 10 minute subway ride, but still, it had the air of a field trip! THC (pun intended, I'm sure), does have, among other things, hemp fabric. The guys were really helpful and really tolerant of the fact that I just wanted to handle the fabric and not buy any (the price wasn't in my range at this point).


They had a couple of bolts of the pure hemp, the rest being blended with cotton or silk. Hemp has a lovely hand; I find it silkier than cotton, more similar to linen in weight and weave. Their fabric is supplied by Effort Industries and is unfortunately neither local nor organic.


Having met it, I definitely want to work with it!

p.s. they sell their swatch cards too!

Night-time Corners and Polyester Thoughts

That little bag in the corner is my bag of scraps. Of thread, of cuttings, the detritus of waves of crafting creativity. This little bag is becoming more significant as time goes on, not only in size but in consequence. Cotton, linen, and wool feel lovely in hand and are so much better for our skin than polyester blends that I try to avoid the latter wherever possible. And the former will break down in the environment long after I'm long gone. Still, many of the rockin' prints of the past are polyester-cotton blends. Since I'm getting them second-hand and not using them in things to wear or cuddle with, I feel pretty good about giving them a second life, but what to do with the scraps?

Why does this matter? A couple of months ago, No Impact Man had a nice little post (oh wait, no, actually horrifying...) about plastic in the food chain. It's unsettled me, and that little bag of scraps has been weighing on my mind. Polyester is plastic. Sure, my scraps aren't significant, but they're my responsibility, eh? And somehow I don't feel right having my crafting life exist on a separate wavelength than the rest of my life (which is not perfect, but that's neither here nor there - it just doesn't jive, is what I mean - the plastic is without feeling - it follows me even to happy-craft-land). So, I figure I can use them to stuff stuffies and that will keep them out of the environment for a while.

What about not buying polyester blends to begin with? Well, I guess that means I'll have to find out what happens to stuff that never sells at second-hand stores. Does everything eventually sell? Do they dump it if it doesn't? (this seems unlikely) Not purchasing polyester at the second-hand level has no impact on first-tier shopping, does it? It's not like I can boycott polyester manufacturers by not buying polyester second-hand items. So a little leg-work is in order.

That just leaves thread. All my thread is polyester. When those run out, what next? Conventional cotton and it's spectre of pesticide use? I think I'll have to bite the cost bullet and order organic cotton thread, maybe from Near Sea Naturals. Maybe delve into plant-based dyeing? Or get really good at knitting ;-)

Ah, from a problem comes another crafting opportunity, perhaps?

As far as sourcing organic textiles in Toronto, I've come up with nothing...so far! (Maybe I should open a store? Hmmm...) On-line seems to have more options, clearly (although I haven't ordered from any as these sites yet):

Near Sea Naturals: everything including natural rubber elastic!
Shepherd's Dream: wool batting, cotton and wool textiles (our bed was made by these folks - this is not a paid advertisement :-) they're just lovely people with lovely product)
KidBean: organic cotton batting
Rawganique: hemp textiles
GreenSage Store: natural fabrics
Tenfold Organic Textiles
earth friendly goods: hemp fabric
Aurora Silk (these guys fascinate me)

Coming up on another post (after camping!), the holy grail of textiles: "100-mile" fabric and the search for hemp in Canada.

Whew! Now I'm going to go pack for camping! Have a great week!

How Did That Happen?

I swear I was buying them for the material!


The image of the apron is so laden with distasteful sentiment - think "tied to his mother's apron-strings", or of that scourge of the earth, the happy housewife, bright smile tilted just so, that the 50's advertisements would have us believe was the only thing worth striving for as females.....


But there they were, waiting to be cut-up, when I needed something to hold my clothespins while hanging laundry. And then, oh! That's why people wore them! They're useful! For clothespins, toys collected, half-eaten food found, the cordless phone, my earrings, pieces of embroidery thread, so that my jeans have fewer layers of dirt, marker, flour, and snot on them when I run to the grocery store.....


Cutting through the cultural crap and getting back to the real thing has roused in me a new reverence for these accoutrements of the household life, and like Other Useful Things (pincushions - in dire need of one; little scissors on a ribbon for around your neck when you're sewing - because I just put them down right there?....and there's more), from now on I will be more thankful for their sheer practicality.......and how pretty they are :-)

And of course no talk of aprons would be complete without mention of the apron coolness and abundance over at Angry Chicken's Tie One On!

I'm convinced that aprons are the new punk.....

What Once Was Lost Now is Found

So way back in the fall, when our water main broke in the basement and we immediately ripped up the laminate floor and then noticed something funky with the basement walls and a "test" for mould turned into ripping out everything....kind of carefully, the stuff being stored down there got hastily moved about three thousand times, a lot being disposed of after exposure to drywall dust possibly laden with (oh-the-horror-seriously) mould spores from a badly finished basement with improperly built walls that had harboured this stuff for who knows how long.

Please still come for tea.....it's gone now, I promise! See?


In the kerfuffle (Safiya's new favourite word), many things just disappeared and after a lot of searching I thought that I had lost two of my favourite fabrics, fabulous hand printed silks from Peach Berserk, fabrics that ages ago I had specifically bought for this house and for Safiya. Today I was cleaning the last of the mess up and upon opening a small unassuming cardboard box there they were, stuffed uncomplaining at the bottom, smiling cheerfully at me, saying "don't worry, we're still here!"


Tomorrow is Summer Solstice, and to celebrate both it and my fabric happiness, I think I'll make a little something for Safiya tonight, maybe a silk streamer like this one at Nova Naturals. And somehow make an offering up to those wonderful fabric gods and goddesses :-)

Anticipation

This weekend Mr. S. is going to do a renovation marathon and fix up the basement. This involves a lot of work. The "before" picture is non-existent; it's just too horrific (think 100 year old brick foundation walls with garish green paint peeling off...lovely....). The end result will be a craft space of my very own. I love him very much....

While he is slaving away, the babe and I will head down to the grandparents' in Niagara-on-the-Lake for a long-ish visit to keep away from paint fumes and such (a low VOC waterproofing paint is an oxymoron, but we did the best we could).

In-between all this I have another craft fair on Saturday - yay! It's the St. Albans Boys' and Girls' Club Annual Street Jam. Which is why my hands have been busy making more of these:


Fabric ready for beanbags! Making these is fun, simply to watch people wonder what they are as they weigh them in hand. The simple tactile pleasure always provokes a smile.

The only thing I regret is missing the TTC Knit-a-Long. What fun! I hope Toronto is overrun with knitters celebrating World Wide Knit in Public Day! Maybe I'll bring my needles to the fair :-)

Light in Hand

Living in a city as wonderfully diverse as Toronto, I've been anticipating this thrift-moment for a long, long, time. I've wished for it, dreamt about it, my heart has skipped a beat before...only to be disappointed, but it's finally happened.


Silk. Metres and metres of silk saris. I couldn't resist - I bought all three (they were $15 each, but well, I couldn't pass them up now, could I?).


The details are from the richly worked ends....


Each one has been lovingly cared for, with careful mending and reinforcement in a couple of places at the back, but they are not fragile by any means. I shiver to even think of cutting into them, but...maybe paired with linen? Could I do something with wool felt? Maybe line a coat for Safiya...ambitious, but how lovely! I called my Mom up with the news...

"you should see them in the light, it's so beautiful....I'll post pictures, but of course they're more gorgeous in person" At which Mr. S. interjects from the other room - "in person, in person? you people are crazy!"

Maybe a little....crazy with loooove :-)

Bliss

Again the word bliss. These kind of sunny days really truly bliss me out. We've been out in the backyard, gardening. In bare feet. Waking up from naps to go right outside, still snuggling under the blanket ("it's too sunny, Mama!" oh yay to hear those words)...


If we're inside, Safiya finds sunny spots like a happy kitten, murmuring little girl murmurs about the warmth.


We moved to a house basically because we only ever got light from the west in our condo, and there was no green space. I'm a sun and dirt person in a serious-joyful-just-lay-there-with-ants-crawling-over-my-arms smelling-the-earth-warming way. So right now....bliss.

'Course now the problem is, what about the crafting? We have grand plans for building a little strawbale studio/greenhouse at the back of our small lot some year, but until then....


Because, you know, I've been thinking.


About the Leslieville Tree Festival, for which I registered an "artisan" table and it's on May 12, which is coming up (eek!). But what are you making? you say.... We haven't really seen anything? you say..... That's because I've actually been busy crafting, which feels wonderful, and I'm so excited (I've just deleted a whole bunch of "but....and....time...but.....whine...." - whew! that feels better!). So, I'm soooo excited. It's my first craft show ever, I have no idea what I'm doing, but hey? What's the worst that can happen? Besides Safiya ending up with 30 pairs of legwarmers and a bunch of blankets and....oh, the last bit I'm saving 'cause I'm having so much fun making them. I promise pictures very soon.

So in the next few weeks, happy Mama will choose to let some things go. Happy Mama chooses to sometimes groove to homemade Indian food, sometimes scrambled eggs for dinner (thank goodness for eggs!). Happy Mama chooses to tolerate a few dust bunnies (do you hear me? bunnies? a few - I see you...) Happy Mama will still go to bed at 10-ish and wake up at 7-ish (because she's not Martha and actually needs to sleep). Happy Mama chooses to not have the computer on at all times. Happy Mama chooses to craft when she can and recognize when to breathe and put it down and not push it, even if there's a deadline. Why? Because it's my deadline and I'm really doing it just for me.

May sound a bit selfish, but it feels so right and so good.

Pictures soon, I promise...